The Pissed-off Poor Appalachian White. . .

Here's something to think about: how many pissed-off middle and lower-class people, not just Appalachian natives, are out there? Quite a few, I'd guess. And we don't have to wonder about how they feel, because articles like this one by Kai Wright make the whole shooting match pretty clear. Thanks to Connie May Fowler who made me aware of this on Facebook.

If ever there was a “teachable moment” about race in modern America, now is it. With the birthers and the reparations conspiracy theories and the Nazi imagery at health care meetings, someone’s gotta explain why all these white folks are wilding out. We need an articulate, impassioned race man to clarify things. But not Al Sharpton; I say pass the mic to Jim Webb.

Remember way back when Webb, a Democratic senator from Virginia and the voice of Appalachia’s neglected white yeoman, was sniffing around a veep nod? In the midst of that media moment, he hit on an idea we’d do well to dwell upon. “Black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings,” Webb patiently explained to Pat Buchanan in a May 2008 Morning Joe appearance on MSNBC. “There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains. … ‘If you're poor and white, you’re out of sight.’”

More.