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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe White Ghetto (America's poorest County)
National Review:If the people here werent 98.5 percent white, wed call it a reservation.
Driving through these hills and hollows, you arent in the Appalachia of Elmore Leonards Justified or squatting with Lyndon Johnson on Tom Fletchers front porch in Martin County, a scene famously photographed by Walter Bennett of Time, the image that launched the so-called War on Poverty. The music isnt Shady Grove, its Kanye West. There is still coal mining which, at $25 an hour or more, provides one of the more desirable occupations outside of government work but the jobs are moving west, and Harlan County, like many coal-country communities, has lost nearly half of its population over the past 30 years.
There is here a strain of fervid and sometimes apocalyptic Christianity, and visions of the Rapture must have a certain appeal for people who already have been left behind. Like its black urban counterparts, the Big White Ghetto suffers from a whole trainload of social problems, but the most significant among them may be adverse selection: Those who have the required work skills, the academic ability, or the simple desperate native enterprising grit to do so get the hell out as fast as they can, and they have been doing that for decades. As they go, businesses disappear, institutions fall into decline, social networks erode, and there is little or nothing left over for those who remain. Its a classic economic death spiral: The quality of the available jobs is not enough to keep good workers, and the quality of the available workers is not enough to attract good jobs. These little towns located at remote wide spots in helical mountain roads are hard enough to get to if you have a good reason to be here. If you dont have a good reason, you arent going to think of one.
Apparently, they voted 81% for Romney, and the Mayor of Booneville has been in office for 50 years.
The Wielding Truth
(11,415 posts)That is why it is important to have strong civil rights and federal consumer protections and regulations.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)mines. Sadly, they have no idea what the truth is. That's why the voted so much for Romney.
WhiteTara
(29,704 posts)and they have to have someone to whom they can feel superior.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)I am reminded of the saying "The beatings will continue until morale improves". The vast majority of these folks are getting better than what they voted for. If they really got all that they voted for, they would be living in absolute squalor with no assistance whatsoever. The Sheep Look Up.
Coal will die as climate change costs become too great for even the 1% to ignore. Alternatives and improved efficiency will cut the price of energy to the point where no one will want to buy coal. The Chinese are already working on this for themselves.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)for Obama is in S Dakota, but there was a story on the most democratic county being in KY. They interviewed the locals and they still had the new deal mentality. They remembered when the democrats brought electricity to that part of the country. They knew which side their bread was buttered on.
I didn't bring up the obvious about skin color, because this was a coal article. They also didn't poll well for Ashley Judd when she was considering running for Senate after they heard her comments about coal.
blueknight
(2,831 posts)and have no idea what you are talking about in reference to the most democratic county.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)story. They give a link to that story at the end. I saw the longer version and it showed people from Kentucky speaking.
http://on.aol.com/video/democratic-party-survives-in-rural-elliott-county--kentucky-517775900#!
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)"Our Democratic principles and how we're registered to vote was handed down from generation to generation," explained Rocky Adkins, who has served as Elliott's representative in the statehouse in Frankfort, Ky., since 1987.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/solid-south-democratic-party-kentucky_n_3151539.html
pintobean
(18,101 posts)Nevernose
(13,081 posts)Even good in parts. It was featured on longform.org the other day (probably to counter accusations of liberal bias).
Obviously, it's infected by the lunatic right wing viewpoint, but the more attention poverty gets in this country the better, I say. And while they blame some of the stuff on liberalism, and use soda pop to decry liberal policies, the writer seems to me to ultimately realize that poverty is such an immense problem that it's hard to encapsulate within a single paradigm. He doesn't paint the picture simplistically, and seems to grasp the immense complexity of the problem.