THE APPALACHIAN SOUTH: A LOOK AT RACISM AND CLASS STEREOTYPES
- Ellie Greenberger
- Sep 10, 2020
- 3 min read
Stereotyping across geographical regions draws imaginary lines between North, South, East, West and the Appalachian South.
At the Oxford Conference for the Book, Elizabeth Catte, Meredith McCarroll, Kadira Brown and Jessica Wilkerson engage in discourse about the Appalachian region and how it is viewed by the rest of the United States especially when it comes to race and class.
When it comes to race, Brown states that much of the history of African Americans in the region has been erased. Her book is a collection of oral histories of African Americans in the region. These stories provide a look at race and racism through the experience of people during Jim Crow.
“I found myself in a dilemma,” Brown said. “It was nearly impossible to find representation relating to every other group of people. I had to go out and build an archive.”
For her book, Brown went out and interviewed 153 people over the course of three years.
“Appalachia is the grease to assuage a curtain of blindness,” Brown said.
She stated that people have always said if you want to see racism look towards the south, but that only serves to enable people to ignore their own actions and beliefs.
“The South often serves as a scapegoat and the Appalachian region serves as a scapegoat for the South,” McCarroll said.
The Appalachian Region often operates under one stereotype, but the region spans 13 states. The region stretches through part of West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
In Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film, McCarroll looks at the cinematic representation of the people in Appalachia and talks about how in movies the people of Appalachia often fill stereotypes similar to other minority groups.
“Its a short hand for a complex group of people that allows them to be simple and secondary,” McCarroll said. “It has been used to excuse the erasure of people and the abuse of extractive industries.”
Yet, race is not the only thing that has defined beliefs about the region. Class has often served as a stereotype for the region.
Catte states that class, capitalism and racism are intrinsically linked.
“Dehumanizing goes a long way toward absolving yourself,” Catte said speaking about industrialists who came to the region to mine.
The dehumanizing of people also leads to the erasure of their history Catte suggests. She brings up rural places in Kentucky that don’t have clean drinking water because coal companies dumped coal sludge into the water supply.
According to the New York Times Article A Torrent of Sludge Muddies a Town’s Future, “Martin County’s torrent of sludge was more than 20 times the volume of the Exxon Valdez’s crude oil spill in Alaska 11 years ago.”
This incident happened in 2000 in Martin County, Kentucky.
“Public history is the product of groups competing for resources…” Catte said, “no one has invested in these stories.”
The article states, “A touchy issue involving industry, jobs and the environment, it drew a few headlines but little national interest.”
The stereotypes for the Appalachian Region are all related to issues of race and class. Many of them had personal reasons for looking into the region.
“For me, my interest is deeply personal,” McCarroll said. “It took leaving home to understand what other people understand about The South, both the Appalachian South and other South. My book points out how powerful and pervasive these stereotypes are.”
The Oxford Conference for the Book The Appalachian South panel occurred in the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. The panel was comprised of four women who are all scholars of the region.
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