Ignored and Forgotten: Disparities and Discrimination in Appalachia

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Welcome to the Conversations of the Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I wanna, before we get into the topic today, just thank everyone for your support for the

00:08

NeNe's Deli documentary, for just supporting Juan Riesco. I know that they're very happy with this and y 'all made it happen, so thank you so much to those who contributed to that.

00:24

I'm actually on the road this week, involved in some projects.

00:30

One of them is facilitating the next documentary and if you go to the info section, you can find out more information about that.

00:38

I'll be talking about it more, but if you wanna give to that, there's a give, send, go link in the info section and I'll be talking more about it in the days to come.

00:46

But I wanted to give you a short podcast today about something that I think is kind of important, something that doesn't get talked about a lot.

00:54

And that is Appalachian discrimination. That's right, Appalachian discrimination.

01:01

Are people in the Appalachian mountains, specifically, or people who just live in the South in general, I suppose, are they discriminated against?

01:08

People who are culturally Southern, culturally, especially Appalachian.

01:14

And the reason I bring this up isn't to, obviously, knowing me, you know that I'm not trying to paint this group of people as a victim category that deserves some kind of reparations.

01:30

I'm not going down the same narrative that Black Lives Matter goes down at all.

01:38

The reason I actually bring it up is because I think it shows the hypocrisy of Black Lives Matter.

01:45

And this idea that it's only ethnic minorities or now they're using the term sexual minorities, or women who aren't really actually minorities, but they get that treatment somehow, that they are all discriminated against.

02:04

And that's it. And it's very hard and fast kind of categories that we have.

02:12

And if you're white, straight, male, Christian, especially if you're all those things and you reside in the

02:21

South, and I suppose if you have a German heritage, I mean, you're really done for if that's the case. Those kinds of people can't be victims ever.

02:28

And that's just not true. It's just not true. And so I wanna really just go through a few things.

02:34

This didn't take me long to compile this, but I just wanna go through a few statistics with you. And as I'm going through,

02:40

I want you to think about the Black Lives Matter movement and how they use disparities to further their agenda. And I want you to think about the quotes

02:47

I'm gonna read for you, and then the disparities that exist between Appalachia and the rest of the

02:52

United States, right? Because there is a difference there. And it could be very easily, and in fact, in part, some of it is the result of certain kinds of oppression, if you wanna call it that.

03:09

And we could easily draw those lines. And I can make a great case that Appalachia deserves reparations.

03:15

I won't do that. I don't believe in that. I don't think that is right. But the same kind of narrative that Black Lives Matter is putting out there can be put out about a lot of other groups.

03:28

And there's millions of dollars, billions of dollars, really, behind the Black Lives Matter narrative. Oh, art, and movies, and textbooks.

03:36

And I mean, it's the religion. It has to be out there in front and center. But there's no money, hardly at all, being put behind this, nothing.

03:45

I mean, it's, to expose kind of the disparities that are between Appalachia and the rest of the country.

03:53

I mean, it's, you gotta, what's the biggest book? Hillbilly Eulogy, that's what everyone quotes. One guy who wrote a book, right?

04:01

So this is something that I think deserves more attention. And I really think if people had an understanding, if they didn't just focus on the victim groups we're supposed to focus on and believe them to be the victim groups, if they had a more of a fair way of viewing disparities, and if they felt sorry, if their heart, you know, it just, it breaks your heart sometimes to see the kind of poverty that exists in these regions.

04:30

If that exists, I don't think you'd be hearing the cry to take down things like monuments to Southerners, to Confederate monuments, et cetera.

04:39

I don't think you'd hear that. Because there would be kind of an empathy and a sympathy for the people that are descendants of them.

04:47

But the reason that works, that narrative is working now in large part, there's a few reasons, but one of them is,

04:54

I think, probably because they don't fit the bill. They're not victims, they're ignored.

05:01

So let's go through some of this. Let me show you some things that, you know, maybe some of you aren't aware of.

05:07

My wife and I were traveling, and we went through the Western part, Southwestern part of Virginia into Tennessee.

05:15

And we were going through some impoverished areas and beautiful country out there. Here's a picture of an old rundown barn, a stable,

05:25

I guess. And then you got some cows out there, a lot of cows. You know, it's so rocky, you can't really grow anything.

05:31

But this is, I mean, there's so many pictures I could have taken of just really like trailers, very junky trailers with, it's not like everyone there's like that, but there's a lot of it.

05:42

There's a lot of trash, a lot of, you can just tell in poverty, people that don't have access to medical care as much as other people who live closer to cities and in other regions of the country.

05:57

And I just started thinking about this, and I thought, you know, why isn't this victim group, if you wanna call them that, why aren't the people here thought of as a victim group?

06:08

Why aren't they thought of as that? I mean, it's like going to the ghetto, right? You see poverty and stuff.

06:13

You see poverty out here as well. But for some reason, this is ignored. And, you know, if there's so much white privilege, because most of the people living out here happen to be

06:22

Scots -Irish descendants, you know, they're white in the critical race theory way of looking at things.

06:28

If they have so much white privilege, why are they ignored? I think this pokes a huge hole in that whole narrative. Let me give you just a few things off the top of my head.

06:37

Sherman's Army, right? That, in Sheridan, you could use Sheridan in the

06:42

Shenandoah Valley, that's in the Appalachians. Sherman's Army impoverished the South. And you could certainly make the way that, make the argument that systemic abuse from back then to today is what's causing all these issues, right?

06:58

Sherman's Army's fault. It's literally the government's policy and actions towards a group of civilians, mostly, that is causing the issues that are happening today.

07:10

I mean, you could almost make, you know, at least with slavery, you didn't have like the whole country coming together when the slave boats were arriving and voting on it.

07:18

It happened more organically. I mean, with this, you had, you know, they were paid for by the government. I mean, you could make the case.

07:26

I'm just saying, if you wanted to use the whole BLM narrative for this, why not? Make the case. It's an impoverished region.

07:32

I'm gonna show you some things on that. There's negative stereotypes. They're made fun of. They're rednecks. They're hillbillies, right?

07:38

Mimicking their accents as if you're dumb or something. You know, the jokes about you might be a redneck and, you know, you don't have teeth or shoes or making fun of poverty.

07:49

I mean, can you imagine if this kind of thing were said about people who lived in inner city areas who were minorities?

07:56

Oh, it's racism. Well, how come this isn't? A lot of these people were displaced by things.

08:04

For instance, I learned that during the creation of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a lot of mountain families were completely displaced, again, by the federal government.

08:15

So, I mean, you wanna make a case for reparations. Lack of access to medical care, financial opportunities, et cetera.

08:23

Just geographically, look at a map. Where are all the hospitals? Where are the places to get jobs? And then where do these people live?

08:30

People in the ghetto have more access than the people who live up in the mountains. And the suicide rate is high in much of the

08:39

South. I couldn't get specifics on the Appalachian Mountains, but I'm assuming it's high there since it's high in the

08:45

South. So, you know, this is just a little sample of some of the things you could use if you wanted to create that narrative.

08:53

Let me give you some quotes. If you wanna do the historical thing, right? It's all historical. Here's what General Grant said.

08:58

Rebellion has assumed that shape now that it can only terminate by the complete subjugation of the

09:04

South. It is our duty, therefore, to use every means to weaken the enemy by destroying their means of substance.

09:09

That means their crops, their animals. Withdrawing their means of cultivating their fields and in every other way possible.

09:17

It's not Sherman, guys. It's General Grant saying this. General Oliver, there are still a large number of mountain men from this

09:24

Corps stripping the people of everything that can sustain life. I saw families of women, children, and Negroes, his word, not mine, who had absolutely nothing to eat.

09:35

Major Berger, a number of cases of atrocities, rape by these people, United States troops, have already occurred.

09:42

Their influence on the colored population is also reported as to be bad. Some of the behavior that happened to people in the

09:50

South during the war, civilians. Horace Greeley, Northerner, this is what he said.

09:57

We mean to conquer them, subjugate them. Never would traitors be permitted to return to peaceful and contented homes.

10:05

Instead, they must find poverty at their firesides and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers and the rags of children.

10:15

Horace Greeley, man of very good standing in the North. That's what he said.

10:22

General Sherman, there is a class of people, Southerners is what he's talking about, men, women, and children who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.

10:32

Now, these are just some quotes. You could use these quotes. I mean, look, quotes are used all the time to vilify Southerners, to vilify

10:39

Americans in general, to vilify white people. Why not just take a bunch of quotes like this, and you could take a bunch more than what

10:46

I just gave you, and say, look, the poverty that exists, it's due to systemic abuse and oppression, and look at these quotes.

10:55

This is where it started. It was these people. Let's talk about some of the disparities. Life expectancy. The least healthy to the most healthy.

11:02

Look at the least healthy. The red is the least healthy. Huh, it's the

11:07

Appalachians. It's the South. That's where people are the least healthy in the United States.

11:14

Let's look at infant mortality by state. Interesting, there's this blue island, and it's mostly the

11:22

South. And of course, you got West Virginia and Ohio as well in there, but a lot of those people are also Appalachian people.

11:30

How about poverty by state? Yep, again, deep South. Got Kentucky in there as well, but the poorer places seem to be in the

11:40

South mostly. Smoking by state.

11:45

Who smokes the most? Prevalence of cigarette smoking during pregnancy varied by state, so we have two. We have smoking and then cigarette smoking by pregnancy.

11:52

And again, smoking, a lot of it is the South. It's, you know, the

11:58

Midwest has some too as well, but it's the Appalachian regions. Smoking while pregnant, again, West Virginia.

12:04

Kentucky, very high. Missouri, high as well. How about adult obesity rates?

12:12

Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, highest in the country. Percentage of advanced degrees by state.

12:25

The South, again, especially Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma.

12:35

They have, they're under 8%. How about suicide?

12:41

And this is, I couldn't find, it was hard for me to find suicide statistics. The best I could come up with with my limited search was from the 90s, but during 1990 to 94, a total of 154 ,444 persons committed suicide.

12:54

Now, here's the percentages. 15 % in the Northeast, 22 % in the Midwest, 25 % in the

13:01

West, and 37 % in the South. Now, I think per capita, the

13:06

West is actually higher, but the South is second. There's been some books talking about some of these things.

13:15

Mike Huckabee came out with a book, God's Guns, Grits, and Gravy, and he talked about why people, why would people be unhealthy in the

13:21

South? Why do you think? Here's what he says. We fried everything, everything. I would later understand that Southern habit of frying, and it's quite practical.

13:29

In a poor family, food needs to stretch to feed a maximum number of mouths. Breading and frying allows one to take pretty much anything and add to the caloric content and the fullness factor without adding to the cost.

13:40

Frying had another advantage. In homes where poverty meant not always having refrigeration or reliable ways to protect from spoilage, especially in the summer, it took food to such a high temperature that any bacteria were also crispy cooked.

13:52

The reason they're unhealthy, a lot of them, the reason they eat the way they do, poverty.

14:01

Here's the cost of living by state. South has the least amount, or some of the property values down there are much less than in the

14:13

Northeast or the West. And the coastal areas,

14:21

I should say, Northeast or the West. We have the adjusted cohort graduation rate. Now, check this out.

14:27

So if you think that, look, oh, these Southerners are, these people that live in the Appalachian Mountains in particular, they're just, they're the ones bringing all this on themselves.

14:35

They're just, they're not good students. They don't apply themselves. They're not wise with their finances. Check this out.

14:41

Adjusted cohort graduation rate. Guess where it's high? Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia. It's high in those states.

14:49

That means that students are completing high school at higher rates in those states.

14:55

Check this one out. State debt per capita. Guess who's more responsible? Looks like Southern states are more responsible than a lot of the places in the

15:04

Northeast that are running up huge debts. Alabama, Mississippi.

15:10

I mean, Alabama's number 44, Georgia's number 47, Mississippi's number 41, Tennessee's number 50 with state debt per capita.

15:19

Looks like they're being a little more responsible with their finances. And look at where the people are moving.

15:27

People are moving away from the Northeast, Mid -Atlantic, the West Coast, and they're moving to many

15:34

Southern places. Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina. People wanna be in some of these areas.

15:43

Now, like I said, there's been some books about this. Hillbilly Eulogy, J .D. Vance, Punished with Poverty by James Ronald and Walter D.

15:50

Kennedy. They talk about some of these things. And how this situation came to be.

16:00

What I wanna, really, the reason I'm making this, though, and what I wanna say is this. This, the facts in this situation work better for the

16:10

BLM narrative than the BLM facts work in many ways. I mean, it's, you can even try to say that, look, they're being more responsible.

16:20

They're graduating from high school, et cetera. Now, in some of the more mountain areas, I'm not sure to what extent that's true. I just have state info.

16:27

But look, they're the victims. You could say that, they're the victims. And look at the disparities they prove it.

16:35

I mean, why not? Why don't, why wouldn't you do that? And of course, pointing this stuff out can certainly lend to the charge against me and people who point this out of racism.

16:46

Isn't that incredible? If you start saying that there's a disparity there, then, well, you must just be racist.

16:53

You don't care about minorities. You just, you care about people in the Appalachian Mountains. No, I care about all people.

17:00

And I think there is a great need. And if God has called you to work in those areas where there's poverty, if you feel like you have a heart for those people,

17:08

I think you should go, no matter whether it's the ghetto or the mountains or wherever. I'm just pointing out that these people are ignored because they don't fit the narrative.

17:17

How sad is that? How terrible is that? There's nothing just about social justice, guys.

17:24

Don't forget it. So I wanted to make that short video for you to point out the hypocrisy of this.

17:30

And I just hope it was helpful for you. I hope it made you think about this from a vantage point perhaps you haven't thought about it before.

17:38

But what if we were to take the Black Lives Matter logic and apply it to other demographics? And sure enough, you can do the same thing with other demographics.

17:49

I think that's why they wanna break it down between white and black. Because if they did it regionally, it wouldn't work too well. So there you go.

17:56

I hope that is helpful to you. And God bless. Got more coming out.

18:01

Like I said, if you wanna support the documentary we're working on right now, go to the info section and there's a