10 ms·

These sorts of elaborate rebuttals, like the article or the art project it references, aren't that different from the works of outsiders that they seek to prove

These sorts of elaborate rebuttals, like the article or the art project it references, aren't that different from the works of outsiders that they seek to prove wrong. It seemingly is the case that Appalachia attracts a kind of journalist-meets-artist who finds plenty of material for a culture-tinged exposé of somewhat-thoughtful poverty and hardship porn, but a curated photoset of Sides of Appalachia You May Not Know is aimed at the level of The New Yorker, and not something relatable to everyday folk in the suburbs or the Midwest. It does little to dissuade the notion that Appalachia still has an odd mystique, which is a disservice to region. The fact is, Appalachia is largely "just" economically depressed region like Northwest Kansas or the Mississippi Floodplain or the drive from Tucson to El Paso, where most jobs are retail and government and the best jobs are in mineral extraction or transportation or industry, but far fewer than in times past. Transportation is a pain but yet it's crisscrossed by critical routes, and life there is pretty normal for rural America. Really, there's only a handful of areas in the US where you can ride the a boom if you time it right, everywhere else things are just okay. In some places you have fewer options. People try to get by, or try to leave. It's odd how much Appalachia has gripped the popular imagination, and how outsiders and a few well-positioned insiders perpetuate it.

bitexploder 7y ago
I grew up in the Deep South, a related cousin to Appalachia. I spent more than 30 years in the south. I have spent a lot of time in Appalachia, hiking, meeting locals. It isn’t a stretch to say “I get it”. I read Hillbily Elegy. This piece does little to change my mind about my own view point. There are parts of the culture that are worthwhile and valuable (to me) and parts I can leave quite easily. For me it is the almost resentful pride in their own ignorance of the rest of the country, and even the world, that was so hard to accept. You can paste over that, all these layers of complexity and beautiful mountain vignettes, but under that there are elements that are difficult to accept for me. There is a lot of stubborn pride for heritage that does the culture no good and I never understood it. Also, Appalachia is not unique to most other rural areas, they just have nicer scenery. Poverty is what it is and it does what it does to people. You either get out of it or it eats you. There is nothing romantic about it. There is no great stoic philosophy providing Appalachian poverty with any special resistance to poverty and being mostly ignored by the rest of the country. I don’t know, it isn’t some terrible reality to suffer through, but it is more tragic than anything else. Maybe this is the inevitable view point I have adopted as I have become more outsider to the culture I was raised in over the years. It isn’t all bad, I will still visit, hike, and enjoy the natural beauty there, but the people suffer like any other under-educated poor people do. There is no number of voices and view points that can change that. I appreciate what the author is trying to do, they must surely understand the culture well, but it is a big miss for me.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > Poverty is what it is and it does what it does to people. You either get out of it or it eats you. Perhaps the people with the compulsion to leave have already done so? Kind of what is being call "The Big Sort", where (politically) like-minded people seem to be congregating to the same neighborhoods: * https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/10/the-big-sort-revisited/504830/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/10/the-big-sort-revisite... * https://www.economist.com/united-states/2008/06/19/the-big-sort https://www.economist.com/united-states/2008/06/19/the-big-s... Something similar happening to the ambition-minded? (Someone once remarked / joked that perhaps America is so stereotypically optimistic is perhaps all the people who left the Old Country for the New World were probably the more adventurous, go-go types, and those that stayed behind were more chill.)
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    This is my take. For all the talk of international brain drain, we don't have a narrative for the more local equivalent. Similarly, we worry about disrupting natural biomes through deforestation or overfishing, but we don't think about sustainability applied to human communities, with a few exceptions (reservations get some attention, though not sufficient attention). What do we do? For one, I don't think it's hard to make an ethical case for remote first workplaces.
    - magduf 7y ago
      More remote work isn't going to make a significant number of people want to stay in these uneducated, economically-depressed locales. They aren't just leaving for the work, they're leaving to get away from the local culture.
      - sudosteph 7y ago
        There are generally some more educated pockets within these regions that are actually quite desirable, but lack economic development. These spots, like Asheville NC (the place I ultimately would like to settle down in) are unfortunately quite expensive due to low housing supply and people from out-of-state moving in. But I've got a remote gig now, so I just need to save up more. Personally, I will be happy to be part of a culture that values friendliness, ingenuity, sweet tea and banjo music. Fwiw, I tried moving away to Seattle, but despite my educational attainment and liberal leanings, I found that I just prefer NC. There's something to be said for living somewhere you don't feel like an outsider. After 5 years in Seattle, I still couldn't lose that feeling.
jessaustin 7y ago
Sure, but Vance is more "wrong" than his detractors are. He's the one who sees all poor people, and all poor people alike.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  Wrong in what regard? I found nothing wrong with Vance’s book. Having a similar family background to Vance, I think he has a great outlook on the matter.
  - moorhosj 7y ago
    I think his biggest miss was failing to connect the region to the rest of the country. He could have easily compared Appalachia to Rust Belt cities facing urban decay but never made the connection. It could have made the story of the region more approachable to more people. It seemed so obvious to me how the areas are linked by economic circumstances, environmental degradation, poor education levels, distinct culture and problems with drug addiction.
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      So you wanted him to write a different book? Maybe he had different goals and that's fine.
      - _dczq 7y ago
        Not what I said at all. I thought there was an opportunity to make a larger connection between what has happened in the Appalachian towns he focuses on and larger Rust Belt cities who face much of the same issues.
        humanrebar 7y ago
        He took other opportunities. Not sure why that's a failing. Someone else can still write the book you want.
    - 7y ago
nrf1 7y ago
> It's odd how much Appalachia has gripped the popular imagination, and how outsiders and a few well-positioned insiders perpetuate it. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina are key swing states. That's the primary reason Appalachia gets so much attention. This electoral reality goes all the way back to the war on poverty.
- sudosteph 7y ago
  Yes, but the Appalacian contingent is not a majority in any of those states. They just are historically less anti-union than other rural areas (while still socially conservative) so they can swing a bit. Overall the big cities and suburbs are usually the deciding factor there. If anything, Appalachian are uniquely under-represented nationally. While the region as a whole contains nearly 25 million people, WV is the only state to have two Appalacian senators. I think TN has one as well, but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention They also serve (willingly or not) as exemplars held up by Republicans, particularly in the populist ideology of Trump supporters, of those "real Americans" who have been betrayed by globalism and progressivism, and to further the narrative of an intractable cultural and political divide having formed between the rural right and urban left (and to contrast the cultural and ethnic purity of the former against the corrupting influence of multiculturalism and secularism among the latter.)
  - TomMckenny 7y ago
    >If anything, Appalachian are uniquely under-represented nationally. While the region as a whole contains nearly 25 million people, WV is the only state to have two Appalacian senators. I think TN has one as well, but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention. Technically that is 50% more senators than California with twice the population.
thebooktocome 7y ago
> a curated photoset of Sides of Appalachia You May Not Know is aimed at the level of The New Yorker, and not something relatable to everyday folk in the suburbs or the Midwest. Midwesterner here. You don't speak for me. JD Vance doesn't speak for me. Try listening for once.
- asark 7y ago
  I took it to mean not relatable because we go "what's the big deal, looks like a hillier version of what and who I can see if I find a state highway and drive 20 minutes", here in the Midwest. A jab at the New Yorker more than the Midwest. That's my charitable reading based on the tone of the rest of the post, anyway—but I could be wrong.
  - nrf1 7y ago
    Exactly. The entire paragraph after that sentence confirms exactly this reading... charity not necessary.
    - asark 7y ago
      Yeah, just leaving some wiggle room to account for my own stupidity, since it looks like at least one person read it differently.
- bshoemaker 7y ago
  Lol stfu
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take personal swipes or lash back at another comment, even if it is wrong or seems so. Doing that only makes things worse. It doesn't help. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
whatshisface 7y ago
There is seriously not that big a difference between the reading level of random comments on the internet and the reading level of the New Yorker, or of the average thinkpiece. Self-styled intellectuals love to pretend that they are writing in a sophisticated secret code language, but that hasn't been true since they quit Latin.
- madhadron 7y ago
  And, to be fair, English is a vastly more sophisticated language with layers of nuance that constitute codes than Latin.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    English more sophisticated than Latin? At nuance?
  - onlydeadheroes 7y ago
    Did you ever study Latin?
    - madhadron 7y ago
      Yes. My parents taught me. They studied it at Cambridge. I'm not talking about inflection. English doesn't use inflection except vestigially, though our grammar is every bit as subtle (compare English verb tenses to those of a Romance language). I'm talking about the employment of reference, accent, dialect...
  - anthk 7y ago
    Hahahaahahaa!! The Romances can have hugely brutal nested sentences as nothing. Would you dare to read Don Quixote in the original and non-modernized Spanish? I think not. That book mixed a parody of Medieval Spanish and the pre-Enlightentment era one. The discovering of America put the Church on a lower-closer to the Earth place and became the roots of modern Humanism. Don Quixote is a pun on the Dark Ages, myth and religion, compared it to Sancho Panza who is a metaphor of the almost Enlightened humanistic/pragmatic folk who doesn't believe on myths and doesn't have crazy religious-like hallucinations on giants. Trust me, a lot of grammar from the crazy knight is stilL¡l valid today even if looks outdated. Heck, it already was outdated, as I said Don Quixote was the old fart pun from the 1600s. English' grammar is a joke compared to the versatibility of Romances. And, even forther back in time, Latin used similar traits.
smt88 7y ago
> life there is pretty normal for rural America I've lived in Appalachia my entire life (West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York). Although I can't generalize about the people of either the Midwest or Appalachia, there are some big differences between rural Appalachia and some other rural places. 1) Landscape. Due to the difficulty of building roads, some Appalachian places (closer to WV and KY) were extremely isolated until the 20th century. This affected culture, education, wealth, and industry. It's a huge factor in the region even today. 2) Agriculture. In most of Appalachia, you can't have a massive corn plantation. You rarely see a large field of anything at all. Most of the exports are capital-intensive and extractive (mining or timber), and the result is that there's a pattern of wealthy outsiders plundering the resources and leaving locals with little of the gain. 3) Stereotypes. A strong Midwestern accent (from, let's say, rural MI or PA) does not have the same connotation as a strong Appalachian accent (from KY or WV). The stereotypes of the regions just aren't the same, and they do affect people applying for jobs.
- culturestate 7y ago
  > The stereotypes of the regions just aren't the same, and they do affect people applying for jobs. I've been around motorsports most of my life and I used to see this all the time at racetracks in America. Even in NASCAR country, lots of people assume the "good ol' boy" accent means a person is just a shade-tree mechanic even if they're the most well-educated person in the garage.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    Heh, funnily enough, a few years ago I was at a rodeo with some friends, and this was in rural Oregon. One of the announcers was a radio personality on some country station in the Portland area (I think -- something like that, at least). For most of the rodeo he spoke with a thick drawl, obviously going for the "good ol' boy" vibe. A few times, he slipped up and spoke with a very plain Portland/PNW accent. It was jarring when I heard it but he went right back to the good ol' boy accent and I don't know how much anyone else noticed. But it came across like it was all an affectation, for the reasons you described.
jpfed 7y ago
>but a curated photoset of Sides of Appalachia You May Not Know is aimed at the level of The New Yorker, and not something relatable to everyday folk in the suburbs or the Midwest FYI I'm a Midwesterner and problems relating to pictures isn't a regional trait that I'm aware of. A picture of X is in pretty direct correspondence to the visual experience of X itself, so it turns out pictures are pretty easy to digest! If you're a Midwesterner, you should definitely give pictures a try. If you're not a Midwesterner, it's possible that meeting a few more of them would change your idea of what they can relate to.
btrautsc 7y ago
I like this comment.

bitexploder 7y ago

I grew up in the Deep South, a related cousin to Appalachia. I spent more than 30 years in the south. I have spent a lot of time in Appalachia, hiking, meeting locals. It isn’t a stretch to say “I get it”. I read Hillbily Elegy. This piece does little to change my mind about my own view point. There are parts of the culture that are worthwhile and valuable (to me) and parts I can leave quite easily. For me it is the almost resentful pride in their own ignorance of the rest of the country, and even the world, that was so hard to accept. You can paste over that, all these layers of complexity and beautiful mountain vignettes, but under that there are elements that are difficult to accept for me. There is a lot of stubborn pride for heritage that does the culture no good and I never understood it. Also, Appalachia is not unique to most other rural areas, they just have nicer scenery. Poverty is what it is and it does what it does to people. You either get out of it or it eats you. There is nothing romantic about it. There is no great stoic philosophy providing Appalachian poverty with any special resistance to poverty and being mostly ignored by the rest of the country. I don’t know, it isn’t some terrible reality to suffer through, but it is more tragic than anything else. Maybe this is the inevitable view point I have adopted as I have become more outsider to the culture I was raised in over the years. It isn’t all bad, I will still visit, hike, and enjoy the natural beauty there, but the people suffer like any other under-educated poor people do. There is no number of voices and view points that can change that. I appreciate what the author is trying to do, they must surely understand the culture well, but it is a big miss for me.

throw0101a 7y ago
> Poverty is what it is and it does what it does to people. You either get out of it or it eats you. Perhaps the people with the compulsion to leave have already done so? Kind of what is being call "The Big Sort", where (politically) like-minded people seem to be congregating to the same neighborhoods: * https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/10/the-big-sort-revisited/504830/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/10/the-big-sort-revisite... * https://www.economist.com/united-states/2008/06/19/the-big-sort https://www.economist.com/united-states/2008/06/19/the-big-s... Something similar happening to the ambition-minded? (Someone once remarked / joked that perhaps America is so stereotypically optimistic is perhaps all the people who left the Old Country for the New World were probably the more adventurous, go-go types, and those that stayed behind were more chill.)
- humanrebar 7y ago
  This is my take. For all the talk of international brain drain, we don't have a narrative for the more local equivalent. Similarly, we worry about disrupting natural biomes through deforestation or overfishing, but we don't think about sustainability applied to human communities, with a few exceptions (reservations get some attention, though not sufficient attention). What do we do? For one, I don't think it's hard to make an ethical case for remote first workplaces.
  - magduf 7y ago
    More remote work isn't going to make a significant number of people want to stay in these uneducated, economically-depressed locales. They aren't just leaving for the work, they're leaving to get away from the local culture.
    - sudosteph 7y ago
      There are generally some more educated pockets within these regions that are actually quite desirable, but lack economic development. These spots, like Asheville NC (the place I ultimately would like to settle down in) are unfortunately quite expensive due to low housing supply and people from out-of-state moving in. But I've got a remote gig now, so I just need to save up more. Personally, I will be happy to be part of a culture that values friendliness, ingenuity, sweet tea and banjo music. Fwiw, I tried moving away to Seattle, but despite my educational attainment and liberal leanings, I found that I just prefer NC. There's something to be said for living somewhere you don't feel like an outsider. After 5 years in Seattle, I still couldn't lose that feeling.

jessaustin 7y ago

Sure, but Vance is more "wrong" than his detractors are. He's the one who sees all poor people, and all poor people alike.

mieseratte 7y ago
Wrong in what regard? I found nothing wrong with Vance’s book. Having a similar family background to Vance, I think he has a great outlook on the matter.
- moorhosj 7y ago
  I think his biggest miss was failing to connect the region to the rest of the country. He could have easily compared Appalachia to Rust Belt cities facing urban decay but never made the connection. It could have made the story of the region more approachable to more people. It seemed so obvious to me how the areas are linked by economic circumstances, environmental degradation, poor education levels, distinct culture and problems with drug addiction.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    So you wanted him to write a different book? Maybe he had different goals and that's fine.
    - _dczq 7y ago
      Not what I said at all. I thought there was an opportunity to make a larger connection between what has happened in the Appalachian towns he focuses on and larger Rust Belt cities who face much of the same issues.
      - humanrebar 7y ago
        He took other opportunities. Not sure why that's a failing. Someone else can still write the book you want.
  - 7y ago

nrf1 7y ago

> It's odd how much Appalachia has gripped the popular imagination, and how outsiders and a few well-positioned insiders perpetuate it. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina are key swing states. That's the primary reason Appalachia gets so much attention. This electoral reality goes all the way back to the war on poverty.

sudosteph 7y ago
Yes, but the Appalacian contingent is not a majority in any of those states. They just are historically less anti-union than other rural areas (while still socially conservative) so they can swing a bit. Overall the big cities and suburbs are usually the deciding factor there. If anything, Appalachian are uniquely under-represented nationally. While the region as a whole contains nearly 25 million people, WV is the only state to have two Appalacian senators. I think TN has one as well, but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention.
- krapp 7y ago
  >but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention They also serve (willingly or not) as exemplars held up by Republicans, particularly in the populist ideology of Trump supporters, of those "real Americans" who have been betrayed by globalism and progressivism, and to further the narrative of an intractable cultural and political divide having formed between the rural right and urban left (and to contrast the cultural and ethnic purity of the former against the corrupting influence of multiculturalism and secularism among the latter.)
- TomMckenny 7y ago
  >If anything, Appalachian are uniquely under-represented nationally. While the region as a whole contains nearly 25 million people, WV is the only state to have two Appalacian senators. I think TN has one as well, but, overall the political power of Appalachia does not at all seem sufficient to warrant extra attention. Technically that is 50% more senators than California with twice the population.

thebooktocome 7y ago

> a curated photoset of Sides of Appalachia You May Not Know is aimed at the level of The New Yorker, and not something relatable to everyday folk in the suburbs or the Midwest. Midwesterner here. You don't speak for me. JD Vance doesn't speak for me. Try listening for once.

asark 7y ago
I took it to mean not relatable because we go "what's the big deal, looks like a hillier version of what and who I can see if I find a state highway and drive 20 minutes", here in the Midwest. A jab at the New Yorker more than the Midwest. That's my charitable reading based on the tone of the rest of the post, anyway—but I could be wrong.
- nrf1 7y ago
  Exactly. The entire paragraph after that sentence confirms exactly this reading... charity not necessary.
  - asark 7y ago
    Yeah, just leaving some wiggle room to account for my own stupidity, since it looks like at least one person read it differently.
bshoemaker 7y ago
Lol stfu
dang 7y ago
Please don't take personal swipes or lash back at another comment, even if it is wrong or seems so. Doing that only makes things worse. It doesn't help. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

whatshisface 7y ago

There is seriously not that big a difference between the reading level of random comments on the internet and the reading level of the New Yorker, or of the average thinkpiece. Self-styled intellectuals love to pretend that they are writing in a sophisticated secret code language, but that hasn't been true since they quit Latin.

madhadron 7y ago
And, to be fair, English is a vastly more sophisticated language with layers of nuance that constitute codes than Latin.
- coldtea 7y ago
  English more sophisticated than Latin? At nuance?
- onlydeadheroes 7y ago
  Did you ever study Latin?
  - madhadron 7y ago
    Yes. My parents taught me. They studied it at Cambridge. I'm not talking about inflection. English doesn't use inflection except vestigially, though our grammar is every bit as subtle (compare English verb tenses to those of a Romance language). I'm talking about the employment of reference, accent, dialect...
- anthk 7y ago
  Hahahaahahaa!! The Romances can have hugely brutal nested sentences as nothing. Would you dare to read Don Quixote in the original and non-modernized Spanish? I think not. That book mixed a parody of Medieval Spanish and the pre-Enlightentment era one. The discovering of America put the Church on a lower-closer to the Earth place and became the roots of modern Humanism. Don Quixote is a pun on the Dark Ages, myth and religion, compared it to Sancho Panza who is a metaphor of the almost Enlightened humanistic/pragmatic folk who doesn't believe on myths and doesn't have crazy religious-like hallucinations on giants. Trust me, a lot of grammar from the crazy knight is stilL¡l valid today even if looks outdated. Heck, it already was outdated, as I said Don Quixote was the old fart pun from the 1600s. English' grammar is a joke compared to the versatibility of Romances. And, even forther back in time, Latin used similar traits.

smt88 7y ago

> life there is pretty normal for rural America I've lived in Appalachia my entire life (West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York). Although I can't generalize about the people of either the Midwest or Appalachia, there are some big differences between rural Appalachia and some other rural places. 1) Landscape. Due to the difficulty of building roads, some Appalachian places (closer to WV and KY) were extremely isolated until the 20th century. This affected culture, education, wealth, and industry. It's a huge factor in the region even today. 2) Agriculture. In most of Appalachia, you can't have a massive corn plantation. You rarely see a large field of anything at all. Most of the exports are capital-intensive and extractive (mining or timber), and the result is that there's a pattern of wealthy outsiders plundering the resources and leaving locals with little of the gain. 3) Stereotypes. A strong Midwestern accent (from, let's say, rural MI or PA) does not have the same connotation as a strong Appalachian accent (from KY or WV). The stereotypes of the regions just aren't the same, and they do affect people applying for jobs.

culturestate 7y ago
> The stereotypes of the regions just aren't the same, and they do affect people applying for jobs. I've been around motorsports most of my life and I used to see this all the time at racetracks in America. Even in NASCAR country, lots of people assume the "good ol' boy" accent means a person is just a shade-tree mechanic even if they're the most well-educated person in the garage.
- Frondo 7y ago
  Heh, funnily enough, a few years ago I was at a rodeo with some friends, and this was in rural Oregon. One of the announcers was a radio personality on some country station in the Portland area (I think -- something like that, at least). For most of the rodeo he spoke with a thick drawl, obviously going for the "good ol' boy" vibe. A few times, he slipped up and spoke with a very plain Portland/PNW accent. It was jarring when I heard it but he went right back to the good ol' boy accent and I don't know how much anyone else noticed. But it came across like it was all an affectation, for the reasons you described.

jpfed 7y ago

>but a curated photoset of Sides of Appalachia You May Not Know is aimed at the level of The New Yorker, and not something relatable to everyday folk in the suburbs or the Midwest FYI I'm a Midwesterner and problems relating to pictures isn't a regional trait that I'm aware of. A picture of X is in pretty direct correspondence to the visual experience of X itself, so it turns out pictures are pretty easy to digest! If you're a Midwesterner, you should definitely give pictures a try. If you're not a Midwesterner, it's possible that meeting a few more of them would change your idea of what they can relate to.

btrautsc 7y ago

I like this comment.