Tag: genuine hillbilly here

doeeyescurious:

insurrectionary-frybreadism:

rawboney:

twistedingenue:

artem-ace:

There’s this guy that sits in front of me who you would think is a conservative redneck bc his entire aesthetic is southern lumberjack w boots and denim and hats but he’s actually one of the most inclusive and anti trump guy I’ve ever met and today he wore this hat that sums up his entire personality and I’m screaming.

Don’t judge a book by its cover; make cornbread, not war.

Hey, this is the  motto of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and among other things, they have an AMAZING podcast called Gravy, which ‘shares stories of the changing American South through the foods we eat’.

You  like this hat. Listen to that podcast. You’ll be happy.

Y’all need to stop being surprised by the radicalism in The South. The idea that Southerners are inherently more backwards is steeped in classism and ableism and erases all the awesome work marginalized folks are doing out there

Yeah if you’re from the south at all yall know theres that whole ass saying about 1/3rds of folks in the appalachias being communists, only liberal yuppies from the north are ever surprised by this lmao

Appalachia is the land of kindly lesbian witches who chain themselves to trees to protest pipelines.

wolvesdevour:

clatterbane:

the-emergency-medical-hologram:

damianmcgintleman:

i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”

no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.

you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.

people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%.

the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.

the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.

when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.

and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.

EDIT: https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_Trends_in_Appalachian_Health.pdf

here, since y’all are too fucking obnoxiously incapable of taking 2.3 seconds google and instead want to claim I pulled random numbers from my asshole

also here https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_August_2017.pdf

a big problem with the people who say stuff like this is they don’t realize just how many “rednecks and hillbillies” are non-white. there are so many appalachian and southern POC that also suffer through these conditions but people like to cling to their idea that the only hicks are white hicks, so they couldnt care less if places like WV or KY just fell off the map, and to hell with who it is that’s actually hurting.

people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true – half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.

as long as they can say that it’s just them shitty racist white hicks that are suffering, then they don’t have to actually care about them. they can ignore them and not do anything to help them. like another person said in the notes, the teacher strike in WV is a better example of leftist organization than a whole lot of the people saying shit about hillbillies have ever done but they don’t care about that because, well, theyre just white hillbillies so what does it matter?

Too relevant, yet again: THE LEGACY OF SOCIAL DARWINISM IN APPALACHIAN SCHOLARSHIP

I LITERALLY MADE A POST ELSEWHERE ABOUT THIS. 

Because I have gotten a lot of anti-rural life jokes thrown at me. Most people don’t know I’m from a rural area, because I currently live in a big ass concrete city, so like… The concept of rural is super obscure. I told someone where I live, and they thought I meant some place with some farms, so they were like “ugh, rednecks, that must be awful.” Fuck off, because I come from a place with real farms & rural land, and just cause you think we work at a super progressive place, and because you think “rural” folks are all Trump-humpin’ far religious right, LGBT-hatin’, POC hatin’ folks, that’s your problem. 

So the place I grew up in? Yes, it tends to vote Republican, but in the current primary? There are folks runnin’ for Republican that very specifically want to support things what we need: there’s a major development that the city side of the state wants to produce, which means it would royally fuck over the rural side–it would destroy environmental reserves, especially, which is what we all survive off of in the rural areas. The Democratic side is literally the “bad” guy in the race. Destroying the natural resources of the area would be terrible for everyone–if you only care about POC, yes, it would screw them over too. Because we all live off the land. 

A lot of the redneck types require the land, because remember: it’s cheaper to buy a box of bullets than it is to buy meat for the year. That’s how most folks I know who are poor survive… And this is why I struggle in the city. I’m used to thinking “If I need to, I could always trust the forest & river.” If I need food, it’s there. It’s in the land; I can plant it, or I can hunt, fish, and forage. If I need something, I could… Make it. Because materials… They exist. Somewhere, out there. But the city? I have to fucking buy berries? So I don’t eat them too much. I need wood? I have to fucking buy it, what the hell??? I need leather? I have to buy it; I can’t just ask a friend to barter for it (or maybe pay ‘em, but the leather out here is more pricey). Especially as an artist, this astounds & disgusts me in some way. You can barter, too. I helped out a friend on their family cow farm; they gave me meat & a skull. You can  weave and whittle. There’s a sort of backup. 

But the city is harsh and expensive. We can’t maintain a garden here. I can’t trust the land to provide. Even suburbia suffers that. So the poorer you are, the less you can live in a city. And its not like it’s all happy & fun in the rural areas. Poverty is shit. But to me, I feel a little safer. Sometimes you barter… (At least its pretty; the city isn’t very peaceful or beautiful.) 

And yea??? There are queer folks in rural areas. And a lot of the ones I know find it horrifying, the idea of leaving. I went back early this year & chatted to one woman I know, who is a lesbian, and she was… Sort of disgusted at the idea of leaving and of the hatred that city folk have of rural areas, especially through an LGBT lens. There’s a major communicative disconnect, because what works for LGBT rights in the city doesn’t work for the rural areas, and this ends up drowning out the rural folks’ voices. Which is especially dangerous, because they may not be great support for the issues of rural LGBT folks. This stereotyping or hate of rednecks/hillbillies/rurality is damaging the people ya’ll claim to say you’re trying to help.

the-emergency-medical-hologram:

damianmcgintleman:

i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”

no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.

you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.

people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%.

the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.

the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.

when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.

and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.

EDIT: https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_Trends_in_Appalachian_Health.pdf

here, since y’all are too fucking obnoxiously incapable of taking 2.3 seconds google and instead want to claim I pulled random numbers from my asshole

also here https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_August_2017.pdf

a big problem with the people who say stuff like this is they don’t realize just how many “rednecks and hillbillies” are non-white. there are so many appalachian and southern POC that also suffer through these conditions but people like to cling to their idea that the only hicks are white hicks, so they couldnt care less if places like WV or KY just fell off the map, and to hell with who it is that’s actually hurting.

people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true – half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.

as long as they can say that it’s just them shitty racist white hicks that are suffering, then they don’t have to actually care about them. they can ignore them and not do anything to help them. like another person said in the notes, the teacher strike in WV is a better example of leftist organization than a whole lot of the people saying shit about hillbillies have ever done but they don’t care about that because, well, theyre just white hillbillies so what does it matter?

Too relevant, yet again: THE LEGACY OF SOCIAL DARWINISM IN APPALACHIAN SCHOLARSHIP

missmentelle:

Here’s a weird thing I’ve learned since I started working with the homeless:

If you want to know if someone grew up rich or poor, take a look at their teeth. 

It seems so stupid now, but before I got this job, I didn’t really think about teeth. I went to the dentist every six months. I was bucktoothed and gap-toothed as a child, so I got braces. That’s just how life worked. Almost everyone I knew had braces. By my final year of high school, my graduating class was a sea of perfect smiles. It never once dawned on me that other families might not have thousands of dollars to spend on cosmetic dentistry. In my world, if you needed braces and cleanings, you got braces and cleanings. 

In the real world, thousands of children go without those things. People who live on food stamps can’t afford fresh food every day; when you grow up poor, you often grow up with sugary snacks and beverages, which decay your teeth over time.If your tooth gets chipped, broken or rotten, it gets pulled or it stays that way, because you can’t afford to fix it. And at the end of the day, you end up as an adult with dental issues. 

If you have nice teeth, you probably don’t realize this, but we live in a world that is fucking obsessed with teeth. Celebrities have nice teeth. Politicians have nice teeth. When you picture a rich person, a successful person, an educated person, they have a full set of gleaming pearly whites. 

In our culture, we use “bad teeth” as a signal of poverty. They are shorthand for low education, for “hillbillies” with a lower quality of life. Bad teeth are not welcome at job interviews. They are not wanted in the dating scene. If you are trying to be taken seriously – at the bank, at the lawyer’s office, at your child’s school, at the doctor’s office – bad teeth will hold you back.

And the consequences go far beyond the social issues. Tooth problems are painful. When you go to the dentist every six months, cavities and issues get caught early. When you go years between visits, abscesses, infections, exposed nerves and irreversible damage have time to take root. It’s an extremely painful thing to live with, it can make eating unpleasant, and tooth infections can get into your blood steam and kill you. Teeth are a health problem, and yet we price dental care like a luxury commodity. 

So if you meet someone with crooked teeth, or broken teeth, or tooth decay, don’t stare. Don’t make fun of them. Don’t fixate on it. That person may not have grown up with the money or nutrition that you did. Take the person for who they are, not for the teeth in their mouth. 

Dental care should be a human right, just like healthcare. Let’s fight for that.

There’s still a hellish zipcode lottery for being gay. I’m not sure why everyone has decided this isn’t the case.

fierceawakening:

anaisnein:

fierceawakening:

anaisnein:

anaisnein:

fair, fair, very fair

there used to be fewer winning zip codes though; I grew up in an extremely liberal post-hippie town in a blue state and it was still pretty much like “if this then best move to SF or maybe NYC fucking asap, maybe up to and including running away from home as a minor” wrt being gay in the late 80s and I do feel like that’s changed quite a bit for sexual orientation stuff

gayness in the late 80s

there were 450 people at my grades 9 through 12 high school, and I can think of 4 that I was aware were gay at the time, and not because they were all proudly out of the closet

one was a super obvious, really sweet guy who cultivated a highly vocal crush on Madonna and we all liked him so we just let him do that because that’s what felt kind. one kid was What? I’m a Theater Kid, Theater, Also It’s The 80s I Can Have A Forelock If I Want, one there was just heavy rumor, one was my friend P who was a nice sad closeted preppy boy I wouldn’t ever have clocked if I didn’t hang out with him and even so we never talked about it, not once. no girls at all, although looking back now I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots wrt one

basically? nobody came out till they went away to college. that was just how that was. you wanted to get out of the immediate social and family crucible first. we didn’t have internet yet, the couple hundred people around you were the only world you had. at some point in my thirties I found out my old high school now had a gay/straight alliance and I think I literally cried

again: this was a small sheltered private school in a lefty hippie town in Massachusetts

Do any other 80s kids (or older, but I think kids got a lot of it) remember the basic health information type brochures on HIV/AIDS and how intensely heavily they blamed the epidemic on bisexual men?

Because I sure do remember feeling suspicious of bisexual men and wondering why they would be so terribly irresponsible and so hurtful to all the rest of us as to spread the plague in ways even gay men didn’t.

If anyone is wondering why I immediately shut down someone the other day for telling a bi man to shut up about homophobia because wlw have it worse?

That shit is why.

Do not try to tell me, someone born in 1979, that homophobia and biphobia against bi men wasn’t as bad as anything else because I will pee in your cereal bowl.

“bi men are responsible for spreading HIV” totally yes, but it was actually worse than that

it was “actually there’s no such thing as a bi man and anyone who says he is one is lying because he doesn’t want to admit to being gay, therefore he’s exactly the sort of terrible deceitful person who would selfishly spread HIV”

with a hefty side of “oh and bisexuality doesn’t exist period, it just extra specially doesn’t exist in men, in women it’s sort of a thing but only in a totally fake immature phase bullshit way”

and both of those messages were coming from the gay community just as much as or maybe even more than from the straight oppressors

tea.gif

Yep, that’s true.

Also there was a heaping spoonful of racism mixed in, at least from what I remember. People did a lot of sensationalist talking about black men “on the down low.”

wwwarmaiden:

lord-kitschener:

I too hate rich liberal pricks who scapegoat impoverished bigots because they don’t want to confront bigots from the same social class as them, but also as one of the poor benighted hinterlanders, I’m really, really fucking sick of his sob story about how rural white racism/homophobia/anti-semitism/etc is totally ok cuz bubba’s hooked on heroin and the factory closed 15 years ago and also one time some of them mean city gays once said something about not liking homophobia, which is totally mean and elitist and oppressive, so bubba can’t help but be a nazi, and his pride in being pigshit ignorant is striking back at them city elitists. I’ve grown up around people like this, and yes, they are genuinely awful fuckers who don’t need to be cried over.

this bullshit enables bigots, and tbh is also pretty massive insult to people who struggle with this like poverty or addiction without turning into bullying bigots

What cracks me up about this narrative is that POC are much more likely to live in the exact same conditions as poor whites yet, somehow, magically, we manage not to believe in ideology that calls for the genocide of millions, and often are the ones actively fighting against this shite with what little resources we have. Really makes me think.

sabot-sister:

shit working class leftists and ppl in general don’t need to hear:

– you making fun of our schooling

– you belittling us for working actual jobs instead of going into higher education

– you complaining that we don’t “do enough about our situation”

– you looking down on us because we might not have the time or the patience to read heaps of irrelevant political theory

– again, these fucking jokes about us having no idea about politics when we’re the ones living them

– you patronizing us about health, parenting, and literally anything else

– you asking why our families didn’t just buy a house (that happened more often than you’d think)

– you making fun of our dialects and mannerisms

– you using a lack of education as an argument against your political opponents

– you pitying us like we can’t be proud of our roots

– you ignoring our self-organization and community work because it doesn’t live up to your ideological standards

– the fucking LEFT in general being classist as fuck which should be a paradox but isn’t

for real I’m just really fed up with the academic left sometimes and y’all should really look at yourselves first when you ask why the new left is so out of touch with working people.
We don’t have to read Marx to know that capitalism sucks. Believe us, we know.

This has been a PSA.

Every. Goddamn. Year.

systlin:

calinda-fox:

systlin:

roenok:

systlin:

Every Fucking Spring; Weather service ‘puts out flood warnings’

People Living Right Next To The Goddamn Mississippi, Apparently Forgetting This Same Thing Happening Last Year And The Year Before And Every Goddamn Year; “WHAT the river is in my LIVING ROOM?!?!?!?!? HOW GOVERNMENT DO SOMETHING HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN.”

Me, Sitting On My Actual Hill With Geological Survey Map: “You dumb motherfuckers realize that the Mississippi has flooded every spring since approximately the last Ice Age and you literally built your suburb on the flood plain as demonstrated right here on this topographic chart.”

People Living Right Next To The Goddamned Mississippi; “BUT I’M HERE NOW TELL IT TO STOP.”

Me; “…That…may prove difficult. Why don’t you just move?”

People Whose Living Room Is Currently Home To Mississippi Flathead Catfish; “We can’t do that we love it here.” 

Me; “……”

Mississippi River; (Quietly cackling to itself)

Much like fire season in Southern California.

OH MY GOD I was just discussing this with my wildlife biologist sister, who did a bunch of research projects out there.

Like

The West has experienced wildfires every year for literally the last 100,000 years, and much like the prairies the ecology of the region has literally come to depend on being burned off every few decades, BUT NO YOU GO BuILD YOUR $5 MILLION MANSIONS THERE AND THEN COMPLAIN WHEN EVERYTHING AROUND YOU IS ON FIRE

Can the people next to the river just like… build their house on stilts?

Some do. Generally, the people who have lived here for generations, including a few local families descended from native tribes who’ve lived in the area for, like, the last several thousand years.

They like to sit on their front porches with a fishing pole and fish in their sometimes-front-lawn-sometimes-river and judge the dumb idiots futilely trying to sandbag around their brand new addition while already standing in 3 feet of water as much as I do.

People make fun of them for being ‘hillbillies’ until their car is floating down the river and there’s river mud caked an inch thick on all their walls and Who’s Laughing Now Steve.