Reblog Your Answer

buffy:

jakoblodwick:  Do American hillbillies qualify as an ethnic group?

I was born and raised in West Virginia.  So I understand the origin of the species better than most.  Unfortunate, but true.  I once knew a guy who got a minority scholarship - Not for being a hillybilly, of course.  But for being ‘Appalachian’. 

Hillbilly.  I want to slap someone every time I hear the word.  Want to scream I studied at Oxford you moron; I have more degrees than you do teeth! Because it’s invariably a thick faced southerner who says it.

As far as ethnicity goes.  They’re still Scotch-Irish as hell. Speech patterns are very similar to Northern Ireland in particular.  When I first moved abroad, my mother was convinced my housemate (Northern Irish girl) was from WV or Kentucky.  Such was her accent.  Her family, in turn, thought I had picked up their way of talking. 

There’s also a funny kind of language still used in the Mountains.  I say ‘still’ because most outsiders will just call it really bad grammar.  But the truth is, and there’s been a lot of anthropological research into this, language hasn’t evolved (no jokes please) much from the Revolutionary war.  A lot of ‘mountain slang’ is actually old English (As America knows it.  Not as Chaucer knew it.)

Now.  I’m off to take a look at the other rebloggers.  I’ll try not to get annoyed.

Update:   “Fornicate” - I’m surprised at you.  I would have thought, living in Lambeth, you’d be more broad minded and less given to perpetuating stereotypes and ethnic slurs.   People born in Appalachia (Ever been there?  By the way?) don’t choose to alienate themselves. The mountains do it for them.  Hence the term ‘hill’.  Their religion and social mores are no different than those of any other small insular American town.  Head to the midwest.  You’ll find people who live exactly the same.  They just don’t have to work as hard to do it.  The state has been so screwed over by corrupt politicians and King Coal companies - it can hardly stand.  Don’t blame the people for that.  It’s not their fault.  Play nice Lambeth. :)

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I spent some time doing construction work by day and wandering by night in Beard’s Fork, WV. I didn’t catch the middle English, but much of the rest came across. The town was just a run down church and school, with modest homes flanking one long road, branching off into dead ends in a mountain no longer used for mining. 

I spent most of my life in the Bronx and Manhattan, but I’ve had some forays below the Mason-Dixon. These include a short stint when I got half my meals courtesy of a soup kitchen for the homeless in Lynchburg, VA (long story). So the South was not entirely alien to me. That said, West Virginia is a different animal, and some random observations stuck:

• While Beard’s Fork Roadwas fit for banjo strumming, you could drive 20 minutes and be in Montgomery, Fayetteville or Oak Hill with access to (many of) the amenities available in, say, Orange County, NY.
• Many homes had just gotten their first non-sulfurous running water in 2002 (I was there in 2003)
• While most houses were in varying states of disrepair, a surprising number had affixed a satellite TV and parked a newish Ford pickup in the driveway. It would later occur to me that -
  • TV was a necessity, like electricity, and cable was spotty there, so people found a way to afford satellite.
  • Since many didn’t want or couldn’t afford a new home, they disproportionately invested in the next most useful asset: a big, reliable truck.
• That said, often lying fallow on the property was their last pick-up truck or two, because paying to haul and scrap it was not worthwhile.
• It’s pronounced Appa’lahcha. Saying Appa-lay-chya will instantly out you as a Yankee or Northen’er - one of only two times I’ve been described with either in a non-ironic way.
• Any whiff of pretentiousness after sun-down might have resulted in a beating. Luckily, as the concept of a bar in WV is not even remotely like what it is on the upper east side, there was little chance of mixing it up with the locals after hours.

Overall I remember having the impression that the adults were mostly content and self-aware, but the kids my age and younger felt a distinct isolation and lack of social mobility. If they weren’t going into the military and didn’t have the ambition/money for out-of-state college, this was it. It’s a difficult feeling to intuit for city slickers, but a good approximation might be - being stuck in a dead-end professional job, with investment banker’s hours, but without any of the benefits or salary or night-life. But some cultural ticks aside, not much separated these kids from those in upstate New York.

I suspend judgement on categorization, but would refer people to Google Omope Carter Daboiku - who has a performance piece on “Confessions of a Black Hillbilly”, and the appropriately named Prof. Susan Virginia Mead, who’s published sociological reports on the region. Also, please enjoy the below audio clip “There’s a Boom In Appalachia” by the Reel World String Band.

4 years ago  /  25 notes  /  Source: jakelodwick