Losing Hope in Appalachia

[QC]

Excellent article in the Boston Globe about early death--frequently due to bad health care and the like--in Appalachia.

Some key passages:

The health of residents in parts of Appalachia has deteriorated so much that a boy born in McDowell County has a life expectancy lower than that of babies in 34 of the world's developing nations, among them some of the most impoverished -- Tajikistan, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mongolia, and Vietnam....

"This is a society that's been used up and thrown away," said Franki Patton Rutherford, director of Big Creek People in Action in the nearby town of Caretta, which provides maternal and infant care to the poor. "The folks who have remained here are beginning to show the stresses and strains of practically a whole generation without an economic future...."

Sharon Denham, an associate professor in the School of Nursing at Ohio University who has studied health care in the Appalachian region, said one of the reasons for early deaths is the high levels of stress endured by people living in poverty.

"What is it like to live with poverty your entire life, and worry day after day about how you are going to feed your children?" she said. "Sometimes we need to look in the dirt or the sky for a germ. But the stresses of a society may also be a factor."

Some real food for thought here. If there was ever a cause the Democratic Party should take up, rural poverty is it. As the article points out, we're not only talking about Appalachia here. This kind of poverty is found all across America, and it is literally killing people by the thousands.

[Cleita]

1. Yes, I saw this up in Idaho and Montana too.

If there are poor white people in America, it has to be far worse for minorities.

[QC]

5. In absolute numbers, there are more poor whites than any other kind.

Charles Rangel pointed this out to a mediawhore who tried to accuse him of "playing the race card" by proposing a draft.

Relative numbers are very different, of course. My point is that poverty does not have a color. Neither does desperation. As the article itself points out, you can find this sort of thing everywhere:

There are other American outposts of needless death, death at too young an age. The Sioux tribes of South Dakota, whose alcohol-related accidents have plunged male life expectancy to 61 years. Or the African Americans of the Mississippi Delta region, who are plagued by high rates of homicide, AIDS, and drug abuse. Or those living in the urban neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., Baltimore, St. Louis, and the Bronx, who die young even as their neighbors, in some of the country's wealthiest neighborhoods, live the longest.

[snoochie]

9. "Poverty does not have a color"

Very important point. By assisting in the division of the poor and middle (middle and sinking, more accurately) classes, and then by pitting these people against each other, the powerful are guaranteed security in their unfair share of the pie.

Once we realize we're all in this together, their position is automatically in much more serious jeopardy.

[QC]

13. Exactly. And the notion that the white poor choose

their poverty, or must be somehow morally or genetically damaged, is itself a white-supremacist idea. I'd be a rich man if I had a dollar for every time a racist, in an effort to seem fair, told me that he has even less respect for poor whites, because they should know better.

You're right--the elites have long liked to play "let's you and him fight" with the poor. It's their best strategy for keeping what they have.

[kentuck]

2. That's why "hillbilly heroin " is so popular in Appalachia...

Many have lost hope and are looking to escape, in my opinion.

[Don_G]

11. I Agree

No jobs, the only money that a lot of these people have is welfare and they desparately need a car for basic transportation due to the lack of public transportation.

What little Industry there is being relocated overseas along with the few customer service centers that were in the area.

A large part of my family still lives in southeastern Kentucky so I know the issues and have seen the poverty first hand.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

3. Soon Appalacians will work for as cheap as Chinese peasants

Then free trade will have worked, and brought efficiency to the labor market.

[Lars39]

4. A Democrat by the name of Robert Kennedy was very concerned

about poverty in the Appalachia. Time to get back to the basics for the Democratic Party.

http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/issues/v80/n22/comm1.22v.html

on edit: what a difference his life could have made for them.

[roughsatori]

6. Many in the USA are unaware of the extent of rural poverty

and its devastating impact on the body/mind/spirit of individuals. I grew up in a level of poverty that would surprise many Americans. When I was a teen I read what the poverty level was by yearly income for a family of 4 at that time. My full-time working father made HALF of the income listed and we were a family of 8.

I met a girl from Appalachia who moved from there to near us. She thought that we were lucky because we all had shoes. I am not exaggerating and I am not a senior citizen. She and I became good friends and I met more of her family over the years. It amazed me that people would not commit suicide, or indulge in acts of violence against the "upper-classes" due to growing up in such poverty.

A wealthy Democrat friend of mine recently brushed off rural poverty with this chestnut: "White people who are poor choose to live that way." I was astounded that a liberal in 21st Century America would take the attitude that poverty was a reflection of one's moral state (this is if one was White and American).

Thanks so much for posting such important and sad facts.

[QC]

10. I know your friend's attitude.

It's a common one among the privileged, who assume that the circumstances of their lives are universal.

I work around academics, so I am surrounded by people like your friend. They pride themselves on their political enlightenment, boycott all the right vegetables, wax poetic over the struggles of oppressed people in other parts of the world, and then have nothing but contempt for the poor people all around them, the ones whose poverty makes their cushy lives possible. In truth, these people are about as "liberal" as Barbara Bush.

[roughsatori]

15. We must travel among the same set

I have a friend who is a Marxist by self-definition. He is a pretty-well known poet and essayist. Yet, in everyday life he is about as classist as the main characters of some Evelyn Waugh novels.

He is white, Main line Philadelphia bred, but his specialty is writing introductions to books of poetry by "oppressed" writers.

I am being catty in that description, but it is none the less true. He loves using the phrase "trailer-trash" in intimate conversations. :shrug:

[QC]

17. Yes, it sounds like we know the same crowd.

Let me tell you about my particular favorite.

She's an aging hippie poet who loves to skip around the classroom barefooted, in peasant dresses and gigantic, dangly earrings. She babbles endlessly about her years at Berkeley, and I have never seen her so proud of herself as when she chained herself to a tree while protesting a new road and got arrested. The photo was on the front page of the college paper, and she walked on air for a week. Her minivan is plastered with "Visualize World Peace" and "Worship the Goddess" stickers. And, of course, she's always ostentatiosly boycotting something or other and urging that everyone else do it too. You know the type: Limbaugh's stereotype of the liberal come to life.

Yet when the other grad students and I attempted to organize because we were carrying heavy teaching loads for less than $900 a month and no benefits, who do you think refused to help us? Yep, Professor Earth Mother herself. For all her talk of speaking truth to power, taking a stand for justice, etc., all she offered us was the back of her hand. Exploited labor is fine, apparently, when it supplies her with a 2-1 teaching load and frequent leaves-of-absence for trips to Europe.

So yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

[roughsatori]

18. I don't think you meant to make me laugh with your description

of the Poetess, but you did. I could see her from your description. Thanks for the chuckle. :)

[QC]

19. Oh goodness no, I've been laughing at her for years.

It's the best response.

[theHandpuppet]

7. Two related articles...

... from the Cincinnati Enquirer, one of which I read just recently:

www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/01/12/loc_kyappalachia12.html
www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/07/02/loc_higher_death_rate.html

[QC]

21. Great articles! Thanks for posting them.

[Some Moran]

8. I guess my friend from KY wasn't exaggerating...

She told me that some parts of Appalachia are in such a poor state that the people don't even know what Christianity is.

[Don_G]

12. Unfortunately, They Do

It's the only thing they have to make them feel better about themselves.

[Some Moran]

14. I didn't say all or even most...

I said "some"...

[kentuck]

16. Many turn to welfare as the only means of survival....

They lose all self-respect and self-esteem because there are no jobs. Everyone cannot be an entrepreneur as some people think. And when there are no jobs, what are these people supposed to do? Coal mines have been mechanized and one person can now do what a dozen used to be able to do. Why do you think so many moved up north to places like Detroit, Lima and Dayton, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Indiana and numerous other places? It's not that they wanted to leave their homes - there was no other way for them to survive. Why do you think I am writing from Colorado today? I love the mountains of Southeast Kentucky but I have seen the desperation and the manner in which poverty can tear a strong people down like a steady drip of water on a stone.

[TXvote]

22. Reich on Welfare Reform

I heard Robert Reich speak on welfare reform this spring and he said that it was a bad idea to have continued with such an agressive downsizing given they had no idea the economy would tank so completely so quickly. He went so far as to say that welfare reform turned out to be a bad idea. And, in my opinion, it is.

Here in TX they just re-defined "work" to include making sure your child has complete and up to date immunizations, never skips school, and noone in the household gets caught with drugs or you lose your benefits. That would sound reasonable if clinics were open and accessible for shots, kids never rebelled, and parents did not have to work 30-40 hours as required and could be home to be sure their kids were not getting high.

Did you know that a single parent with two kids cannot earn more than $1200/ month or they lose benefits, yet they are required to work 30-40 hours per week? What a conundrum from hell.

Peace,
Teresa
www.votervirgin.com

[Nikia]

20. My cousins live in Appalachia

They live in a bigger town so things aren't quite as bad. Teen pregnancy and incarceration rates are really high. Few of the other students in my cousin's senior class are going to college. Some of her friends say that she thinks to is too good for them because she won't date guys in jail or prision and is going to college in Michigan.

[QC]

23. Where have you gone, Bobby Kennedy?

He was the last candidate to show much interest in the lives of the poorest of the poor. No one in the present crop seems to have given these people much thought, much less a few minutes of their time, and that apathy is reflected in the big yawn that always greets such topics at DU.

To judge from the discussions here, one would think that the only issues facing the nation and the party were saving computer programming jobs, catering to "NASCAR dads," and relating over and over and over why my candidate is a deity and your candidate is the personification of evil. Oh, and Green/Dem catfights, too. Those always draw lots of animated discussion.

But when the subject turns to those people who for generations looked to the Democrats for help, it's a big bore. How can anyone who calls himself or herself a lefty consider the lives of the people in this article, and their counterparts of all races in all parts of the country, and yawn?

When they killed Bobby, did they also kill the soul of our party?