If your understanding of Appalachia is based on watching JD Vance’s campaign for the Republican nomination in the Ohio Senate race before Tuesday’s primary, reading his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” or watching Netflix’s adaptation of the memoir , you may not think someone like me could do it. exist: someone who was born and raised in the hills of West Virginia as the daughter of immigrant Indian parents, who is queer, and who identifies deeply as Appalachian.
Vance’s Interpretation of Appalachia: A region that includes 13 states and 423 counties, it doesn’t include people like me. Ohio has 32 counties that are part of Appalachia, but Vance certainly doesn’t seek anyone’s vote like I do with his.”You are racist?”, in which he first mocks people who disagree with the bigotry directed at Mexican immigrants by many Republicans, and then touts Donald Trump’s border wall as the solution to Ohio’s problems.
I urge Appalachian Ohioans to really think about whether the narrative offered by Trump and Vance aligns with the values of community and acceptance that allowed my immigrant family to make a home in Appalachia.
He has painted the region as a region riddled with stereotypes: of people struggling with unemployment, poverty and addiction; of people whose downfall is their fault, or the fault of the immigrants who take their jobs, but certainly not the responsibility of the corporations or politicians who have abandoned them.
That is not the Appalachia I know or grew up in. My Appalachia has been immigrant home of all the world. First, the Welsh and Scots-Irish; then Hungarians, Poles, Italians, Lebanese and Syrians. And when I was a kid in the ’80s and ’90s, Indian, Filipino, and Chinese immigrants came to work in the chemical industry and health care professions. This is how my parents ended up in the Kanawha Valley in the early 1970s. My father worked for Union Carbide and our family had the support of nearly 100 other Indian families who lived in the region, as well as hundreds of West Virginia black and white who welcomed us as friends and neighbors.
My Appalachia has always been home of black people: prominent educator and leader Booker T. Washington grew up less than 20 minutes from where i grew up, author and scholar bell hooks breathed for the first and last time in Kentucky, and the NASA mathematical researcher katherine johnson went to college in the same place where my mom later got her degree. My Appalachia was home to the Battle of Blair Mountain, the nation’s largest labor uprising, in which black and white miners joined forces to improve working conditions in the mines.
My Appalachia is home to gay and trans people, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Zoroastrians, agnostics, and atheists. My Appalachia is complicated. It’s messy. It is nuanced.
But we live in an age where nuance doesn’t get people picked; play with polarization yes. Reducing people to stereotypes, pushing them further and further away from each other, is how Trump was elected president in 2016, when “Hillbilly Elegy” was a bestseller and often referenced as one of the books to read to help understand the election results. Now, Vance has used his celebrity to try to become a Trump-style politician, and the former president has rewarded him for his efforts with an endorsement.
Recently, on my book tour, I drove through Appalachia for the first time since 2019. I visited with friends and family, none of whom were surprised by Trump’s endorsement. As one of my uncles said at dinner the night I read in Charleston, West Virginia, Vance is an opportunist. Appalachian people have known since 2016, when “Hillbilly Elegy” was published, that Vance will say what he has to say to advance his own agenda, no matter who suffers as a result.
The people I spoke with in Appalachia are exhausted by the narrow view of their community that Vance offers the world. They want the world to see them more clearly: to understand that Appalachia is populated by people who are white and people of color, people who identify as straight, queer, and trans, people who position themselves as right, center, and left. on the political spectrum. . Know that Appalachians whose families have lived in the region for 10 generations live alongside Appalachians who arrived just a generation ago. Seeing this part of the country, like any other part of the country, is complex and worthwhile.
Because the people of Appalachia Voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2020 election, I might conclude that my assessment is false or that I no longer understand where I grew up. I am not confused by the fact that Appalachia has experienced a intense economic decline. Its effects are impossible to ignore. And I understand that people in the region are looking for a narrative to make sense of the why behind that decline. It is human nature to seek an explanation when we are grieving. Politicians like Trump and Vance offer a narrative to make sense of the decline, but it is based on exclusion and hate. Ultimately, I think what people want even more than simplistic explanations are leaders who seek to understand and concretely respond to their lived struggles.
I urge Appalachian Ohioans to really think about whether the narrative offered by Trump and Vance aligns with the values of community and acceptance that allowed my immigrant family to make a home in Appalachia, and to consider how your votes can help. for the region to move forward in a way that does not reject those values.
And outside of Ohio, in each of the other 12 states that make up Appalachia, we can’t provide a platform for leaders who use xenophobia and alarmism to be elected, or fill their pockets with money from great techor prioritize conservative legislation inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council on making laws based on the very clear needs of the people who elected them.
That said, countering all of this can’t just come from Appalachia. It has to come from all of us, those inside the region and those outside it. We need to seek out different stories, challenge dominant narratives, and recognize how the exploitation of Appalachian Natural Resources and the Appalachian people have been used to make huge profits for the wealthy elite. Politicians are not going to abandon their strategy of polarization unless we demand it.
The people of Appalachia deserve much more than they get from a dominant narrative that reduces them to stereotypes, politicians who prioritize bragging over good governance, and corporations that take their resources and leave them poisoned. air and water.
My Appalachia defies stereotypes. You deserve leaders who reject stereotypes.
Reference-www.nbcnews.com