A Liberal
Dose
May 19,
2022
Troy D.
Smith
“The
Real Purpose of the Hillbilly Stereotype”
Sometimes I ask students to list off for me some of
the stereotypes of Appalachians widely held outside our region. Here’s what I
tend to get: backwards, lazy, alcoholic, moonshiners (or meth-heads), barefoot,
inbred, toothless, poor, uneducated, violent, racist. Some students from the
region tell stories of being called these things when they travel. Some
students from outside the region- even other parts of the South -confess to
having believed those stereotypes before coming here.
Then I ask them to name some famous people who were
associated with Appalachia BEFORE the Civil War. This takes more patience, but
they usually come up with Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Andrew Jackson. How
have those guys always been portrayed in popular culture, memory, and history?
As brave, resourceful, clever, strong, and as violent in a more positive,
patriotic way (unless, of course, you are Native American or Mexican). Indeed,
those guys -and men like them -are portrayed as the very epitome of
Americanness.
And yet. Their descendants are viewed as ignorant,
toothless, inbred morons. When did that change, and why? That is a very
important question, and one that almost no one ever thinks to ask.
(When I ask students to name a living Appalachian,
they never think of anyone non-white -and are surprised when I tell them they
missed Samuel L. Jackson of Chattanooga).
I’ll tell you when it started to change. The 1870s, picking
up substantial speed in the 1880s, and then increasing for the next
half-century. The “local color” school of American literature -roughly
1875-1925 -played a big part. This was the approach of using local dialect and
culture in works of fiction, which is not in itself a bad thing -Mark Twain
used it to great effect. But it was also used by a very large number of authors
writing about moonshiners and hillbillies, almost always presenting them as
ignorant and immoral. Meanwhile, throughout the 1880s, newspapers across the
nation were obsessing over the Hatfields and McCoys feuding on the West
Virginia/Kentucky border. The “feud” itself, while violent, was nowhere as
widespread or as lethal as it was reported to be -nor was it more deadly than
similar things happening at the same time in other parts of the country. These
two families, though, quickly became a cautionary tale of how violent,
unpredictable, and backward mountain people were. The theme was repeated often
over the years, from numerous early silent films to cartoons to potboiler
novels, until it was understood as gospel by most Americans. The 1925 Scopes
trial in Dayton, Tennessee, brought about a renewed emphasis on the stereotype.
That’s the how. What is the why?
It is no accident that everything I just described
-the rapid shift from viewing Appalachians as pioneer heroes to backward morons
-coincided exactly with the rapid growth of extractive industries like coal and
timber, often backed by investors outside the region, into Appalachia. Most
Appalachians were content to be farmers, and did not want to sell their land,
their resources, or their labor to these new companies.
And virtually overnight, they were being portrayed in
all the negative ways I described. Most of all, they were portrayed as obstacles
to “progress,” selfishly blocking the advances that, they were told, would
benefit everybody. And at the same time, practices that farmers had used for
generations to augment their income -turning their grains into potent liquids
-became subject to heavy taxes and jail. Appalachians were, essentially,
“othered” in the same way racial minorities were. “They are too backward to
make their own decisions, so someone needs to make decisions FOR them -for
their ‘own good’.”
First they were forced off their land into the mines,
then punished for organizing. The stereotype was but one item in the toolbox
used to trap Appalachians into a cycle of hopeless poverty and despair, to make
other people money.
J.D. Vance never told you that part.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
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