Looking Back On Appalachia
Reflective Essay
Matthew Penaranda
ERH 303WX 01 SSI
June 16, 2015
Help Received: None
Matthew Penaranda
ERH 303WX 01 SSI
Looking Back On Appalachia
Reflective Essay
So I think a good place to start is in the beginning. The first day of class started with us being asked what we thought when we considered what Appalachia is. Somehow, despite only a select few of us being from the region or having any prior knowledge of the region, we managed to cover the chalkboard with a slew of derogatory terms and harmful associations with the culture. This alone spoke to the extents to which the region is affected by perpetuated stereotypes thanks to the media and other mediums that depict the region.
Our upbringings are apparently very influential to our perspectives of the world around us. When asked to consider what sort of words we associate with Appalachia the class was able to fill half of the chalkboard with terms that were increasingly negative and in some cases derogatory towards the people of Appalachia. So what shaped our perspectives of their identity? For one thing, we are all part of the civic discourse that is VMI and unsurprisingly the words “townie” and “stoopie” found their ways onto the list to describe Appalachia. Being a part of a discourse that has a precedence of discontent with a janitorial staff in barracks has led to the progression of reasoning that associates said janitorial staff as uneducated and incompetent under the label of “stoopie.” The rhetoric of our civic discourse as well as the tendency for language to be used to label and categorize things and people has in this case been used to discriminate against certain people. Unfortunately, the labels that we use become associated with the broader identity as we associate incompetence with stoopies, then townies, and inevitably identifying the population of Appalachia in the same negative sense.
Our perspectives of the identity of Appalachia are not only influenced by the civic discourse of VMI, the media and hollywood have obviously contributed to shaping our perspectives of the Appalachian identity. Movies such as “Deliverance” found its way onto the list and if that is not an uncommon view of Appalachians then I do not think I have to tell you how unfortunate that is. Once an archetype or label is established, it becomes incorporated into the language and once popularized in the civic discourse enough to become canon then regions such as Appalachia become associated with all the negative connotations of the sort of words we covered the chalkboard with.
Simply googling the word hillbilly shows the extent that society in general has accepted the stereotype. The hillbilly in almost every one of the top results of a simple Google search showed a person more than likely as a white individual, dressed in tattered overalls, their teeth rotted out, and of course they are cross-eyed. The absurd anatomical frames associated with the hillbilly are testament to the extent that labeling can victimize people. The archetypal hillbilly has even found its way into political cartoons and memes. The people of Appalachia have been labeled hillbillies and the implications of this categorization is the unconscious attitude towards those associated with the term as being characteristically uneducated and otherwise incompetent. Categorizing and labeling peoples as hillbillies has come with a social stigma result of the perceived follies of the Appalachian man and woman.
My research essay was originally intended to simply chronicle the effects of industrialization on Appalachia but it evolved into a narrative that highlighted the region’s resistance to the mechanisms of control opposed on them that included exploiting their status as outsiders for cheap labor. Their resistance did offer an opportunity, ironically, to reshape their identity through Appalachian activism. The Appalachian as an empowered activist is the sort of identity I wish there was more of.