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The White Ghetto
The National Review Online ^ | Jan 9, 20 | Kevin D. Williamson

Posted on 01/12/2014 9:34:36 AM PST by Jack Black

Owsley County, Ky. – There are lots of diversions in the Big White Ghetto, the vast moribund matrix of Wonder Bread–hued Appalachian towns and villages stretching from northern Mississippi to southern New York, a slowly dissipating nebula of poverty and misery with its heart in eastern Kentucky, the last redoubt of the Scots-Irish working class that picked up where African slave labor left off, mining and cropping and sawing the raw materials for a modern American economy that would soon run out of profitable uses for the class of people who 500 years ago would have been known, without any derogation, as peasants. Thinking about the future here and its bleak prospects is not much fun at all, so instead of too much black-minded introspection you have the pills and the dope, the morning beers, the endless scratch-off lotto cards, healing meetings up on the hill, the federally funded ritual of trading cases of food-stamp Pepsi for packs of Kentucky’s Best cigarettes and good old hard currency, tall piles of gas-station nachos, the occasional blast of meth, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, petty crime, the draw, the recreational making and surgical unmaking of teenaged mothers, and death: Life expectancies are short — the typical man here dies well over a decade earlier than does a man in Fairfax County, Va. — and they are getting shorter, women’s life expectancy having declined by nearly 1.1 percent from 1987 to 2007.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Kentucky
KEYWORDS: appalachia; poverty; rural; scottsirish; whites
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To: Jack Black

These people have had their livelihoods and dreams snatched from them by Obama and the other Democratic Party elitists who only value the urban educated liberals and the Welfare Queens of the big cities.

They were once a proud people mining coal and maybe even making moonshine, but now are left to trading their public assistance for smokes, crank and the Oxycontin.

Forgotten by America and denied the American Dream.


21 posted on 01/12/2014 10:09:31 AM PST by Oliviaforever
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To: Nifster

The fewer “services” the better. All I want locally is for the roads to be maintained and plowed. Hell, I want to ditch the 5 or 6 streetlights my town has.


22 posted on 01/12/2014 10:13:26 AM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: Oliviaforever

Sopunds to me like some are just miffed that Whites are abusing the same system that Liberals created specifically for Blacks to abuse.


23 posted on 01/12/2014 10:16:40 AM PST by digger48
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To: palmer
Often we will just sit there and gesture while nobody goes.

You're not helping your argument. 8^)

24 posted on 01/12/2014 10:20:19 AM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: Nifster

The writer is a typical Commie, who thinks they are “down” with the working class, but thinks they need to be “enlightened” to join the struggle against Capitalism.


25 posted on 01/12/2014 10:25:24 AM PST by dfwgator
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To: Jack Black

Dang, that first sentence glazed my poor eyeballs.
100 words.

WTH is a “wonder bread hued town”...oh, wait, he means “WHITE”

he hasn’t been to small towns in Appalchia these days, Some of that Wonder Bread is whole wheat.


26 posted on 01/12/2014 10:31:19 AM PST by silverleaf (Age takes a toll: Please have exact change)
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To: palmer
There's nothing elitist about Applebees. That restaurant is at the bottom of the food chain with respect to casual dining joints. If people think it's worth an hours drive to get to, you are talking about a hardscrabble place for sure.

I thought the article was excellent and not condescending at all. Having spent significant time in Appalachia (especially northern Alabama), the article has the ring of truth. This really is the way millions of people live.

I was struck by the phrase that "poverty is the natural condition of humans". If you think about it, that is a true statement. My grandmother grew up in Alabama during the 1920s and the stories she told me about how things were back then stick with me to this day. Let's just say that the average welfare recipient today is extremely wealthy from the vantage point of my grandmother, who had to raise a family of 10 in a house that is barely bigger than my living room (boys, including my father, slept in the barn with the cows once they got out of diapers).

All this without a single penny of government aid.

27 posted on 01/12/2014 10:31:34 AM PST by SamAdams76
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To: Jack Black
Forget calling it the Appalachian Ghetto. It's all of America that's becoming a ghetto.

Thirty or forty years ago the Southern Tier/Appalachian part of NYS where my wife grew up, was doing well. Now it's decaying or decayed like all the rest of our formerly great country.

28 posted on 01/12/2014 10:39:17 AM PST by FreeReign
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To: BenLurkin

Often we will just sit there and gesture while nobody goes.

You’re not helping your argument. 8^)

I think what he/she meant was there’s still a sense of kindness there. What I find amazing and often lacking in the LSM is that Appalacia is as poor or poorer than those in the inner city, yet have much much lower violent crime.
Hmm, I wonder what the underlining factor is there?
Hmm, is it PC to answer that question?


29 posted on 01/12/2014 10:41:43 AM PST by Undecided 2012
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To: dfwgator

exactly…. and from NRO. Used to be that conservatives could at least get some decent writing from Bill’s mag…even that hash;t been true for decades


30 posted on 01/12/2014 10:43:52 AM PST by Nifster
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To: Jack Black
... the last redoubt of the Scots-Irish working class ...

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.

31 posted on 01/12/2014 10:44:34 AM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: palmer

My favorite four way has a sandwich truck (and I do mean a pick em up) and a fellow with his trailer and boiled peanuts. I make a point of stopping and enjoying the vittles


32 posted on 01/12/2014 10:45:22 AM PST by Nifster
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To: FreeReign

According to a tv show I saw just last night, most of Appalachians are involved in poaching ginseng root. At $550 per pound, I’d be poaching it too.

poaching off “federal land”.


33 posted on 01/12/2014 10:46:04 AM PST by Graybeard58 (_.. ._. .. _. _._ __ ___ ._. . ___ ..._ ._ ._.. _ .. _. .)
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To: cripplecreek

with you on that


34 posted on 01/12/2014 10:47:43 AM PST by Nifster
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To: SamAdams76
"There's nothing elitist about Applebees. That restaurant is at the bottom of the food chain with respect to casual dining joints. If people think it's worth an hours drive to get to, you are talking about a hardscrabble place for sure."

Your first sentence is true, I should not have implied otherwise. But the people on average definitely do not think it is worth an hour's drive. But there are the usual of low information people who will play Applebees roulette without realizing what they are doing.

35 posted on 01/12/2014 10:48:18 AM PST by palmer (Obama = Carter + affirmative action)
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To: Undecided 2012

The rules for a four way stop are extremely simple.

So easy — even the ubermensch should be able do it.


36 posted on 01/12/2014 10:48:56 AM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both.)
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To: silverleaf

hahahahaha!


37 posted on 01/12/2014 10:52:47 AM PST by Irenic (The pencil sharpener and Elmer's glue is put away-- we've lost the red wheel barrow)
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To: Jack Black
We have our own Big White Ghetto here in New England.

It's called Maine.

38 posted on 01/12/2014 10:59:21 AM PST by billorites (freepo ergo sum)
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To: palmer

While the article points out some sad realities, I think much of it would go away before long without EBT cards-there are people like those spoken of in the article where I live, too, right down to the meth labs in the woods, the intoxicated arrested for DUI, and the addicted for petty crimes-just not on such a scale as where the author went. The suicide and accidental death rates among young males are disheartening, but I blame that on the welfare and addiction cycle, too.

Like many others here, I’m a ranch kid and have taken it upon myself to move back to the country, in a remote-and now, thanks to Obamanomics-poor place-an old resort/tourist area, pretty much ruined by economy and circumstance. None of the neighbors or others I know well receive government cheese, or use EBT cards-we work at whatever we can. Organic veggies and free range chickens and eggs are for sale/trade everywhere.

I noticed that the article doesn’t mention gardens or livestock-do these people not grow/raise their own food? That would be a start to not being dependent on that EBT card...

There are a lot of people like me here, returned to country roots, wasting our college educations doing the manual labor we did in our youth. We make less money, and yeah, I guess we’re trashy, but we work for ourselves and not someone else. The general store is 9 miles away, the nearest town is 20, Walmart is 25, the post office is 14, but we order stuff online, it gets delivered to your gate in a timely manner-and that is just fine...


39 posted on 01/12/2014 10:59:53 AM PST by Texan5 (" You've got to saddle up your boys, you've got to draw a hard line"...)
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To: Undecided 2012

The underlining factor would seem to be manners & respect for others, imho.
Ironic that it’s said that “money can’t buy class”.


40 posted on 01/12/2014 11:02:57 AM PST by KGeorge (Till we're together again, Gypsy girl. May 28, 1998- June 3, 2013)
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