Despite what white people of today want to believe, it was NOT that long ago. At all.
Like, my father who is absolutely still alive (he’s sleeping right now though cause it’s after midnight) vividly remembers being packed in a car with some of his siblings and my grandparents and going to hear MLK speak in DC
Rosa Parks only died in 2005
I can only trace my paternal lineage back to my great-great grandfather who was an escaped slave. Like, me myself is only three generations removed from chattel slavery
The daughter of a slave was in the opening ceremony of the National African American History Museum
This isn’t even touching on the ramifications of Jim Crow Laws. There are literally Sundown Towns (though not with the blatant signage they used to have at the height of Jim Crow) and redlining is still a thing that happens (Google them if you’re unfamiliar)
I really hate that when White people talk about slavery and segregation, they frequently act like it was so long ago because it wasn’t. And that green strip? We’re still going through systemic oppression and racist practices held over from the segregation era. It’s not like the US desegregated and everything was copacetic after
Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to go to a White school is only two months older than my dad
Please, if you’re White, really try to conceptualize how recent these events were and what’s still going on. Just because something is historical doesn’t necessarily mean it happened a long time ago or that its effects aren’t still felt
Also a reminder that slavery didn’t actually stop when slavery officially stopped. There were white people in out of the way places keeping black folks enslaved for decades after by just not telling them the law had changed.
ALSO A REMINDER THAT FORCED LABOR FOR NO WAGES IS STILL LEGAL IF YOU HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME
We are not out of the shit yet and there is work to do.
i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”
no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.
you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.
people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%.
the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.
the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.
when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.
and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.
a big problem with the people who say stuff like this is they don’t realize just how many “rednecks and hillbillies” are non-white. there are so many appalachian and southern POC that also suffer through these conditions but people like to cling to their idea that the only hicks are white hicks, so they couldnt care less if places like WV or KY just fell off the map, and to hell with who it is that’s actually hurting.
people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true – half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.
as long as they can say that it’s just them shitty racist white hicks that are suffering, then they don’t have to actually care about them. they can ignore them and not do anything to help them. like another person said in the notes, the teacher strike in WV is a better example of leftist organization than a whole lot of the people saying shit about hillbillies have ever done but they don’t care about that because, well, theyre just white hillbillies so what does it matter?
As someone who lives on the assend of the Appalachians, I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have a post like this. The LGBTQ+ Community down here is scattered and sparse, often in the shadows except to come out once a year when Pride Fest takes place during the first month of June- And the students in school that are LGBTQ+ will often group up and have eachothers backs, because we are often vindicated and threatened- Our very identity a crime and the people we love a shame. I was one who proudly stated that I had a girlfriend- Someone who I love dearly, it was less risky than coming out as trans. Because had I done that, I would fear for my life even more than usual.
My ‘defiance’ led to me being ostracized and outcasted except by my closest friends. My first Pride Fest I cried and felt I belonged, but I also had a sense of fear a bigot would ruin it for everyone, and so did everyone else.
💖💖💖
I think the worst thing the Left has ever done, for ALL of us, is abandon Appalachia. Because by abandoning class as a primary axis of activism, they lost so much, and WE have lost so much as a country as a result. Class, race, LGBTQIPA+ status, gender, all of these things are tightly intertwined, and when you let one strand of a rope fray, the rest of it becomes critically unstable.
The thing is that white women are fully aware that they are in no danger of any of this happening. Never forget (no matter how hard white women try to make you) white women but enjoy, maintain and perpetuate white supremacy, white racism, white ignorance and white privilege. Every. Damn. Day.
I legit served a man at my last job who was fully covered in nazi symbols and shit. He was a proud actual real life nazi getting icecream in a family theme park and when he left I voiced my disgust to my coworkers on how security even let him in the gate wearing all of that. And you know what that bitch said? “Well some people are offended by your rainbow flag and you are allowed to wear it so he can too”. It’s not the fucking same. Don’t fucking compare the two
Nazis’ entire mission is to exterminate anyone who’s not exactly like them. It’s in no way comparable to “some people are offended”.
me: “I’d like to visibly exist without fear”
them: “I want to literally kill these people so that they stop existing”
centrists: “I don’t see the difference”
Oh wow I guess my addition to this post got spread a lot. I just wanted to add in another piece of important information. I live in Orlando. The location of the Pulse night club shooting. I was wearing a rainbow pin on my uniform because 49 people in my community died in a hate crime. I will never forgive anyone who tells me that my rainbow pins are the same as a swastika
Words can’t express our devastation, fury, and sorrow. Our hearts break thinking of the lives that will go unlived, and the families left behind.
If you’re suffering from fear or anxiety, or know someone who is, call the NAMI helpline at 1-800-950-6264 or text NAMI to 741741. Trained counselors are available 24/7 to help you process what you’re feeling, free and confidentially.
Where do we go from here?
This won’t be the last mass shooting in America. Until Congress puts aside the politics of gun control and honestly faces the human toll of their inaction, guns will continue to ravage our communities.
If you’ll be 18 by November 6, 2018, please register to vote. Help your friends register. Help your neighbors register. On election day, organize carpools to polling places. Trade shifts with people who can’t get time off, or babysit their kids. A single vote for gun control is more powerful than all the thoughts and prayers in Washington.
Tens of thousands of people will be killed by guns before we can wrest control of Congress from the gun lobby. Many hundreds will be students sheltering in classrooms. But change is possible.
TurboVote.org will help you register online or by mail. Go now. We don’t have time to wait.
Tumblr is entertainment, stay out of political issues. The death of anyone is tragic. Gun control wasn’t an issue 150 years ago, when more homes had guns per capita than today. Back then more families were together. People didn’t give up on each other so quickly. Marriage was worth fighting…..for. There wasn’t the blurred line between right and wrong. There was no such thing as tolerance, either you were descent, or you were a degenerate. But there was always a place for a second chance. Today ¼ of society has been thrown away into the penal system and is forever lost, even after they get “ out” they never really leave. Gun control isn’t the answer now, Man control is, Sin control is. If it had been a gun, it would have been a toxic substance or an explosive. If evil wants to kill, it will kill. It’s not the gun thats is evil, it’s the person behind it. Was It Hitler or his guns that were evil?
A hundred and fifty years ago people just got told they weren’t allowed to own other people anymore (slavery was abolished in 1865, 152 years ago) and the civil war had ravaged and destroyed the country. Talk all you want about families staying together when brothers were killing each other on the battlefield.
When women had no rights to leave abusive spouses and marital rape was just being a good wife.
Fuck you with this “things were better 150 years ago” bullshit.
thisacelovesheadcanons 