When you Google the Mountains

When you Google “Appalachia,” what do you find? First you’re going to scroll down through a few web pages created to persuade those hesitant tourists why their trip to Illinois couldn’t compare to Appalachia, National Geographic’s hand out on the mountains, and maybe a handful of natives advertising their peach butter or hand sewn quilts, and why they love the mountains. These Appalachian websites will give you either an unbiased or local’s perspective on what the Appalachian home is and how its people live. But eventually those viewpoints will begin to become fewer and fewer, and you’re going to start to come across several people giving the outsider’s, and evidentially commonplace, view of Appalachia.

You’re bound to run into the cliché hillbilly stereotype first, thanks to the media’s portrayals of what “mountain people” are (i.e. The Beverley Hillbillies, Wrong Turn); it’s a typecast that seems to run synonymous with the word Appalachia itself. The “hick” label will be elaborated on as you begin to look closer; Appalachians are illiterate, Appalachians are unwashed and drunk half of their life, Appalachian people only eat cornbread, veal, and beans, Appalachians lack the basic modern electric necessities, Appalachians all carry a gun on their person. The list goes on and on and is then added to by missionary groups who explain their plan for tending to the third world country in their own backyards.

Saying that these views are an exaggeration is obviously an understatement. But it leads one to wonder: what the cause of these negative stereotypes is, and do they hold any merit?

Appalachia has a bloody history. The family feud between the Hatfields and McCoys and the Battle of Blair Mountain, brutally and bluntly recorded in nineteenth century newspapers, must have something to do with it.

The bloodshed scared the rest of the nation, and suddenly the mountains were known for the people who had willingly taken up arms against their employer and their neighbor and (in the case of Blair Mountain) caused so much trouble that the U.S. Army had to be called in. Not many happy pictures were derived from that, and suddenly the media mainly focused on the problems of Appalachia while it ignored the good. Today’s media has only elaborated.

-R