Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes

     In a recent Graduate class at the University of Kentucky, I've been studying historical depictions and current issues facing my Appalachian East Kentucky home-place. Professor Dwight B. Billings, a highly published Appalachian Scholar, has an impressive academic and personal resume on his work in Central Appalachia. I was entranced by his book Confronting Stereotypes, in which he debunks quite a few myths and raises important questions about the mass acceptance of negative caricatures of the Appalachian Kentucky and West Virginia natives. 
     Misinformed humor flowed from "wild west" and "frontier" writers in the 18th and 19th centuries. The fascinating stories of the backwoods and the native, illiterate folk were easily sold to publishers and newspapers in the north east and in more "advanced" sections of the country. 
      Today, those same stereotypes are flowing from mass media and prime-time entertainment. Billings digs deeply into the theory that the perpetuation of such stereotypes leads to errors in the written history of the area and forges further prejudice towards West Virginia and East Kentucky natives. 
     Billings and other scholars are working to rewrite our history from more objective documentation. I take the stereotypes seriously. In my graduate class, I was the only one born in the 1940s in the more traditional generation. Two other students were about 2 generations younger than I, and most of the class were in the Millennial generation between the ages of 18 and 29 years-- peers of my grandchildren. 

The inter-generational perspectives were interesting.