theHandpuppet
theHandpuppet's JournalA matter of shoes
Odd timing, that. Right after I posted about the barefoot taboo I had responded to the thread about "A Connecticut Yankee in Appalachia" with a link to an old Life Magazine article that featured an impoverished family from Portsmouth. It had been years since I read that article but perusing it afresh, I was reminded once again how the issue of shoes became one of such importance and identification with class.
"I like winters more than summers, because you can shovel snow in the winter," says Mike Copas. "And I'm the best snow shoveler in town." Mike hides his money under his mattress so little Jamie won't find it. "But I don't like to," he says. "Mice get under it. I hate them things. They get in your food. Poop in it. I 'bout puke when that happens. They got in one of my old shoes once and had babies in it." Chuck makes $8.64 a week on his newspaper route, but quickly points out that "thirty cents of that is for insurance. In case I break a leg or die. It'll pay half my funeral costs." Last year Chuck won a $100 gift certificate from the Daily Times for signing up the most new subscriptions. He shared his prize with his sister Jenifer. They used all the money to buy clothes. On a recent can-collecting mission, Carrie earned enough to buy a pair of purple jellies at the Dollar Store. "Guess how much they cost?" she asks Jake. "Three ninety-nine."
"Jellies" were rather hideous, colorful and cheap shoes with the consistency of... um... what folks jokingly call "booger glue". At the time they were particularly popular among little girls.
During recess, although she is athletic and loves to skip rope and ride the swings, Carrie stands by herself against the schoolhouse wall while her classmates play. "The rich children won't let Carrie play with them because she's poor," says her mother, Dorothy, who dropped out of school after eighth grade. "Not real dirt-poor, but poor. They just make fun of her. I don't know why. Jeff and Mike, they're having problems too. The other kids have better shoes on and all this. And they make fun of 'em."
Shoes... no shoes... better shoes... it's certainly not a subject foreign to anyone but to the poor (and especially to any hillbilly poor) it holds a special significance. The irony is that Portsmouth used to be a center for American shoe manufacturing, an industry that went the way of the steel mills, the railroad, the industries that made bricks and furniture and scores of other goods. When my beloved grandmother, who was herself quite poor, passed away, there was little in the way of worldly goods by which to remember her. The old leather-bound bible with its handwritten record of births and deaths and yellowed newspaper clippings tucked into the margins, is now mine. An old composition doll in a homemade wedding dress, carried by the little girl who was my grandmother when she came over on the boat from Germany, found a home with my elder sister, who didn't mind that a missing hand had been replaced with one cut from cardboard. But the last treasure that symbolizes more than any other our funny and sad ways is now in the loving possession of my eldest sister: a pair of shoes. The tiny, buttoned, high-top shoes of nearly a century ago, the leather still supple from her ceaseless care. The shoes that told everyone that she, too, was a person of dignity and worth. Such a small thing, isn't it.
It's the barefoot thing that pricks a particular nerve
Many of my friends used to kid me mercilessly about my "barefoot hang up". Now, I can only speak for the idiosyncrasies of my particular area but back in the day, going around barefoot was tantamount to a scandal. Folks were very sensitive about being considered hillbillies and to go out in public with bare feet was considered especially low -- it made you a "white trash" hillbilly, the kind mocked in the funny papers and cartoons. So no matter how raggedy folks' clothes might have been, they all wore decent shoes because it at least identified you as a better class of hillbilly. Didn't matter if it was 95 degrees outside, socks and shoes. And no sandals. Any exposure of the bare feet was considered a no-no. Hell, if you were going to run around barefoot, why not completely shame yourself and go all out by stripping down buck naked!
About 20 years ago a group of my friends from NYC and DC came down to visit with me in my hometown and the subject of the barefoot taboo came up. They laughingly dared me to prove that the locals, even on this blistering summer day, would all being wearing socks and shoes when they should be found in flip flops, sandals, or (horrors!) barefoot. I took that dare and offered 20 bucks to any one of them who could find a single person, man woman or child, who had broken the rule. I even sweetened the pot by including sandals of any kind in my bet. We hopped in the car and drove to town -- they, joking and confident that within seconds they'd dispel that barefoot taboo and me, confident that I'd never have to pay that 20 dollars. I had to be pretty darn confident because I didn't have 20 dollars, anyway!
So we drove. And we drove. Up and down the streets of the town, down 'round the park and playground then to the municipal pool, where even kids dressed in nothing but ill-fitting trunks and hand-me-down swimsuits wore their socks and shoes until the very last moment when they made a dash for the water. At that I got a collective "Uncle!" from my gaggle of friends and they never again teased me about the veracity of the barefoot taboo.
Even in Appalachia things have changed so much over the years that the rules by which we once lived might as well be remembered as mere fables. Flip flops and sandals are everywhere, though to this day I wouldn't be caught dead exposing my feet like that. The old taboos die hard.
I can look back on that barefoot adventure now and chuckle, though it bespeaks a sad truth about class. Even when folks know -- or perhaps because they do -- that they're part of negative cultural stereotype, an "ignorant hillbilly", they will determine ways to separate themselves as a higher class of the commonly ridiculed and despised. In most of our society folks display their means by living in McMansions or driving expensive cars. In my little corner of Appalachia and in my time, it required only one thing. A pair of shoes.
Now this is certainly not the dissertation on or analysis of the cultural stereotypes you might be looking for, just a personal anecdote. Take it as you will. There are just some things that are hard to explain unless you've lived it.
Not just daily political life but daily religious life
In countries around the globe the two often overlap. The fundamentalist influence on politics with regard to women's lives becomes more and more evident every day. When powerful religious leaders preach that women don't even have the right to the autonomy of their own bodies we witness its political effectiveness in the rollback of reproduction rights and the shutting of clinics. These are legislators who use God to justify outrageous levels of misogyny and fashion it into law. These same men who think women have no place in the leadership of the church also believe women have no place as equal partners in the home, the workplace, the country. They know this because the Bible tells them so, at least in their version of it. They've got to preach it in the schools, implement it in the workplace, enforce it in the bedroom, legislate it in the halls of Congress. The following example is just one of the most outrageous examples of how this works: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/16/426850/democratic-women-boycott-issas-contraception-hearing-for-preventing-women-from-testifying/
Some might say I'm straying from the topic here but I disagree. What frustrates me is that there seems to exist either a lack of recognition of or an unwillingness to confront the unholy alliance of church and state in creating a misogynic society. We tiptoe around the subject as to not hurt someone's feelings. Well that's just bullcrap my friends and it's exactly what the purveyors of misogyny count on -- that we'll react well, like "women", not wanting to bruise anyone's delicate ego especially if it involves religion, even to the point of silencing ourselves. Right here on DU there are those who would contend that we have a choice -- we can support the war on poverty OR women's rights. We can fight for environmental protections OR women's rights. Etc, etc, etc. But not both. So women are asked to choose either the planet or their rights, or between the poor and their rights, or between income inequality and their rights. The arguments are posited as a choice for which women must make the sacrifice and too often, some do just that. Anything else is called selfish. I see it all the time on what is touted as a progressive forum. The fact that it should be a choice at all is a ridiculous, manipulative fallacy. It's apparently an effective one because once again I find myself embroiled in just such a debate on DU, watching way too many women fall into that same old trap, rushing to the defense of an avowed and powerful misogynist and homophobe because we must sublimate the cause of our basic human rights to whatever causes supersede them... and that list seems endless. I've got news for some of those folks --as long as we are so willing to make the sacrifice there are those who are more than willing to take it. Our turn will never come if we validate and empower the very people whose aim is to oppress us. Those in power will not grant us respect for being acquiescent; they will only despise us the more for it.
If we want to formulate strategies for how to reform a society shaped by misogynic dogmas that are in turn enforced by legislated policies, we simply must face the fact that patriarchal religions have way too much influence in the political sphere. (That holds true no matter where you go or what you believe.) We can't afford to ignore this elephant in the room, hoping that if we don't make eye contact it will miraculously disappear. The more we hint at any trepidation in confronting this issue the more WOMEN WILL DIE. Not at some point in the distant future -- TODAY, tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that. They will die because too many boys and men are indoctrinated from birth that women are lesser human beings, that women's lives and bodies were created to service their needs, that a woman's value can only be measured by the degree to which she is willing to sacrifice herself on the altar of what we are told is "the greater good".
Okay, I need some feedback from this group regarding an article
First of all, let me get this out of the way: Alice Ely Chapman is a remarkable philanthropist for her Appalachian community and the world certainly could use a few more people of such resource and dedication. The programs she has initiated and supported in Washington County, Ohio will undoubtedly return their investment an hundredfold.
The article to which I'm referring is:
A Connecticut Yankee in Appalachia
by Howard Husock
Alice Ely Chapman wages a one-woman war on poverty.
Spring 2014
http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_2_alice-ely-chapman.html
The struggle I'm having with the article is the tone in which I perceive it is written. Perhaps it's just me. I went to bed last night really bothered by the nagging feeling that as Appalachians we had just received a good dose of condescension. I had hoped that if I gave it a fresh look this morning my hackles would smooth. Unfortunately, after several readings I'm still bothered by the slant of this article. Perhaps what I really need is some feedback from others here because I now question my objectivity.
Those of us who've posted here have pretty freely discussed some dire issues facing Appalachia: poverty, unemployment, drugs, lack of educational opportunities et al. It's when those problems are presented in the manner I have illustrated by the excerpts below I have to ask, "Who the hell do you think you're talking to?"
All this dysfunctional behavior—the disordered families, the aversion to work, the welfare dependency, the drugs and violence—is what Marietta leaders mean when they use the euphemistic phrase “Appalachian values.” Social thinker Edward Banfield, in his classic book The Unheavenly City, described something similar when he wrote of chaotic lives marked by “present orientation”—that is, unable to plan rationally for the future and addicted to immediate gratification. Sociologist Joseph Howell called the conduct “hard living.” Economist Thomas Sowell has gone so far as to suggest that the values of the poor, antebellum Scotch-Irish Southern whites who settled the region became the cultural norms into which poor African-Americans eventually assimilated. Appalachian values, he believes, were imprinted on black culture, with the urban underclass its cultural product. City treasurer Harper links the drug and alcohol abuse among the young to what she calls “community disorganization.” Around here, bad choices are so common that people just accept them as normal.
To me, the paragraph above seems to smack of the worst kind of stereotyping. To add further insult to injury, the author then proceeds to fold these descriptors into what is described as "black culture" (and here we must assume the author is referring to the litany of our moral failings, such as "the disordered families, the aversion to work, the welfare dependency, the drugs and violence"
. I'm sorry, but to me that's racist, plain and simple. It's also a theme parroted more than once in the article.
The moral judgments seeded throughout this piece -- But school officials say that they are battling powerful and destructive forces in the community, with many students living in disorganized households with multiple children from multiple fathers. -- is the same lexicon employed against poor folks everywhere, not just Appalachia. Painting Mrs. Chapman as some genteel, cultured New England lady of breeding who stepped from the drawing room into a hillbilly pigsty rubs me the wrong way and I'm sure Mrs. Chapman doesn't view herself in that manner, either.
The efforts of Mrs. Chapman to uplift the youth of her Appalachian community is a noble legacy. For some it will provide a hand up but for many others a ticket out, further propelling the "brain drain" of the best and brightest from rural Appalachia. Therein lies the conundrum, because the underlying problems facing not only much of Appalachia but our society as a whole, remain. Income inequity and unemployment are the economic cancers of a people without hope. The people of whom Mr. Husock writes have been undone not by their own moral failings but by a plutocracy that has abandoned them and then as if to assuage the guilt, created a alternate reality wherein the victims themselves are to blame for being victimized.
Well, I've had my rant for this morning. Just had to get this out of my system. As I suggested, perhaps I'm just a bit too thin-skinned regarding this topic or perhaps I've misinterpreted the tone of the article. I'd appreciate some feedback.
So the Nigerian govt now denies they knew of the attack beforehand?
Please see post #17 of this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024561241
There are several DUers who have been reporting for some time on these attacks on Nigerian schoolchildren. I had to do a search but located that report on the slaughter of the schoolboys and how the military had mysteriously withdrawn its soldiers just before the attack.
Now we hear that the gov't had several hours' warning prior to the schoolgirls being abducted. There is NOTHING the Nigerian government can offer as a believable explanation for what has been happening there for months. They're a bunch of liars. I wouldn't believe them if they told me water is wet.
I hope this will not be misinterpreted but at least there is some global outrage now that the girls have been abducted. This kind of terrorism has been ongoing there but barely made a blip on the news radar. Even past threads on this subject here on DU could barely be sustained by a handful of posters -- the slaughter of civilians... the destruction of entire villages and burning of schools... the murder and abduction of schoolchildren, both boys and girls... the kidnapping and torture of LGBTs, carried out with the blessings of Christian churches. Only now has the outrage pricked the world's conscience. Have we become numb to the ceaseless conflicts in places like Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria and CAR? Make no mistake, these atrocities are being committed by Muslims and Christians alike.
In the case of Nigeria, they are Africa's largest economy, primarily due to oil -- and Europe is the largest importer of Nigerian oil. It would be disingenuous for any government sucking on the teat of Nigerian oil to claim ignorance of the atrocities being committed or the government's skimming of oil profits whilst 65% of the populations is mired in abject poverty. (Gee, I wonder where they got THAT model?) The world didn't care before -- why now?
If by some miracle all the abducted girls are returned safely to their families, how long will it take for a waking world to return to sleep mode? Not long, I fear. In the meanwhile, the wheelers and dealers are sipping cocktails and making deals at the World Economic Forum in Abuja with the knowledge that this too, shall pass.
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