Reply #43: Here's an interesting overview of poverty in Appalachia, FYI

[deutsey]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/readings/duncan.html

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I think that chronic poverty in rural areas, and urban areas for that matter, really represents long-term neglect and lack of investment -- a lack of investment in people as well as communities. And in the rural areas that I know in America, that lack of investment began as deliberate efforts by those in power -- local elites or employers -- to hold people back. Because it has worked for them, to keep their labor force vulnerable, keep them powerless.

In the case of Appalachia, the coal operators wanted to keep workers from unionizing and demanding higher wages in the early days of coal mining because the industry was so competitive. Historians have shown that the large Northeastern utilities and Midwestern utilities were pitting one small company against another. In the face of this bitter competition, coal operators tried to control everything about workers' lives to keep their labor costs down. And part of controlling everything was to not educate people, to be in control of the ministers, the doctors, the stores … and to discourage workers' participation in community life, making the workers dependent on the coal operators for everything about their livelihood and their community.

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Regarding which is more important, race or class: it's interesting MLK was killed right around the time he began focusing his efforts on class along with race. I think keeping poor whites and poor blacks divided doesn't serve either group's interest. Who's interest does it serve, then?

Hmmmm.