Calling all Hillbillies

[RedLetterRev]

I've seen this term being thrown around as an epithet a lot lately and it's really gotten under my skin. Now, gentle DU friends, I'm not flaming because you don't know that which you don't know. There has been an awful lot of social conditioning that has gone into the use of the term "hillbilly" and I can't undo it all at once, but let me try as gently as I can.

I am a hillbilly.

I am a born an raised Appalachian man, one who has sprung from a culture that has been derided for centuries, caught between squabbles, even between sides in a civil war -- yet without whom much of this nation would not be what it is today. My ancestors didn't just "live off" the land, they lived closely with it, respected it, held it in stewardship (and we would like to think that living "green" and "conservation" are modern concepts). Hillbillies were ingenious at making a living with near-nothing, inventing what they needed on the fly, could make their own clothing (not Nieman-Marxists :)), soap, shoes, anything at all they needed.

During the Civil War, the mountaineers, the hillbillies if you will, were once again caught between cultures; too poor and too independent to own slaves, of no use to the north or the south except as cannon fodder. Up and down the ridge, none of them cared to go to war as they had no dog in the fight. In my own state of NC, Governor Vance marched troops west toward my own ancestors when they threatened to secede as Western Virginia did, and pressed them into the fight. They didn't teach you that in grade school, did they? But it happened.

After the war was over, the north laid obscene taxes on the south, the hillbillies included. Of course they were doubly resentful, having been abused by the south and now taken advantage of by the north. They had little to begin with, now they had nothing and were losing their homes and land because they couldn't pay the reparation taxes. I would highly recommend that my fellow DUers watch the PBS movie "The Price of Dark Corners" that tells a very poignant part of that history. The hillfolk were sterotyped in northern papers as slouching, stupid, slinking, dirty, ignorant, and worse. Those stereotypes exist today.

Today, it's time to lay those 19th-Century stereotypes and terms to rest. I am a hillbilly and I find no shame in my heritage.

To call the Palins "hillbillies", truly is an insult to real hillbillies. They didn't come from the hills; they truly are stupid, cunning, evil and destructive. Call them all those things. Those they deserve. But please don't use the heritage of a proud, independent, strong, intelligent people who gave this nation so much good to describe people who are participating in its destruction.

Thank you for letting me vent.

:grouphug:

[drm604]

1. For the record, it was Republicans who first called them hillbillies.

Specifically, a McCain staffer.

[RedLetterRev]

2. Understood

but there have been an awful lot of echoes on DU.

We're better than the Republicans in that we can learn history. We take education and run with it. As I said in the OP, a lot of times we don't know that which we don't know. My intent is to educate, not to flame. I'm not casting asparagus :)

[drm604]

3. My father grew up in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania.

His father was an illiterate coal miner and they were dirt poor. My father left the region and married my mother in the Philly suburbs which is where I grew up. So I guess I come from hillbilly lineage myself.

I don't think many of the people on here see the term "hillbilly" as applying to real people, but rather as a cartoonish image as portrayed by "Lil Abner" and "The Beverly Hillbillies". So they don't see it's use in a disdainful manner as an insult to any real persons.

To be honest, I myself wasn't aware that anyone thought of themselves as hillbillies.

[mdkilkenny]

14. My Parents each claimed the other one was the Hillbilly

Interestingly they each came from areas that coal mines had torn up the countryside-Southern Illinois and Southern Iowa.
Their families often suffered injuries, deaths in the coal mines. Usual scenario: Mine accident, deaths, mine closes, time passes, mine reopens under different management. Very often any "hillbilly area" is a good melting pot of recent immigrants as well long established Melungeons. I remember some disdain my grandfather(Melungeon) had for recent immigrants(hunkies) because of competition for jobs.

[malaise]

4. You hillybilly: Me

mutt. :grouphug:

[RedLetterRev]

6. Me too!

I've been climbing my family tree for years and it's fascinating. I really do contain rainbows! Viking and North African roots, Scots and Anglo-Irish, European and oddly eastern European/Turkic stuff, with a dash of Native... in short, European settlers and the elusive Melungeon that DNA says is there and I'd love genealogy to prove. Yup. Everything an Appalachian mutt is supposed to be... thoroughly Murrican. Mutt works for me, too.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. as city folk, I can say that I associate the term "hillbilly" with someone who is uneducated

simply being from Appalachia does not qualify you as a hillbilly IMO

[RedLetterRev]

8. There's some fascinating history behind that

actually. I wasn't aware of a lot of it until I took up genealogy and started studying history a while back. A lot of that happened after the Civil War when the hillfolk -- most especially the southern hillfolk -- were rather ill-used by both sides as convenient cannon-fodder (does that sound familiar in modern-day terms, using the poorest to do the bidding of the more well-to-do?). When the hill-folk were trying to recover under the burdens of reparations, a few took to activities like selling 'shine to try to raise the money to pay the taxes so they wouldn't lose the land they'd held for generations.

The northern papers went wild with the stereotypes. Southern Appalachian people were categorically painted as slouching, criminal, slinking, stupid... well, you get it. These cartoonish figures were played up over and over until the images and terminology were made indelible in American vernacular -- like "kleenex".

Again, I'd highly recommend watching the PBS film "Prince of Dark Corners". It's fairly short and it's a great play. It shines a small light into that part of history and explains a little bit of why we have some of the images we do today.

Yeah, I'm a little bit of a history buff, but that's partly why I'm a thoroughgoing Dem :)

[Motown_Johnny]

11. very informative thank you... but that does not change the fact that the common usage of the term

"hillbilly" today is associated with people who are uneducated, and not simply a regional term.

[jimmybama]

7. Hillbilly no hoosier yes!!

No insult to Indiana but I think they are Hoosiers by
defination.

[mondo joe]

9. The word, I believe, for the Palins is GRIFTERS. NT

[malaise]

15. And as Colbert would say

And that's the word.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

20. Grifters is a great word for them, and I've used that myself to describe them

on DU.

[Individualist]

10. Present

and proud of my hillbilly heritage. Well said, RedLetterRev!

[brentspeak]

12. What about...rockabilly?

[Celebration]

17. when I think of HILLBILLIES

it is ALL about the music, not about Neiman Marcus shopping.

And, Dolly Parton is a really *great* one.

[Buns_of_Fire]

18. Amen to that...

Actually, she's a great *TWO*, as Johnny Carson might have noted...

...and one of the damned NICEST people you'd ever want to meet.:loveya:

[RedLetterRev]

26. Dolly is a big hero of mine

She came up from even harder circumstances than me and did ever so much for herself. She's got talent and more money than Croesus, but she never forgot who she is and where she came from. As we say, "she was brought up raht" :) She's one of the "big stars" I'd give anything to meet -- more than meet; fix a good dinner for her and her husband, kick the shoes off, talk for a while, then have everyone part friends and say, that 'uz a real nice visit. I rarely invite anyone into my home. For her and her husband, me and my husbear would make an exception (he's a WV mountain man himself, aka HillbillyBob on DU).

He's a helluva cook and I make a helluva swaytater pah!

[sunnystarr]

13. wow what synchronicity this is ...

my daughter and I were having a conversation on the phone this morning about Palin. The hillbilly reference came up and we both agreed it was a real insult to hillbilly's since what she really was, and was being described as, was plain. old. ordinary. TRASH.

[nashville_brook]

16. took the words right out of my mouth -- not cool to smear hillbillies with the Palin brand.

[SmileyRose]

19. I'm a hillbilly - and rather proud of it actually.

I have bluegrass, coal dust and farm dirt in my blood. I am far from stupid even if my spelling and grammar are less that perfect. I have a stronger work ethic than most people I've worked with. I'd do anything in my power for pretty much anyone who asks (or even if they don't). If that makes "hillbilly" a bad thing then so be it.

[live love laugh]

21. Here! And proud that I am a hillbilly from beautiful Appalachia. nt

[Soup Bean]

22. Obvious Hillbilly here.

Northeast Tennessee, about 100 miles northeast of the Great Smoky Mountains. Tennessee turned redder than ever in this election. We have the first Republican House since the sixties; the Senate turned even redder, leaving our Democratic Governor all alone for the next two years.

I don't really know what to do. Democrat is a bad word here, but my family and the beauty of the area keep me from leaving. Oddly enough, Asheville, NC is less than an hour away, and it's the San Francisco of the South. Much culture, and a big city feel. Very expensive to live there, though.

And the Palin's arent' "Hillbillies". They couldn't survive a good NE TN snowstorm.

[Duppers]

24. uh?

JC, TN's weather seems to compares favorably to Wasilla's.

- a former east Tennessean here.

[kentuck]

23. Yeah, I guess I'm a "hillbilly"...

I was born and raised in the "hollers" of Appalachia.

[Athens30603]

25. Thank you!!

Ever since my ancestors immigrated here from Ireland and Scotland my US roots have been in the rural mountains of western North Carolina. "Hillbilly" has always gotten under my skin, too.