African American writer examines the 'invisibility of white poverty' in Eastern Kentucky

Lenoard Pitts, Jr., an African American reporter for the Miami Herald, recently traveled to Eastern Kentucky—an area that was called the Big White Ghetto by one reporter and that was the focus of a story with the headline “What’s The Matter With Eastern Kentucky?” by another reporter—to examine white poverty in one of the nation's poorest regions. (Herald photo by David Stephenson: Samuel Riley buying cigarettes in Booneville, Ky., located in Owsley County, one of the nation's poorest counties)

"Granted, America seldom discusses poverty of any hue, except insofar as conservative pundits and politicians use it as a not-subtle proxy for racial resentments among white voters," Pitts writes. "But white poverty is the great white whale of American social discourse—believed to exist but seldom seen."

"As it turns out, our deeply racialized view of poverty bears no resemblance to reality," Pitts writes. "Though it’s true that African Americans are disproportionately likely to live below the poverty line, it is also true that the vast majority of those in poverty are white: 29.8 million people. In fact, there are more white poor than all other poor combined."

"There is a remarkable consistency to the way citizens of the poor, white mountain South have been portrayed in popular culture and scholarship. In entertainment, they are narrowly defined as naifs whose very innocence and trusting nature insulates them from the conniving machinations of city folk (think Jed Clampett), as lazy sluggards (think Snuffy Smith), as big, dumb rubes (think Jethro Bodine) or as the personification of perverse evil (think Deliverance). Women’s roles are even more constrained: they tend to be either ancient, sexless crones (think Mammy Yokum) or hyper-sexualized young women (think Daisy Duke)."

"Get past John-Boy and the rest of 'The Waltons,' and it is difficult to recall a sympathetic portrait of white Southern poverty in mass media," Pitts writes. "To the contrary, America has always bred a special contempt for the white poor. As far back as 1866, a Boston Daily Advertiser writer opined that 'time and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood, but I almost doubt if it will be possible to ever lift this ‘white trash’ into respectability.'” As recently as 2010, the Hillbilly to English Translation Dictionary was published with a cover depicting "a woman with pigtails and a missing front tooth, clutching a scraggly bouquet. She is wearing a dingy white wedding dress. She is barefoot and pregnant."

"There is no national advocacy group to defend the white poor against such libels as this, no analogue of the NAACP or the National Organization for Women to assert their dignity," Pitts writes. "You may malign them without a whisper of complaint."

"The invisibility of white poverty, says Edmund Shelby, editor of the Beattyville Enterprise, is part of the problem," Pitts writes. Shelby told him, “Those of us who are aware of the issues facing Appalachians and those of us who speak out about those issues see that as one [thing] that has kept us in the position that we are in for so long. I think that can be said for a lot of poor populations because if you can say things about people that dehumanize them, then there’s no need to help them raise themselves up in any way because, after all, using that stereotype, they are incapable.” (Read more)