Rural Americans often see themselves portrayed in unflattering ways in the national news media, which tend to report on people from small and/or remote communities without much consideration for the nuances of opinion and diversity.
The bias that paints rural people with a broad brush was a topic in a lengthy interview with Kentucky author and farmer Wendell Berry, published recently by The New Yorker.
The interview resulted from Berry’s correspondence with Amanda Petrusich, a 39-year-old staff writer for the magazine, who sent a letter to Berry seeking advice because she was feeling “existentially adrift about the future of the planet.”
Berry is the author of more than 80 books. One of his first, The Unsettling of America, in 1977, remains highly regarded for its promotion of responsible, small-scale agriculture.
“Berry, who is now 84, does not own a computer or a cell phone, and his landline is not connected to an answering machine,” Petrusich wrote. “We corresponded by mail for a year, and in November, 2018, he invited me to visit him at his farmhouse, in Port Royal, a small community in Henry County, Kentucky, with a population of less than a hundred.”
In the interview, Berry recalled his decision, with his wife Tanya, to move back to Kentucky:
“When I came to teach at the University of Kentucky, Tanya and I thought we would live in Lexington, and we would have ‘a country place.’ And we hardly had laid our hands to this house, which needed some preservation work, when we realized, we’re not going to have a country place; we’re going to live here. And so we have. We bought this home and twelve acres in the fall of 1964, and moved in, in the midst of renovations, in the summer of 1965. That put our children here, and now we’ve got grandchildren who are at home here. That comes from a decision that we made to be here, and to be here permanently.”
Petrusich asked Berry how his peers in New York reacted to his decision to return to Kentucky. “Well, here I was going to the provinces. I was going to put myself under the influence of what one of my friends called ‘the village virus’ … (which is) To be narrow-minded. To be what everybody’s saying now about rural America. Racist, sexist, backward. Stupid.”
Petrusich asked, “What do you think people – journalists, commentators, citizens – mean when they use the term ‘rural America’?”
Berry replied, “Since the election, liberal commentators have made ‘rural America’ a term of denigration, the same as ‘boondocks’ and ‘nowhere.’ It is noticed now, by people who never noticed it before, only because of its support for Donald Trump. Rural America could have supported Trump, these people conclude, only because it is full of bigoted ‘non-college’ white people who hate everybody but themselves. These liberals apparently don’t know that, with their consent, urban America has been freely plundering rural America of agricultural products since about the middle of the last century – and of coal for half a century longer. Conservation groups have accepted this abuse of non-wilderness land about as readily as the corporate shareholders. [1950s Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft] Benson gave permission to urban America to accept that industrial technology could solve all the problems of food production. And so urban America could just forget about rural America. What a relief! And then Mr. Trump arrived. A century ago Robert Frost spoke of 'the need of being versed in country things,' and that need has now been reinforced, at least politically."
Read the full interview here.
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| Wendell Berry has lived on his family farm in Henry County, Kentucky, since returning home in 1964. (Photo from Modern Farmer) |
The bias that paints rural people with a broad brush was a topic in a lengthy interview with Kentucky author and farmer Wendell Berry, published recently by The New Yorker.
The interview resulted from Berry’s correspondence with Amanda Petrusich, a 39-year-old staff writer for the magazine, who sent a letter to Berry seeking advice because she was feeling “existentially adrift about the future of the planet.”
Berry is the author of more than 80 books. One of his first, The Unsettling of America, in 1977, remains highly regarded for its promotion of responsible, small-scale agriculture.
“Berry, who is now 84, does not own a computer or a cell phone, and his landline is not connected to an answering machine,” Petrusich wrote. “We corresponded by mail for a year, and in November, 2018, he invited me to visit him at his farmhouse, in Port Royal, a small community in Henry County, Kentucky, with a population of less than a hundred.”
In the interview, Berry recalled his decision, with his wife Tanya, to move back to Kentucky:
“When I came to teach at the University of Kentucky, Tanya and I thought we would live in Lexington, and we would have ‘a country place.’ And we hardly had laid our hands to this house, which needed some preservation work, when we realized, we’re not going to have a country place; we’re going to live here. And so we have. We bought this home and twelve acres in the fall of 1964, and moved in, in the midst of renovations, in the summer of 1965. That put our children here, and now we’ve got grandchildren who are at home here. That comes from a decision that we made to be here, and to be here permanently.”
Petrusich asked Berry how his peers in New York reacted to his decision to return to Kentucky. “Well, here I was going to the provinces. I was going to put myself under the influence of what one of my friends called ‘the village virus’ … (which is) To be narrow-minded. To be what everybody’s saying now about rural America. Racist, sexist, backward. Stupid.”
Petrusich asked, “What do you think people – journalists, commentators, citizens – mean when they use the term ‘rural America’?”
Berry replied, “Since the election, liberal commentators have made ‘rural America’ a term of denigration, the same as ‘boondocks’ and ‘nowhere.’ It is noticed now, by people who never noticed it before, only because of its support for Donald Trump. Rural America could have supported Trump, these people conclude, only because it is full of bigoted ‘non-college’ white people who hate everybody but themselves. These liberals apparently don’t know that, with their consent, urban America has been freely plundering rural America of agricultural products since about the middle of the last century – and of coal for half a century longer. Conservation groups have accepted this abuse of non-wilderness land about as readily as the corporate shareholders. [1950s Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft] Benson gave permission to urban America to accept that industrial technology could solve all the problems of food production. And so urban America could just forget about rural America. What a relief! And then Mr. Trump arrived. A century ago Robert Frost spoke of 'the need of being versed in country things,' and that need has now been reinforced, at least politically."
Read the full interview here.
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