I’ve read that article. It does to city culture what it claims city culture does to rural culture, IMO. I had a slightly more nuanced objection the last time someone posted it, but I’m not going to take the time to read it again now. IIRC It’s worth a read, but that man paints with as broad a brush as anyone he criticizes in that article, and folks should go in knowing that.
Edit -
By coincidence, here’s an article about a book that takes an opposing view, and the current Lemmy discussion about it. As of this moment I’ve not yet read more than the first para of the article:
In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence to achieve their goals, as thousands did on Jan. 6.
According to a new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.
The authors, Tom Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman, a former columnist at The Washington Post, persuasively argue that most of the negative stereotypes liberals hold about rural Americans are actually true.
They do not mince words about what this means for the future of democracy in America. “Rural voters—especially the White rural voters on whom Donald Trump heaps praise and upon which he built his Make America Great Movement—pose a growing threat to the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”
And Schaller and Waldman bring receipts.
In a book filled with reams of data to back up their arguments, Schaller and Waldman show that rural whites “are the demographic group least likely to accept notions of pluralism and inclusion” and are far less likely to believe that diversity makes America stronger.
It’s 100% because of propaganda. These people wouldn’t feel this way if right wing media outlets weren’t all competing for the “building full of the worst scum on earth” award. They’d have the common gripes we all do about inflation and general life satisfaction, but they wouldn’t be frothing at the mouth and wishing for a civil war so they can kill us.
I don’t talk to him too often and while my dad hasn’t done a full 180 yet, his amount of Democrat/liberal bashing and general anger has dropped quite a bit since he started a new hobby instead of going home and sitting down in front of the two minutes hate programming on Faux News.
Fox News, Newsmax, and the like are the true dangers to democracy. Without their legitimizing of Trump and their willingness to use him to their own benefit we wouldn’t be in this situation where there’s only ever increasing threats of political violence.
Edit: I’m a dumbass and I did not read your comment very well so feel free to ignore this rant. It probably has nothing to do with your post but it’s too late meow. I’m not deleting it.
Hey I know it’s kind of late to reply to things in this thread but I was just thinking about this article again today and I wanted to see what other people had to say about it.
It does to city culture what it claims city culture does to rural culture
Yes, my friend, this was the point of the article. You yourself may not feel like you stereotype folks who live in rural areas but there are plenty of people who do. Some of the folks who stereotype rural people feel they are justified for doing so because they DO see rural folk as “less-than”, and admittedly it’s sometimes hard not to absorb this view due to the perceived ignorance of these rural people. It is a broad brush, but it’s an appropriate brush. He’s not saying it’s correct, he’s putting the shoe on the other foot.
I work in customer service in a very unique part of the country (Near Chicago but not inside) so I interact with a lot of different people with very different backgrounds. Some people take the train to visit my workplace and rarely drive or visit our part of the state unless they’re showing up where I work. Some people don’t leave their hometown of literally 500 people unless they’re visiting my workplace which is a mere 40 minute drive for them.
I almost never hear open racism where I work (though I’m certain there are plenty of legit racists, they just keep it quiet). We occasionally have to describe people by their appearances, and “basic-ass old white dude” has been both a physical description and a personality description I have heard and nobody pressed back against. It’s a stereotype, people hold it. And, my coworkers are left-leaning (me too) so it does just become shorthand for “this guy probably voted for Trump and is scared of my nosering”. It isn’t a healthy way to view your neighbors, nor is it an assumption you can make about people.
I noticed your last quote:
In a book filled with reams of data to back up their arguments, Schaller and Waldman show that rural whites “are the demographic group least likely to accept notions of pluralism and inclusion” and are far less likely to believe that diversity makes America stronger.
It’s not a race to see who holds the least stereotypes or the least offensive stereotypes. It’s important to identify your biases, which is what this article is asking you to do. It’s not an us-vs-them thing.
The authors, Tom Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Paul Waldman, a former columnist at The Washington Post, persuasively argue that most of the negative stereotypes liberals hold about rural Americans are actually true.
Most? Okay which ones are wrong? Does it mean all rural people are closed minded bigots? There probably is at least one rural american who isn’t a close-minded bigot, but it doesn’t matter because they’re mostly all the same right?
Don’t think for a minute I think rural folks are justified for their ignorant and fearful bullshit, I’m just pointing out that stereotyping people doesn’t actually do anything but hurt the people who don’t suck.
I’m a dumbass and I did not read your comment very well so feel free to ignore this rant. It probably has nothing to do with your post but it’s too late meow. I’m not deleting it.
It actually seems like a mostly reasonable rebuttal from someone who might have different opinions than I do, but I’m not going to argue with you about most of it because of this disclaimer. 🙂
I’m just pointing out that stereotyping people doesn’t actually do anything but hurt the people who don’t suck.
Which is why I object to, or at least would want people to be aware of, the fact that the article promotes stereotypes of (for lack of a better word) ‘city folk.’ Writing an article about the dangers of stereotyping, but predicating it on stereotyping a different group, seems firmly in the “two wrongs don’t make a right” category to me. Especially because, with as often as I see this article referenced, I’m sure plenty of the folks he’s trying to “explain” for the rest of us have read this article and found within it someone who “gets” them - and so will be primed to accept every one of his swipes at urban dwellers as confirming exactly the stereotypes they already had.
He closes by implying anyone who disagrees with him “have gotten angry, feeling this gut-level revulsion at any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all, they’re hardly people, right? Aren’t they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing, spitting subhumans?”
My father grew up on a single-family private farm, lived in a farmhouse with a partial dirt floor that used the same fireplace for heating and cooking, attended a one-room schoolhouse, and had to walk to the outhouse to take a shit. To this day I doubt there are even five thousand people living in the town he grew up in. The author is not the only one who has had a foot in both camps, he doesn’t speak for everyone who has, and I think it’s reasonable to point out that he was at pains to paint a very fair picture of rural folks while doing absolutely nothing but promoting stereotypes of urban folks.
Bottom line - we’re pretty far past it mattering on a personal level why maga is tearing down our democracy, rolling back anything resembling equitable treatment of LGBTQ+, rolling back women’s rights, suppressing education about slavery and diversity, etc. They are doing those things. I might care about their plight, but I care about stopping them from further fucking up the country more.
I’ve read that article. It does to city culture what it claims city culture does to rural culture, IMO. I had a slightly more nuanced objection the last time someone posted it, but I’m not going to take the time to read it again now. IIRC It’s worth a read, but that man paints with as broad a brush as anyone he criticizes in that article, and folks should go in knowing that.
Edit -
By coincidence, here’s an article about a book that takes an opposing view, and the current Lemmy discussion about it. As of this moment I’ve not yet read more than the first para of the article:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-rural-trump-supporters-are-a-threat-to-democracy
https://lemmy.ml/post/12666394?scrollToComments=true
It’s 100% because of propaganda. These people wouldn’t feel this way if right wing media outlets weren’t all competing for the “building full of the worst scum on earth” award. They’d have the common gripes we all do about inflation and general life satisfaction, but they wouldn’t be frothing at the mouth and wishing for a civil war so they can kill us.
I don’t talk to him too often and while my dad hasn’t done a full 180 yet, his amount of Democrat/liberal bashing and general anger has dropped quite a bit since he started a new hobby instead of going home and sitting down in front of the two minutes hate programming on Faux News.
Fox News, Newsmax, and the like are the true dangers to democracy. Without their legitimizing of Trump and their willingness to use him to their own benefit we wouldn’t be in this situation where there’s only ever increasing threats of political violence.
Edit: I’m a dumbass and I did not read your comment very well so feel free to ignore this rant. It probably has nothing to do with your post but it’s too late meow. I’m not deleting it.
Hey I know it’s kind of late to reply to things in this thread but I was just thinking about this article again today and I wanted to see what other people had to say about it.
Yes, my friend, this was the point of the article. You yourself may not feel like you stereotype folks who live in rural areas but there are plenty of people who do. Some of the folks who stereotype rural people feel they are justified for doing so because they DO see rural folk as “less-than”, and admittedly it’s sometimes hard not to absorb this view due to the perceived ignorance of these rural people. It is a broad brush, but it’s an appropriate brush. He’s not saying it’s correct, he’s putting the shoe on the other foot.
I work in customer service in a very unique part of the country (Near Chicago but not inside) so I interact with a lot of different people with very different backgrounds. Some people take the train to visit my workplace and rarely drive or visit our part of the state unless they’re showing up where I work. Some people don’t leave their hometown of literally 500 people unless they’re visiting my workplace which is a mere 40 minute drive for them.
I almost never hear open racism where I work (though I’m certain there are plenty of legit racists, they just keep it quiet). We occasionally have to describe people by their appearances, and “basic-ass old white dude” has been both a physical description and a personality description I have heard and nobody pressed back against. It’s a stereotype, people hold it. And, my coworkers are left-leaning (me too) so it does just become shorthand for “this guy probably voted for Trump and is scared of my nosering”. It isn’t a healthy way to view your neighbors, nor is it an assumption you can make about people.
I noticed your last quote:
It’s not a race to see who holds the least stereotypes or the least offensive stereotypes. It’s important to identify your biases, which is what this article is asking you to do. It’s not an us-vs-them thing.
Most? Okay which ones are wrong? Does it mean all rural people are closed minded bigots? There probably is at least one rural american who isn’t a close-minded bigot, but it doesn’t matter because they’re mostly all the same right?
Don’t think for a minute I think rural folks are justified for their ignorant and fearful bullshit, I’m just pointing out that stereotyping people doesn’t actually do anything but hurt the people who don’t suck.
It actually seems like a mostly reasonable rebuttal from someone who might have different opinions than I do, but I’m not going to argue with you about most of it because of this disclaimer. 🙂
Which is why I object to, or at least would want people to be aware of, the fact that the article promotes stereotypes of (for lack of a better word) ‘city folk.’ Writing an article about the dangers of stereotyping, but predicating it on stereotyping a different group, seems firmly in the “two wrongs don’t make a right” category to me. Especially because, with as often as I see this article referenced, I’m sure plenty of the folks he’s trying to “explain” for the rest of us have read this article and found within it someone who “gets” them - and so will be primed to accept every one of his swipes at urban dwellers as confirming exactly the stereotypes they already had.
He closes by implying anyone who disagrees with him “have gotten angry, feeling this gut-level revulsion at any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all, they’re hardly people, right? Aren’t they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing, spitting subhumans?”
My father grew up on a single-family private farm, lived in a farmhouse with a partial dirt floor that used the same fireplace for heating and cooking, attended a one-room schoolhouse, and had to walk to the outhouse to take a shit. To this day I doubt there are even five thousand people living in the town he grew up in. The author is not the only one who has had a foot in both camps, he doesn’t speak for everyone who has, and I think it’s reasonable to point out that he was at pains to paint a very fair picture of rural folks while doing absolutely nothing but promoting stereotypes of urban folks.
Bottom line - we’re pretty far past it mattering on a personal level why maga is tearing down our democracy, rolling back anything resembling equitable treatment of LGBTQ+, rolling back women’s rights, suppressing education about slavery and diversity, etc. They are doing those things. I might care about their plight, but I care about stopping them from further fucking up the country more.