There is a final, asymmetrical challenge rural minorities face: racism itself. There’s no reason to suspect that rural White citizens who score high on what pollsters call “hostile racism” indicators somehow reserve these sentiments for outsiders. When rural schools in minority areas are most likely to be segregated, when rural hospitals that serve mostly minority patients are more likely to close, and when rural poverty is more persistent in minority areas, it is hard not to see implicit or even explicit racism at work in the heartland.
