What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

by Elizabeth Catte

Dependency narratives fuel popular talking points among individuals on both sides of the political aisle. They are often presented without acknowledgment that corporate welfare runs Appalachia.

Many are, Cohen observes, “blue lives matter” supporters. Most are incensed by wage stagnation. But according to Cohen, these attitudes are different than those found in New York, where a white police officer strangled an African American man to death for selling cigarettes, or Paris, France, where police and citizens joined forces to destroy the temporary housing of Muslim migrants.

“We know Appalachia exists because we need it to define what we are not. It is the ‘other America’ because the very idea of Appalachia convinces us of the righteousness of our own lives.” Appalachia is real, but it exists in our cultural imagination as a mythical place where uncomfortable truths become projected and compartmentalized.

People in power use and recycle these strategies not because it’s enjoyable to read lurid tales of a pathological “other”—although that certainly informs part of the allure—but because they are profitable. And if you trace a flawed narrative about Appalachia back far enough, you’ll often find someone making a profit.