An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America White Rural Rage has become a best-seller--and kindled an academic controv

[shrike3]

22. I grew up on a farm. That's rural.

The nearest town consisted of a party store, a gas station and a post office. That's it. Didn't even have a traffic light. Among the usual sins, racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia, there was hatred of Jews and Catholics, the latter of which I experienced personally. We were the only Catholic family around and we got taunted about that on the bus regularly. When the local women came to welcome my mother to the neighborhood, they found out we'd be attending the Catholic church in the nearest big town, they got up en masse and left. One of our bus drivers did not like Catholics, made no bones about it, and often hurtle past our house, finally stop about a quarter mile away and say, "You'll have to walk."

After I graduated, I found out what one of my old classmates was Jewish. He'd kept it a deep, dark secret. Smart kid.

One of my close relatives lives in a rural area, farms everywhere. They use the n word openly around there. (Not my relatives.) They are heavily armed and some actually think gangs of blacks from the big city are going to come marauding one day.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned -- forgive me if I missed it -- is the fact that these folks regard themselves as the real Americans. True blue, salt of the earth. They don't get the respect they think they deserve from non-rural people and they don't like that. Also, media choices were far and few between in these areas, so AM radio, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News filled the gap.