I wrote a recent post here (completely coincidence) that makes some of these exact points(though perhaps not so thoroughly, or so well). Thank you. I'm not actually from the Appalachian region per se, but I'm close enough to it and familiar enough with the people and the culture to have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about.

It's certainly a more informed idea than most of what I read in here: I am frankly appalled by the ignorance and the outright, oblivious intolerance of so many of Sen. Obama's supporters on this subject, as expressed in the the aftermath of the outcome in West Virginia. To excuse Sen. Obama's poor performance there as pure and simple "racism" is a self-perpetuating fraud. That attitude is SURE to lead to trouble in November and beyond, if that is the only simplistic "lesson" that is taken from it.

I'm sure it would suprise many of the readers here to learn that the kind of deep-seated, violent racial attitudes we associate with either the Deep South or the big northern cities (perhaps almost equally unfairly) are actually relatively unusual in the Appalachian region. People there DO have their prejudices (Read further in TPM to acknowledge that we ALL apparently do), but skin color is not high on that list.

Some of the statements I've read in here recently on this matter cause me to legitimately and seriously question the good sense of Sen. Obama's supporters (and by logical extension, the Senator himself). Is this what we mean by "uniting the country"? I don't know, but that's certainly not what THIS citizen intends it to mean. I thought I had left self-righteous, narrow-minded, hateful ignorance behind when the truth finally caught-up with Pres. Bush and his Free-Republic people.

Now, I'm not so sure.

Please recommend!

Thanks for continuing this discussion.
I read with great interest yesterday's post by Akbarjenkins and the comments that followed.
Excellent post.

Responding to Josh’s recent inquiries into a unique Appalachian culture, I worry about the dark side of what is essentially an ethnic identity question.

Syndicated right-winger Kathleen Parker printed a really disturbing column yesterday in which she conflated Obama with illegal immigrants.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/05/14/getting_bubba?page=1

Since Obama’s father was born in Kenya, Barack lacks the genetic capacity to “get” America. This “Obama doesn’t get America” trope is being passed around in that circle of right wingers who know how to read and write for the media. For example, Peggy Noonan dropped the idea into her largely positive response to Obama's "More perfect Union" speech. We can expect to hear it repeated with increasing regularity and I hope the Obama campaign is prepared to counter it.

I find her reasoning to be profoundly racist in a very scary nationalistic way. She claims a national divide that is not racial but is one between patriots and multi-culturalists. It gets creepy when she defines patriotism as being the “heritage” that is received through bloodlines. The currency of the America that Kathleen Parker deems authentic is measured in blood. Down payment consists of human life lost to war, the deed passed genetically to “ordinary” “white Americans”. She sounds like an aperthied Afrikaner here yet denies that racism has any place in the discussion.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/05/14/getting_bubba?page=1
“Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America.”

“It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.”
“-- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.”

But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.
It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.

Yet, white Americans primarily -- and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially -- have been put on the defensive for their throwback concerns with "guns, God and gays,"
But so-called "ordinary Americans" aren't so easily manipulated and they don't need interpreters.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative.”

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2008/05/14/getting_bubba?page=1

By “new demographics” Parker means immigrants. By the larger American story she means the fading hegemony of of white European progeny. She may mean the descendants of Scot-Irish immigrants who settled and became isolated in Appalachia -- no less immigrants for having arrived sooner than many Latinos.

I also object to her notion that “ordinary whites” have more of a claim to America than those she deems less white and less ordinary. She bases the claim on the notion that white forefathers bought a birthright with their blood.
Fully 25% of war casualties, back to and including the Civil War, were of non-white ethnicities – a number disproportionate to the general population.

One almost expects her to start quoting blood-type percentages as noted in the anti-miscegenation laws that, and I quote Ms. Parker intending sarcasm, "worked pretty well for 200 years"

The “larger American story” is in fact the one that Parker would deny. The story has always included a highly diverse population whose constituents have continued to arrive from other places and nations.