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.