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I agree. Poverty looks worse in Eastern NC said since Western NC has the better scenery. Keep in mind before our government decided to outsource jobs with NAFTA and such, East NC wasn't such a bad area.
I agree. Poverty looks worse in Eastern NC said since Western NC has the better scenery. Keep in mind before our government decided to outsource jobs with NAFTA and such, East NC wasn't such a bad area.
I remember cotton and tobacco fields and many manufacturing jobs in that region dedicated to processing those materials. Dupont had a large facility in Kinston dedicated synthetic fibers. Most of the people seemed very poor but made enough to support themselves.
On a recent trip to Hawaii I happened to notice that the pineapple and sugar cane industry left Hawaii at around the same time- circa late 80's early 90's..
No way around it; there is a racial bias in how we perceive poverty; and it "looks worse" on people of color. Many towns and counties in Eastern NC are majority black the majority of people in poverty are black and that scares most people more than the poverty stricken white hillbillies in Western NC.
Couldn't have anything to do with almost everyone I know including myself, when I lived out in Eastern NC being robbed by black people?
I'll take the beauty of the mountains and possible meth hillbillies over the gangs of Eastern NC and the dull, flat, lifeless terrain any day.
FWIW, most people don't consider Robeson and Scotland County to be located in Eastern NC.
Using stats for Jones County and Hertford Co would be fair game though.
And in all reality Coastal NC is not a high poverty area...the counties on the coast have differentiated themselves from Eastern NC...this would include Brunswick, New Hanover, Pender, Onslow, Carteret, Dare and Currituck Counties.
After recently traveling through the "coastal country" as I call it, you couldn't tell me it wasn't the pits of impoverishment just based on the optics of areas around US-17, US-13, NC-101, etc... But I'm thinking mountain country probably takes the cake as far as percentages... The views are much more accessible down east...
Eastern NC catches a lot of flak on here, but if I had to be dropped off in one of the state's most impoverished regions, I'd take my chances in the country of the coastal plain/eastern NC instead of the mountains...
Thoughts?
The Coast is definitely not a high poverty area.
Lots of places north of Raleigh and along the SC line that are though.
Poor ENC towns are plagued with poor blacks who smoke crack and shoot each other
Poor WNC towns are plagues with poor whites who smoke meth and shoot each other, though not *quite* as frequently as ENC
Take your pick...I;d pick mountains just because it's a lot nicer to look at than a flat coastal plain...
No they don't. Gun crimes and/or murders are low to almost non-existent in the mountains, depending on where you are in the mountains. The further you get from Asheville, the more non-existent they become, and those are the areas with MORE locals.
Mountain locals are the least of anyone's worries. The mountain culture is "live and let live". I've lived in Marble, NC and now live in Young Harris, GA just a couple of miles from the NC state line. I grocery shop in Hayesville, NC. I could choose to not even lock my doors and it wouldn't matter.
I'm a black person and I would rather live in Eastern NC with poor blacks than Western NC with racist white hillbillies.
Your chances of having any harm come to you in the mountains are pretty non-existent. First, not all white "hillbillies" are racist. Second, even if they are, their culture is "live and let live". They are the farthest thing from "confrontational" that you can imagine. They don't bother anyone, and they don't want anyone to bother them. If a neighbor was bothering them, they'd be unlikely to report it because they don't want anyone to report them.
BTW, there are some blacks up here, and they seem to be doing fine.
The only thing you'd need to worry about is maybe some of the cops, but I don't think the mountains are unique in that regard.
Bingo. I didn't know a way to frame this but you did it very well.
Also, not gonna lie, the hillbilly types are much more friendly and welcoming than the impoverished set down here. They don't seem to have the proverbial chip on their shoulder.
I do not agree that race has anything to do with bad-mouthing Eastern NC in this forum.
Eastern NC is the under-explored scapegoat for using state funds that must be spread thinly across a state inhabited in nearly every spot.
Charlotte has decried it so much for decades that its ingrained for them that no one lives there but yet highways keep getting built that aren’t utilized.
FYI: over 2-1/2 million people live East of I-95.
I don’t think Eastern NC is ugly, and I’ll bet for those who do they’re basing it on US70 to the beach, which is less than attractive.
And besides, you have an internationally respected beautiful coastline that is the beach vacation every year for at least a dozen states in the Northeast and Midwest.
For those of you who don’t get to the Outer Banks often, the rental homes there are ginormous with usually 17-25 bedrooms!
The rate for weekly rentals is often $25,000-$30,000 or more.
The economically depressed areas are noticable around FarmVille, and also the skinny far NE counties like Perquimnans.
And for those of you who don’t know: Amazon has a 100 windmill wind farm up in those far NE counties which powers a data center in Virginia.
Each windmill pays about $8,000 per month in rent to the landowner.
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Correction
