Why people in Pittsburgh don't like the term Appalachia (Springfield: house, neighborhoods)

[creepsinc]

Atlanta isn't remotely Appalachian.

Pittsburgh's in the middle of it, though, but people should keep denying/debating geography. It's what makes the internet the internet.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by stevo6

I think the Eastern Europeans are concentrated more in the Anthracite Region in NEPA, with a few Welsh miners thrown in.

I remember reading about Italians and Hungarians being brought in a strikebusters in West Virginia and SW Pa.

[BrianTH]

Atlanta and Cincinnati don't come across as Appalachian to me.

On the other hand, I'd consider extending honorary membership to Birmingham (actually once known as The Pittsburgh of the South).

[Fiddlehead]

Interesting maps. I will take issue with the genetics argument. Though I do think that sometimes different folk streams arrive with differing abilities driven by socioeconomic forces, or alternatively that people who stay behind in depressed areas may end up being less capable, I think the cumulative effects of isolation, low educational attainment, and allied ills really can cast a long-shadow of socioeconomic depression. The Scots produced the American Appalachian redneck and also the Edinburgh Enlightenment and many US Presidents.The oppressed Irish were considered inferior to the English for centuries, but when they hit America, with its opportunities, they blossomed. But it is not instantaneous. I would posit that a very poor, uneducated subculture (let's say E. Kentucky, Afghanistan) will need at least 2, perhaps three generations to rise from such a depressed state, and that is if the conditions change. Hard to blossom in some of the those hard bit landscapes. Best way to do so is to leave, I would suspect,and the geographic pattern remains. I hope they can find a new and more diverse economy and ways to strengthen their peoples' competitive abilities.

Interesting, I was listening to NPR this week, and I heard that in Africa, having a single abundant resource (diamonds, oil, gas, timber) is now viewed by many as a curse. It enriches the capitalistic class, enslaves the working class, and feeds political corruption. I wonder if that might be true of the coal areas of the Appalachians. I was reading somewhere that the some degree of the success of New England (the rural areas of which attracted many of the same Scots-Irish stock that people the Appalachians in the early 18th century) may have occurred paradoxically because life was hard and one needed to be more adaptable and multifaceted to succeed. We have the same problem out here in Oregon, where many of our people with high school or lower educational attainment, usually men, were paid very well to work in the woods liquidating your federal old-growth forest, then shifted to work in the building trades during the housing bubble. Now, they are suffering Michigan-level unemployment. Perhaps resource abundance diverts attention away from developing people, which are the best long-term investment in a society.

[BrianTH]

Yeah, it can be mining, tobacco, lumber--any time one large capital-intensive industry dominates your economy, it will likely lead to low class mobility, class strife, political corruption, and so on.

[scrapp]

Originally Posted by jimmyev

I think it's kind of odd how the official designation of Appalachia stops just short of Atlanta and Cincinnati. I've always thought of those two cities - especially Cincinnati - as being as Appalachia as Pittsburgh.

Personally, "Appalachian" implies a rural quality to me. I wouldn't call any big city Appalachian.

[Ohiogirl81]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I remember reading about Italians and Hungarians being brought in a strikebusters in West Virginia and SW Pa.

My maternal grandfather came from Italy around the turn of the 20th century to mine coal in Westmoreland County; he worked in mines in Cambria County through through the mid-1950s. Two of my older uncles worked in the mines up through the mid-1960s. The others joined the service to avoid going into the mines.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Atlanta and Cincinnati don't come across as Appalachian to me.

Cincinnati's Appalachian population is huge, most coming from southeastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee during the establishment of the auto industry, then the Depression, then World War II. Over-the-Rhine was an Appalachian ghetto up through the mid-60s; most people of Appalachian heritage have scattered throughout other city neighborhoods and into the 'burbs since then.

[Honest Bob]

The two counties in Pennsylvania being highlighted in the graphs were Forest county and Clearfield county.

Both Forest and Clearfield county has lost most of it's manufacturing capabilities and it's industry is mainly based around the timber industry.

Other then Du Bois - Sandy Twp = which is mainly based around shopping and a few small shops that still survives in Dubois - there is not a lot to do in Clearfield county except drink, sell drugs and do drugs and steal.

When the Russians flooded the market with cheap timber, the bottom fell out of the timber industry and some if not most mills either shut down or decreased production to the point of where it costs more to run the mill then what they make from the products they produce.

Not to mention that most of the Pennsylvania hardwoods was used in the furniture industry which is all now in the transitional stage, being moved from the backwoods of Kentucky and North Carolina to China, where labor costs are cheaper.

Eventually it will get to the point of where even Jefferson County will be on the map, because all that is left in Jefferson county is a couple of small machine shops and Home Health Care / Nursing Homes / Hospitals.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81

Cincinnati's Appalachian population is huge, most coming from southeastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee during the establishment of the auto industry, then the Depression, then World War II. Over-the-Rhine was an Appalachian ghetto up through the mid-60s; most people of Appalachian heritage have scattered throughout other city neighborhoods and into the 'burbs since then.

Very interesting. A lot of Appalachians (of course called Hillbillies at the time) also moved to Detroit (where I grew up) in the mid-20th century.

[fleetiebelle]

Growing up outside Cincinnati, I did see quite a few hillbillies, but I don't know that I'd call the city itself an Appalachian city.