This won’t only be a problem in Appalachia. I would posit that this will happen everywhere there’s been pervasive economic problems, not just in the rust belt, but in areas of the south where economic competition between poor whites and poor blacks has been a common theme. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) founded in the early 1930s in the Mississippi delta threatened the domination of the planter class, and was to boot, integrated (which was a bigger horror for the wealthy). Racism has an economic basis for capitalists, since the divide and rule of white/black racism provides a disunified labor pool which can be manipulated and exploited by setting the ‘differences’ alight. We see this continued to this day with the racism of ‘illegal immigration’ and the constant demands of poor whites that the ‘government do something!’ and restrictive anti-immigrant (read: anti Hispanic – all this continues to be anti-brown people – interesting, eh?) whilst business and industry use their lobbyists to prevent effective restrictions.

The Scotch-Irish (of which I am a descendant) have been pummeled in this country economically since colonial times. They’ve been exploited economically and militarily, and ‘kept down’ by exploiting our clannish (actually – we pay attention to our extended families – kind of like Afghans and Arabs) nature. Barack Obama would do very well indeed to work with Senator Webb, who is related to the people of this area and work his way in. Piyush Jindal did his homework and did well in this arena with the north central Louisiana folk, and I believe Obama is a better politician (and a vastly better human being).