Letters to the Editor
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Racism
Don't confuse racism with cultural prejudice. In fact the term ought not to be used by the Hollwodd and Park Avenue elites when talking about the people of Appalachia, because after all it is based on their own brand of" racism, "their sense of culural superiority not only to the
"hillbillies" but even to any of their fellow Americans who don't share their cultural values.
Asto the feelings of hillbillies about blacks, it is most a matter of dislike. They don't like blacks for many of the same reason why many Boston Irish don't like blacks , why Mexicans don't blacks, why the Irish don't like Italians or Poles.
And it works both ways: blacks don't like whites. Blacks feel a deep resentment for Jews that is not unlike the resentment that Polish and Ukrainians felt toward Jews in "the old country." But they don't like whites, either, and they do their best to live apart from people not like themselves. The election of Obama is not going to eliminate racism in this country anymore than the election of Kennedy ended anti-Catholicism.