West Virginia Day - The State of the State's Stance Toward Stereotyping

Since I already write so much about the negative stereotyping of West Virginia on this blog, I've chosen to write about our approach as a state to being stereotyped. If you're new here and interested in what I've written about certain aspects of West Virginia's stereotype, you may find the "Hillbilly Like Me..." section interesting (listed on the right hand column of lists just above where the awards begin) or do a search on the blog here for "Bigot of the Month" (where I hand out a monthly award to those who stereotype us) or "stereotype."

This has been a big year already for West Virginia's perpetual pas de deux with those in the media who would stereotype her, and on this, the 145th anniversary of West Virginia becoming a state, I choose to discuss how a group can approach changing a negative stereotype because, in plain English, we suck at it. At least those with the power to demand apologies and the like have to date and it would be good if their methods were improved.

I've heard part of our problem in confronting stereotypes is that we lack a Rev. Al Sharpton type character of our own who would go straight to the media and use the collective power of the voices in his church to discuss head-on why a slander is wrong and what the community needs in order to feel like the memory in the public consciousness has been sufficiently rectified by discussions ad nauseum in media outlets and that the offenders have sufficiently been punished or paid penance for their image crimes.

We don't have one of those and, frankly, we don't need one of those. What we need is a better connection between academics and politicians on addressing such issues. What we have is: politicians asking for bland, blank apologies without benefit of tapping into the resources the state already has to address issues of stereotyping.

What we have is politicians and people following the precedents set by A. James Manchin when he was our Al Sharpton and he did stand up to the powers that be to say "you can't say that about West Virginia" whenever a company or media outlet showed us in a stereotypical light.

My favorite example of this style of stereotype confrontation and the products of those efforts is the Weenie Wagon family from the television show Night Court in the 1980s. Night Court was a popular silly little show meant to entertain. The courtroom in which most of the scenes were set offered a constant flow of quirky felons and odd characters. Once they had a family on who was from West Virginia. As far as comic characters go, this family was hilarious. They were a big enough hit that the family came back for other episodes throughout the series. A. James Manchin took offense at these characters being labeled as down-on-their-luck West Virginians. Night Court complied and the family from there on said they came from "that place we cannot name" or something to that effect.

You see, asking for them to stop saying they were from West Virginia was effective in that they stopped saying West Virginia altogether. What would have been more effective, more funny, and probably garnered West Virginia a lot more airtime, would have been working with the show's producers to see that they gave those West Virginians for whom stereotypical characters are not representative equal time. You see, in those days, Reagan had not yet struck down the equal time clause, so we would've had a shot at it. In other words, adding characters from the reasonable side of that family who came into the court whenever the family got into trouble would have buffered the stereotypical characters and given us non-stereotypical characters to butt heads with them. It could've been comedy gold.

Unfortunately, they just stopped talking about West Virginia. Doesn't anyone with any power realize that the number one problem facing West Virginia's image is that people don't realize we're a separate state from Virginia?

Unfortunately, it seems that all too often when a politician steps forward to stand up for West Virginia, he or she does so without having been taught (or making sure someone on his or her staff has been taught) the basics about stereotyping as a phenomenon unto itself. You see, once someone has labeled you as (______fill in the blank, but I'll go with hillbilly here) and you tell them it's not true and they need to apologize, even if you receive the apology you've supplied no new information about West Virginia to counter the stereotype.

Even in school, I would run into people who would say they were interested in fighting the stereotype, but when pressed for details on their plan the details were lacking but the names of the mucky-mucks they wanted to rub shoulders with were right on the tips of their tongues.

We, West Virginians, should not wait for someone to lead us on this stereotyping mess. Those who aspire to leadership often are as impressed with getting his or her own name in the media as they are with any tangible bit of stereotype change they could bring about.

To confront a stereotype, you need to have any and all of the people who fall into that stereotyped group decide to stand up and say why it's wrong....and make those who stereotype us speak the truth about West Virginia because apologies are the same as letting them off the hook.

And, each of you, whether West Virginian or not, has a responsibility to represent your state as you would like it to be seen. Studies have shown that when dealing with stereotypes on a one-to-one level people who previously held negative stereotypes about a group of people tend to change their views very quickly after having met a person from the stereotyped group and found them to be a nice person, instead of a walking representative of a stereotype.

When I travel, I am a self-appointed ambassador for West Virginia. I know that most people I meet aren't going to know much about our state. I know that my words and my actions are going to alter their perceptions of my state. I often hear from people who have driven through the state before, "West Virginia's so beautiful. I'd love to spend some time there, but I don't know what there is to do." In those cases, I tell them to look up callwva.com (the Division of Tourism's website) and suggest a few places depending on what they're into. Matter of fact, I think we'll be seeing some bear hunters from Alabama when bear season comes in this year. They were telling me they'd not been here to hunt because our "deer are so small" (and if you've been to the Rockies, they indeed are). I started telling them about our bumper crops of black bear and how I've been seeing license plates from all over the country show up in my little neck of Boone County to hunt the black bears.

These guys were hunters' hunters and they were practically salivating as I explained that our black bears are growing bigger than average. Hell, I had one break into my house 14 years ago in April (when they've just woke up and are at their skinniest for the year), and he was 450 pounds already (when the high end of black bears' average weight falls around 500 pounds). I even told them about how the hunters in the family say some of the big males are not sleeping through the winter, but foraging year-round. I know this because they were deer hunting one year and Leroy told Jack he was going to go squat down behind the black stump over yonder. As he walked toward the black stump, it got up and walked away. It was the biggest bear either of them had ever seen.

So, my advice would be to sell West Virginia. The Division of Tourism does a load of studies (available on their website as they're taxpayer funded) and their studies have shown that people leave West Virginia thinking much better of it than they did when they came. They also most often tend to mention that one of their favorite things about West Virginia is the people and how friendly they tend to be.

For those who have power to demand apologies, I would say please demand something a little more than an apology. At least try to broker some deal to present a positive image as part of their apology. An apology doesn't change anyone's mind about West Virginia. It simply reflects that the person who is apologizing has made a mistake.

If you want people to know us for who we truly are, you're going to have to use every opportunity you get to inject some truth about West Virginia into the discussion about stereotyping and what we're not. It is possible to change the stereotypes we face, but it will take many voices presenting many views over time. It's not a subject anyone should "own" because we all already own it. Now we need to work on selling what and who we really are.

Happy West Virginia Day!

A list of links to bloggers participating in blogging to confront West Virginia's negative stereotype today is being kept at http://www.abetterwestvirginia.com/.

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Edited to add: I'd never seen 304blogs before today. Great list, but they're missing a lot of us WV bloggers. Wonder why?