Who's Afraid of Rural Poverty? The Story Behind America's Invisible Poor

Abstract

AbstractRural poverty and rural issues in general remain invisible in the United States to the urban majority. Rural sociologists have tried to raise these issues, but even in the field of sociology, they have been sidelined for several generations. Progressives treat urban poverty with sympathy and rural poverty with contempt because the latter is stereotyped as a problem that afflicts only white families, who are then blamed for failings of the economy as a whole. In fact, persistent rural poverty is concentrated in pockets in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and several other regions, many of which are inhabited by blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Nevertheless, it seems that making rural poverty as much a concern among progressive Democrats as urban poverty has been will require a different political orientation towards rural issues. Such an approach was visible briefly during Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, but it has had little influence on other candidates for high office.