# So apparently rural America (modern hunter gatherers) think city folk look down on them **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 17, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221 "2016-11-17T02:34:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/1 "2016-11-17T02:34:18Z")
> **[For years, I've been watching anti-elite fury build in Wisconsin. Then came...](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/16/13645116/rural-resentment-elites-trump)** > > I did not set out to study rural resentment of “elites,” but that’s what I found. > [@](#): > > But perhaps most significantly, the people I talked with thought that they were not getting their fair share of respect. They perceived that in the rare cases that people in the cities paid any attention to people in places like theirs, they ridiculed rural folks as uneducated racists. What have we EVER said to disparage such people ?!??!?!?!? All I’ve ever done is post hopeful posts about expanding cities so more rurals out in the dirt patches of this nation can move to civilization and have a better life. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/2 "2016-11-17T02:47:10Z")
While this is true, it is a two way street. The contempt for liberal elitists on the coasts has been on display for years and years. As has the contempt for minorities, gays and immigrants. That article even discusses how people in the rural areas feel superior to blacks and urban whites, but do not feel that their (self appointed) superiority is reflected in social standing. So yes, the two groups do not respect each other. Sad but true. the fact that these people voted for a sociopathic billionaire with a proven track record of lying and scamming people to protect them from the elites isn’t going to win them any respect from liberals. I mean, how are we as liberals supposed to respond? It feels like these people anointed themselves as superior, but they actually aren’t. And there is an undercurrent of bigotry in their views. So they fall for the first con man who offers them easy answers. Its hard to respect people who do that. That’d be like if I said I was taking a stand against domestic violence by marrying Chris Brown. Am I supposed to be buried under an avalanche of respect for my decision making abilities? I think I have a reasonable understanding of their mentality, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to treat it as if it is a factually accurate, well thought out philosophy. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/3 "2016-11-17T03:49:50Z")
I see no sign that it’s the rural aspect that leads to a lack of respect. If you care about minorities and education, people seem to be fine with you. It’s those who don’t who get treated badly. Though I admit “flyover country” is a shitty thing to say. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/4 "2016-11-17T06:43:26Z")
Gee. Someone should write a parable or, perhaps, a fable about this situation. They might call it “_The City Mouse and the Country Mouse_.” And while there are certainly urban citizens who look down on rural citizens, I defy anyone to listen to a Country Music station for any length of time without encountering a number of songs scorning people who are not “country.” (Urban people may not respect rural people, but they don’t sing about it.) ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/5 "2016-11-17T06:45:03Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > All I’ve ever done is post hopeful posts about expanding cities so more rurals out in the dirt patches of this nation can move to civilization and have a better life. So, you want to import ALL your food from the Third World? Even as sarcasm, that fails. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/6 "2016-11-17T11:40:45Z")
A bit of realism to deflate romantic notions about the rural “Real 'Murika”: [QUOTE=Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Copper Beeches”] “Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?” “They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” “You horrify me!” “But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.” [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/7 "2016-11-17T12:01:21Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > And while there are certainly urban citizens who look down on rural citizens, I defy anyone to listen to a Country Music station for any length of time without encountering a number of songs scorning people who are not “country.” (Urban people may not respect rural people, but they don’t sing about it.) As topics go “big city folk look down on us” is right up there with “woman done me wrong” and “damn, I love my truck”. I’m pretty sure the term “flyover states” was made up by a rural person to put in the mouth of an imagined city person, rather than being used by actual “coastal elites”. In fact, a quick google finds [this](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160314-flyover-country-origin-language-midwest/). ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/8 "2016-11-17T13:12:38Z")
IMHO they both do somewhat look down at each other, but more in the terms that one doesn’t understand the other’s way of life and feel they live in a world that revolves around themselves. This does not have to do with the elections directly, but such a sentiment has been exploited but the elections. ---
**Author:** ![Cardigan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardigan/32/187_2.png) [@Cardigan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardigan)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/9 "2016-11-17T13:24:24Z")
It’s called ‘[ethnocentrism](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnocentric)’ and it’s pretty much a universal constant where just about any group of human beings’ attitudes are concerned. ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/10 "2016-11-17T13:32:10Z")
I’ve lived in rural NC, Texas, West Virginia, and South Pittsburgh. I’ve spent some time in Birmingham, Jackson, upstate Louisiana. I now live in the biggest city in America. The whole country is a segregated and racist nightmare. My city now has the most segregated school system in the whole country, where Mississippi has cities that are 97% Black and living in failed Central American dictatorship levels of poverty. But, why the city folk look down on rural America has something to do with [this:](http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/in-wayne-county-nc-trumps-america-is-angry/Content?oid=5086119) > [@](#): > > When asked if he’d be willing to pick cucumbers or tobacco, Bolton got defensive. “Just because I don’t want that kind of work doesn’t mean some Mexican should get it. A part of me says we should let them stick it out on them fields, but it ain’t right.” > > So who, then, should companies like Mount Olive Pickle and Butterball hire to take on jobs men like Bolton want no part of? > > “Give 'em to the blacks who sit at home on the porch all day,” he said. “Make ‘em earn that government check. Know what I’m sayin’?” Some of the disdain is earned. Some is hypocrisy. There’s no easy answers. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/11 "2016-11-17T13:58:45Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > And while there are certainly urban citizens who look down on rural citizens, I defy anyone to listen to a Country Music station for any length of time without encountering a number of songs scorning people who are not “country.” (Urban people may not respect rural people, but they don’t sing about it.) This is a difference I see, rural folks actively engage in disdain of urban folks as part of their identity signifiers. Whereas urban folks don’t spend a lot of thought on disdaining rural folks. To me it goes back to the notion of one party saying to the other, “you think you’re better than me!” Um, no, I’m just living my life with no thought of you at all. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/12 "2016-11-17T14:56:04Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > [For years, I've been watching anti-elite fury build in Wisconsin. Then came Trump. | Vox](http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/16/13645116/rural-resentment-elites-trump) > > What have we EVER said to disparage such people ?!??!?!?!? While I think it’s true that all sorts of different groups will disparage others that are not them and rural folks are not innocent in that regard, this statement is strange given you [started a thread disparaging rural folks:](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=811043) > [@Is it possible to have an ultra dense city that has a low cost of living?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-to-have-an-ultra-dense-city-that-has-a-low-cost-of-living/772124/24): > > I do think there is something to the hollowing out of rural areas due to the sorting mechanism of higher education and the shift of rewards to higher skilled people. NY and other major population centers tend to be more magnets of people with greater skills, and as those people leave the smaller towns the leftover residents are more of the… slag. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/13 "2016-11-17T15:16:18Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > While I think it’s true that all sorts of different groups will disparage others that are not them and rural folks are not innocent in that regard, this statement is strange given you [started a thread disparaging rural folks:](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=811043) You don’t understand. That thread was about helping those backward rural folk and improving their lives. They simply don’t know what they are missing!! ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/14 "2016-11-17T15:30:13Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > What have we EVER said to disparage such people ?!??!?!?!? > > All I’ve ever done is post hopeful posts about expanding cities so more rurals out in the dirt patches of this nation can move to civilization and have a better life. The answer to the first sentence is the second one. People living in the country really don’t want a string of McMansions popping up down the street, with rising traffic and crime and strangers walking their dogs on their land. They’re people that are fine without HOAs or a city water bill. Sometimes, a twenty minute drive to the grocery store is more than worth not having to hear your neighbors at night or smell their cooking or having to worry about finding a parking spot. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/15 "2016-11-17T15:34:26Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > This is a difference I see, rural folks actively engage in disdain of urban folks as part of their identity signifiers. Whereas urban folks don’t spend a lot of thought on disdaining rural folks. > > To me it goes back to the notion of one party saying to the other, “you think you’re better than me!” Um, no, I’m just living my life with no thought of you at all. Some could see that as the ultimate form of disdain. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/16 "2016-11-17T15:45:03Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > This is a difference I see, rural folks actively engage in disdain of urban folks as part of their identity signifiers. Whereas urban folks don’t spend a lot of thought on disdaining rural folks. > > To me it goes back to the notion of one party saying to the other, “you think you’re better than me!” Um, no, I’m just living my life with no thought of you at all. Except every 4 years we go thru this little exercise. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/17 "2016-11-17T15:51:21Z")
They should try not being uneducated racists. Also while they are at it maybe they can get rid of the homophobia too. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/18 "2016-11-17T16:49:50Z")
Aren’t some of them _educated_ racists? Let’s be fair… ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/19 "2016-11-17T17:05:12Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > This is a difference I see, rural folks actively engage in disdain of urban folks as part of their identity signifiers. Whereas urban folks don’t spend a lot of thought on disdaining rural folks. And describing them as “modern hunter gatherers” isn’t disdain? ---
**Author:** ![Calatin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@Calatin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calatin)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221/20 "2016-11-17T17:13:37Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > All I’ve ever done is post hopeful posts about expanding cities so more rurals out in the dirt patches of this nation can move to civilization and have a better life. “…can move to civilization and have a better life.” This post is parody, right? If you don’t see the condescension in that phrase, then I don’t know what to tell you. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-apparently-rural-america-modern-hunter-gatherers-think-city-folk-look-down-on-them/772221.md?page=2)