That was then. This is now.

Amidst the pending change in government and the economic crisis that did so much to bring it about, it's fascinating to revisit Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address, which signaled the beginning of an epoch that has now come to a crashing end. This was the speech, a quite eloquent one, in which Reagan famously proclaimed, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem", and legions of the faithful marched to work in Washington (although curiously rarely on Wall Street) wearing the now nearly forgotten yellow ties with Adam Smith's profile.

"Communalism"

In today's Washington Post Dileep Padgaonkar discusses the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and offers a new word with a peculiar meaning. In the Indian political lexicon, "communalism" is the "determined bid to exploit religious sentiments for political gain".

City Mouse, Country Mouse

Tell me it never occurred to you that Woody Allen isn’t just Don Knotts on meds and in analysis. Well, it turns out we were right! Alvy and Barney, the crown princes of neurosis, the favorite sons of the Big Apple and Morgantown, WV respectively, are of one clan, one people, who just happen to live at opposite ends of “the neurosis belt” . . . or so says a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

Boy! Won’t our city cousins be thrilled when we pay them a surprise visit for Thanksgiving this year? We’ll have so much to talk about. After all, we’re the most neurotic state and they’re the most neurotic city.

Frankly, I was skeptical of the methodology employed by the researchers at Cambridge in profiling and ranking the fifty states. I mean, across five parameters – Neurosis, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness – they identified North Dakota . . . North Dakota? . . . as either the top or bottom state for three of them. I knew North Dakota was out there, but that’s like really OUT THERE!

But, when I saw that the researchers had struck upon the spiritual and psychic bond that unites West Virginians and New Yorkers, I knew I had heard the note of truth.

FWIW: Another Troubling Trend for Republicans

People who live in states that voted for John McCain are 28% more likely to commit suicide than people in states that voted for Barack Obama . . . and this was before the election.

Apropos of . . . . ?

EPILOGUE FROM THE PLAY, "REVOLUTION"

(Two men huddled at a microphone in a BBC broadcast studio. It is March 1939 near the end of the Spanish Civil War . . . and the beginning of World War II.)

NEWSREADER

On March third, 1939, this is the BBC Overseas Service from London. I am happy to welcome back from Republican Spain our correspondent, Malcolm Ridgeley.

Malcolm, two years ago on this program you interviewed a young fellow from Huddersfield who had volunteered to defend the socialist government in Spain. But today the volunteers are gone and the Fascist forces of General Franco seem destined to prevail. Is Europe’s most destructive civil war in a generation finally over but for the formalities?

RIDGELEY

In a word, yes. But I am obliged to remember that those “formalities” are a doomed struggle being waged by people I know, who continue to die even now. It’s easy to dismiss them as naive idealists. And for a time I did. But tonight as I contemplate the greater abyss into which Europe may fall, I find myself reconsidering.

Even if their politics are wrong and their reasoning childish, their willingness to sacrifice for a greater good enables them to stand against the certain evil of unvarnished self-interest. Against that, there is only this alternative: a mindset which says it is deluded vanity to presume to know the difference between good and evil and, therefore, the height of arrogance to fight for it. Rather, we should satisfy ourselves with simple wants – a long life with an occasional well-made meal a fellow named Chernovsky told me – and let history take its course doing what it will with the fools who presume to challenge it.

I fell into that mindset until I witnessed its consequences: 500,000 souls slaughtered, whole villages destroyed from the antiseptic altitude of 10,000 feet, and a child who I loved die. Of course, through it all I’ve enjoyed a long life and many well-made meals. So, I should be satisfied – even proud. But only a monster could be so smug.

Tonight I am terrified – not for myself, but for us all. And the only ones I have to look to for consolation are those same naïve idealists whose cause is lost but whose fight goes on. I was wrong to call them fools, for they know the desperateness of their situation. They choose to die now so that their actions might inspire others to take up their cause at another time, in another place where prospects are not so bleak. For that I admire them and I pray we can find similar courage, for we may soon need it. And if I could be with them now, I suspect someone might say to me, “Of course I don’t know if there is a utopia. But I’m certain we must act as though there can be.” Amen.

NEWSREADER

That was our correspondent, Malcolm Ridgeley, reflecting on his two years in Spain. Now we turn to the day’s top story. German troops have crossed into Czechoslovakia.
(Blackout.)

"Business Weak" on Innovation

Because we’re human, many fields of endeavor produce people and ideas that acquire almost mythic and magical powers. We must, therefore, faithfully adhere to their dictates even when every outward sign indicates these idols may be irrelevant, mistaken, or worse. It is, after all, a test of conviction.

In economics one such god is the free market whose “invisible hand” some people worship as though they believe (and a few even assert) it to be God’s hand. In management literature one such god is “innovation”, which some suggest is the sufficient and perhaps indispensable means to prosperity and growth. For them, innovation is a deity to which all businesses must continually sacrifice (i.e. invest) especially when times are tough – like a craps player doubling down when he’s on a losing streak.

Thus “Business Week” magazine instructs businesses in the “Ten Worst Innovation Mistakes in a Recession” which include:
· Reduce risk
· Shift evaluations away from rewarding riskier projects toward sustaining safer older goals
· Cut back on investments in technology
And, of course:
· Replace innovation as a key strategy

All this, if you’ve read and followed the prescriptions of BW in times good and bad, amounts to, “Stay the course”. An odd admonition when the economy and many companies are in the midst of economic meltdown . . .the sort of thing that in the unfaithful and conventional might inspire a desire to reduce exposure, preserve resources, and generally step in out of the tsunami.

This belief in innovation as indispensable to success is odd in one respect. Whereas Christian dogma instructs us that all faithful believers can aspire to heaven, the innovationists, in their admiration for their champions, regularly remind us how exceptional and rare those champions -- true innovators -- are. And they’re right! Innovation . . . the creation or significant improvement of products or services or of the organizations that deliver them . . . is rare unless one is willing to dilute the meaning of the term to encompass any change, however trivial, that produces positive results. Companies do not and should not invest in triviality.

In fact, we live and work in a marketplace in which a few innovate and the many assimilate and disseminate. To cite for the gazillionth time the “Lake Woebegone Effect”, not everybody can be above average and it can be reckless and self-destructive for businesses to think and invest as though they can be when the prospects for producing an innovation . . . at least one of significance . . . may be small.

Most businesses are not, by any meaningful definition of the term, highly innovative and most, even in economies such as this, will survive and a few will prosper as has always been the case.

40th Anniversary of Farmington #9

As measured by the number of people killed, West Virginia is the scene of four of the ten worst industrial disasters in US history, a remarkable record for a state whose population is smaller than that of Brooklyn, NY.

The worst disaster in both West Virginia and US history, The Hawk’s Nest Incident of 1927, killed more than 700 men who were digging a tunnel through silica-laden rock for a hydroelectric project. Workers wore no face masks and those who survived the project did so with fiber-encrusted lungs that crippled and eventually killed them.

The Monongah mine explosion of 1907 killed 361 miners and the Buffalo Creek Flood of 1972 killed 125 people when a coal company’s rain-saturated earthen dam burst and flooded a hollow destroying a succession of towns.

On this day in 1968, explosions at Consolidation Coal Company’s Farmington #9 mine took 78 lives, fewer than the other disasters, but with far-reaching consequences. Farmington was the first major industrial disaster to take place during the “media age” and the events were broadcast live around the world as families and TV crews maintained a days-long vigil in the hope that some of the 78 men trapped underground could be saved.

None were and nineteen were permanently entombed when the decision was made ten days after the first explosion to seal the mine. But, by putting a human face on what otherwise would have been mere statistics, Farmington #9 led to the enactment of the first national mine safety legislation.

Today it’s unlikely that the death tolls achieved in those disasters will again be equaled. Whether we’ve become more humane or merely more intimidated by the greater financial liability associated with negligent death, the safeguards against such accidents are considerably greater now.

In hindsight, it’s stunning how little compensation or consideration was accorded the families of the victims of these disasters. The widows of Farmington accepted payments of $10,000 each from Consolidation Coal, which, even when adjusted for inflation, is a pittance compared to the average $2.1 million given to families of the 9/11 victims.

West Virginia Public Radio and National Public Radio have two excellent reports on the Farmington #9 disaster. The first, aired in January 2006. The second, which aired just yesterday, provides not only a retrospective, but also reveals that a memo has been discovered that suggests the deaths of the miners may have been the result of an intentionally disabled alarm.

The chalice from the palace is the vessel with the pessel . . . er . . no

A previous post noted the remarkable evolution of Senator Robert Byrd, a process that took place over decades. But, not since Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester" has anyone undergone so rapid a transformation as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson whose warp speed evolution is described here by David Cho of the Washington Post. It's testimony to how mutable even deeply held beliefs can become under certain circumstances. Whether we should be glad remains to be seen.

Greed is good

Some movies cannot be seen with the same eyes again. “The Wizard of Oz” cannot because we first saw it as five year olds full of wonderment. Then we changed. The movie “Wall Street” cannot because the world changed.

In 1987 Gordon Gekko was, the movie’s producers insist, an unintentional hero and his guiding principle, “Greed is good”, became a credo. Today . . . well . . . today “Wall Street” wouldn’t play the same way to our suddenly wizened eyes and investment portfolios. And, as with childhood fantasies, we’ll go through a period during which we’ll feel a bit foolish for having once been taken in, but we’ll soothe ourselves with the knowledge that so was the redoubtable Alan Greenspan (Was he any less a wizard than the one in Oz?). And when we watch “Wall Street” again, we’ll be struck as much by the movie’s naivete as our own. After all, Gordon Gekko was eventually brought down because he disobeyed the law and was caught. The real life Gordon Gekko’s who brought us all down, didn’t have to violate any laws.

A Disease of The Soul

Today yet another “malady map”, this one for obesity, in which West Virginia is among the darkest colored states, just as it was for diabetes, tobacco use, drug abuse (pain killers primarily), and heart disease. But, there is another malady in which I suspect we lead, one that underlies all the diseases listed above.

Sometimes you don’t need a survey, although in this case one can and should be done, to sense an endemic disinterestedness in caring for oneself. I don’t just mean a disinterest in eating sensibly, getting a reasonable amount of exercise, and avoiding harmful substances. Those are merely the symptoms of insufficient caring. I’m talking about the underlying will to aspire and to control one’s own destiny, the absence of which is called fatalism.

It might also be called resignedness or acceptingness, but not despair. No. Despair requires a degree of energy and passion that among many of us is either lacking or well hidden. Nor is it criminality. West Virginia has a very low crime rate, but then crime is in its sick way aspirational and that doesn't seem to be part of our makeup. Even the “Economist” a few years ago . . . the “Economist”! . . . commented on West Virginians’ comparative lack of enterprise and entrepreneurial initiative, which, although I don’t remember, may have been illustrated by yet another black spot on a map.

The notion that self-destructive behaviors are correlated with fatalism and resignedness is hardly original with me. So, I wonder when will we see a malady map, unaccompanied by redundant admonitions to eat more fruits and vegetables, that measures the disease of the soul? And what will we do about it?

Our coming "coalonoscopy"

Jacob Leibenluft, Ben Elgin, and Jeff Biggers argue here, here, and here that the idea of “clean coal” is absurd. If it is, where does that leave West Virginia?

Even in good times, coal is a blessing and a curse. The industry provides 42,000 well-paying jobs in a state that doesn’t have nearly enough and coal severance taxes pump $400 million a year into West Virginia’s state government assuring solvency at a time when other states are staggered by deficits and debt. But, coal’s benefits come at the price of environmental degradation, floods, tops blown off our mountains, and broken bodies.

In short, coal provides us with a livelihood while killing us, a paradox to which West Virginians are long accustomed if not reconciled. But, aware that the price of oil can go to $150/barrel and buoyed by President-elect Obama and nearly all Republicans singing the praises of “clean coal” as a key component in achieving “energy independence” (another idea that many experts consider absurd), a lot of West Virginians are willing to renew our vows with the promise of coal, however flawed.

After all, we’ve known for a long time that nothing good comes from coal without exacting a steep price, a deal we’ve always accepted. But, as the costs of coal are nationalized and internationalized, we shouldn’t be surprised if our fellow citizens choose not to accept the deal. And, if they don’t, what then? No more coal industry?

I’ve wondered before what West Virginia would be like had there been no coal. Would we be Vermont with a twang? A place where cow burps produce more greenhouse gasses than power plants and the internal combustion engine? Would Abraham Lincoln have seen a place with few economic prospects and, instead of declaring it a state, decided West Virginia was better suited to be a national park?

But, virginity is not recoverable. Of course, neither is the coal industry going to grind to a halt over night. So, where will that leave us? Probably where we’ve been – lurching along year to year with our coal dreams that are equal parts aspiration and dread.

RAIN IN THE HOLLOWS: Tonight and Saturday night in Morgantown

http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?story_id=40516

The Daily Athenaeum article on M. T. Pockets' production of RAIN. If you're there on Saturday, I'll see you.

Why Does Prejudice Endure?

Prejudice endures because it works.

In my professional life I’m often involved in consumer research and one of the questions with which I most frequently grapple is why consumers choose more expensive brand name products over less expensive private label or “store brand” products when the products are of equal quality and occasionally even come from the same factory. The answer is that, in the absence of personal experience or persuasive testimony from friends or experts, consumers can’t know in advance that the brand name and private label products are of equal quality. They sometimes are and sometimes are not. Therefore, choosing the private label product requires that consumers either educate themselves in advance or accept a degree of risk that they may purchase a less satisfactory product.

In economic terms, the effort required to become fully informed or, alternatively, the risk of dissatisfaction, carry quantifiable costs that have to be weighed against the presumed benefit of reduced price. And often times the cost is greater than the marginal benefit associated with purchasing the private label product, so consumers stick with the brand name. This is a rational and, more importantly for the purpose of this discussion, a prejudicial decision – prejudicial in the sense that it is a decision made in the absence of available facts.

When you think about it, most of the decisions we make every day are at least somewhat “prejudicial” in the sense described above – that is, they are made based on impressions or partial understanding without a full comprehension of the facts. When the decision being made is about mouthwash or breakfast cereal, it creates no ethical or legal controversy because choosing a consumable product is a decision that has no moral dimension. That changes, however, when I’m deciding who to hire for a job, because those who do not get the job will be denied an opportunity and that denial, if unjust, violates the one ethical tenet with which agreement is nearly universal – that we should treat others as we, ourselves, would want to be treated.

The problem is the ethical imperative now stands in direct opposition to the economic imperative. That which is just may not be that which is most efficient. Whether we’re talking about who to hire for a job, who should get a mortgage, or even whether I should cross the street because the person approaching me seems vaguely threatening, the specter of prejudice – economically rational, but still immoral prejudice – comes into play.

Society and government try to mitigate this conflict for us through moral suasion and the passage of laws that limit or guide our choices, but those aides are of limited value because, while they can be applied to highly structured decisions such as school admissions or job applications, they’re often not useful in the context of more casual and numerous decisions, such as do I want to go on a date with this person?

The problem is further compounded by the fact that we’re neurologically wired to be prejudicial. The human ability to use heuristics – ad hoc techniques that allow us to make rapid and reasonably good choices in the absence of full knowledge – is an evolutionary triumph that allows us to thrive and is arguably a major component in what we call creativity. In short, prejudice works, but the context in which it is applied makes all the difference. And we now know from painful experience how hard it is to eradicate prejudice from some contexts – those with a moral dimension – and not from others. Perhaps, in the end, we can't, but we damn well need to try.

The Pompadour Never Goes Out of Style

Photo: Jeff Gentner, Str / AP

The image won’t be as jarring for you as it was for me when I visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis at the old Lorraine Motel, site of Martin Luther King’s assassination. As I wandered through the exhibits recounting the long struggle for civil rights that was waged more in the streets than in the courts, I was accompanied by a succession of closed circuit TV’s that run a constant loop of contemporaneous newscasts and documentary pieces ensuring that Bull Connor will turn his dogs and fire hoses on peaceful demonstrators a hundred times a day for eternity.

Amid the alternating images of dignity and chaos there appeared a young . . . well, middle-aged man -- Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia whose luscious pompadour was even then three years out of style in New York and L. A., although not in Memphis and Birmingham and not at the Grand Ole Opry or the WWVA Jamboree. His softly rounded nose and chin defeated the sharp, chiseled cracker appearance I imagine he once aspired to, but the pompadour was flawless, a signal as certain as Sarah Palin’s dropped “g’s” that the owner was a tribune of the common man . . . at least of the white common man.

He was the same fellow some of us can remember as a happy, backslapping raconteur of the Dixiecrat persuasion, except the state he represented was never . . . never part of Dixie. We also remember that his mood could darken and his features take on a vaguely Nixonian cast as they were doing now on the TV screen at the Lorraine Motel where he was playing the brooding Cassandra warning of the sinister Communist hand lurking behind the trouble-making coloreds.

Then, without warning, the TV cut to another image of I don’t remember what and the senator was gone. I emerged from the darkness of the museum into the glaring afternoon sun wondering if it was all a dream and hoping it wasn’t because, if the . . . well, I'll give him his due . . . young man with the pompadour was real, there’s hope for us all.

"When you ain't got nothin . . . "

As the current economic crisis rumbles and swirls through the land, West Virginia has surprisingly avoided most of the damage inflicted on other states. Incomes have so far remained relatively stable as have home values, except in some isolated areas, and the state’s finances have not yet gone to hell. That’s good news in its way, but also bittersweet, because the resilience shown by West Virginia’s economy can basically be explained by the adage, “When you haven’t risen very far, you don’t have far to fall.”

West Virginia incomes have remained relatively stable because West Virginians derive a comparatively high percentage of what they live on from entitlements, which are generally unaffected by the crisis, and a comparatively low amount of income comes from investments and work, two areas that are heavily impacted. Of course, we must remember that no one ever got rich on entitlements and that people who depend on them often live pretty close to the edge. So, any loss, though smaller in percentage terms than losses being suffered by people elsewhere, can none-the-less be devastating.

West Virginia’s housing and mortgage markets also continue to be comparatively durable, but for anomalous reasons. Most people are surprised to learn that West Virginia has long had one of the highest rates of home ownership in the nation, and to that degree, we might be expected to have more mortgages at risk. However, our housing stock is older than it is in most places and, due to a general absence of economic development, there have been relatively few new mortgages created in the past five years, the period during which most of the flawed lending practices have taken place.

These factors generally inoculated West Virginia’s housing and mortgage markets against the scourge, but as nice as that is, they also bespeak an underlying illness. For all the cant about the virtues of home ownership – remember George W. Bush’s “ownership society” -- in a fast moving economy, high levels of home ownership become a structural problem because people have a harder time responding to economic incentives. They find it more difficult to move from places they live that offer fewer jobs or low-paying jobs to places that offer more jobs and opportunity.
In an economy that evolves at ever greater speeds, this kind of rigidity is a major barrier to prosperity. Of course, some might argue that there is a bright side – that, if West Virginians found that it was easier to move elsewhere, they would, thus depleting the state of what little human capital it has. To this objection, my only response is that West Virginia’s story is in many ways one of people worried more about hanging on to what little they have than about reaching for what they might attain. And this economy, for better and for worse, is the result. Celebrate it or rue it as you’re inclined.

Of Incest and Authenticity

A few years ago I experienced a strange coincidence. The artistic directors at two theaters, apparently unknown to each other, told me that, if I wanted my play, RAIN IN THE HOLLOWS, to be produced in New York, I should change the play’s setting from the hollers of West Virginia to the west coast of Ireland. They even offered suggestions about how the play’s dialogue might be tweaked . . . no major revisions, mind you . . . to lend it the necessary “authenticity”.

What the two artistic directors were less clear about was why a change in setting unaccompanied by any change in the play’s substance should make theaters and presumably their audiences more receptive to my play. On reflection, I think it’s fairly clear that they felt RAIN IN THE HOLLOWS, a play that employs magical realism to explore the nuances of family relationships, would be more “accessible” to audiences if it were set in Ireland.

Why should that be the case? Well, Ireland unlike West Virginia has produced a stream of playwrights over the last century – Synge, O’Casey, Friel, McPherson, and others – who have written highly nuanced works in this vein, so perhaps audience members, although most of them have probably never set foot in Ireland, are able to relate more readily to the “Irish peasant experience” than they are to the equally distant, but rarely staged, “Appalachian mountain experience”.

That’s the polite way to describe it. There is, however, a darker interpretation that goes like this. Audiences either can’t or don’t want to identify with characters whose lives, which they associate with ignorance, provincialism, and bigotry, they look down upon. In other words, audience members might not be able to get past their caricatured notions of Appalachian hill people to find their underlying shared humanity.

Whichever interpretation is more accurate, the episode reminds us that the mere mention of place can evoke in audiences waves of emotions, images, and preconceptions . . . a phenomenon that good playwrights use to imbue their plays with color, texture, and context without having to devote pages of dialogue to tedious description – what playwrights call “exposition”. That’s a good thing, but it’s a good thing that can have a distressing consequence.

Calling upon peoples’ preconceptions also means calling upon their prejudices. In fact, by willfully employing audiences’ prejudices, playwrights, whether intentionally or unintentionally, validate them. An example is seen in the frequently produced play, THE SPITFIRE GRILL, in which a young woman recently released from prison travels to a remote lake town in Northern Wisconsin to start over. When we hear that the crime for which she was briefly imprisoned was murder, we are also told that she killed her own father at whose hands she was the victim of incest.

Normally this kind of revelation is, as my mentor and fellow playwright Ernie Joselovitz would say, a hand grenade that a playwright can’t simply roll out in the middle of the stage and leave unexploded. INCEST! My God! The audience wants to know about it. But, if that’s not really what the play is about and the playwright needs to get off the topic and move on, what does he do? The playwrights of THE SPITFIRE GRILL (James Valcq and Fred Alley) add a line explaining that the young woman is from West Virginia.

Why does that simple piece of information bring closure to the issue of incest . . . defuse the hand grenade so to speak? Because incest is what audiences expect to happen in West Virginia. No further explanation required and, in fact, the playwrights give us none. Would further explanation have been required had the young woman hailed from New York, California, Florida, or other more presumably cosmopolitan places? Certainly.

I won’t go into statistics showing that incest is no more prevalent in West Virginia than it is in other places, but will merely observe that the writers of THE SPITFIRE GRILL didn’t feel compelled to look at the statistics either before dropping this little tidbit in the play. But, does this tiny exploitation of the preconceptions that audience members hold about West Virginia really do any damage? I don’t know, but I do wonder if THE SPITFIRE GRILL might have been seen by a woman I met in New York recently who, upon being told that I live in West Virginia, casually asked, “Why?”

An open letter to Andrew Sullivan

Andrew,
On more than one occasion you’ve suggested that Barack Obama’s political fortunes in West Virginia suffer due to an unusually high degree of racism in the state. I replied by pointing out that, based on polls at the time, your criticism was based more on misconceptions about West Virginia than it was on fact and I went on to predict that, on election day, white voters in West Virginia would give Senator Obama greater support than white voters in at least a dozen other states including Pennsylvania. As the following chart derived from exit polls shows, I was wrong about Pennsylvania, but I actually underestimated Senator Obama’s support among whites in West Virginia relative to other states.

In fact, there were twenty states whose white voters gave Senator Obama less support than did white West Virginians, including two of the states, Virginia and North Carolina, that Senator Obama actually won. Moreover, of the states that went for Senator McCain, in only two, North Dakota and Montana, did white voters lend greater support to Senator Obama than did white West Virginians.

In short, white West Virginians were close to the national median in their willingness to vote Senator Obama and gave him about the same level of support they gave John Kerry four years ago. And Senator Kerry, unlike Senator Obama, actually campaigned in the state. That’s why you and the Huffington Post’s John K. Wilson, who flatly called West Virginians the nation’s most racist voters, were simply wrong – a fact you should acknowledge and for which you should publicly apologize in your blog. As your earlier misguided comments showed, West Virginia is already tarnished unfairly in some peoples’ minds and that makes it all the more important that you do the right thing and set the record straight.

Thanks,
Sean O’Leary

West Virginia: The most racist state?

This election season Barack Obama’s candidacy raises the question of whether racism will be a significant factor in the election outcome. That question is asked of West Virginia as frequently or perhaps more frequently than it is of any other state. Major news organizations including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, National Public Radio, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times have all run stories exploring the issue racial prejudice in West Virginia and whether it will reduce support for Senator Obama.

While these news organizations merely ask the question, some in the blogosphere are willing to provide an answer. After the Democratic primary in West Virginia, The Huffington Post’s John K. Wilson flatly stated, “West Virginia voters revealed they are the most racist in the country”. Others are more oblique in their assertions of racism, but no less adamant. In his October 17 Daily Dish blog Andrew Sullivan wrote, “There was only one reason white Appalachian Democrats suddenly discovered Hillary Clinton was their idol, having despised her for years. It's the same reason McCain will win Ohio. It has nothing to do with Clinton or McCain.”

In one respect these accusations are not surprising. West Virginia is often portrayed as a backwater of racial prejudice in films and on television where the state has become a meme for racism, perhaps most tellingly in the current film, “The Express”, about Syracuse University football star Ernie Davis. The movie portrays an ugly episode of racial slurs and threats taking place at a game played against West Virginia University in Morgantown, despite the fact that the Syracuse/West Virginia game that season was actually played at Syracuse. Moreover, the original screenplay for the movie set the game not in West Virginia, but in North Carolina, a detail the film’s producers chose to change. Why?

Still, it is said that such attitudes must have some basis in reality and there certainly is racism in West Virginia . . . as there is in many places. But, if West Virginia’s racism were more pervasive or of greater depth than racism elsewhere, one would expect it to be manifested in polling for the presidential election. And it is true that, at a time when Senator Obama holds a seven to ten percent lead over Senator McCain in most national polls, a recent CNN/Time poll shows Senator McCain leading in West Virginia by 53-44 percent . . . a swing of 16 percent or more as compared to national polls! Surely affirmation of racism . . . or not.

The funny thing is that a contemporaneous IPSOS/McClatchey poll that gives Senator Obama an 8-point lead nationally also reports that Senator McCain leads among white voters by 51-40 percent. Senator Obama more than makes up the difference with immense support from black and other minority voters . . . something West Virginia doesn’t have many of. In fact, minority voters represent less than four percent of West Virginia’s electorate and black voters only about 3%.

So, going back to the CNN/Time poll that gives Senator McCain a 53-44 percent lead in West Virginia, even if we assume that Senator Obama receives 100% of the support from blacks and other minorities in the state, he is still preferred by more than 40 percent of white West Virginians . . . the same level of support the IPSOS/McClatchey poll shows him receiving from white voters nationwide. This in a state where Senator Obama has campaigned for only one day and that was months ago before the Democratic primary.
In short, white voters in West Virginia are just as likely to support Barack Obama as white voters nationally, a fact that does not mean West Virginia is free of racism, but which does mean that the exaggerated assertions of racism by Andrew Sullivan and John K. Wilson say more about their preconceptions . . . or prejudices . . . concerning Appalachia than they say about the region and about West Virginia in particular. It is sometimes said that demography is destiny and, at least for now, that and not racism appears to be the case in the presidential race in West Virginia.