Well I guess my view is shaped both by my work and by my personal experience.

I've worked my entire adult life with poor or working class West Virginians and North Carolinians - people who the larger and more prosperous society see through the erroneous lenses of multiple stereotypes. Nigger. White Trash. Red Neck. Low life. Hillbilly. Southerner. In reality they are just people, like everyone else, but the perceptions and stereotypes applied to them impact nearly every aspect of their lives and make their hard lives even harder. Because stereotypes are so pervasive and largely unquestioned in society, for many it has really negatively impacted the way they view themselves, and lowered their expectations, hopes and dreams.

Born and raised a West Virginian, I have also spent a good part of my life dealing with prevalent stereotypes of "those poor, ignorant, incestuous hillbillies." Don't get me wrong. I am a hillbilly, and proud of it. I can laugh at myself and crack jokes about being a hillbilly. I can make fun of hillbillies. But only to other hillbillies. Because other hillbillies know what we have in common but also know the stereotype is a significant distortion. I understand the basis of the stereotype and can see elements of the stereotype within myself. But I know I am not the stereotype and do not mistake the stereotype for who I am. Others, however, have mistaken me for the stereotype, and I have suffered because of it.

The power of stereotypes to wound really hit home for me about 20 years ago. Was in a team meeting and told a WV hillbilly joke, i.e. the definition of a Logan County virgin is any 12 year old who can outrun her big brother. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized how NOT laughable this was to one of our team members - a colleague - not a hillbilly - who had confided to me that she had been a childhood victim of incest. At the end of the meeting I went to her office and apologized. See, there is some element of truth to the notion of inbreeding that is part of the Hillbilly stereotype. Isolated, stagnant populations living up remote hollers where nearly everybody is related somehow or other, lots of double first cousins, marry your 3rd cousin who is related to different degrees on both sides of the family. But inbreeding is not synonymous with incest. Think of the royal families of western Europe. The stereotype, however, doesn't distinguish.