I live in an area just like GYC describes. Hardi and I were "called" here to minister to the gracious, business-oriented segment of one of the towns' people. "Towns under 40,000," heck-- our whole enormous, mountainy COUNTY is only 41,000 people.

Some of Hardi's people hail from a similar county in Illinois, an "upscale" (oil refinery workers') branch of the family in a similar county in Kentucky. His people ran the gamut socially (and so did mine), so we're both pretty comfortable around folks of all sorts, and they, mostly, with us.

We've come to see that the "mutt people" (and the people who profit from their presence) are human beans just like everyone else. There are, as GYC eloquently describes, of a particlular culture one can identify viscerally. But essentially, the wants are the same wants as anyone else, the wounds hurt the same way, and the same goodnesses inspire them, draw them, and motivate much of their behavior.

"They" most especially do not need, want, or respond to people from some "better way" "educating" them.

They just want, in most things and more than anything else, a little ROOM to be their best selves; to define what that is; to strive toward it without being told they "aren't good enough."

~Susan