Author ponders rural America’s political power
Urban historian Steven Conn’s current book,
“The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is and Isn’t,” is garnering interest. Conn, W.E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, recently received an enthusiastic write up of his book in the New Yorker.
The author’s provocative title should be enough to pique interest. What does he mean by that? How does a land tell lies? Conn’s premise is that our enduring image of rural America is in large part illusory. Since most people in America, about 75%, now live in urban areas, he theorizes our perception of rural life gets distorted by idealistic visions that don’t correspond to reality.
According to Conn, our rural areas have been hollowed out. He asserts idyllic imagery of quaint family farms is mostly an illusion. Today massive agribusinesses practice highly mechanized farming with few people involved.
He points to immense expanses of rural areas occupied by military bases. Some local economies are dependent upon bases and the federal revenues they generate. Whenever a base closes, adjacent economies wither.
He examines the legacy of the Army Corps of Engineers as it reconfigured waterways across the nation. Those arbitrary projects flooded rural communities, dislodging residents who often relocated to urban areas.
The rise of suburbs is another factor. Statistics show many people fled cities, moving to suburbs. Another significant suburban influx originated in rural areas after job markets shriveled. Big chain stores gradually wiped out once-prosperous merchants. Formerly bustling, some small towns today might have just a dollar store, and that’s about it. He explains how dollar stores often target depressed communities.
When our nation’s founders formed our government, most Americans didn’t live in cities. They devised an Electoral College and the U.S. Senate with two senators representing each state. Now, rural areas with far fewer residents exercise an outsized electoral power through our antiquated election system.
Our remaining rural voters sometimes resent what they characterize as “big government.” Conn points out federal dollars flow into rural regions in massive amounts in the form of agricultural subsidies, military spending, and through pork barrel legislation. Without such “big government,” some who vocally oppose it could experience hardships.
Some rural folk express antipathy toward urban areas, invoking imagery of cities as being crime-ridden, drug infested, deteriorated, simply not nice places to live. Conn describes those who embrace these perceptions as “anti-urbanites.”
In conclusion, he writes: “Rural America is not racially or ethnically homogenous — not today and not in the past — but it is more so than metropolitan America. That contrast creates the imaginative space to pretend that rural America — ‘Real America’ — is white. And whiteness has always been a central part of our rural mythology. Further, density also necessitates a wider web of social interactions and dependencies than is true in less-dense environments. That interdependence, too, is something anti-urbanites have railed against.”
In case you are wondering, the author grew up in Philadelphia.