Dana Blankenhorn has written an interesting piece called "The New Appalachia" in which he argues that the abject poverty we used to associate with Appalachia has shifted to the areas between the mountains and the coast. From his post:
Appalachia had resisted all attempts to bring it prosperity. Places
last western Virginia, West Virginia, eastern Tennessee and western
North Carolina were as poor as they had ever been. There seemed to be
no solution.But there was a solution, right around the corner. These are now
"the mountains," that fabled far-away magical land where lowlanders
dream of retiring to. This is now the east’s vacationland, an
alternative to the beach, where rafting and hiking and mountain biking
rule the summers, and skiing the winters. The resort and retirement
economies have transformed these areas into, if not greater prosperity
spheres, at least something resembling the rest of America.But a new Appalachia has developed in our time. It’s the river
bottoms, the swamplands, the vast middle between the mountains and the
seacoast. Millions of people live there, in grinding lives of poverty
or of faded wealth. And it’s getting worse.The farm economy that once sustained these areas has collapsed. The
factories that once dotted the landscape have moved overseas. Much of
the land now consists of tree farms, and the people who are left are
steadily losing ground.The biggest difference between today’s Appalachia and yesterday’s is
more stark, however. It’s the color of the victims. (That’s the point of the chart at left, from the Knight Foundation.) Because in the
South, the new Appalachia is often the "black belt," land share-cropped
for some generations, then lost to the trees.
This hit home because Winston-Salem and the Piedmont Triad are situated to the east of the mountains and have been hit hard by the meltdown of the furniture and textile industries. My first inclination was to disagree with Dana’s assertion that this is a disproportionately black phenomenon since at least in this area the hit has been taken be people of all colors, but if you think of it in comparison to Appalachia, which was predominately white, then I guess it makes sense.
The good news here is that the local leadership has been very proactive in trying to convert the local economy from a manufacturing base to a more "intellectual" base of biotechnology and design services. The success has been mixed but it looks promising for the future. To me the question that remains is "Will the jobs be filled by re-trained locals or by outsiders who follow the jobs here?".
And Dana’s bigger point about the lowlands is a good one. While the Piedmont seems to be on the upswing all you have to do is drive to the beach through literally hundreds of dying or dead small towns to realize that your seeing an economic wasteland of immense proportions.
Finally, let’s not forget that the evolution of Appalachia to the "fabled far-away magical land" has not come without some negative effects within the mountain communities. For instance in this article in the Raleigh News & Observer we see that while local leaders in the western North Carolina mountains welcome the influx of tax dollars and service jobs that come with the development of luxury second-home communities local residents worry about how their going to pay the taxes on their suddenly soaring property valuations. And of course some people aren’t going to be happy with the influx of carpetbaggers no matter how many jobs it creates.
For the most part, though, I agree with Dana’s post.
Befuddled 
