Talking with Julian Martin the other night - he told me that he'd been called an "outsider" by another citizen of the county where he lives - and this in the face of having been born and raised within twenty miles of where he lives now! So that got me to thinking about what it means to be an "outsider" in the context that this particular citizen who shared a county with Julian must have meant.
I harked back to those days in the 60's (it pays to be older sometimes - it gives one a better perspective on history, especially history repeating itself) when folks like George Wallace and Orville Faubus were blasting the "outsiders" who came to only "stir up trouble." Then it dawned on me that this label had nothing to do with where one was born and raised - in some cases an outsider can be identified as one within one's own family. Surely many sixties fathers considered their shaggy- maned teen sons as outsiders and treated them as such.
If one is to be labeled an "outsider" by fellow county citizens, it probably has more to do with the so-called outsider trying to uphold and promote the values of the Constitution of the United States than anything else in some of the rural counties of West Virginia. It is surely not "cool" to try to oppose a local political system that has thrived on poorly concealed ways to buy votes and where nepotism and cronyism exceeds political justice for all citizens by quite a wide margin. By this definition, an "outsider" is more likely one who is not part of the socially, economically and politically privileged "in" group than one who arrived somewhat late on the scene from another part of the country or another nation. It also occurred to me that this privileged group, which I will refer to as the power structure of the particular political region, has a real need to have some folks they can label as outsiders so that there is a person or persons they can point to as a justification for the unethical and often illegal outrages they often perpetrate. It takes the focus off their deeds to have someone they can scapegoat as an enemy.
Governor Underwood is a good example of what I mean, a veritable Orville Faubus of the Nineties. This current brand of West Virginia governor, who joins an old tradition of favoring the coal interests over those of the West Virginia citizenry, signed into law a bill which would benefit the large corporations that mine coal, a bill that would invite even further strip mining degradation to the already corrupted landscape of southern West Virginia. Then to make his point clear he growled menacingly at the EPA which had threatened to throw down a challenge to the new law. "I resent officials from the Environmental Protection Agency making threats in an effort to tell West Virginians how to do business in our state." A clever cover-up to the monstrousness of the law, itself, his words are calculated to appeal to those who are lock step in their mentality about so-called "outsiders." It is a parallel situation to the cover-up of the racist system of Jim Crow which was pervasive in the South up to the Sixties, when the attack on "outsiders" were invoked to cover up a system of flagrant injustice to a race of people. The irony is that what we in this state do need now is some agency that will protect West Virginians from this privileged minority that wants to exploit the land and its people for greed.
Clearly the EPA has not been doing its job as well as it could in protecting the citizens of this country from the health and long-range economic problems created by polluters in the name of greed. It is a story we've heard over and over in this decade -- too much wealth is concentrated in the large corporations. Then this wealth is distributed to those politicians who appear to be willing to sell out their oaths of office because it takes a lot of money these days to be elected to office and to stay there. A very simple formula, but one that has a lock on America at the present time, shutting out the majority of the citizens and making them all virtually "outsiders" in their own country. Money is eagerly sucked up by too many politicians whenever these corporations decide to do a little judicious buying of government. Seldom are EPA personnel allowed to do the job they are mandated to do.because of the influence of this powe structure. So when they do take a stand, they must have pretty compelling reasons to override those ever present political considerations. Presently, the majority of politicians in the USA are changing the old refrain to new words - "American, of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations." Subsequently, all life on Earth (that includes human beings, folks!) is headed to doomsday because of an accelerating environmental degradation. Do the privileged expect to vacate the earth in space ships when they have completely fouled our nest of Earth? Are they willing to abandon the rest of us to our fate? In West Virginia Governor Underwood, Speaker Kiss and many others long ago adopted the tune so old that it has become a traditional melody here. West Virginia, of King Coal, by King Coal, and for King Coal. Who are the real outsiders that carry off our resources for profit, leaving a broken land and broken people who once lived on this land? _