In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver tells a wonderful anecdote about having ‘insider’ status in a rural area;
“The only useful generalization I’d hazard about rural politics is that they tend to break on the line of ‘insider’ vs. ‘outsider.’ When my country neighbors sit down with a new social group, the first question they ask one another is not ‘What do you do?’ but rather, ‘Who are your people?’ . . . I am blessed with an ancestor who was the physician in this county from about 1910 into the 1940s. From older people I’ll often hear of some memorably dire birth or farm accident to which my great-uncle was called; lucky for me he was skilled and Hippocratic. But even a criminal ancestor will get you insider status, among the forgiving. Not so lucky are those who move here with no identifiable family ties. Such a dark horse is likely to remain ‘the new fellow’ for the rest of his natural life, even if he arrived in his prime and lives to be a hundred.”
(In Vermont, having a mutually known friend/relative or a locally famous ancestor would definitely put you on the fast track to acceptance. But the entry level test is more about where you were born, where your parents were born and how long your family has lived in the state.)
Kingsolver continues: “The country tradition of mistrusting outsiders may be unfairly applied, but it’s not hard to understand. For much of U.S. history, rural regions have been treated essentially as colonial property of the cities. The carpetbaggers of the reconstruction era were not the first or the last opportunists to capitalize on an extractive economy. When urban-headquartered companies come to the country with a big plan – whether their game is coal, timber, or industrial agriculture – the plan is to take out the good stuff, ship it to the population centers, make a fortune, and leave behind a mess.”
Vermont probably has suffered less from extractive economy than many other rural places. But it still happens. Locals get angry and frustrated when a rich flatlander clear cuts a beautiful hillside to build an enormous house. It may seem like a small thing but when ‘leaf-peepers’ drive big tourism dollars in the fall to look at these beautiful hillsides, it’s not as trivial as it initially sounds. But reliance on tourism is the conundrum of our state; we want people to visit and appreciate all the wonderful things our state has to offer but we don’t want these same people to actually move to Vermont. People say that possession is 9/10ths of the law, but do ‘real’ Vermonters have more of a right to live in Vermont than anyone else? Does our mistrust of outsiders stem from historical abuses as Kingsolver proposes? Can rural people protect their interests and remain open to outsiders?