Democrats, stop ignoring rural, red communities. Do you know who you're writing off?
For the last three years, in between semesters at Albion College, I’ve been busy making a life for myself out in East Texas. Hill Country is as rural of a region as I’ve lived in during these 21 years of life, but it’s a place I’ve quickly grown fond of.
It’s taken acclimation, I won’t lie. Thankfully, I’ve always been an adaptable sort. The timing of our move was fairly perfect. By May 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had rendered my classes online-only and I had very few reasons to leave the house outside of a summer job.
After one summer out here, I quickly got past the initial shock of MAGA banners and Trump 2024 flags.
Said shock was instead replaced by a gnawing impulse deep in my gut to keep my political beliefs down, to avoid causing a stir.
"This isn’t Dallas," I could hear a voice in the back of my mind tell me. "Some things have to be kept between us and the trees."
See, rural communities like the one I live in have been sold lies by conservative media that paint various members of society as threats to their safety and well-being. They’re told that immigrants are invading this country, queer folk are pedophiles out to groom their kids and their children are being indoctrinated into believing that the U.S. and white people are inherently evil.
Conservative media has been able to build and consolidate its hold on rural America, with little to no pushback from the political left. It’s clear to me that my city-dwelling friends are either unwilling – or don’t believe it possible – to start creating spaces in rural communities where conservative propaganda can be challenged.
This is the media ecosystem in rural communities, regardless of state. Rural communities across the U.S. are left feeling abandoned, shunted off and discarded. Progressive media has failed to meet the rural working class where they’re at, leaving a vacancy that conservative media has happily stepped in to fill.
It’s pushing us further apart, quite frankly.
The view from Hill Country
Across the board, USAmericans in rural and urban communities are only barely getting by. It’s easy to see folks in urban communities fighting for their own interests. Such discussions are more openly accepted.
It’s a different story out here in Hill Country. It’s much harder to try and agitate for change when your side of things barely gets any space to be a part of the discussion.
So consider this an open letter to the urban USAmerican: I’m pleading with you to stop writing off rural, red communities. It does no good to have to hear constant talk about how things will never change.
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Do you have any idea how many people you’re writing off? It’s not just rural white folk out there, I hope you know that.
Per a Brookings study of the 2020 census, for instance, 24% of rural America is not white; it’s diversifying rapidly, as the median rural county’s population of color increased by 3.5%.
Look at Athens, Texas, the nearest town I’ve spent most of my days in. Of the estimated 13,007 folks living there, 32.4% percent are of Hispanic or Latine descent. I often spoke Spanish to customers at my summer job.
Folk out here work hard, and as often as they can. The median household income for Athens, Texas is $45,625 in a year, far behind the national median of $63,202. Approximately 24.3% of people live in poverty, a significantly higher figure than the national average of 11.4%.
The heart of the matter is very simple: out here, people are struggling to get by.
The thing that always sticks with me is just how tired we all are. The shifts we’ve worked together, evenings at a fast-food joint, are anything but kind to us. The folks I worked with don’t share my beliefs in their entirety, but that hardly mattered on a given shift. We commiserated together at the exhaustion and frustration we felt throughout the evening.
The realities of rent and utilities burden every move. Everyone just wants to take care of their families while trying to find enough time to be with them. We’re all doing our absolute best within the circumstances we all have to abide by.
I'm an atheist and a conservative. My politics is informed by skepticism, not faith.
I didn’t make it a habit of naming my political ideology outright during those conversations. Out here, what I called myself wasn’t as important as letting folks know that I understood their frustrations, or at the very least I wanted to do so.
If I’m going to continue showing my face around these parts, I need to be a friendly face. I can’t afford to be unapproachable out here; if I’m going to try and form bonds of community with folks out here, they need to know that I’m someone they can approach easily.
Empathy takes willingness
Put simply, I need them to know that I’m not the enemy.
Beyond that, I need folks to know that other people like me are not threats either. The real threat, we must agree, is the system that seeks to divide us and further take advantage of our lives and labor.
Empathy takes willingness, I’ll be the first to admit, on both sides. I can’t fault people who are apprehensive, if not unwilling, to reach out to folks out here. It’s incredibly difficult to find the patience and willingness to help others shake their harmful beliefs.
But it’s important that we try. There are ways to deradicalize, to ease people into realizing that queer folk aren’t pedophiles, that people of color aren’t trying to oppress white folk, that there’s nothing to fear about the other.
In order for this work to be done, we need to create spaces where people feel comfortable being open about these sorts of ideas, where uncomfortable conversations can be had and processed.
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So for the past three(ish) years, I’ve been doing my best to emulate some of what I’d like those spaces to look like; I’ve had to listen to and partake in some exhausting, at times, conversations with coworkers, but I’ve come away from those encounters with an expanded understanding of who they are and the circumstances they face.
There's work to be done
People like me must make it clear to folks in places like Athens, Texas, that there are people who care about them, and wish to do something about it. We must endeavor to collaborate with those folks and further engage with those in our immediate surroundings. The world isn’t as limited in scope as conservative propaganda would like to make it seem.
We can’t place our trust in the market to do anything about this; hate sells particularly well when the media’s convincing people of reasons to fear one another. We can’t continue putting our faith in the institutions that have allowed and enabled these issues to grow out of hand.
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There is a way to craft a better world where everyone gets to reap the benefits, as opposed to a select few holding them all and deciding who gets what arbitrarily.
No one gets left behind. No one should be struggling to make ends meet. Everyone deserves comfort and dignity, regardless of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or religion. Yet it’s common to hear liberals and progressives alike attempt to write these folks off entirely. It’s easy to point at an individual’s voting record and insist that because of who they cast a ballot for, they deserve whatever comes their way.
I reject that notion. I firmly believe that we all vote the way we do because we’re convinced that we will be better off with our chosen candidates.
We are desperate for change.
There’s work to be done to challenge conservative media out here in Hill Country and elsewhere across the United States.
Lives are on the line and I can’t stomach the thought of inaction. My heart’s aching for a just cause.
For those who are feeling the way I am, I need your help. Feel free to bring a friend, always; there’s work to be done, and a need for someone to do it.
Juan G. Rodriguez is a student at Albion College in Michigan. This column first published in the Detroit Free Press.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Right wing media hurts rural Americans. Liberals have let it happen
