Klein & Pruitt: Rural Bashing
In Rural Bashing, an article written for the University of Richmond Law Review symposium on “Overlooked America: Addressing Legal Issues Facing the Rural United States”, authors Kaceylee Klein (J.D./PhD Candidate, UC Davis Law) and Lisa R. Pruitt (UC Davis Law) consider and complicate the increasingly hostile sociopolitical relationship between urban and rural America.
The authors use the term “rural bashing” to define the harsh and even dehumanizing language that some metropolitan and coastal folks increasingly use when talking about their rural and “flyover” counterparts. The article focuses on two recent periods of rural bashing: (1) first, during the 2008 presidential election and its aftermath, when Sarah Palin in particular and her rural roots generated rural-focused critiques, and (2) second, when rural bashing exploded during the 2016 presidential cycle and its aftermath, with many urban voices directing frustration over the Trump victory and the Trump administration at Trump’s rural voters.
However, the article does not solely focus on the how and why metropolitans participate in rural bashing – but rather it sheds light on the contemporary effects of this phenomenon. In particular, the authors address rural bashing’s potential influence on rural voting habits. They emphasize the practice is counterproductive and undermines rural-urban connections. Rural bashing leads to widespread disdain of rural communities, attributed to the political left.
This sense of alienation, the authors assert, gets in the way of providing rural communities with indispensable infrastructure, such as broadband. Urban voters must be convinced rural communities are worth investing in. Rural voters must be convinced the political left and its politics concerning infrastructure are necessary for their survival. This mindset ignores the fact that rural and urban communities are interdependent — that urban folks need and want what rural America produces and supplies, and that rural folks desire the innovation and cultural amenities that are often associated with population density.
In sum, the authors explain how the phenomenon of rural bashing benefits neither urban nor rural communities. The disdainful rhetoric surrounding rural communities and voters further polarizes them by pushing rural communities towards the right-wing radicalization that the disdainful left apparently fears. The authors state that folks engaging in the rural bashing need to take a step back and consider what they are doing – making more enemies than allies.
