A product of our times
November 15, 2008
A few weeks back, there was a story in “The Washington Post” written by Wil Haygood about Central Montana’s perception of black people, in light of the upcoming Presidential election.
The story is typical of what is produced by national-level journalists living in urban areas after they spend a few days in a rural Western town to hit up the quaint local businesses and a couple of public officials for interviews, then go back to the city to write a quote-driven piece with lots of frothy landscape descriptors.
I’m sure his quotes are accurate. And I’m sure his facts are right. There aren’t too many black people in Central Montana. Nobody’s going to argue with that.
And lots of rural folks, not just Montanans, but all over the West, might consider television and movies their primary source of information about black people.
What I find ironic are lines like this excerpt from Haygood’s story: “It’s easy to imagine Gary Cooper, who was raised on a ranch over in Helena, rounding a corner.”
Three sentences later, he describes a Central Montana woman’s first exposure to Barack Obama: “A black man she knew nothing about came into her life through a TV screen.”
It seems to shock Mr. Haygood that this woman’s first introduction to Barack Obama came through a TV screen, but all he can reference when he sees a Montana landscape is a popular movie star. Since I assume he hasn’t actually seen Gary Cooper round any corners, he must have obtained this imagery through a TV screen as well.
And I wonder, how many people in New York or Minneapolis or Phoenix obtained their first images of Barack Obama through a TV screen? Why is it so shocking that a rural Montanan might first see him on TV, but not newsworthy that the rest of the country was introduced to him in the same way?
Mr. Haygood liked to use the word ‘innocence’ to describe Central Montanans. Here’s a secret – writers use words like ‘innocence’ when they know words like ‘naiveté’ and ‘ignorance’ might be too patronizing or politically incorrect.
I lived in urban Michigan for over eight years before moving home. The three most common sentences uttered by people upon learning I was from Montana were: “Montana, that’s near Wyoming, right?” “Did you ride a horse to school?” and my personal favorite, “That’s funny, you don’t look like a cowgirl.”
I was continually amazed by the innocence of such statements. I became a sort of ambassador for the rural West, dissecting stereotypes and defending the intellect of the Motherland.
Regardless of the racial demographics, bigots and bigotry exist in every city and small town, in every community on the planet. But for every jerk I met while living in the Midwest, there were 10 great people interested in getting to know someone from a culture they’ve only seen in movies.
Most rural westerners would not wring their hands if a black person moved in next door, any more than my Michigan neighbors, black, white, or otherwise, were concerned when a “cowgirl” (yeah right) moved in next door to them.
If obtaining the majority of our information about a certain group of people from TV is the qualifying factor, then I guess we’re all equally innocent. But that doesn’t make us closed-minded. It makes us a product of our times.
Wil Haygood’s Washington Post story can be found here.
This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus November 15, 2008.