On the False Romanticization of Small Town USA.
Some thoughts on the decline of "rural" America.
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In an election cycle that has, so far, seen at least two assassination attempts, a nominee switch-a-roo, and a revelation that the then-leading third party candidate once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park, it’s incredible that the wildest conspiracy theory, by far, has been “Haitian immigrants are terrorizing Springfield, Ohio, by eating residents’ dogs and cats.”
(Believe it or not, no, there have not been any verifiable instances of Haitian immigrants cooking American Shorthairs on their George Foreman grills. Sorry!)
In the aftermath of barbecued cat gate, my question was how did a conspiracy like this gain legs in the first place? My theory is that it’s because a large percentage of the US population has a romanticized, rose-tinted glasses view of small-town USA that looks something like this:
Hundreds of houses surrounded by white picket fences, a thriving blue collar labor force where everyone knows their post officer, doctor, diner owner, football coach, and preacher, strong wages, and a sense of communal pride.
But many of these small towns, especially in the Rust Belt, have fallen under hard times in recent years. Jobs have disappeared, wages have collapsed, and local economies have stagnated, and folks want to assign blame for this decline somewhere. Through this lens, immigration makes for an excellent scapegoat. While it’s true that, yes, Springfield has experienced an influx of immigration, immigration isn’t what’s killing small town USA. The real culprits are the younger generations of small towns themselves.
Rural populations continue to shrink as the best and brightest of these communities opt to leave their hometowns for college and never come back, causing rural brain drain around the country. If anything, the small town immigration stories that have been all over the news lately are a byproduct of homegrown emigration that has been happening for years: new arrivals are simply filling in the gaps left behind in local labor markets.
And you know what? For the most part, the kids who leave are right to do so.
I grew up in Tifton, Georgia, a city with a population of 17,000, and I spent a decent amount of my childhood in my grandparents’ 4,200 person town of Ashburn. I spent my college years in Macon, a city of 157,000, and then I spent three years in Atlanta, which has 500,000 people, before moving to New York, America’s most populous city, which boasts 8,300,000 inhabitants. The first 27 years of my life have been an ascension from small town USA to the largest city in the country, giving me a unique perspective on the dichotomy of rural and urban America. Today, I’d like to share my thoughts on the false romanticization of small town USA.