A Primer on Appalachia (with resources for learning more at the end). To some, it’s synonymous with home, to many it’s just a place on a map, & still others, the center of everything backward & narrow-minded. But what is Appalachia really? Where is it? What peoples does it claim its own? Let’s take a trip through the original American frontier:

MYTHS ABOUT MIGRANTS (thread): 5 Prominent Myths Being Peddled by the Media, US Government, & Your Leftist Coworkers

*inspired by what I've learned working with the migrant population teaching ESL for the last decade. Disclaimer 1: I’m using the term “migrants” because it’s in the education field & has been for several decades. It had a specific meaning (temporary farm workers)- recently it became an umbrella term. I’m not saying this is the right term it's just the one that’s used.

"White People Food" - a timely🧵on the boiled, bland, bad, bitter, burnt, and boring in culinary culture As Thanksgiving rolls around once again, we're treated to a string of memes, posts, and articles bemoaning the scourge of bland, boring cuisine, brought to us almost exclusively by Anglo-Saxon stock.

theguardian.com/food/2023/jun/…

A Primer on the Boers (the Afrikaners): from an Outsider Who Lived Among Them Less than 10% of South Africa’s nearly 60 million are considered “white.” Of that number, just over ½ are considered “Boer,” or more specifically “Afrikaner.”

The results are in. Here's a🧵on where we stand.

I'm inclined to agree. I think the main disagreement is a paleo/neo-con difference.

But it definitely feels like there's a bit of a turf war going on at the same time. I think there's a very particular reason for this:

https://twitter.com/HVNYrefugee/status/1706311441278459934

I believe this is what's going on in local churches across the country/world (and this is from personal experience+knowledge of other churches in other parts of the country & world):

Fact: The overwhelming majority of theologically conservative churches in the US are baptistic.

🧵For further clarification, my wife & I just recently had a conversation about this:
We're from the same upstate NY small town, the same church & went to the same college.

We have diverse ethnic streams coming into us, but we're from the same culture & love the same things.

https://twitter.com/HVNYrefugee/status/1692920257529164235

We are most comfortable with 4 seasons, small river towns, pine & hardwood forest everywhere, rolling farmland, Italian delis, trips to JFK to fly somewhere else, and the sound of Spanish conversation mingling with English ones after a Sunday service.

LONG 🧵on Rhodesia: Here’s what you need to know about this extraordinarily controversial nation, and why it still matters today (list of resources for further study at the end of this thread): *Briefly: my own interest in this topic comes from living in Northeastern South Africa for a time, very close to the Zimbabwe border. I knew many former Rhodesians & the inflammatory rhetoric about them did not hold up to knowing them in real life. They are/were wonderful people.

On the "hick-libs." 🧵
Several years ago I was shocked when I heard that a Texas country singer whose music I really enjoyed was a Beto O'Rourke-supporter (Ryan Bingham). For the life of me, I couldn't understand how someone associated with rural West Texas could be on the left. Around the same time, I heard Kacey Musgrave's breakout album. I loved (and still do) her western sound and style, as well as her songwriting ability, but the final track on the album ("Follow Your Arrow") made her leftist persuasions plain.