Whether mcat2 should have known the difference between the rust belt and Deep South is NOT as relevant as his clear bias against these two areas where he has never resided.
And he is well educated…takes two seconds to do a google search to find out where these sections of our country are located.
From a global perspective, which is what the author is taking, the US has no poor. We do not register on the world poverty index. We have -zero- people living in poverty on that standard, while there are billions worldwide who do. Which makes the author’s argument wrong in a sense, i.e., he is comparing apples to oranges. Once you have visited the slums of India and Africa, you understand that our poor, with their TVs, cars and plumbing have it easy.
The over half million homeless in the US would disagree with you, bay. Those who are fortunate to be able to seek temporary refuge in a shelter can stay warm or dry. Those living on benches,or under overpasses, with their belongings in a shopping cart, might find your comments insensitive. http://www.endhomelessness.org
Not just homeless, some of the people that I talk to frequently, middle class white Americans are on the verge of financial collapse if they are sick or hurt on a job. I feel really bad when I talk to them. They work long hours, still renting at the age of 40ish, not on minimum wage either.
I heard of the rust belt before but I am vaguely aware that it refers to some areas where some manufacturers (in heavy industry?) used to be located at.
A prior coworker of mine, who was from an area close to it (he went to CMU for his UG) described what was like in that area to me – However, I heard that the economy in several parts in that area has improved to some extent since then.
I actually know the difference between the Delta and the rust belt. It was just due to an accidental slip of my still not-so-good English writing skill (it was late in the night after all) that I wrote that sentence that apparently treats the Delta and the rust belt as if they were the same. However, I learned of the word “deep south” from that article just late last night and indeed do not know its exact definition.
Regarding the bias here and there, it is likely hard to avoid it completely when the first half of your life was not immersed in this culture. I guess every immigrant needs to go through this stage – if this does not happen in the first generation, it could happen in the second or even third generation.
Googling? I am not writing a “essay” or anything serious like a thesis here. So I am often too lazy for that, especially when it is so clumsy to “type” on the small screen of a smartphone and the battery almost runs out of its power. I am also still not used to multitasking (using multiple windows) on a smartphone like I often do on a real large screen computer.
If someone suggested you look up terms before you use them, especially if the terms are unfamiliar to you, they were giving you good advice.
Austin is hardly the Deep South. Huntsville is a strange island of high technology, and feels more mid-western than the Deep South that surrounds it (go out to Decatur just 15 miles down the road) due to the high percentage of Yankee transplants that live there. Contrast Huntsville with Birmingham or Montgomery and the difference is stark.
I believe most people refer to Texas as being in the “Southwest” or South Central rather than “the South,” and most certainly not the “Deep South.” Sometimes I think people include us when they speak of “southerners,” but the culture here is a little bit different.
The life of the author of that article is somewhat interesting (to me at least).
He seems to be quite familiar with what a poor country is like. (I notice that he moved and lived in a more privileged part on the Earth when he was older. Not to intend to undermine what he was doing when he was slightly younger though.)
From wiki:
Theroux was educated at Medford High School, followed by the University of Maine, in Orono (1959–60) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he obtained a B.A. in English in 1963.
After he finished his university education, Theroux joined the Peace Corps in 1963 as a teacher in Malawi. A new program, the Peace Corps had sent its first volunteers overseas in 1961. While there, Theroux helped a political opponent of Prime Minister Hastings Banda escape to Uganda. For this Theroux was expelled from Malawi and thrown out of the Peace Corps. He was declared persona non grata by Banda in Malawi for sympathizing with Yatuta Chisiza.[6] As a consequence, his later novel Jungle Lovers, which concerns an attempted coup in the country, was banned in Malawi for many years. He then moved to Uganda to teach at Makerere University, where he wrote for the magazine, Transition.
While at Makerere, Theroux began his friendship with novelist V. S. Naipaul, then a visiting scholar at the university.[7] During his time in Uganda, an angry mob at a demonstration threatened to overturn the car in which his pregnant wife was riding. This incident may have contributed[citation needed] to his decision to leave Africa. He moved again to Singapore. After two years of teaching at the National University of Singapore, he settled in the United Kingdom, first in Dorset, and then in south London with his wife and two young children.
I’m not from Texas, but have visited, and I agree with you. Fort Worth’s mottos is “Where the West begins,” and that is exactly how it felt to me, a Westerner.
BTW, I am indeed not good at geography, history about US. But I have the impression that my son was pretty good at these two topics in high school - especially APUSH. I heard his teacher thought he was the best student in his class. (Before the AP test, his teacher said to him that he really did not have to prepare for it, and asked him to lend his notes to another student likely because his notes was better than other student’s. Now , I need to get out of the “proud parent” mode.)
He knows it well but I do not.
I think the term rust belt evolved after the term sun belt. The sun belt refers specifically to economic resurgence in the south, particularly connected to CNN and Atlanta. More people began moving back south in the 80’s after decades of movement going in the opposite direction (which started with African Americans moving north during Reconstruction and during the Industrial era during the 19th century).
So the rust belt is those old industrial cities of the North and northern midwest that were a bit hollowed out by their industries leaving in the latter part of the 20th century. It is not shaped like a belt at all! Some cities lost their steel industries, but that was longer ago and they have recovered a bit since then (Baltimore, Pittsburgh). Smaller cities that were all about steel haven’t really recovered (Bethlehem, PA).
The auto industry took a hit for many reasons, but it was later in time so places haven’t really recovered (Detroit) and other cities that had lots of different manufacturing saw much of that leave around the same time and they haven’t really recovered either (the rest of Ohio, Michigan, upstate NY, etc.)
American cities in general lost much of their population from the 1950’s on and some have recovered and some haven’t. Some have gone crazy (San Francisco, NY, Chicago). Most are somewhere in between. It is important to have cities with a strong and varied economy!
If you are not familiar with locations or terms, again, a moment of research begore using terms with which you are unfamiliar will save lots of needless explanations. Your son’s grade in AP us Hx is irrelevant to this discussion.
Paul Theroux is a great travel writer; I’ve read a couple of his books. I wish he had touched upon the impact of immigration on America’s poor, as it is also related to their plight and is often driven by corporate ambitions.
I knew people do not consider Texas as a part of the South. But I do not understand why.
Texas’s location is indeed in the south, and is far from both southeast coast and southwest coast!
mcat2,
Don’t let others make you feel bad about understanding US geography. References to regions are not always logical. New Mexico and Arizona and California touch the southern US border but are not referred to as part of the “South.” Some of the references come from historical events, rather than actual location on the map.
From this Californians standpoint- TX is definitely in “the south” . Just look at a map.
In the west?, not even close…
If you draw a line down the center of the US, Texas probably lies more in the West than the East. Maine sticks way out there.
Bay,
Thanks for the explanation.
If I make a wild guess, I would think that some time ago, most US populations resided in the east half of the current US (some parts of the South West might have been acquired for not a very long time.) So people then would think Texas is in the South West.
While “The South” and the “Southwest” share similar lattitudes, they are distinguished by different cultural & ethnic compositions. “The South” has a large black demographic component. The Southwest has a large Mexican demographic component.
US Census ethnicity maps
Black
http://www2.census.gov/geo/img/maps-data/maps/black.jpg
Hispanic
http://www2.census.gov/geo/img/maps-data/maps/hispanic.jpg
