Phrases rural (or middle) Americans avoid? "climate change" and "social justice"

That is the conclusion one is invited to draw from recent stories in the New York Times and from a progressive faith-based magazine called Sojourners.

First, I saw this headline in the New York Times last month, "In Flood-Hit Midwest, Mayors See Climate Change as Subject Best Avoided."  Here's some of the substantiating content:

[I]n some of the hardest-hit areas, where bolstering flood protection and helping the displaced are popular bipartisan causes, there is little appetite for bringing climate change — and the political baggage it carries — into the discussion.

Here's a quote from two-term Mayor Frank Klipsch of Davenport, Iowa, offered as the city was recovering from devastating spring floods:

We know there’s something going on, so how do we come together and deal with that? Let’s not try to label it. Let’s not try to politicize it. It’s just a matter of something is changing. 

* * *

I don’t see a purpose at this point to create a challenge, a straw man to argue about, when in reality we all know what the ultimate results are.

Klipsch, who is not a member of any party, referred to the term as "divisive."  (By the way, given that Davenport is Iowa's third largest city, I am highly aware that it is not rural in any sense except in the minds of folks who think all of Iowa must be rural.)

Paul Rumler, chief executive of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce, is also quoted: 

We have to think about what the next 20 years look like and be cognizant that this 100-year flood might be happening more than once every hundred years.

I’m going to say this, and I’m going to be meaningful in the words: The weather pattern is changing, and we need to be cognizant of those changes.

 These quotes strike me as avoiding the phrase "climate change," and especially the "human caused" angle on it.  They do not necessarily mean climate change denial. After all, the man at the chamber of commerce talked in terms of changing "weather patterns."

Here's a related story from last fall out of Georgia, in the wake of Hurricane Michael's destruction of crops in the southeast. A 38-year-old male farmer is quoted after learning 80 to 100% of his cotton crop was destroyed by the 100 mph winds:

Look, I know the storms are making it unsustainable. If what’s happened this year happens next year, we’re done. But we’ve always had bad weather. Is it getting worse? Have we had three bad years in a row? Yeah. But I’m worried about the weather, not about climate change. 

And here's a quote from that same story that offers a contrary rural perspective.  This one is from 27-year-old female farmer, Casey Cox, who studied  forestry and environmental preservation before she returned home to help run her family's 2,400 acre farm.

I really wish that Al Gore hadn’t been the messenger, it just turned everybody off. It allowed people to say that it was just a liberal thing, when we know it is completely sound science.

Here's another good NYT take on farmers, flooding and climate change.  From the Washington Post on farmers, flooding and the 2019 corn crop, good coverage is here and here.

Ok, enough on "climate change," let's turn to other supposed unmentionable, "social justice."  I was catching up this weekend on some old issues of Sojourners, a progressive Christian magazine. One headline in the December issue was, "Just Don't Call it 'Social Justice.'"  The author was Brad Roth, a small-town Missouri pastor, and it was one of a small cluster of stories in that issue on progressive Christians in middle/ruralAmerica--in what is popularly thought of as "Trump country."  (Well, I say "progressive," but/and the focus is more on work these congregations are doing to help others in their community (the hungry, formerly incarcerated) than it is about their theology, which may or may not be viewed as progressive.)  Here's a salient excerpt, with the real focus on the "social justice" phrase in the second paragraph:

The economic reality of rural America is diverse. Pockets of robust growth exist within driving distance of vibrant cities and gorgeous natural amenities. Yet many towns face profound challenges. They’re communities fractured by generational poverty, addiction, and—perhaps surprisingly in breadbasket regions—food insecurity. 

In places like this, it’s often the rural church that takes on the role of change agent. Social justice runs deep in the scriptures, given voice by the Old Testament prophets, embodied in Jesus’ life, and lived out in the upside-down economics of the early church (see Micah 6:8; Luke 4:18; Acts 2:44-45). And yet, as Jordan Rasmussen with the Center for Rural Affairs (CFRA) in Lyons, Neb., explains, social justice “can be an off-putting term for rural residents.” 

In part, the disconnect is a factor of the national political environment. Rasmussen describes how, in her advocacy work with CFRA, she’s found that rural people may vote and express approval for conservative candidates whose platforms include cutting the safety net. Yet, if you “go a layer down,” people desire to see their communities thrive, and that desire is often expressed in the language of faith. It’s love of neighbor that mobilizes rural folks, for instance, to “come to the legislature to testify about how [lack of] broadband is limiting their community’s ability to grow.” 

This is interesting because it could be read to suggest rural people want  everyone in their community to have broadband (perhaps implicit in this is "if they can afford it"?); they just aren't sure they want everyone in their community to have food, housing and healthcare (again, unless they can "afford" it).  Does something in Rasmussen's articulation of the distinction/response implicate racial difference (embodied, perhaps, in the "welfare queen" trope?  or "white trash" (a term I used advisedly)?

Roth's explanation goes on to implicate two characteristics of rural communities I've written a lot about:  lack of anonymity and sense of community

If the way social justice commitments are described and encoded into political options plays out differently in the country than in urban or suburban areas, so too the mechanisms for change are differently inflected. 

Take protest, for example. Protest can function as a potent prophetic lever in urban environments. Think of church leaders locking arms across Charlottesville, Va., in witness against racial injustice. Yet that type of protest often doesn’t work in rural communities—or at least, not in a straightforward way. Those in authority are not the other. The mayor and the sheriff live down the street. And there’s often not the same critical mass to lend protest its urgency and oomph. Ten people on the steps of the county courthouse doesn’t pack the same punch as thousands filling the National Mall. What’s more, street protest can be counterproductive, seen as tearing at the social fabric, as something indiscreet and indiscriminate that harms the precious us-ness of the rural community. 

I can see that numbers do seem to matter when it comes to a protest looking like it has oomph.  That said, women's march gatherings in smaller towns and cities were among the most inspiring to me because they arguably most "bucked the trend" of those places.  I'm also wondering if the Poor People's Campaign, which is centered on social justice (including, in addition to poverty and living wage issues, "systemic racism," immigration, the military industrial complex, ecological devastation, and mass incarceration), had gatherings in rural places, along with their more highly publicized gatherings in state capitals.  And thinking of the Poor People's Campaign, with its considerable attention to systemic/institutional racism, makes me wonder if climate change and social justice are distasteful to rural folks because they--like nonwhiteness/racial difference--are associated with cities.

I return to the question I had when I began writing this post:  Are these just phrases rural Americans avoid?  or are they topics and causes that rural Americans avoid and are in denial about?  Is there something that is a dealbreaker about the phrases/terminology?  Is there a way that "social justice," in particular, is understood as an "urban" or "outsider" idea?  Rasmussen of the Center for Rural Affairs suggests the latter, which is better than the alternative, I suppose.  Plus, Roth's story is chock full of rural communities responding to poverty and the downtrodden and trying to achieve social justice.  Now the question is, how do progressives in politics deal with or manipulate those "differently inflected" meanings to draw more rural folks into the fold of progressive voters?