Rastafari roots of plant-based eating

An Ital meal of rice, ackee, callaloo, and veggie chunks.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (2009)

In considering a vegan diet, I imagine a young, progressive urban consumer motivated by environmental or animal welfare concerns. In other words, someone who likely shops at a Whole Foods. In the West, veganism is packaged as something performed through individual consumer choices. That framing obscures the structural conditions shaping diets, and reinforces the mistaken belief that veganism is a modern invention. The “Ital” tradition complicates the popular narrative of modern veganism. Long before plant-based eating carried a price premium in Los Angeles, it was ordinary in the hills of rural Jamaica. 

The Rastafari movement began in the 1930s in Jamaica among the working poor who had been devastated by the global financial crash of 1929 and prolonged colonial mismanagement. These forces created mass unemployment and rural-to-urban migration into the slums of west Kingston. Rastas fled to the rural mountains where they could access land and practice self-governance without persecution.  

Leonard P. Howell, an early Rastafari leader, drew on the practices of Hindu indentured laborers in Jamaica to promote what became known as Ital living. The word “Ital” comes from “vital,” dropping the first letter to emphasize the pronoun “I”. This linguistic practice signals unity with the speaker, the listener, and Jah (God). Ital eating is an expression of “livity,” a Rastafari concept that the individual can embody and express spirituality through the practices of daily life.  For Rastafarians, Jah exists in all of creation, including plants, animals, and people. As such there is a divine force or energy in everything. 

What one puts in one’s body either enhances or degrades this life force. Food that has been processed or chemically altered is considered corrupted and further from Jah’s creation. Life force does not begin at the moment of consumption. Powell’s research participants described farming, cultivation, and conservation as the literal pouring of one’s energy and emotion into the earth. The sincerity of this effort determines how the earth responds and reciprocates that energy. 

Rural Rastafari food is shaped by what the land yields. Coconuts are naturally abundant across Jamaica. They are cracked, drained, grated, and squeezed into milk that forms the base of most dishes. Vegetables and aromatics are sautéed in coconut oil. The food typically contains beans, spices, chili peppers, and the coconut milk, stewed for hours over low heat and eaten communally. A strict Ital diet rejects salt as “a needless adulteration” of what Jah placed on the earth, so herbs and dry seasonings are key. Scotch bonnet peppers, thyme, lemongrass, allspice, and nutmeg build complex flavor without salt. 

The one-pot stew is a practical response to the rural conditions of Rastafari life. Land access is limited, so the range of available produce is narrow. A single pot stretches what is on hand to feed the community. Cooking takes place outside in clay pots often balanced over a wood fire by three stones. Metal cookware is avoided on the belief that it harms the body. 

In Saint Lucia, a young Rasta farmer described conversing with plants throughout their life cycle to transfer positive energy to them. He explained that during planting one must ensure a positive heart is present because this very energy will be transmitted to the earth. The same is true of cooking. Ital food involves preparing food with a clean heart to transfer life force into the food. Food must be cooked slowly, with intention and gratitude. This preserves and transmits the life energy that began in the soil. Food is not just physically nourishing; it is also spiritually nourishing.

Food that is rushed or processed severs the energy force and transmits a lower form. It follows too that food grown under corporate conditions is spiritually degraded. Jahson Peat, who runs a vegan restaurant in London called Zionly Manna, presents Ital as a process of relearning that strips away the method of eating brought about by colonialism. This is inseparable from a rejection of capitalism itself. Commitment to Ital eating is tightly linked to a broader turn away from the imported industrial and materialist ways of life, which are all combined under the Rastafari concept of “Babylon.” 

By contrast, mainstream veganism operates according to market logic. It converts diet choices into an ethical identity. For some, it is an exercise in personal branding, where what you eat signals who you are. This channels genuine ethical concerns for animals and the environment into demand for plant-based products. In this sense, the market-based vegan movement can be seen not as a challenge to the current food system, but a force that risks expanding it further, as seen through the IPO of Beyond Meat. The growth of this plant-based segment does not depend on replacing meat consumption, only on expanding overall consumer demand. The Ital diet is not a consumer identity. It seeks to reject the economic system and the very notion of consumerism upon which it relies. 

However, Ital does not operate entirely independent of market forces. Jaffe’s concept of “Ital chic” describes the convergence of middle-class consumerism and the Ital diet. In Kingston, Rasta symbols have been used to market artisanal soap lines and premium vegetable products. When a brand sells coconut-milk products with Rasta packaging, it co-opts a tradition built on self-sufficiency and places it inside the very market that tradition was designed to reject. This dynamic is similar to that explored in a blog post from this semester about rural tourism. It noted that rural culture is often packaged to meet consumer expectations, with authenticity operating as a selling point. 

Plant-based eating did not begin with a farmer’s market or with a marketing campaign. It owes some of its roots to rural Jamaica, where people grew what the earth offered based on a theological conviction. That story deserves to be remembered before it is repackaged.

The incompatibilities between the personality traits of lawyers and rural people

One of my uncles is a large, scary man. When he was younger, he regularly attended mixed martial arts events. On most occasions, he was approached by promoters and asked if he had ever considered becoming a fighter. As a young man seeking fortune, he instead set his eyes on what he was told was an extremely lucrative activity: a season of crab fishing.

This type of fishing can be a grueling endeavor. The crews who sign up for it usually expect to work long (regularly over 12 hours) days in freezing weather. With little privacy or connection to the world outside the boat, the weeks (sometimes months) they spend in the boat can really do a number on their mental health. My uncle thought himself perfectly equipped for this job. Alas, it was not the case. Before long, the loneliness and taxing nature of the job got to him. About 2 weeks in, he suffered from a panic attack. Forsaking his dreams of riches, he demanded to be done with the whole thing well before the fishing season ended. He got stuck with the bill for the helicopter lift off the boat.

The key thing my uncle failed to consider was his own personality. Despite his intimidating appearance, he is actually a very warm person who thrives on social interaction. He was not well suited for the life of an Alaskan crab fisherman. He now makes a comfortable living as a pest control technician here in sunny California. If you asked him, he would tell you that there is no amount of money that could have compelled him to stay in that boat for another second.

Several American legal scholars have brought up the issue of the lack of lawyers in rural areas. A common prescription to this issue is financial incentives for lawyers who commit to working in these areas for some time. Whenever such an idea comes up, I always think of my uncle, barely holding onto his sanity in a tiny boat on the Bering Sea.

The personality profile of lawyers has been the subject of some research. The research suffers from a lack of uniformity as to how personality is measured, a problem which permeates the field of psychometrics. The Big Five personality trait model divides personality into five factors (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) each measured along a continuum.

No single scientific paper collects data and analyzes trends on all five of the Big Five personality traits of American lawyers. Such papers exist for legal professionals in Germany and Israel. The cultural consensus on the Big Five personality traits of lawyers seems to be that lawyers are higher than the average person in openness (creativity and willingness to entertain new ideas) and conscientiousness (diligence and thoroughness). On the other hand, it seems that most people think that lawyers are significantly lower than the average person on agreeableness (willingness to kindly cooperate with others). The research on extraversion and neuroticism (proneness to depression and irritability), indicates that lawyers are lower in extraversion and higher in neuroticism than the average person.

With some idea of the type of person who becomes a lawyer, we turn our eyes to rural populations. A study compares Big Five traits among urban, suburban and rural populations. The study establishes that rural people tend to be higher than their urban counterparts in extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. They are also lower than urbanites in conscientiousness and openness. As described here, lawyers and rural populations are almost mirror images in terms of personality. The only trait which they share is their higher than average neuroticism, which probably does not make for a winning combination.

The cited study qualifies each of these disparities as nonsignificant when one controls for socio-demographic characteristics. This means that rural people do not display the above characteristics because they live in rural areas. Rather, they display them because they are much more likely to be poor, old and less formally educated (“POL”) than urban people, and the aforementioned set of personality traits is highly correlated with a person being POL.

One might suspect that this personality contrast applies to rural populations when compared with any high-income or highly specialized professions, but the evidence suggests otherwise. In Personality and Medical Specialty Choice: A Literature Review and Integration, family care physicians are characterized as high in agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism, and only average or low in openness. At first glance, physicians appear to share far more personality traits with rural populations than lawyers, differing primarily in conscientiousness.

It has been proposed that the legal system might benefit from offering lawyers debt relief if they serve in a rural communities for a certain number of years, much like existing programs for physicians. While I cannot see how such a policy could be harmful, it could definitely face the personality profile of lawyers as compared with that of physicians and rural populations as a major hurdle.

This raises the question of what to do about it. Government-mandated personality changes are still unfeasible, and while money can do fearsome things to a person, it is not clear that it is adequate to overcome absolutely anything. It certainly could not keep my uncle in a lonely boat in Alaskan waters.

One idea is for law schools to admit classes with more varied personality profiles, including people more amenable to rural life. There is some evidence that law schools select for and exacerbate the personality traits characteristic of lawyers. However, rejecting applicants on the grounds of being “too diligent” or “too willing to engage with new ideas” would understandably raise other concerns.

Rural tourism: a double-edged sword

Summer Hike 2025 - Kīholo Bay, Big Island, HI 

Where tourists vacation, money often flows: lodging bookings increase, more jobs are created, and the beauties of rural communities are discovered. The reality, however, is that the people and places making money aren't always the ones paying the price for over-tourism. Within this context, people like environmentalist Hanan Kouli are part of a movement supporting rural tourism. 

Kouli explained the significance of tourism to rural economies in places like Hawaii, and the need for a more sustainable approach, stating:

...[M]any residents rely on [tourism]...The problem isn't tourism, it's too much tourism without enough care. 

As someone from a rural island community, it's encouraging that tourists and locals alike recognize the harms of mass tourism, even though it can also be a double-edged sword. Without increased community control, rural tourism can reproduce the same harms as mass tourism - displacement and cultural commodification - albeit with better branding than mass tourism. 

What is rural tourism? 

Rural tourism occurs in non-urban areas and is considered a sustainable alternative to mass tourism. A 2015 blog post put it even more simply, defining rural tourism as: 

...[T]he country experience [with] opportunities for visitors to directly experience agricultural and/or natural environments. 

I felt the appeal of that "country experience" while staying on a farm in New Zealand. Even then, it was clear that rural areas were still recovering from COVID-19's impact on the tourism industry. Indeed, especially after COVID-19, one benefit of rural tourism is attracting more tourists like me, who seek rural destinations to avoid large crowds and experience a different way of life.

Farm Stay 2024 - New Zealand

What are the benefits of rural tourism?

At its best, rural tourism can broaden the local economy by keeping income streams rooted in rural communities instead of flowing from (or towards) urban centers. The promise is simple: jobs and demand for local businesses in rural areas. According to a 2023 article from the journal for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, rural tourism:

...[Promotes] rural community development and...could counteract the negative impacts of urbanization.

Hawaii offers an illustration of how that can play out. Tourism is the state's largest economic driver, but the benefits are most visible when tourism dollars circulate through rural communities, rather than resorts. This is particularly true in rural areas that offer  "authentic" island experiences, like the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC), Hawaii's top-paid tourist attraction. 

Mariott Resort 2024 - Ko'olina, Oahu

However one views it culturally, PCC channels visitor spending into the rural community where it operates - supporting jobs, and for many workers, substantial college scholarships. 

Sadie's Inn 2025 - Utulei, American Samoa

Similar dynamics show up in my home country of American Samoa. Tourism helps offset the country's financial reliance on its tuna processing plant - Starkist - which makes up about one-third of its workforce. Rural attractions like the National Park and Ofu Beach draw tourists whose spending supports lodging, food service, and cultural education.

My criticisms of rural tourism

My gripe with rural tourism is rooted in concern about what happens to "authenticity" once it becomes the selling point. What was once authentic is often changed to meet consumer expectations rather than community needs. That was the dynamic Professor Lisa Pruitt described as "faux rural" in her 2013 blog post. 

Sapphire Princess 2023 - Pago Pago, American Samoa

The trade-off of living in a highly marketable rural "paradise" is that it can make you feel like you're always on display. When tourists arrive expecting a specific version of island life, the pressure to look the part increases. A 2023 study on the Socio-Cultural Effects of Rural Tourism observed that 

...[T]he development of tourism in rural communities has the potential to produce unwanted socio-cultural consequences.

I felt that dynamic early. As a child, I remember giving staged performances for tourists. Those dances weren't fake, but over time, the performance mindset skewed my perception of "authenticity."  

So, what now?

I can't deny the economic benefit that rural tourism has brought to rural communities, mine included. I still see it as a bridge between the "urban-rural" divide discussed in Professor Pruitt's 2024 blog post. The goal isn't to eliminate tourism; it's to shape it on community terms. 

What does this look like? Perhaps restrictions on short-term rentals, visitor caps, or local hiring requirements. In any case, increased community control is essential to stop rural tourism from reproducing the same harms as mass tourism.

Democrats say they'll do more to attract rural voters

Ashley Lopez reported for NPR a few days ago on Democrats' plan to vie from aggressively for rural voters.  Here's an excerpt about the "8 figure investment" the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is making in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, an investment that will include "a full-time staffer who will be focused on 'strategic rural engagement across the country.'"  This is the first time the DCCC has had a program dedicated specifically to rural voter engagement. 

Suzan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC and represents Washington's 1st Congressional District, said Democrats see an opportunity to engage rural voters as President Trump's economic agenda, particularly tariffs, becomes less popular.

She said rural voters see the "damage" being done by GOP policies that have led to "costs going up, health care being gutted," and Democrats can provide an alternative.

Here's a further quote from DelBene:

I think Republicans are turning their back. They've been actively hurting rural communities with the policies they've put in place. Democrats are fighting to improve the lives of rural Americans and farmers.

* * *

When we look at the swing districts across the country, the districts that are going to determine the majority in the House of Representatives, we know that rural voters are key in those districts.

* * * 

According to the Pew Research Center, in last year's presidential election Trump won 69% of voters who describe their communities as rural, compared with just 29% for Kamala Harris.

Lopez spoke to Anthony Flaccavento, a former candidate for congress in southwest Virginia and founder of the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, who acknowledged how hard it'll be to win back Democrats:  

We focus on rural, but because there's so much overlap in why people have left the Democrats and why they have so much disillusionment, it's a lot of commonality between working-class folks in small towns and cities and rural people.  When you put those two together, rural voters and blue-collar, working-class voters, then you have the biggest voting bloc in the country.

I've written a lot on the blog about Democrats' neglect of rural voters, including here and here.  

Ro Khanna talks "Epstein class" in relation to rural and working-class unrest

David Leonhardt interviewed U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna on the NYT opinion podcast yesterday under the headline, "The Democrat Who Split MAGA Over the Epstein Files."  Khanna styles himself an economic populist, and he has paid a lot of attention recent years to spatial inequality and the ways in which rural and rural-ish communities have been hurt by U.S. trade policies of recent years.  That is, he takes seriously the woes of places often styled as "left behind," including rural ones.  (Here's a December 2022 post about Khanna's interest in rural America).  

In this interview with Leonhardt, Khanna talks about his collaboration with Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie to push for the release of the Epstein files.  The quotes below, all from Khanna, link rural and working class agitation that drew them to Trump to their discontent with the so-called "Epstein class."  

Khanna: I have been going on podcasts to argue for my economic patriotism agenda — an agenda that says we’ve got to focus on factory towns that have been hollowed out in rural communities. I was going and visiting these communities, and so I was on Theo Von’s podcast and I was on the “Flagrant” podcast and I was going to places like Johnstown, Pa., and going to places like Warren, Ohio. When I was there, the issue would come up about the “Epstein class” — that’s what they called it. They said, well, are you on the side of the forgotten Americans or on the side of the Epstein class?

I realized how much the abuse by rich and powerful men of young girls and the sense of a rape island that Epstein had set up for people embodied the corruption of government. And then many of them saw Donald Trump as fighting this corrupt government and standing up for forgotten Americans. And this was the symbol for the most disgusting abuse and corruption of our government. And so when the issue came up that Pam Bondi said that there was nothing to release, I knew that this was a betrayal of the core promise that Trump had made to MAGA voters.

I said, we should push for the release. And I put out some tweet initially and then we introduced a bill. Then Massie and I have worked together for years; we have a real friendship. He called me and he said: Well, why don’t we try to collaborate on this instead of just doing something partisan? And I think we can reshape the coalition.

In the process, I then met the survivors and when I met the survivors, then it became personal. I mean, these are women who are talking about being raped at the age of 14 and being told to recruit other junior high and high school students. I think I had the same experience that Marjorie Taylor Greene or Nancy Mace or Thomas Massie had — once you meet these survivors, I mean, it’s just one of the most horrific crimes in our country’s history.

* * *

And once these files are released, people can judge for themselves the abusive conditions of those young girls. But one of the survivors really struck me and said, “Ro, I don’t remember what happened to me, and I want to see the files to understand the trauma I went through.” And for these survivors, some of them voted for Trump. It’s not personal. In fact, we’re having a press conference and one of the asks of the survivors will be to meet with Donald Trump to have these files released. But anyone who meets them realizes that, look, there were over a thousand victims. The idea that only two people would be doing this with a thousand victims just doesn’t make sense. I mean, it’s more than Epstein and Maxwell. It’s a symbol for the recklessness of an elite that could do things without impunity.

* * *

It gave me a sense of how deep it went. I didn’t really follow the details. Now, there is a whole island of people with a thousand-plus victims abused so that the scale of it, it resonated. And it occurred to me how many people view this as the central example of the corruption of their own government. And many of them had said — look, they thought that there were more Democrats than Republicans involved. I think that’s probably because of Trump’s messaging. And I don’t believe that to be the case, I think it’s widespread, but that was the sentiment. And so the emotional power of it is something that I grasped only because I was in these communities. I was on these podcasts and I was talking to people in the MAGA base.

* * *

And I would often say to people, after I go into these communities, when I was in Aliquippa or Johnstown, I said, if I was in one of those communities, I’d vote everyone out too. Why wouldn’t you? Those towns have been abandoned for 40 years and it’s not just the working class.

I think this is one of the places that Democrats make a mistake — it’s not just the person who’s making $13 an hour who should be making $15 or $17 or $20 an hour. It’s people who are doctors or who are lawyers or who are small-business owners who think their entire communities have been hollowed out. The pride is gone. Their jobs were shipped overseas. They see districts like mine that are succeeding. They think they built America and a governing class has abandoned them. And Trump evoked that sentiment and he said, I’m going to tear down this corrupt system. I would often say, well, what we need to do is build things up. But they said, well, your party is not even understanding what needs to be torn down.

The Epstein class often became Exhibit 1 in what they thought that the status quo had protected, and didn’t care enough about. So I think it’s deeper than just the economics. It was this sense that these people feel and felt they were losing their country.

* * *

I did not know, in full honesty, where the MAGA base would go because one of the things — having just been to so many small towns, rural communities, factory towns for the past nine years — that I think we don’t understand is the emotional connection that Trump built with these communities because he was one of the first people to say, you got shafted, you got screwed and I’m going to bring back your pride.

And so they give him a lot of latitude because they think he was the first to emotionally speak to their ambition and their pain and their hopes. But what started to happen is, as we built momentum for this, I started to see commentators first in the MAGA base say: “You know what? This is really important. This is core to what Trump ran on.”

NYT's Thomas Edsall on the current food stamp controversy, including rural and racial differences

Thomas Edsall's column in the New York Times this week is under the provocative headline, "It Would be Trump's Honor to Pay for Food Stamps."  Here's the part of Edsall's column that mentions rural Americans:  

In “Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide That Threatens Democracy,” the coauthors Suzanne Mettler and Trevor Brown point out that while urban and rural counties relied on government transfer programs at similar rates in the 1970s and 1980s,

They diverged from the 1990s onward as rural places faced economic tumult and residents came to rely more on government benefits. By 2019, the eve of the pandemic, rural people benefited from social transfers by $1,749 more per person per year than their urban peers.

In 1970, Mettler and Brown calculated, rural and urban households received social benefits of $2,220 and $2,244, respectively, a 1.1 percent difference. By 2019, the average annual government benefit for rural residents rose to $10,558 and for urban residents to $8,809, a 20 percent difference. 

Mettler and Brown cite research by Jennifer Sherman, a sociologist at Washington State University, to describe the agonized struggle of the rural poor who, when faced with a major economic setback, are forced to turn to government for help:

When they themselves need to use such benefit, they experience a deep sense of stigma and shame. They drove to stores far away to use SNAP benefits, hoping to avoid the gaze of their neighbors and community members.

Given the way people have traditionally talked about these programs, one of the most striking things about government data on SNAP use is just how high the white share of food stamp recipients actually is.

In West Virginia, 97.7 percent of SNAP recipients whose racial and ethnic identity was recorded are white; Indiana, 66 percent; Iowa 75.5 percent; Kentucky, 83.4 percent; Missouri, 67.1 percent; Montana, 76.6 percent; North Dakota, 66.9 percent; Ohio, 64.9; Oklahoma, 60.9 percent; Utah, 86.6 percent; and Wyoming, 78.8 percent.

On this issue of "white share of food stamp recipients" I am pleased to see Edsall note that.  It's an issue I've often foregrounded, along with the fact that middle class folks who are resentful of those who receive public benefits are as resentful as the whites who do so as they are of the people of color who do so. The resentment is not driven by racism, certainly not solely so.  The intra-racial tension is as significant as the inter-racial tension.  Read more here and here.

Risks to rural hospitals grab big headlines in Arkansas

The lead story in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is about the perils that Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" poses to rural hospitals in the state.  Here's an excerpt from the feature by Neal Earley, which provides some excellent explanatory reporting: 

Rural hospitals in Arkansas will have to ready themselves for some major changes coming in the next few years that could mean savings for the federal government but fewer people with health care coverage.

The changes are part of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act the U.S. House of Representatives passed on Thursday. It includes key changes to Medicaid and health care for low-income Americans that are projected to reduce federal spending on the program by $1 trillion over 10 years and lead to an increase in the number of uninsured people...

But some hospital officials worry the work requirements and bi-annual eligibility checks would mean a drop in coverage for many, shifting the cost burden to providers.

“You can take people off the rolls, but they’re still going to come to the (emergency room),” said Shelby Brown, administrator of Southwest Arkansas Regional Medical Center in Hope. “And small rural hospitals like we are in Hope, Arkansas — we don’t have the volume to absorb more people without insurance.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation says 813,000 Arkansans are enrolled in Medicaid, and 41% of those live in rural areas. 

Cuts to Medicaid would be felt more acutely by rural hospitals, as they don’t have the type of patient volume that suburban and urban hospitals have that could help them absorb a drop in revenue, Brown said.

* * *

Arkansas already attempted to implement work requirements in 2018, but it led to about 18,000 Arkansans losing coverage. In 2019, a federal judge struck down the requirement.

While the new requirement is designed to eliminate waste and force those who are able to seek health insurance through their work, Bo Ryall of the Arkansas Hospital Association said prior experience has shown health care providers are the ones who will observe the financial hit, saying, “Arkansas’s prior experience with work requirement enforcement and frequent re-determinations increased uncompensated care in hospitals.”

The story also quotes Stacy Harberson, CEO of Howard Memorial Hospital in Nashville, AR:

[R]ural hospitals (are) already operating at such a thin margin it could be very detrimental.

"Rural" all over the news as Senate passes "Big Beautiful Bill" that will undermine rural services, especially health care

Analysis of what Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" would do to rural health care has been in the news for several weeks, and it stayed there today as the Senate passed the Bill by a vote of 50-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie.  

What follows appeared on the Ezra Klein Show today, July 1, but much of it was recorded in advance in anticipation that the bill would pass.  Here, I'm just going to highlight the bits about rural health care, including as they relate to "red state" voters: 

Klein: [T]hey are very substantially cuts to the Republican Party’s voters. They’re cuts to Republican states. They’re cuts to Republican hospitals — rural hospitals in areas that vote for Republicans and are very dependent on the care that gets financed by Medicaid in order to stay open.  (emphasis added)

This is the Republicans’ old ideology coming into conflict with their new coalition.

Yglesias:  Absolutely. If you look at the share of people who are on Medicaid by state, there are seven states where more than a quarter of the population is on Medicaid.

One of them is New York, and one of them is California. But the other five are New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia.

And then you look at states like Mississippi and Alabama: If they would accept Medicaid expansion funding, there’s a huge, potentially eligible population share in those states.

It’s a big conflict inside the heart of Republican politics. [Details about Mitch McConnell and Kentucky] 

There’s just a conflict between the Republican Party electorate and their ideology, which has shifted in some ways but really remains focused on low taxes, on investment income, low corporate taxes and wanting to cut spending on programs for the poor.

About work requirements and how they've worked out so far, Klein and Yglesias shared this conversation:

The most conservative states don’t accept Medicaid expansion funds. They have tried to impose work requirements in Arkansas, for example.

(Read more about the Arkansas experiment here and here.) 

So we ran the experiment: Does putting work requirements on Medicaid increase employment? And the answer was no. When they did it, employment didn’t go up. People did lose coverage, but employment didn’t go up.

And Republicans didn’t reverse course after that. They didn’t say to themselves: Oh, our goal here was to get more people working, but we didn’t succeed at that. They said: You know what? This cut the rolls. It cut spending. We’re happy with that.

That’s a free market view: If you want a television, you’ve got to pay for it yourself. If you want chemotherapy, you’ve got to pay for it yourself.

On work requirements, I published this three years ago in Politico.   

Here's more from Yglesias, on perverse incentives: 

There’s this threat that hospitals will go out of business. I’m in Maine right now in a very rural area, and hospitals don’t have a ton of customers here. If they lose let’s say 10 percent or 15 percent of their customer base and have higher uncompensated care burdens — some of the facilities will just close.

Senate Republicans have discussed creating a hospital bailout fund to prevent this, but it seems crazy to me to address hospitals’ business model problems by giving them direct payments to stay in business even though they’re not treating patients, rather than just letting people get the treatment they need.  (emphasis added)

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska ultimately voted for the bill, but only after she was offered big concessions for her state.  Read more about those here.  Apparently, one of those concessions was to double to $50 billion (from an initial $25 billion) the amount in a fund that would support rural hospitals.  Another related to how SNAP will be administered in Alaksa. 

Also instructive is this interview by NPR with Kaiser Health News reporter Sarah Jane Tribble, published yesterday, leading with Juana Summers questioning Tribble: 

SUMMERS: Rural America is poised to be greatly impacted by these proposed cuts. Roughly 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas where Medicaid covers 1 in 4 adults. Here to talk about what could be at stake for those communities is Sarah Jane Tribble. She's the chief rural correspondent for KFF Health News. ...

Sarah, just start if you can by telling us a bit about what you have been hearing from people in rural communities across this country about these proposed cuts.

TRIBBLE: Yeah, I'm not hearing good things. They're very concerned, because Medicaid rates are so high in rural America, that these cuts will be very detrimental, they'll cause more hospitals to close, they'll tax rural health clinics. I was sitting next to a CEO of a rural hospital from Colorado. He has a 25-bed critical access hospital, the only hospital between the Kansas border and Denver on the Colorado I-70 corridor. And he had been talking about the cuts and not happy about them. And then we heard about the rural transformation fund that the Senate has been working on to sort of help offset the cuts. And he leaned over and he just scoffed. He just said, that's just not going to be enough. So I think that there's a lot of concern out there in rural America.  (emphasis added) 

Here's a late June NPR story about the ripple effects the cuts are likely to have on hospitals in rural Colorado, this one focused on the San Luis Valley in the southwest part of the state.  Here is a key excerpt from the story by John Daley: 

"I'm trying to be worried — and optimistic," said Konnie Martin, CEO of San Luis Valley Health in Alamosa. It's the flagship health care facility for 50,000 people in six agricultural counties — Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Mineral, Rio Grande and Saguache.

The numbers out of the bill about deep Medicaid cuts were "incredibly frightening," Martin said, "because Medicaid is such a vital program to rural health care."

Martin's hospital is not alone. "I think in Colorado right now, nearly 70 percent of rural hospitals are operating in a negative margin," in the red, Martin said.

Here's a late June Washington Post story about Medicaid as a "lifeline" in West Virginia.  

Another rural hospital at risk, this one in northern California

Ana Ibarra reports for Cal Matters from Willows, in Glenn County, California, home of a small hospital, the Glenn Medical Center, which is under threat of closure.   The reason for the new threat:  a new interpretation of a provision on distance in relation to a regulation that requires facilities with the "critical access" designation to be at least 35 miles from the nearest medical center.  Here's an excerpt: 

Glenn Medical Center, a 25-bed hospital in the rural agricultural town of Willows, north of Sacramento, is about to lose its “critical access” title. Without it, administrators say the hospital couldn’t afford to stay open because it would lose its increased Medicare reimbursements and regulatory flexibilities.

Glenn Medical Center received a letter in April from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notifying the hospital that it was no longer in compliance with the distance requirement to qualify as “critical access.” That requirement states that hospitals must be more than a 35-mile drive on primary roads — or a 15-mile drive on mountainous or secondary roads — from the next nearest hospital.

The next closest hospital is Colusa Medical Center, which the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency places at 32 miles south of Glenn Medical Center. That makes Glenn County’s hospital three miles short of the qualifying distance for the critical access title. But local health officials and the Willows Fire Department say ambulances and most patients take the “more reliable” route of I-5 and Highway 20, which makes the distance between the hospitals 35.7 miles — far enough to qualify.

About 40% of Glenn County’s 30,000 residents rely on public health insurance programs — Medicaid and Medicare — and 12% live under the poverty line.

“We treat and see and care for a lot of people who are unseen in the community. A lot of behavioral health crises, a lot of justice-involved folks, a lot of elderly, a lot of people without transportation. And we are truly a lifeline for those folks,” said Lauren Still, chief administrative officer at Glenn Medical Center.

Closing the only hospital in this Sacramento Valley county would mean residents would have to travel farther for emergency care and ambulances would take longer responding to 911 calls.

Dr. Jared Garrison, Glenn County’s health officer, said losing the hospital would be a devastating blow to the community. Garrison worries about the elderly who may be afraid to drive at night and people who don’t have transportation to make it out of the county. Heart attacks, strokes, traumatic injuries and overdoses can become more deadly when hospital treatment is delayed.

“If Glenn Medical Center closes, it’s not just a health crisis — it’s an economic and social crisis,” Garrison said. “We’ll see longer emergency response times, job losses, declining local businesses, and worsening health outcomes for our most vulnerable neighbors.” 

* * * 

Both hospitals, Colusa and Glenn, have been at the same location since their construction decades ago. In 2001, Glenn Medical Center was first approved to participate in the federal Critical Access Hospital Program under the same distance rule. Hospital and county health officials say geographically nothing has changed.

“We tried to send some emails back and forth and say, ‘Hey, this is not the road people would take. This is not the road the ambulance takes. This is just not accurate,’” Garrison said. The “shorter” route, he explained, actually takes longer because it includes a county road that often floods and is primarily used by farm equipment.

The hospital’s appeals to the federal agency have been unsuccessful. Still said she is clinging to one last hope that U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Richvale Republican, can make the hospital’s case.

Mark Spannagel, chief of staff at LaMalfa’s office, told CalMatters that no resolution has been reached yet, but that conversations with the federal agency continue and that the hospital’s situation is under “heightened review.”

The federal Medicare and Medicaid agency is supposed to review critical access hospitals’ eligibility periodically. This review started last year and the issue seems to be a reclassification of roads, Spannagel said.

Signs that rural voters are sticking with Trump, despite the pain of cuts

Two recent stories suggest that Trump voters--including rural ones--are loyal to Trump, even though some early decisions made by his administration are likely to hurt them.  The first of these stories, out of far northern California, was published in The Guardian and written by Dani Anguiano.  She reports from Shasta County, which has a recent history of right-wing activism and militias (read more here, here and here), and she quotes several residents.  Some excerpts follow: 

In March, about 150 people took to the streets in Redding, the Shasta county seat, to protest aggainst proposed cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. A month later more than 1,000 people in the area gathered to demonstrate against the administration’s policies.

Amid reports about possible reductions to Medicaid, the head of the area’s largest healthcare provider warned such action could have “crippling” impacts in a county where the local Medicaid provider serves nearly a third of the population. A bipartisan group of state lawmakers, including the region’s Republican representatives, signed a letter in late April urging Congress to protect Head Start, the federally funded education program.

 * * *

Bruce Ross, a Shasta county Republican, acknowledged the difficulties of seeing layoffs, but said he had been pleased with the direction of the administration.

“Everybody who lives up in north-eastern California knows folks who work for the Forest Service, or for federal agencies, and it’s tough for them. I think on a human level, that’s real,” Ross said. But, he added, he had seen a willingness on the part of the administration to listen when local officials have pushed back against proposed cuts, and the practical changes had ultimately, so far, been less severe than they initially seemed.

“There’s been a lot of drama about it. But I think the actual results have shown that the administration is listening to people and saying, OK, this is important. We’re gonna take it back.”

Congressman Doug LaMalfa, a Republican and staunch Trump supporter who represents a large swath of northern California’s interior, has acknowledged that some of his constituents, and Republicans broadly, are concerned, but echoed Ross’s sentiments. “But they’re listening to us. I got in a room with Elon [Musk] and his right-hand man. They’re understanding us now, and they’re going to look at it more through that lens, and they’ll certainly listen to us,’ he told the Chico Enterprise-Record in March.

More high profile than The Guardian story is sociologist Arlie Hochschild's piece in the New York Times a few days ago.  Her most recent book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right, is set in Pikeville, Kentucky and the state's 5th congressional district, one of the poorest in the nation.  She spent several years living there off and on, getting to know folks, and that formed the basis of the 2024 book (just as several years of living in the Lake Charles, Louisiana area formed the basis for her 2106 Strangers in Their Own Land).  Now, Hochschild has gone back to Kentucky's 5th congressional district to talk to people about how they feel about the early days of the Trump administration.  Here's Hochschild's summation of how Trump's policies are likely to impact the region:  

[E]xperts predict Mr. Trump’s tariffs will raise prices, and his budget cuts will hit some of his strongest supporters the hardest. Meals on Wheels: cuts. Heating cost assistance: cuts. Black lung screening: cuts. One nearby office handling Social Security has closed. Even the Department of Veterans Affairs may have to pull back on the services it offers.

These are services people need. More than 40 percent of people in the Fifth District rely on Medicaid for their medical care, including addiction treatment. Now, Mr. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is poised to cut benefits, which could lead to layoffs in the largest employer in eastern Kentucky, the Pikeville Medical Center. Meanwhile, many children in the district qualify for food stamps, and the administration’s chain saw is coming for those, too.

Hochschild found that some residents of the region seemed more committed to Mr. Trump than they had been before. Here are some key quotes:

Mr. Trump’s angry tone didn’t seem to bother his supporters in the district. Calling his opponents scum? “Oh, that’s how Trump talks. People know how he talks, and they voted for him. I wouldn’t talk that way and don’t like it, but I’m glad I voted for him,” said Andrew Scott, a Trump supporter and mayor of Coal Run Village, a town of around 1,600 nestled next to Pikeville.

As for the likely cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and Meals on Wheels, Mr. Scott mused, “You know how proud and stoic Appalachians are — we know how to take a little pain. People,” he explained, “may have to suffer now to help make America great later. Trump’s tariffs could raise prices but that will force companies to gradually relocate to the U.S.”

Many of the people I spoke to recognized that this bill would create some pain for them or their neighbors, but that didn’t seem to bother them. One Trump supporter told me that if you like the guy who’s making you suffer, you don’t mind so much. As Mr. Trump himself has put it, America is akin to a sick patient, and the tariffs are the surgery — “The patient lived, and is healing.”

This is consistent with something I've been saying since at least 2000:  Stubbornness is a real force to be reckoned with among many Trump voters (those we might label MAGA) and--for that matter--with some on the left, too. I think that progressives need to be willing to re-think our positions on some issues, especially in light of new information.  As one of my very progressive friends put it, we all need to be able to identify one issue on which we differ from the "progressive blob."   Of course I would say ditto for conservatives and the conservative blob.  

Also important is how progressives talk to Trump supporters, especially about things that may not go well for them.  I very much appreciated a quote Hochschild included in her NYT piece.  It's from an addiction counselor who is not a Trump supporter:

If people in Pike County or elsewhere get socked with higher prices, there might come a tipping point. But what happens then would hinge on how Democrats handle it, what better ideas they have to offer, their tone of voice. If the left starts scolding, "You Trump supporters brought this on yourselves," or "We told you so," people around here will get more pissed at the snarky left than they are at the hurtful right — and Trump will march on.

These possible reactions by the left are just what I documented in my "Rural Bashing," in which I also argued that "I told you so" is a very, very unhelpful response.   

In any event, these two stories remind me of a conversation I had with a Trump supporter in my hometown this spring.  I asked this person how the local school, which educates many children from low-income families, would get by without the Title I funding that flows from the Department of Education,  given that Trump was abolishing the Department.  She replied, "oh, he'll find a way to get us that money.  We can't survive without it."  As much as I oppose most Trump policies--certainly including abolition of the Department of Education, I hope she is right--that they will somehow get the funds they need--because I care so much about that school and that community.  

I also want to acknowledge that these stories and my anecdote run counter to the data in an early May story in Newsweek suggesting that Trump was losing support among rural voters.  Here's the key data from that story:

The 2024 election saw Trump win 63 percent of rural voters, up from 60 percent in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

But a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll, conducted between April 21 and 23 among 1,439 adults, shows that Trump's support among rural voters is declining.

According to the poll, just 46 percent of rural voters now approve of Trump's job performance, while 45 percent disapprove. In February, 59 percent approved and 37 percent disapproved.

Trump's approval rating has also declined slightly among urban, small city, and suburban voters. Among big city voters, his approval has dropped from 42 percent to 40 percent. Among small city voters, his approval has dropped from 42 percent to 36 percent.

Meanwhile, among suburban voters, his approval rating has declined by 1 point to 40 percent. The only group that Trump has seen a rise in support from is small town voters, with 53 percent now approving of his job performance, up from 46 percent in February. The poll had a margin of error of ±3.3 percentage points.

Rural sociologist Tim Slack of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge provided context on the cuts, including this:  

Poverty is higher in rural America. Underemployment is higher and labor force participation is lower among rural working-age folks. There is a wide and growing rural-urban gap in death rates among working-age people—part of the rural mortality penalty. So, the struggles are pronounced. 

Bernie Sanders rallies rural Americans to "Fight Oligarchy"

As part of his "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" tour, Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has spent the last several weeks visiting districts where Republicans enjoyed a narrow electoral advantage during the 2024 general election.

While the tour kicked off in Omaha, Nebraska, Sanders recently stopped in rural Altoona, Wisconsin on March 8, 2025. Bernie Sanders used his platform to address the myth that rural people are regressive and conservative. Following his stop in Altoona, Sanders posted the following message to Facebook:

We're told that rural America doesn't like progressive ideas. Not what I saw today in our great rally in Altoona, WI - population 9,200. The people here, and throughout the country, understand that health care is a human right and that we need an economy that works for all, not the few.

Sanders spoke to the Wisconsin crowd of 2,600 about how the current administration will harm rural and working-class communities. He also sought to empower and motivate the audience through a targeted call to action, saying:

I worry very much that people all over this country in rural areas especially, do not stand up. What we're going to see in the next few months...over a trillion dollars of tax breaks for the top one percent. We can stop it.

Earlier in the tour, Senator Sanders spoke to an overflow crowd of more than 3,400 people in Omaha. Sanders' next stop was in Iowa City, Iowa, where he filled the historic Englert Theatre. Once he was done speaking to the Englert Theatre crowd, Sanders delivered a second rendition of his speech to the overflow crowd at the hotel next door. This was the first time in Sanders' career that he has given the same speech to two audiences in one night due to extremely high turnout.

Although these cities are not rural themselves, both Iowa and Nebraska are states with significant rural populations. Many people traveled from hours away to hear Sanders speak. So far, the tour has drawn record crowds.

Reporting for Barn Raiser, Greg Wickencamp writes about the Iowa crowds' fears and hopes as they attended Senator Sanders' rally in their state on February 22, 2025. Some attendees expressed frustration over rising grocery and feed prices; other audience members worried about their children's job prospects; and others in the crowd said they hoped Sanders' speech would give them hope and motivation. Kelli McCreary, a retired nurse from Toledo, Iowa, noted that her Trump-supporting neighbors are just starting to regret voting for Trump, but that "it's too late."

The theme of Sanders' message seems to be that politicians will not save us, that both political parties have fundamentally failed the American people, and that we have more power than we are led to believe. Sanders told the audience during his Iowa speech:

Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians in the D.C. Beltway. It will only be defeated by millions of Americans in Iowa, in Vermont, in Nebraska, in every state in this country by people who come together in a strong grassroots movement and say no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts in programs that low-income and working Americans desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country.

For a long time, Bernie Sanders' policies have been degraded by Republicans and Democrats alike for being too radical and extreme. Now, Sanders points out that the Democratic Party has failed to excite people enough to motivate voter turnout. He says that rather than standing for the working class, the Democrats have prioritized corporate interests and need to radically change their approach if they are to succeed in the future.

Whether or not Bernie Sanders will gather enough momentum to inspire significant change remains to be seen. Some Bernie-supporters remain cautiously optimistic. Kelly Schmidt, a University of Northern Iowa graduate from Holstein, Iowa, said that although everyone in her hometown would benefit from Sanders' proposals, she is unsure if her fellow residents will listen. Still, many of those who did listen to Sanders' words left his rally feeling hopeful, inspired, and invigorated.

You can find more information about the rural vote and particular issues that engage rural voters here, here, here, and here. 

Hillbilly cosplay and the privilege coverup

With nearly 120,000 reviews and a 4.4-star rating among Amazon purchasers, Hillbilly Elegy seems to strike a fond chord with readers. The book, a memoir of J.D. Vance's life, tells the story of a young boy with Appalachian roots navigating a new world from Ohio to Yale Law School. Vance tells the story of how he, a self-labeled hillbilly, rose from the dregs of poverty to wealth through his hard work and grit. 

In 2020, Netflix released the film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy. Not having copious amounts of time as a third-year law student yet wanting to know about the new U.S. Vice President, the movie would be the perfect chance for me to verify the acclaim. Unfortunately, after watching, I am left feeling unmoved, uninspired, and frankly, disappointed in the narrative promoted by Vance. 

Shortly after beginning, Hillbilly Elegy tracks Vance while in law school. The scene occurs at a recruiting event for law students attempting to network with fancy, private firm attorneys, hoping to secure a summer internship at a big firm. Initially, I felt empathy for Vance as he attempted to fit in by ordering a glass of wine. However, Vance was immediately confounded when a server presented him with several wine varietals unfamiliar to Vance, eventually being rescued by a teacher who ordered him a Chardonnay. My empathy extended as Vance became immediately uncomfortable upon sitting for dinner because of the numerous forks at his place setting, not knowing the purpose of each.

Vance's story is similar to mine. Raised by a single mom and surviving thanks to government assistance, I was utterly unprepared for law school. It seemed like all my classmates had parents who were doctors, lawyers, or white-collar professionals. For them, it seemed like law school was second nature. However, law school was a new world for someone like me—raised by a minimum-wage-earning office secretary. Like Vance, I was ultimately and utterly "a fish out of water."

While most viewers might continue watching this networking scene in Hillbilly Elegy, feeling sorry for Vance, I had a different reaction. I felt pity for Vance, but not because of his awkward situation; instead, I felt pity for Vance because I knew how the story ended. I knew who Vance would become. 

For all intents and purposes, Vance defied the odds and became successful through hard work. His rise is objectively admirable. However, I believe Vance is a cosplayer at best and a traitor to his people at worst. Vance grew up in suburban Ohio, two generations removed from living in the Appalachian hills. Although he self-designates himself a hillbilly, that designation is suspect and laughable to some critics.

Even worse than Vance's cosplay as a hillbilly when it benefits him, Vance actively engages in harmful rhetoric against his so-called people. He describes the impoverished as lazy burdens on the system. If Vance were a hillbilly, perhaps he might understand that laziness has nothing to do with the poverty experienced by poor white folk in rural America.

In my opinion, Vance is not a hillbilly. He does not deserve that title. I believe Vance only calls himself a hillbilly for one reason—to preclude accusations of privilege, as if privilege diminishes his accomplishments. 

Vance is privileged. Returning to the movie's dinner scene, Vance, upon seeing the multiple forks, retires to the hallway to ask Usha (his then-girlfriend and now wife) how to approach the dilemma. Returning to a table of classmates and prominent attorneys, Vance tells the table a little about himself. Vance goes on to talk about military service and attending The Ohio State University for his undergraduate degree, leading to one of the attorneys asking Vance if he was a "redneck."

To me, this dinner scene is perfectly illustrative of the privilege Vance has as a white man. When Vance returns to the table, he is seen and treated by the others as one of them, starting on a level playing field. Nevertheless, while Vance's sex and skin color entitle him to a favorable baseline opinion from the others, those belonging to minority groups often start far below in the esteem of the group, only to be deemed an equal by them proving themselves worthy. As Vance's statements and reactions to the group's questions grow more abrasive and subjectively rude, it is by sheer grace, and ultimately privilege, that he is offered an interview from someone at the table.

Hillbilly Elegy tells more than a story about an individual achieving the American Dream. The memoir tells the story of privilege, that despite considerable adversity, sometimes being white does mean that "you'll be all right."

Death of the American Dream for rural America

Is the American Dream ("the Dream") dead? The Dream posits that success results from work and sacrifice rather than the circumstances in which one is born. However, in recent years, some have argued that the so-called Dream is illusory, used only as a "strategic and intricate device crafted to keep you where you are." Antagonists propose that the Dream only adds wealth to the rich while keeping dream-chasers on the hamster wheel. 

The Dream can be measured by analyzing generational mobility, which refers to whether an individual's social and economic opportunities depend upon their parents' income or social status. Less generational mobility suggests that the Dream is dead or dying, and more mobility indicates the opposite. Upward mobility means that an individual was born to parents in the bottom 25% of income earners and that they later fall within the top 25% of income earners in America. 

According to most data, residents of rural counties are more likely to be persistently poor, with at least a 20 percent poverty rate persisting for at least 30 years. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, "In terms of poverty, college attainment, teenage births, divorce, death rates from heart disease and cancer, reliance on federal disability insurance and male labor-force participation, rural counties now rank the worst."

According to some researchers, five factors directly correlate with generational mobility: (1) residential segregation, (2) income inequality, (3) school quality, (4) social capital, and (5) family structure. Rural counties have lower incomes, levels of educational attainment, life expectancies, and limited access to health insurance and healthcare providers than their urban counterparts. Why, then, do some rural counties have the highest upward mobility rates in the country but also some of the lowest? 

Perhaps another factor—the ease of migration from rural communities to urban ones—can explain this seeming disparity. Is the solution to "attaining" the Dream to be born into a rural community and leave as soon as possible for an urban one? If leaving is the only answer, should the Dream even be considered a dream?

Supposing that achieving the Dream for rural people is premised on leaving their community, each pursuit diminishes the Dream for those left behind. If the best and brightest pursue education or economic opportunities elsewhere, growth remains stagnant for the home community. Published by The Sun, a U.C. Davis law student references Fresno's inability to attract educated professionals, a phenomenon called "brain drain," the migration of educated and skilled individuals away from their home region. His solution to attract young professionals includes increasing career opportunities, housing, arts, entertainment, and sports.

While stagnant growth may be one side effect of the Dream, one more insidious issue is the Dream's tarnishing effect. If everyone can succeed, why do unsuccessful people exist? Like Vice President J.D. Vance, proponents of the Dream argue that lack of success results from laziness. However, those proponents forget what the evidence proves—a lack of resources impacts the likelihood of success. Often, proponents of the Dream ignore their privilege to bolster their ego and achievements.

Like most things, the Dream may be aspirational in most parts of America. Nevertheless, it seemingly impedes and damages rural America's vitality. It is okay to recognize that dreams vary between people and places. Arguably, for rural America, the question is not whether the Dream is dead but whether it should be.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just for urbanites: how Trump’s war on DEI will harm rural communities

Since his inauguration, President Trump has made it no secret that he intends to go after programs supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion ("DEI"). In the span of only a few weeks, Trump has repealed a handful of executive orders promoting DEI in the workplace. Notable among these is Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which required federal contractors to "take affirmative action" to ensure that their employees were treated without regard to "race, creed, color, or national origin." 

To further his anti-DEI mission, President Trump has issued a slew of his own Executive Orders, including one on January 21, 2025, entitled Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity. In this Order, President Trump proclaims that DEI undermines the "traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement" and exchanges these values for "an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system."

Perhaps no group in the United States is more familiar with these "traditional American values of hard work" than the American working class, which largely overlaps with rural populations. However, rather than President Trump's anti-DEI stance protecting the interests of the working class, his war on DEI is more likely to disproportionately harm poor, rural communities.

In particular, gutting DEI initiatives will inhibit educational access for rural people. For example, Lane Wendell Fischer, a self-described "cisgender white man from Kansas" writing for The Daily Yonder, described how he has personally benefited from DEI programs. As a rural college applicant from a working class background, Fischer had accepted his fate of eternally paying off student loan debt in order to earn a college degree. However, he was encouraged to apply to an Ivy League school, and was accepted into Yale University with a near-full ride scholarship in part due to a DEI initiative designed to recruit rural students.

Fischer emphasizes the importance of rural representation in higher education and beyond. Without rural students in higher education, how will rural interests be represented in companies providing healthcare or insurance to their communities? Who will bring the rural perspective to authoritative bodies, such as Congress? 

Similarly, who will provide legal representation to rural communities? Given that many rural areas have become legal deserts, a lack of DEI initiatives prioritizing rural representation in schools will exacerbate the already existing lawyer shortage.

Further, President Trump's mission to root out DEI will not only impact educational access in rural communities, but will restrict environmental justice initiatives as well. For example, the President has revoked Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority and Low-Income Populations, which directed federal agencies to center environmental justice and address "disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects" on minority and low-income populations.

So far, President Trump has already begun eliminating funding and positions related to environmental projects, including those designed to aid small communities. While projects which have already received funding are in the clear, those for which funds were pending will suffer. 

Examples of the communities that may be impacted include places like Danville, Arkansas, where a 122 mile EF-4 tornado rampaged the county in 2008. Because Danville is a poor, rural community, $2.5 million in federal funds was allocated to build a school tornado shelter.

In an interview with CNN, Professor Robert Bullard, a sociologist dubbed "the father of environmental justice," poignantly stated, "it's not DEI (to have) the right to breathe clean air (or) drink clean water." Unfortunately, the politicization of DEI will only serve to exaggerate rural vulnerabilities and disproportionately restrict the rights and resources rural people require to survive and thrive.

Cowboy boots & Carhartt: The revitalization of cowboy couture

I bought my first pair of cowboy boots when I was in the first grade. I wanted to be like Jesse from Toy Story, I told my parents. Fast forward to my freshman year of high school, I found myself buying a new pair from Ariat when we went to visit my grandparents in Houston, Texas. I wore them proudly to country concerts at the Shoreline Amphitheatre and “ironically” to Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park. 

My infatuation with “cowboy couture” took a hiatus until college. During my sophomore year, I came home for break one year wearing a green Carhartt hoodie. My dad, born and raised in Houston, asked me why I was dressed like my cousins who go hunting, fishing, and mudding on the weekends. I told him it’s what everyone was wearing, but I had no idea why. 

To this day, cowboy boots and Carhartt hoodies are back and bigger than ever. From the streets of Copenhagen to Gen Z on TikTok, it is now socially acceptable to wear cowboy boots to a night out with friends or a camo hat to the farmers market. Camo hats have also taken over, most recently seen during Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign. MSNBC said it best when reporting on Vice President Harris’s choice to make camo hats her main piece of campaign merch: 

While camouflage never truly exits the general fashion milieu, it’s enjoying a real moment. This is especially true for men’s fashion, so-called Carhartt-core, in its embrace of ‘90s-era military trends and a subversion of traditionally masculine pieces that perpetually exist outside of high-end fashion.

How did cowboy boots and so-called “workwear” go from a necessity to a fashion statement? American cowboy boots date back to the late 1800s—right around the end of the civil war. According to Buffalo Jackson Trading Co., cowboy boots were made of “thick leather to protect the cowboy’s ankles from bruising against his wooden stirrups, as well as to keep his legs from rubbing against the stirrup leathers.” In short, cowboy boots were made for practical reasons. 

After the rise of cowboy-themed television shows and movies like Big Valley (my personal favorite) and the influence of John Wayne during the 20th century, cowboy boots and camo print have somehow found their way into mainstream media. Gen Z TikTok influencers like Annie Paventy have described wearing cowboy boots as “effortless and chic.” But why is Gen Z’s obsession with cowboy couture a problem? 

The answer is (somewhat) clear: Cowboy boots were built for cowboys. Cowboy boots were, and are, considered a “survival tool." They were made to keep a person’s feet secure while they are riding a horse. Dixie’s perfectly outlines the purpose of cowboy boots here: 

The boot’s iconic heel helped a cowboy keep his feet in the stirrups; the height of the leather protected sensitive parts of the leg from chafing or other hazards while riding. 

Although some may not have a problem with more people wearing traditionally “working class” brands and articles of clothing, some see this as “class appropriation,” a lesser-defined form of cultural appropriation where the wealthy dress like the working class. It seems like cowboy boots, and other clothing associated with the working class, used to serve a purpose. The “appropriation of working class attire” like Carhartt highlights how certain brands used to signify a “working class, blue collar identity” and now signify a kind of “stylish streetwear.” 

Wearing cowboy boots could also be seen as another example of “rural cosplay.” Most recently, newly-elected Vice President J.D. Vance was called an “Appalachian Pretender” by Newsweek, for playing into Appalachian stereotypes in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. 

This “rural cosplay” perpetuates the differences between urbanites and ruralites. By wearing clothing that they see as “rural,” urbanites may pretend that they live more simply than they actually do. For example, Isha Nicole, creative director and vice president of marketing at Boot Barn, stated in a Footwear News article from March of 2024: 

“As technology, overstimulation and skepticism continue to spike, a yearning for simplicity and purpose will continue to permeate through self-expression,” she explained. “Western fashion is symbolic of the iconic American cowboy’s spirit — channeling untamed freedom, tenacity and rebellion.”

A counter to the idea of “class appropriation” may be that wearing workwear is appealing simply because of the quality of the clothing, and more people are becoming aware of this. Personally, my Carhartt hoodie’s quality has remained the same since 2018, except for a couple bleach stains. Still, the growing number of celebrities and urbanites wearing brands like Carhartt has increased the prices of workwear which undoubtedly makes it more difficult for people in rural areas and those who earn lower wages to afford the clothes that they wear every day. 

Gen Z probably doesn’t intend to appropriate workwear, but this still might not mean that it’s okay. Perhaps we should all think a little more before we buy a pair of cowboy boots or a Carhartt jacket.