Affrilachian Culture

Affrilachian Voice: Celebrations of Truth and Culture

One cultural identity resistant to mainstream social persuasion among rural populations resides in the consciousness of Appalachian Mountain African Americans self-described as Affrilachians in which African Americans from this region are not trying to create an altogether new identity based on fight in the South or flight to the North, but are rather reinforcing and enriching an old identity. Because of the unique Appalachian cultural and regional environment, African Americans experienced less slavery, socio-economic stratification, and discrimination; subsequently they experienced more independence, opportunity, and cultural cohesion. Affrilachians are self-determined in their
The owner replied, ‘The mountains are high, and the Emperor lives far away.’” The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has delineated Appalachia to include thirteen states and more than four hundred counties (Turner 11). The environment is well recognized as containing the most biologically diverse mountain systems on the continent. The diversity of this regional span in terms of its geography, ecology, ethnicities, and cultures and their interactions with each other is difficult to grasp. Reflections of their environment and “despite a popular opinion to the contrary, Appalachia is as extraordinarily heterogeneous economically, socially, and culturally as it is ecologically” (Hay 9). Burkhard Bilger of the New Yorker called the Appalachians, “a kind of cultural Galapagos.” At the very least, finally someone is noticing the multiplicity of this extensive domain. It would seem that most of the “Emperor’s kingdom,” the outsiders, have not been able to scale the mountain wall surrounding Appalachia to see what is really like
In his One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture, John Shelton Reed argues that members of a regional community share more than geographic space; “they share a common identity, a common history that binds them together as a people” (Reed 4). American sociologist Robert Bellah defines a community as a group which retains a “community of memory” (Taylor). From these viewpoints, communities are shaped by memories, and of the telling and retelling of those memories over time. So instead of seeing Appalachia as a geographical place or myopic racial viewpoint, we could analyze the region in terms of interfacing and interaction. We could have the freedom to accept identity on the basis of shared encounters within community of culture. In this way, the location of one mountain or the foothills or even the flat lands will not constrain or restrain our vision of who we are. We can revise and claim identity based on our scrapbooking of memories and sharing those savored moments with others who appreciated them. This new conceptual mode of envisioning Appalachian identity has practical implications for sustaining the people of the region by controlling “the kinds of political, socioeconomic, educational, professional, and social support our governments and communities provide”