> --- On Mon, 10/27/08, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
>> >
>> > These are all-white areas?
>>
>> Yup. The explanation I heard back when I used to hang out
>> around there
>> was that "black people just don't like the
>> hills." Genetic, I suppose.
>>
>
> I know Doug wrote that in jest, but if you go to my hometown of Welch,
> West Virginia (much hillier and more mountainous than anyplace in
> Virginia), just over the mountain than those places I mentioned, there are
> a fairly high percentage of blacks. So, the fact that those places in
> southern Virginia have so few blacks has got more to do with the lingering
> legacy of the Confederacy.
>
> -Thomas
Staunton's local weekly -- or maybe monthly? -- called Eighty One, which is named, I assume, for Interstate 81 that runs through the Western most portion of VA, featured a cover story. "What’s it like to be Black in the Valley?" Here's the link: http://www.eightyone.info/online/?p=631
The online version doesn't carry the demographic table breaking down the various cities by race, but ISTR it was ~5 - 8%, with the percentage decreasing markedly in the past few decades.
One thing that caught my attention was an interview with a young woman, 21 IIRC, who mentioned that white people would expect her to "talk black" and when she didn't, she was described by whites as "acting white." Her grandmother, also featured in the story, launched into a rant about "not acting the clown" for white folks. Interesting twist on the claim that black people accuse each other of "acting white." In this case, it was whites who made the claim, and the issue was old enough that someone who grew up in the 1920s-1940s was also familiar with the problem.
shag -- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)