The "Rural Vote"

• In Event: “All of a Sudden, Rural Is on Everyone’s Mind”: Rural Education After Trump

Abstract

Stories about the “rural vote” have been unavoidable since Trump’s election. In these stories, there is a recycled image of the rural voter—disabled, unemployed, and fed up. Stereotype threat is an academic construct shown to influence academic performance. While the rural “hillbilly” stereotype is commonplace, one must ask if the “rural vote” represents yet another stereotype threat for rural teachers and students—that is, a stereotype consistent with the rhetoric of the recent election (e.g., conservative, xenophobic, racist, etc.).

In his popular, bestselling memoir, J.D. Vance (2016) believes that “hillbillies are the toughest goddamned people on this earth,” but then questions that toughness: “Are we tough enough to look ourselves in the mirror and admit that our conduct harms our children? Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us” (p. 255). Can we engender rural learners who are proud of their rural roots while also looking in those mirrors of self-reflection? Was the “rural vote” a showcase of conservatism—or an act of revolution?

Freire (2009) explained that acts of revolution require critical awareness and that, without it, either by ambiguity or by oppression, people who “come to power...will merely imagine they have reached power” (p. 127). Have rural communities come into real or imagined power? This discussion area will address what’s at stake for rural teachers and students by examining if and how the “rural vote” represents another source of stereotype threat for rural teachers or students who will have to, as Steele (2010) suggests, engage in the “Sisyphean task” of disproving a stereotype (p. 110)? In other words, what will the “rural vote” do for rural education?


Essential Question: What does the rural vote mean for rural learners, stereotype threat, and assumptions about rural communities?

Author

• Amy Price Azano, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University