Thanks for your post.  It is very informative for those who live outside the Appalachia region.  There was another recent diary on Appalachia that was cross-posted on bluenc and raisingkaine.  I was moved to share the following story in a comment on the bluenc post.  Sorry this is so long, but it seems to put a good topper on vadare’s post.

I live in Abingdon, Virginia near the TN line at Bristol.  For perspective to those unfamiliar with the area, we are a two hour drive south of Roanoke, Virginia and just under two hours north from Knoxville, TN.  Abingdon is the home of Congressman Boucher.  As for me, I am a 44 year old white male attorney that attended Virginia Tech (also in the Fightin' Ninth) and UVA Law.  My wife (37-White) and I spent a lot of our younger years in the coalfields, and in fact, both of my wife's parents were coal miners.  In short, we know the area well.  We became supporters of Sen Obama last fall.

Prior to the Virginia Primary, we purchased a load of Obama signage, stickers, etc from demstore.com, obtained from the Obama campaign a list of area residents who had donated to Obama, and contacted them and others in the area who were involved in area groups on Obama's website.  On the Saturday before the Virginia Primary about 12 volunteers gathered at Exit 7 in Bristol, the highest traffic area in southwest Virginia south of Roanoke, and stood along the Exit ramps and in the general commercial area waving signs and handing Obama stickers to folks as they stopped at the bottom of the Exit ramps.  (Remarkably, the State and City Police saw us and said nothing!).  We gave out several hundred stickers over the course of five hours.  We sent a few of our group with signs to Abingdon to cover the entrance of the community college where Bill Clinton spoke that afternoon to a crowd of around 2,500.

The majority of the people we encountered at Exit 7 expressed neither support nor rejection.  If we saw 5,000 people that day, I would guess that 4,000 of them tried to not make eye contact, 950 were supportive, took stickers, and gave us a thumbs up, and the other 50 were very rude.  I had a few people flip me off, including a couple in a Lexus who were in their 70s and BOTH of whom gave me the one finger salute.  That was funny.  A younger guy in a pick-up yelled at me from across the road "N#@%^* lover!"  An old lady called my wife stupid.  Those were the exceptions, though.  One older couple actually pulled over, rolled down their window, and said that they were considering Obama but needed to know if he was a Muslim.  My wife and I decided that if nothing else came out of the day, we at least educated two confused people.  Of course, Barack lost our immediate area in the Primary as well, but I would have liked to have seen the results if Barack has visited us like Bill Clinton did.

Since the Primary, my wife and I ride around with our Obama bumper stickers, and our parents, all of whom are life long democrats in their 60s and 70s kind of shake their heads at us and wonder where they went wrong.  They are, in short, racist, including my Dad who spent a career as a Bank President.  At some level, I think our parents cannot believe that their Party has left them with having to choose between a woman and black!  However, in their world the woman is the easier choice.

My Dad's friends are just like him, too, and I am sure that he is embarrassed that I run around with my bumper sticker out for everyone to see!  While all of his friends who gather daily at Hardee's to solve the world's problems are strong supporters of Rep. Boucher, they are openly dismayed that he would actually endorse Obama.  They question whether he realizes that there are very few blacks in southwest Virginia.  My wife and I recently saw Congressman Boucher, told him that I appreciated his support for Sen. Obama, and that I was know it took courage on his part to do so.  He acknowledged that he realized that it was not the most popular choice for his district.  I wonder if my Dad and others like him have considered that Rep. Boucher may have a very good reason to choose Sen. Obama over Clinton given that he was in Congress throughout the Clinton presidency?

I relay all of this to you not because I am especially proud of my heritage or the attitudes of my family and neighbors.  For them, it is simply a generational thing, and they truly cannot appreciate that they are racists.  For my part, I am so proud that I have this opportunity to support Obama as an object lesson for our kids.  One of my sons, who is 14, is actually wearing an Obama "Hope" bracelet everyday and is enjoying the ribbing he is getting from his friends, most of whom fall in the evangelic right category.  Even his Mom, from whom I am divorced (shoo!), keeps questioning my son about whether Obama is really a Muslim.  (To no surprise, she's a Huckabee lover because he's a preacher and must be God's chosen one.)  For what it's worth, I have made all our kids listen to Obama's speech on religion.

Just today I had another conversation with a Republican Doctor friend who was shocked to hear that I was supporting Sen. Obama.  His first comment was that Obama was nothing more than a speech and didn’t take a stand on any issue.  I challenged him to ask me what Obama’s position was on ANY issue, and I could tell him exactly where Obama stood.  He declined to ask.  He later admitted that he really enjoyed hearing Obama speak, but really did not think he could ever get over the Muslim name or the black skin.  Again, this person was a physician who was educated and trained in Michigan, not Appalachia.

I relay this information with the hope that it will somehow be informative to folks like you who study these kind of things.  Maybe it will help you and others craft an appropriate campaign to reach this "underbelly" of Appalachia that is still one generation removed from enlightenment.  I am hopeful that Barack will find his way to southwest Virginia during the campaign, because it is also a truism about the folks of this area that seeing and meeting someone different from them does make a positive impact, and it really would change the minds of many if they could see him in person.  My wife and I drove the four hours to Columbia, SC and shared with Obama his victory celebration in the South Carolina primary.  While we did not get to shake his hand, we did get to experience him first hand, and we hope to see him again, with our children, many times in the future.

In closing, I will share a story that demonstrates the Hope that I have for our corner of Appalachia.  Before Barack's victory speech in South Carolina, we stood elbow to elbow in the crowd with African-Americans all around us.  At one point a chant started that was probably the most moving thing that I have ever experienced in my 44 years.  The crowd of blacks, whites, latinos and asians suddenly began chanting "Race Doesn't Matter."  Tears actually came to my and my wife's eyes as we proudly chanted along with the crowd.  While we had to return home after that fully aware that in our area "Race DOES Matter," we were happy knowing that our children would most likely not judge a person based on the color of their skin.  For, that we have HOPE.