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I grew up in Central PA, and I have some nerdy historical/sociological analysis to offer as to why it's a bad idea to use the term #pennsyltucky to criticize racism. https://twitter.com/lara_putnam/status/1277811057520762883
As @lara_putnam shows in her fantastic thread, the communities that are included in the term #Pennsyltucky are internally diverse and complicated. There have been BLM protests across the state, in some of the most unlikely places. Why ignore the voices of those people?
But this is NOT to say that the communities of central PA, like communities everywhere in the US, have liberated themselves from the nation's history of racial inequality and bigotry.
In my experience, #Pennsyltucky is a term more well-off white people in PA use to put down less well-off people in central PA by saying "THEY are the racists ones, whereas *people like me* are not that way at all." That last claim almost always does NOT pertain to the speaker.
The #Pennsyltucky diss also partakes in a dumb northern habit of associating racism with the South. As if Kentucky is where the racism was born & PA was always free of that. The histories of KY & PA are indeed different, but it's hardly the case that PA has no history of racism.
Put most simply, #Pennsyltucky is a term more well off racists use to blame a) poor people and b) the South for racism and avoid looking in the mirror. It's textbook projection.
Nothing in this thread is intended to absolve the bigotry recently exhibited by people who live in Central PA. It should be called out and scorned. But using a term like #Pennsyltucky to do that work is, IMHO, just replicating a history of genteel racism.
