After viewing a recommended video about the Ward Brothers from a small town called Munnsville, NY not far from us, I have decided I need to write something about the stigmas that are associated with country and farming people.
The name of the documentary is called “Brother’s Keeper”. Brother’s Keeper is a 1992 documentary directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The film is about an alleged 1990 murder in the village of Munnsville, New York.
The film contrasts two groups of society; people from rural areas and those from larger cities.
This whole documentary has sparked a whole train of thought and conversation about the perceptions people have from one group to another, one location over another, one way of life over another and how differently people are treated based on some of these differences.
I have almost always lived in the country, mainly in dairy-farming areas. I have seen the sense of community shown within this documentary. It’s amazing how different small towns are. People stay around their own homes more often than not but, when it comes to someone within their community needing help, it’s all hands on deck. People whom you have rarely seen come to assist if someone loses a home to something like fire. People pull together as a community over tragedies like accidental death.
Seeing as how I lived for a short couple of years within a small college community, I will express what I have seen as a major difference. Neighbors have no idea who lives next door to them. They pass each other on the street without so much as a passing glance and if you do make eye contact and smile in someone’s direction people get suspicious of you. This is coming from a female. It takes a very long time to establish relationships, if ever, with the people who live within the same block. People are distrusting and suspect every movement, look or word.
In my more recent years, I have moved back into a rural, dairy-farming community. It isn’t as closely knit for me, being an immigrant to the area, but I still know my neighbors and most of the residents within the town by first name. Communities are not the same as they once were, but for the most part it’s still a close-knit area. Since we have established the farm again, we have been seeing more and more people come from the city areas to visit. They come to see the animals, maybe do some fishing in our pond or to just come out and see the scenery.
One group of men, who are contractors from New York City and Long Island, came this last fall. During their visits, some of the stigmas they had placed on country people came into conversation. One in particular came out and told us that he didn’t think country people even had access to the internet and didn’t know how to use computers. He also felt that we weren’t up to date on current events because we didn’t have cable television. As we sat discussing when we joined the technology age, he was shocked that we had computers before he did and that we had joined the smart phone age when he had yet to do so himself.
Furthering the conversation, one of the other men came out and expressed his shock over the intelligence expressed in our house. Not only were we up to date with current events but we had massive knowledge on things he never considered. Some of those examples were crops, yields, soil improvements, and typical farm things that most farm families know and put into working knowledge. Other things that baffled his mind was that I, a female, know how to work on four wheelers, tractors and automobiles.
I admit, I may be a little rare in my tomboy ways but I know lots of women who do these types of things out of necessity. We, and I am saying this loosely as a country girl, have to know how to do many things. Many of us shoot guns, go hunting and fishing, work on difference mechanical things and we also know the basics of construction, plumbing and electrical “stuff”.
The question is…Am I treated differently? You bet I am. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told to act for like a lady, that I should “dress up” more often and that I should find a nice desk job all because I was born with a vagina and breasts. Do I do things differently? You bet I do. I am an independent women who can raise my own food, hunt or fish for it if need be and can fix my own vehicle. Am I intelligent? I don’t know but I can tell you this…I can sit in meetings, talk with college professors about things that 99% of the population has no clue about when it comes to renewable energy through agricultural biomass. I can research, learn and take class after class to create what I call a more education person. Do I do dumb things? All the time. I am not perfect, I don’t want to be perfect.
Do I think that people who reside in the city areas are more intelligent? On some things, I have no doubt. But, I also don’t live within a closed mind of stigmas and discrimination either. I take each person as they are. I learn about them from them, not through what society says they should be.
So what’s the moral to this blog post?
As the old saying goes, “Never judge a book by its cover”. Just because someone lives rural doesn’t mean they are any different from you are. Don’t discriminate against the individual. Country people are no different. City people are no different. People are people, no matter where they were born, what color, what sex, what religion they follow, or how old they are.
I was raised to treat people all the same. After all, don’t we all get up and put our pants on the same? We all have the same chances in life, IF we work hard enough to make our dreams come true. Don’t make someone feel inferior because of a stigma handed down through society.
Important definitions:
Discrimination is the prejudicial or distinguishing treatment of an individual based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or category, such as their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, age, disability, skin color, ethnicity, or other characteristics.
Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.
Barrows Farm 