Mountain Rose's History

In the well over years long work to get here, I have had to ask myself some serious questions. The first being, what am I doing on the Internet and why should anyone listen to me? What is my goal?

I always wanted to teach and share stories. Hearing the stories of my past family members and things that happened a long time ago, always spoke to me and my quest for identity. This idea that being White in America has no complications or any set backs, is a tool of propaganda used by White Supremacy as a way of sinking their hooks into poor whites. When you don’t know your history and you are suffering, it is easy to fall for their lies. When you are poor and white, it certainly doesn’t feel like life is easy. That is the trick, right?

Rural America’s relationship with the republican party is an abusive one. That is what it is like being poor and white in America. It is confusing, but all the tools, history, and critical thinking skills aren’t taught to you. We are currently raising our children to pass tests, and not to be thinking, feeling, and actual functioning Americans. Then the blue states that have well funded schools, libraries, and have access to supportive care; get mad because they don’t have that problem here. It has to be different in the red states, they want life like this.

No, they don’t. They are very angry and for damn good reason, but their abuser is telling them that you are the enemy. They will quickly believe it because of all the terrible things said by democrats and their followers alike. ‘You are dumb, hateful, and unworthy of understanding, it’s not our fault you are stupid.’

It is our fault as Dems, though. We are just as guilty as anyone in allowing our country slide in to ignorance and poverty. When school funding was cut time and time again where were the parents protesting in mass? When we saw books coming home talking about how slavery had taught them skills, why didn’t we go burn down the Texas School board that approves almost all the books used in the south? Why didn’t we demand more for our teachers?

That is the thing about being in an abusive relationship, you don’t know that you are in one until its too late. Once you are in it, it feels impossible to get out. Trust me, I know. It is so hard to see the lies for what they are, when you are constantly being fed the same lie over and over again. It reminds me of women who watch Lifetime movies saying that would never happen to them or anyone they know. I tell them it happened to me, my Aunt, my bio-mom, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and so on. They look at me me as if I come from a defective blood line. When I tell them that I am just being honest and that it will happen to approximately 10 million in the US people every year, they believe that I am lying (NIH). It is far easier to think its their problem, because that allows you abdicate responsibility.

This is what I am here for. To teach everyone on the beautiful complicated story that is the History of North Carolina and Southern Appalachia. I promise that I will keep most of my content free. The important stuff anyway. I want the children and adults of North Carolina and Southern Appalachia to be proud of what is worth being proud of, and learn from our ancestor’s past mistakes. I don’t want to simplify, I want to teach history honestly and messily. I want to do this because it feds my soul, and I want every Appalachian/American to see themselves in the story of America. All Americans deserve to feel like they belong and their families helped build this country, because despite what current history would have you believe, it did take all of us to build this land. It will take all of us to save it.

How do you combat what is going on in America today? For me it is teaching the truth, with compassion, and pushing for critical thinking skills. American History is just as complex as her people, shouldn’t we be teaching her honestly? Any time you erase one part of the story, it quickly becomes a fictional tale more akin to propaganda. And we the American people deserve better. All of us.