Hillbilly - the True American

Text & Image: Helena Peters

My friends and I started discussing the word hillbilly, as one does at a bar. 

I became increasingly worried discussing this word, as I associate something negative with the word hillbilly and wasn’t sure if it was insensitive and ignorant to use. But my friend said she disagreed as the word for her was just an objective description; this is how we started off our discussion. 

To understand the word better and to see where we stand regarding its usage, I wanted to look into the history of hillbillies and ask my American family for the personal association they have to it  to get a bigger picture of it.

A hillbilly, according to the Oxford dictionary is: “a person from a mountainous area of the US who has a simple way of life and is considered to be slightly stupid by people living in towns and cities”. This aligned with my understanding of the word, and I read the definition out loud to prove my point that night. My confidence in stating this definition really showcased my personal prejudices and the false ideas I had developed. Saying that I agree with this definition sets a border between me and “them” (the hillbillies as a group). Are Hillbillies actually so real that I'm able to call them a group, or is it only something imagend? Now, writing this after speaking with my American relatives and researching online for answers, I present you my journey, which is up for further exploration.

Through some further reading the word became an entity of description through the Scottish settlers in the united states of america. These were the first to be called hillbillies, due to the common name William and their living situations in the hills in Scotland and Appalachia. But this still didn't explain how the word developed into an overgeneralization within American ideals. 

To cut into the root of the word, I thought talking to the older American generation would be helpful. I asked my grandfather and grandmother who live in Boston, and my grandmother who lives in California, and both came up with a description of hillbillies that points to an idea of a less developed human. “They need less to make them happy it seems” and “we judge them to be more undereducated and underemployed but they work much harder at more physical jobs.” I believe this last sentence from my grandfather explains my point yet again. The perspective on hillbillies usually relates to something negative and lesser. Yet the understanding of their culture and their being is not perceived or explored enough from their perspective. 

My grandparents also added that their perspective was also built upon television shows. My grandmother even explained how she, as an elementary school teacher, had a difficult time teaching kids in southern Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati as many parents of these kids lived “the hillbilly lifestyle” and did not have aspirations for kids to leave their town or enter the “educated” workforce. 

In its socially created definition, hillbillies are on the lower end of the scale of a gradual evolutionary line of the American dream: at the beginning. The starting point: uneducated, poor and living far out in the country. The question still stands what hillbillies actually are, or if they even exist as they are painted out to be. Ideas about hillbillies come from culturally reinforced narratives, like in television as my grandmother put it: “To be honest, I think of Hillbillies as they were portrayed in this sitcom I grew up with in the 1960s: “The Beverly Hillbillies”. 

Yet, an actual perspective from a hillbilly, as they are defined, ceased to exist fully. Why is this the case? Are they only an imagined community, created in American society? Or are there concrete groups we can call hillbillies? 

When I spoke to my American grandparents I got a well deserved first answer to my question of what impressions they had of the characteristics of hillbillies. My grandfather said that “characterizing a group always comes with the risk of generalization and stereotyping”

Thus the question of what American culture entails keeps floating in my mind. 

The thought of cowboys and country music comes to mind. American society, the American identity, it’s an interesting one to look at and analyze. American society is built on lies and terror. Even the idea of cowboys has its white supremist roots. Most cowboys were not even white and the idea just like the hillbilly developed over time into something so different and fictional. The idea of the cowboy as a white settler came at the same time as the idea of a hillbilly. The history of the states has successfully created a false whiter past with these ideas. It allows white Americans to connect to their supposed history and feel proud to be american. 

As time goes by, American culture loses its credentials, more and more discrimination gets uncovered and defeated. What are Americans without white power? The white-claim and commodification of cowboy/hillbilly culture shows how white Americans desperately need something to define themselves and their culture. One could argue that the idea of a hillbilly is all that is left in being a true white American.