Delmarva Today 5-20-22
Harold Wilson’s guest is author and lecturer Joe Belden. Joe is the former Deputy Executive Director of The Housing Assistance Counsel, a national rural housing support organization. He currently lectures on issues affecting rural communities for the American University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and is the author of Dirt Rich, Dirt Poor: America’s Food and Farm Crisis.
They discuss the current rural-urban divide so much in the news today and reflect on the Washington Post- Kaiser Family Foundation Rural Divide Survey conducted in 2017. The survey found the divide to be based on fairness rooted in rural resident’s concern about the nation’s changing demographics, the sense that Christianity is under siege, and that the Federal Government caters more to urban residents. Rural people say, according to the survey, that their values are different from city dwellers. The survey found that there is a deep-seated kinship in rural America coupled with a stark sense of estrangement from people who live in urban areas.
Are these the issues at the heart of the divide and how do they play out in the political, cultural, and economic life of the country today? Are the findings of the survey representative of your understanding of rural people and the current rural/urban divide?