Delivered from West Virginia

I must admit that Morgantown, West Virginia surprised me. I had never been to the state before last month, and while I had more nuanced expectations than the images from the film Deliverance, as a New Yorker I had prepared myself for some serious culture shock. As I began to talk to different people and hear about their experiences of race, I got a much more discordant and interesting view of the place.

I drove with some family from Washington, DC to Morgantown on a Friday night, and after checking into a hotel near the university’s football stadium (a bit of luxury compliments of my aunt and uncle before a week of “roughing it” on my cousin’s couch). We all went to dinner on the outskirts of the town at a chain seafood restaurant. It was hard to get much of an impression of the town initially in the dark, but the area where we went to eat had that suburban plaza familiarity. Our dinner spot was one in a line of national and regional chain restaurants, banks, gas stations and grocery stores.

The clientele seemed to be mostly, if not exclusively, white, but there was a bit more racial/ethnic diversity among the restaurants’ large front-end staff. Our waiter was a friendly young man from nearby Gaithersburg, Maryland who had spent five years at the West Virginia University and stayed in Morgantown looking for work after graduating. My aunt’s family lives near Gaithersburg also and began chatting with our waiter about restaurants and schools in the area. Our waiter got to talking about his high school. When he attended, it was a “really good” school, he said. But now, well, things had deteriorated. Yes, my cousin agreed, he’d heard that some of the schools in that area were having trouble. Our waiter looked very concerned, and told us about how much his alma mater had changed, and how upset all his friends were about it. He lowered his voice just a little and stood closer to our table.

           

“When I was there,” he said, “it was almost all white. But now, it’s majority black and there are lots of Hispanics, it’s a mess.” He gave a commiserative look around the table.

           

“There are so many problems at that school now, you know?”

I was stunned… not necessarily by the sentiment, but by the candor. Because we all appeared white, he felt confident enough that he could share his view on this with strangers and that we would, first, understand that an increase in the number of ethnic/ racial minorities corresponds to an increase in “trouble” at the school, and second, agree with the assessment.

So, I thought, this is what West Virginia is going to be like. This was a pretty silly and premature generalization, of course. I felt uncomfortable and fell back on my stereotypes-- not at all dissimilar from what my interviewees later did. An example I was given twice was something to the effect of, “If I’m in bad traffic, someone cuts me off, and I look over and see an Asian person, I think, oh, of course.” I hear what I considered a fairly racist statement, but when I’m in West Virginia, I think, oh, of course.

It’s just not as simple as all that, no place is. Certainly there are areas where racism is much more socially acceptable than others, but we can’t call out whole states or regions. Morgantown, West Virginia has been shaped in recently decades by the university that contributes some 30,000 students to its population. Many people I interviewed told me that Morgantown was a very tolerant place because of the presence of the university and the diversity it attracts. But, almost all qualified, go outside of the town and it’s a very different story.

           

Honestly, it was a little difficult to find local Morgantowners to interview. To hunt down the locals in a thriving college town, I figured my best bet was to ask professionals, shop-owners and employees, as well as folks on the street and in cafes. This turned out to be pretty hit or miss, but I did get some really interesting interviews (which you will be able to read on our website soon!) from both people who had grown up in West Virginia, and those who had come for the university.

I met a young white woman who had had trouble finding a place to live with her black boyfriend, because, she believed, landlords couldn’t accept a biracial couple. During a very brief interview at a bus stop, I heard from a former coal-miner who had not been allowed to ride “whites only” buses or attend white schools. I also talked to the head of the Muslim Student Association who had grown up in West Virginia and said racism wasn’t a “major issue” for him. 

I wish I had been able to spend more time in Morgantown and had the opportunity to talk to more people. I felt unsure at times that I was really getting a feel for the town, not just the university campus. The voices I did hear, however, were an interesting cacophony. They reminded me how easy it is to fall back on stereotypes, whether of a group of people, or a place, and how useless those stereotypes can be.

Sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in Race Monologues in Morgantown. Your stories will help to patch together our understanding of how race is experienced in this country today. And a special thanks to my cousin for dousing his futon in Lysol before letting me crash there.