Hillbillies and Rednecks; Or, Why Kentucky Does Not Suck

I am from this area. I'll just get that out there right away.

I was born in Northern Kentucky to parents who lived in Cincinnati. A fluke, I suppose, as they might just have been in Cincinnati at the moment my mother went into labor and - poof! - I would have been born a Cincinnatian. Shortly after my birth, we moved from Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky (Latonia, to be specific), and I spent the next 18 years of my life living in different parts of Northern Kentucky. And miracle of miracles, I think I turned out as an adult who is not toothless, shoeless, overall-clad, redneck, prone to outbursts of "Golly Gee!," cornhole-obssessed, nor married to a cousin.

So it annoys me like nothing else when people in Cincinnati talk about Kentucky like it's the hinterlands or like everyone in Kentucky is a stupid redneck and the whole state is some vast backwater that takes you hours and hours to get to from your precious homes in the vast Cincinnati metropolitan area. Kentucky is all of about 2 minutes from downtown Cincinnati (depending on which bridge you're crossing and how fast you're driving), so it's hardly any further than driving from downtown to any trendy neighborhood in the outlying areas like Oakley, Hyde Park, or Mt Adams.

The distance issue aside, what I find most frustrating when I hear people disparage Kentucky or Kentuckians is that it puts me in a position of suggesting Cincinnati is no better - or even worse in some ways. And I like Cincinnati. I live here, for Christ's sake, and I live downtown for the very reason that I care about and want to support the growth and expansion of this city.

I really want to understand why Cincinnatians think so little of Kentuckians. We're co-mingling all the time in this area because we're so close, and from my perspective, we're really pretty similar in most ways. Yet I saw comments online this week about the people in the Newport Kroger being dumb and toothless. Really? I wasn't there, so maybe there were some dumb and dentally-challenged people there. But it seems like when Cincinnatians have any interaction in Northern Kentucky, issues like this come out as supposedly pithy comments. Nevermind that maybe the grocery store is in a very economically depressed neighborhood and maybe some of the people in the grocery store can barely afford the groceries they're there to buy much less extensive dental care (I am taking this one example too far, and I will stop).

I've been lucky enough to travel a lot for my job over the years. I've been around this country many times over to places I'd never otherwise have known existed much less been able to visit. What I've seen is everywhere has its share of idiots, geniuses, hillbillies, cosmopolitans, and the people who fall somewhere in between each. And somehow most of these places are the richer for it...it's sad to me that Cincinnatians, for all their promise, don't seem to be so open-minded about their neighbors.