Defamation Of Native Appalachians By The Ignorant

 I just did a spontaneous Google search at about 6:25am on February 25, 2022, on the word "Appalachia" which I frequently do in order to see what might have popped up lately which I might not have encountered yet.  I found this link to a website called Facts.net  and the first question I spotted in that drop down list of questions which often come up with links from Google was this question: "Are Appalachians inbred?"  Naturally, my hackles rose quickly and I went to the site to investigate.  I found the article (if that is not too magnanimous a term to describe the drivel I found) which that link will take you to and the first thing that caught my eye was this: 

The Fugate family head, Martin Fugate, came from France to restart his life in America with a local bride. Though they were unrelated, the gene started from them. This is because both Elizabeth Smith and Martin Fugate carried the genes for it, making it impossible not to be passed down. It was their children that committed incest afterward.

It wasn’t much of a problem before. Having an inbred family was once common in the past. In the 1910s, Kentucky didn’t have easy access to transportation. Because of this, people often married their cousins instead. Nowadays, incest is a moral issue that many people debate about. However, the biggest issue regarding inbred families is not the morality of it all, but the hereditary problems that follow. (Facts.net available on February 25, 2022, at 6:25am) 

I suspect nearly every native Appalachian who reads this will tend to become just as instantaneously angry as I did.  This is something we have heard ever since the first missionary from the great industrial north came to Central and Southern Appalachia and began to tell us what all was wrong with us, our culture, our belief systems, and our lifestyles both as a culture and as individuals.  I happen to be a Hicks on both sides which I have written about on this blog post many times.  I have also often made the joke both verbally and in print that if I could ever trace my ancestry back a few more generations I would probably find "that grandpa came through the Cumberland Gap alone".  But I have also always made it clear that when my parents married about 1946 that no one in the area of Beaver Creek in Knott and Floyd counties could remember far enough back to say that they were related.  I will also say that it is not uncommon in the greater area of Central and Southern Appalachia for people with the same last name to marry and raise large families of perfectly normal children. There are numerous amazingly common last names in Appalachia but that does not mean that every person with one of those names is related to the next person they meet with the same last name.  Examples of these common last names are Hicks, Smith, Jones, Brown, White, Johnson, Jones, and Jackson just as these last names are common all over America.  But nobody ever accuses the people with those last names of being "inbred" if they live outside Appalachia. The blog post on the website above has just enough truth in it, as all blatant lies do, to appear truthful.  That is how liars have continued to exist today.   When the author of that blog post states that

The Fugate family head, Martin Fugate, came from France to restart his life in America with a local bride. Though they were unrelated, the gene started from them. This is because both Elizabeth Smith and Martin Fugate carried the genes for it, making it impossible not to be passed down. It was their children that committed incest afterward. (Fact.net, available on February 25, 2022, at 6:25am)

they are speaking both truth and half truths along with a major outright lie.  The presence of a recessive gene in two parents does not automatically mean that "it is impossible not to be passed down" .  In actual practice, inheritance of any particular gene or related genetic defect is somewhat of a crap shoot. 

In humans, genes vary in size from a few hundred DNA bases to more than 2 million bases. Every person has two copies of each gene, one inherited from each parent. Most genes are the same in all people, but a small number of genes (less than 1 percent of the total) are slightly different between people. Alleles are forms of the same gene with small differences in their sequence of DNA bases. These small differences contribute to each person’s unique physical features. (Medicine Plus , available on February 25, 2022, at 6:51am) 

It is a massive difference between 2 million DNA bases and the 20,000 to 25,000 actual genes each of us inherit and inheritance is a completely random process.  I realize that some fundamentalist religious believers might even totally deny that DNA and inheritance are facts, or they might simply say that what we inherit is a "God thing" and we have no control over it or even knowledge about it.  But, I am certain that no matter what any native Appalachian chooses to believe about DNA they do not, with incredibly rare exceptions, believe in the practice of incest as the article which prompted this entire blog post states as fact.  When I boil it down to its most basic content, I'm pissed off about this screed about the Fugate family and I suspect you are too.  It is just one more instance of the ignorance of someone who knows little or nothing about Appalachia believing they are qualified to disseminate asinine and ignorant lies about all native Appalachians.  The website does not have an easily accessible "Contact" button or an e-mail address appended to the post.  It is also not clearly identified as to author with only a name "Bernice" on the byline.  If you can figure out a way to contact this idiot and complain, I would appreciate it.  I will also and if I can come up with a direct contact means, I will append it to this blog post as soon as I find it.