American Myopia

My family is a coal mining family. We have a lore that has passed down through the generations about life in the mines - and more particularly, life in coal mining towns. I have heard my mother talk about watching all of the men walking home through the small company town, their faces black from the coal dust. However, she could always pick out her father from down the street, just by the way he walked.

She and my grandmother talk about the "Slavish" (that is Slavic to you and me) people who came to Alabama to work the mines. A drive through Birmingham reveals names on businesses that denote a distinctly Italian or Greek ancestry. The huge synagogues in downtown are seemingly out of place - something you would think you would see in New York, not the heart of the Deep South. That is until you realize that all of the German Jews immigrated to Alabama to work the mines, just like back home. And then there are the white bread "Americans", like my family. However we are not native, we hail from Ireland and England - where my people blasted out coal for generations before ever sighting the shores of the US. American mining is truly a melting pot.

So when I read this story on ABC's site, I saw the subtitle and thought, "Oh, cool they are going to talk about the cultural soup that makes up American mining." No, the myopic American journalist talked about the "uniquely American" dangers of mining. Huh?

I am going back to solely reading the BBC. You know, where you can read stories about Welsh miners being rescued from a coal mine collapse... stories which would only make the ABC reporter scratch their head wondering where in America Wales must be....