West Virginia Misses Out on Diversity Explosion

A guy I work with disputes the statements in this AP article about how minority populations are increasing in every state except one -- West Virginia.

His basic issue is with the contention that West Virginia has historically not attracted immigrants. He's got a point. That's pretty sloppy writing. (Then again it's AP. I think AP hires writers based on how sloppy their writing is.)

In any case, West Virginia does have a history of attracting immigrants. During the early part of the 20th Century, immigrants came to West Virginia from southern and eastern Europe to work in the coal mines. To the same purpose, many African-Americans also moved to state from the South. The state rightly should be known for its rich blend of cultures resulting from the immigration of that period. (As well as for the crass exploitation those immigrants suffered at the hands of the mining companies. The good with the bad, after all.)

What West Virginia has historically failed to do is manage to get the number of people entering the state to offset the number leaving. Within only a few decades, many immigrants to the state in the early 20th Century saw their children move to cities such as Detroit and Pittsburgh to take work in the war industries during Worlld War II. The state has never really recovered from that. Just when it seemed it might recover, mechanization led to loss of jobs, especially in mining and to a continual drop in population that has not yet been stanched.

We West Virginians are touchy about slams to our home state, so I wanted to clear that up. Plus, as a journalist, I get damned annoyed by AP reporters' laziness, which leads them to make sloppy mistatements in otherwise good, and interesting, articles.