
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 31, 1990                   TAG: 9004020193
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

THIRD WORLD?

A SAN Francisco travel agency which has run "awareness" tours to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Brazil - now plans a "Third World Tour in America" to the mountains of West Virginia, southwestern Virginia and east Tennessee.

That has aroused the predictable ire of tourism directors in the region, who say (a) Southern Appalachia isn't part of the "Third World" and (b) the tour will reinforce stereotypes that at best are only a fraction of the truth.

Both criticisms are on the mark. Southern Appalachia has its problems, and they're not trivial, but they're hardly on a par with the problems of Haiti or the slums of Sao Paulo. (For that matter, Southern Appalachia in some ways may be in better shape than parts of California.) And the agency's itinerary seems to avoid places that run counter to stereotyped images of Appalachia.

Yet it's something else that may be the most galling, to folks on the edge as well as in the middle of Appalachia: the implication that a lot can be learned about the region, with all its ambiguities and ironies, on a quick "awareness" tour of it.

It's discomfiting anytime to be under a microscope. It's even more discomfiting when you strongly suspect the lens to be distorted and the scientist to be in the habit of drawing too many conclusions from too little data.

by CNB