Its a little different in Appalachia, than most places in America, I suppose. And that is because we never really changed too much from the Old World culture of the 17th and 18th centuries. We tended for a long long time, to be just about what one would expect to have found in Scotland or Ulster in that time, attitude and values wise, that is.
But there is a new generation here (not a majority, by any stretch) that is pretty much against anything traditional. Be it ancestry, religion, family ties and loyalty, moral issues, anything traditional is what they are opposed to.
And so, in Appalachia, there are the folks that cherish their Scots-Irish and English ancestry very much, and then, there are the ones who would say that even talking about it is silly. And that would tend to bring down a curtain of distrust between them right then and there, in a conversation.
50 years from now, that distrust of the one who said it would still follow around the one who was told that. And they are ideological enemies from then on, and will almost always take opposite stances on any conversation from then on, no matter how unrelated it is to ancestry.
Insider/Outsider thing, ye know.
