* * "Don't get above your raisin'"

The first time I heard the expression, I thought the woman who said it to me was talking about a dried fruit, not her progeny. “Don’t get above your raisin’, is something my folks told me often, especially my mother,” she said. I was in the depths of coalfield Appalachia, in the town of Hurley. Hurley is in Buchanan County, near the top of Virginia’s little triangle, where you go west to get to Kentucky and east to go to West Virginia. I was mystified by the expression, so I asked her about it.

“Hollow folks don’t often want their children to have too much more than they did,” she admitted.

I’m on an active Facebook group called “Appalachian Americans,” that has over 33,000 members. So I asked them about it, whether they’d heard it before and whether they felt good or bad about it. Here’s a sampling of what I got back:

“I don't see it as negative. Yes you should strive to better yourself no matter how good your upbringing may be, but just don't forget where you came from.”

“‘Stay humble, child. You ain't no special case.’ – that's what I heard. If I got way too big for my britches, my name became Little Fool.”

“I don't have kids. I did question humility as a young person. With gray hair has come a greater appreciation for what my grandparents and mama taught me. Humility, or remaining grounded, has become a mellowed yet useful tool in being the adult that I wish to be. I don't ever want to forget where I came from. I never did. But, I didn't always appreciate the humble heart.”

“I was never told that but have heard it. My take on it was 'don't be ashamed of where you came from'... Not don't do better. I have heard it said of people who moved away and came back home acting like they were better than everyone that had stayed. And heard it said to teenagers who in their infinite wisdom were thinking they were better and knew more than their parents.”

Many used the expression, “Don’t forget where you came from,” which they saw as equivalent, or at least related.

This was puzzling to me on many fronts. My conclusions:

“Don’t forget where you came from,” too, is a colloquial expression. Nobody really forgets where they come from. Some of us come from supportive, healthy, nurturing environments. Some of us come from abusive, destructive environments. Those in that latter group are probably the least likely to forget.

The inner meaning, perhaps, is to retain a sense of humility regardless of your station in life. Through much of our nation’s history, each generation has done better--materially and educationally than the one before. Yet retaining humbleness has been a time-honored value in these mountains. Conceit is a definite no-no. Does it come from religious underpinnings? Is it traceable to the Scots-Irish roots of many of the earliest settlers? 

Nevertheless, human advancement is part of human nature, it seems. If we’d never got above our raisin’, wouldn’t we still be living in caves?

I was always encouraged by my parents to be educated and successful. They both had college degrees; mom had two! We were expected to go to college. We raised our daughter that way as well. When I asked her about this and whether she’d ever been told not to get above her raisin’, she said, “Nope, that would be silly.”

Then I asked Courtney Chang, my “Taiwanese daughter,” who stayed with us on a Rotary International exchange a few years ago. She’s about 35 now, and like most Taiwanese is accomplished and driven. She said, “My parents encouraged us to study more and someday we can be standing on the top of the world (economic pyramid).” But her parents also told her to remember her roots. Taiwan, as a small island country, is at the mercy of larger economic powers, yet it is still one of the most advanced, technologically sophisticated nations in the world. They will teach their children to excel whether Americans do or not.

One Facebook comment has stuck with me. “I grew up in an abusive and loveless household, have just about no pride in my heritage, and had to remake my personality in order to become a half-way decent person. There's a lot of people who grew up in situations like mine, and it’s a big burden for them to constantly be reminded to be “proud of their heritage or how they were brought up.” People should be proud of their heritage if their heritage is something to be proud of. Otherwise, they need to move to other parts of the country or world, meet new kinds of people, and create their own better heritage.”

Shouldn’t we all want our children to achieve?