Ideas

In a recent blog post, I introduced the need to respect rural as a culture tied to place that includes diverse peoples, histories, and economies. Three practices can help build cultural competencies for working in and with rural communities and stakeholders: practicing self-reflection, being curious, and building trust. In this post, I explore how self-reflection and leaving personal bias behind is a critical first step in rural-centered capacity building, community-based research, and program evaluation.

When working in a new environment with a new group of people with whom we have no previous experience, it is natural to rely on stories and statistics to shape our initial understanding of the place and people. However, there is a strong chance that what we’ve heard may be incomplete or untrue of the community we are partnering with and lead to an incorrect starting point for our work, ineffective work processes, and inaccurate findings and solutions. To work effectively in rural communities means letting go of stereotypes — before engaging with a community — of who lives there, their histories and cultures, their economic status and political affiliations, what the primary community challenges are, and how we think they should be solved.

Examine Stereotypes

Much of what we hear about rural communities in mainstream media outlets is highly generalized and ignores the depth and diversity of rural places. For example, “deaths of despair” is a term that downplays the tremendous impact of global and regional economic restructuring on some rural communities, the physical toll of extractive labor, and the systematic targeting of hard-working people by manufacturers of addictive opioids.

One common refrain is labeling all rural areas as “red states” or “conservative” places. This establishes an “us” versus “them” narrative, ignoring rural diversity and pitting a singular “rural” voting block against a singular “urban” one. Just as it makes little sense to think that simply by nature of being urban, the cities of Miami, Florida; Seattle, Washington; and Little Rock, Arkansas would have no political diversity, it makes no sense to make similar assumptions about rural communities. Instead, urban and rural communities share common needs and desires that deserve attention in all geographies, no matter the politics: affordable housing, clean water, reliable internet, good jobs, quality education, strong social connections, and other systems and institutions that support a thriving and equitable community.

Another harmful narrative describes rural communities as getting more support from the federal government than they contribute in federal taxes. This argument lacks nuance and seeks to cast rural communities as “takers” or a burden on the nation. It misses the many ways rural areas and their residents give to our national health and economy, such as generating energy, growing and safely processing our food, manufacturing our goods, providing critical transportation corridors, and stewarding our natural resources and recreational amenities.

Negative stories and perceptions lead to uninformed opinions that rural communities deserve to suffer and to be abandoned, prompting questions of why “those people” don’t just move somewhere else and reflecting a strong urban bias among funders and policymakers. This perspective denies both the culture and contributions of rural communities and writes off their concerns as unworthy of our attention.

Ask Yourself Honest Questions

If we approach rural communities as places and people with problems, we miss out on seeing their assets and finding commonalities within and across these places. And these communities miss out by being denied resources — data-driven decision making, investments, technical assistance for nonprofits — that could contribute to greater thriving.

Examining the biases we are bringing to the table and our willingness to challenge them is critical. We can start by asking why we believe what we do about rural communities. What shaped our opinions — personal experience, media outlets, or research and data? How reliable and representative are those sources? We must assess how open we are to examining our own preconceived notions and how to change them. Then we must be honest about the time and effort we are willing to invest in learning about different ways to understand rural places and to actively listen to and learn from rural people. Finally, establishing accountability to trusted peers and others along our journey of self-reflection helps us maintain momentum and answer hard questions, such as:

• To what extent do I believe that the histories of different places in this country are interrelated and, as a result, geographic equity has an impact on everyone?
• How do I determine which information is real? Which information or evidence am I more likely to believe? Which am I more likely to share?
• How might my preference about which information to use to make my case cloud my framing of how or why I am investing in a rural community or project, or what evaluation questions and methodologies I propose to use?
• How likely am I to ignore data and findings that do not fully support my preconceived notions about a particular place or group in the community?

Leaving behind our personal biases makes room for us to look, listen, and learn about facts and perspectives different from ours. As we engage in participatory evaluation methods, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and impact assessment consulting, this reflective practice enriches our ability to promote learning system design in rural contexts.

The next blog post in this series will explore how to counter stereotyping by being curious, learning about rural realities, and considering community capacity building needs and values.

References

Associated Press. (2025, January 24). Purdue Pharma and owners to pay $7.4 billion in settlement of lawsuits over OxyContin. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2025/01/24/g-s1-44524/purdue-pharma-and-owners-to-pay-7-4-billion-in-settlement-of-lawsuits-over-oxycontin

Carlson, C. (2024, November 13). Rural America did not push Donald Trump to victory in 2024. Daily Yonder, https://dailyyonder.com/rural-america-did-not-push-donald-trump-to-victory-in-2024/2024/11/13/

Junod, A.N., Salerno, C. & Scally, C.P. (2020, October 30). Debunking three myths about rural America: How to improve research and reporting for the 2020 election and beyond. Urban Wire, https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/debunking-three-myths-about-rural-america.

W.K.K. Kellogg Foundation. (2024). How we think and practice evaluation in service of racial equity: Practice guide series on doing evaluation in service of racial equity – A toolkit for practitioners. https://everychildthrives.com/doing-evaluation-in-service-of-racial-equity/