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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

Damn

"Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence—and the incomprehensible malice—of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs … The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin."
 
Working class solidarity across racial groups is the key to any political transformation for poor folks. The mainline parties have done a very effective job of keeping white and non-white poor folks pitted against one another for the benefit of the party elite.
 
To be fair, poor whites are pitted against poor blacks while poor blacks are pitted against people in power.
 
This article pulls no punches.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/fun...al-christian-white-america-will-never-change/

"I grew up in rural, Christian, white America. You’d be hard-pressed to find an area in the country that has a higher percentage of Christians or whites. I spent most of the first 24 years of my life deeply embedded in this culture. I religiously (pun intended) attended their Christian services. I worked off and on, on their rural farms. I dated their calico skirted daughters. I camped, hunted, and fished with their sons. I listened to their political rants at the local diner and truck stop. I winced at their racist/bigoted jokes and epithets that were said more out of ignorance than animosity. I have also watched the town I grew up in go from a robust economy with well-kept homes and infrastructure turn into a struggling economy with shuttered businesses, dilapidated homes, and a broken down infrastructure over the past 30 years. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand these people. The problem is they don’t understand themselves, the reasons for their anger/frustrations, and don’t seem to care to know why."

...

"Gays being allowed to marry are a threat. Blacks protesting the killing of their unarmed friends and family are a threat. Hispanics doing the cheap labor on their farms are somehow viewed a threat. The black president is a threat. Two billion Muslims are a threat. The Chinese are a threat. Women wanting to be autonomous are a threat. The college educated are a threat. Godless scientists are a threat. Everyone who isn’t just like them has been sold to them as a threat and they’ve bought it hook, line, and grifting sinker. Since there are no self-regulating mechanisms in their belief systems, these threats only grow over time. Since facts and reality don’t matter, nothing you say to them will alter their beliefs. “President Obama was born in Kenya, is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood who hates white Americans and is going to take away their guns.” I feel ridiculous even writing this, it is so absurd, but it is gospel across large swaths of rural America. Are rural, Christian, white Americans scared? You’re damn right they are. Are their fears rational and justified? Hell no. The problem isn’t understanding their fears. The problem is how to assuage fears based on lies in closed-off fundamentalist belief systems that don’t have the necessary tools for properly evaluating the fears."
 
inspectah said:
I think the problem is that people have gotten wise to the lack of upward mobility, which takes away their motivation. A lot of young people from families without the means to send them to college know they're doomed in this economy without a degree. So they just drift along from one dead end job to another, doing their best to make ends' meet on a day to day basis. It's not hard to see why Trump appeals to people in that situation.

Haven't read Vance's book but I might. A lot of people with his background don't speak out about it because of a sense of shame and not wanting to be exposed as somebody other than who their bank account/Ivy league diploma/Wall Street job suggests they are.
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So rather than have a decent job, a home, etc. they'd rather just get wasted and fired from their job?

Anyway, I read the book and thought it was really good.
 
DeacWatcher said:
I just started reading the book and one of the early passages talks of how young whites no matter their economic status in these counties in eastern Ohio have become immune to hard work. Vance talks of working in a tile factory (one of few good places to work that is fairly recession resistant) and a manager hiring both a guy and the girl he got pregnant. Both were horrible employees missing work w/o calling in and taking long bathroom breaks. They both were being paid $13 an hour to start and could get to $16 an hour after a few months (this is well above the poverty scale in his area). However since both were bad employees they were shit canned. The guy complains that he has a pregnant wife to support, but the manager is like "you have to at least work while you are here".

Vance's explanation is that the basic fibers of family have been destroyed over the years of losses of jobs due to manufacturing jobs being lost as well as wages. I agree but this has been happening everywhere. A lot of the companies I call on down here in SC simply cannot find good employees to work in the auto plants (pay begins around $12-$15 an hour which is a good wage if you don't go to college) that either don't do drugs or don't have a rap sheet.
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That explanation you cite in your second paragraph to me is incredibly important. Regardless of the reason, when the family unit starts to unravel communities begin to struggle (the struggle accelerates) in ways that go way beyond their economic circumstances. And that sense of hopelessness has not been confined to just rural America. Our inner cities long ago started going through that same unraveling of family units decades ago.
 
DeacWatcher said:
I just started reading the book and one of the early passages talks of how young whites no matter their economic status in these counties in eastern Ohio have become immune to hard work. Vance talks of working in a tile factory (one of few good places to work that is fairly recession resistant) and a manager hiring both a guy and the girl he got pregnant. Both were horrible employees missing work w/o calling in and taking long bathroom breaks. They both were being paid $13 an hour to start and could get to $16 an hour after a few months (this is well above the poverty scale in his area). However since both were bad employees they were shit canned. The guy complains that he has a pregnant wife to support, but the manager is like "you have to at least work while you are here".

Vance's explanation is that the basic fibers of family have been destroyed over the years of losses of jobs due to manufacturing jobs being lost as well as wages. I agree but this has been happening everywhere. A lot of the companies I call on down here in SC simply cannot find good employees to work in the auto plants (pay begins around $12-$15 an hour which is a good wage if you don't go to college) that either don't do drugs or don't have a rap sheet.
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Add in the rampant opiod addiction.

Now, where is bkf to denounce the lack of 2 parent households, accountability, etc? Rural whites do NOT show up well in his paradigm of virtue. He's pretty silent on the subject, though.
 
Just to be clear, the article I posted isn't from the Hillbilly Elegy author.
 
I, too, i grew up and spend quite a bit of time around poor white people and while he's not necessarily incorrect in his observations, I don't see how this is helpful at all. another navel gazing, self aggrandizing take on poor white folk meant for liberals to masturbate to and say "see, I told you this is the problem"

much of the lengthy list of issues/hypocrisies that 'must be addressed' before any meaningful change applies to almost all sectors of american life, especially poor, rural or urban
 
Nah. It's a warning to liberals that trying to appeal to this group won't be effective.
 
Meh. I grew up in rural Eastern NC. This stuff is familiar.
 
this is definitely the Bizarro-Topic for you where you get play the Sailor/nuevo-BKF/JH role of "meh, they're helpless idiots/dregs that deserve that they get"
 
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That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying Democrat policies should continue to try to help them and Democrats should run candidates in those districts, but a large portion are not going to vote Democrat no matter how hard Democrats try to appeal to them. It's not a viable national strategy.
 
oh, right the poor white voting bloc; the ying to the Monolithic Black Vote yang

have you ever met a 28 yr trailer park rate who works for a pipe fitting union with truck nutz and a rebel flag who votes staunchly democrat? because that's my cousin
 
PhDeac said:
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying Democrat policies should continue to try to help them and Democrats should run candidates in those districts, but a large portion are not going to vote Democrat no matter how hard Democrats try to appeal to them. It's not a viable national strategy.
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Interesting how things flip over time. 60+ years ago, republicans in the south were scarcer than hen's teeth. Every Senate seat in the former confederate states, except for the two in KY were held by democrats. Now it is close to the reverse.
 
PhDeac said:
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying Democrat policies should continue to try to help them and Democrats should run candidates in those districts, but a large portion are not going to vote Democrat no matter how hard Democrats try to appeal to them. It's not a viable national strategy.
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This is merely a zoo-viewing article about hard R voters. Would love your take on a right winger waxing eloquent about inner city voters living off the system who would never vote Republican
 
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