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

ImTheCaptain said:

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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I've never lived in the inner city. I have lived in the rural south.

ITC, sit this one out, man.

I really would recommend reading the book before your takes get too hot, though.

Strangers in their Own Land by Arlie Hochschild is also worth a read, fwiw. It's a bit more academic, but it's a pretty good book on a similar topic.

My takes are about three essay. You sit it out.

I read the book a few months ago and think its wonderful and very on point for the most part. Honestly my experience is so similar to his that I started highlighting passages about events I had also lived and ended up marking whole pages. I was fortunate enough to dm & email with JD Vance about it before it blew up. I don't agree with his entire political philosophy, but he's an awesome guy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438996/jd-vances-hillbilly-elegy-saved-family-support

Just got to this part, and could not agree more. Granted, I grew up in a redneck farming community (not criticizing) instead of a hillbilly coal mining town, but these two quotes pretty much sum it up:

"When my sister or I struggled in school, I’d overhear things like “Well, maybe she’s just not that great at fractions,” or “J.D.’s more of a numbers kid, so I wouldn’t worry about that spelling test.” There was, and still is, a sense that those who make it are of two varieties. The first are lucky: They come from wealthy families with connections, and their lives were set from the moment they were born. The second are the meritocratic: They were born with brains and couldn’t fail if they tried. Because very few in Middletown fall into the former category, people assume that everyone who makes it is just really smart. To the average Middletonian, hard work doesn’t matter as much as raw talent."

And

"One of our neighbors was a lifetime welfare recipient, but in between asking my grandmother to borrow her car or offering to trade food stamps for cash at a premium, she’d blather on about the importance of industriousness. “So many people abuse the system, it’s impossible for the hardworking people to get the help they need,” she’d say. This was the construct she’d built in her head: Most of the beneficiaries of the system were extravagant moochers, but she — despite never having worked in her life — was an obvious exception. People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness. During the 2012 election cycle, the Public Religion Institute, a left-leaning think tank, published a report on working-class whites. It found, among other things, that working-class whites worked more hours than college-educated whites. But the idea that the average working-class white works more hours is demonstrably false. The Public Religion Institute based its results on surveys — essentially, they called around and asked people what they thought. The only thing that report proves is that many folks talk about working more than they actually work."

Some more of my favorite passages from the book:

"One consequence of isolation is seeing standard metrics of success as not just unobtainable, but as a property of people 'not like us.'"

"It’s not just our own communities that enforce the “outsider” attitude. It’s the places and people that upward mobility connects us with. Social mobility isn’t just about money and economics. It’s about a lifestyle change. The wealthy and powerful aren’t just wealthy and powerful. They follow a different set of norms and mores. When you go from working class to professional class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best, or unhealthy at worst."

And finally, a part that I'm surprised didn't get more attention here:

"The president [Obama] feels like an alien to many Middletonians for other reasons that have nothing to do with skin color. None of my classmates attended an Ivy League school; Barack Obama attended 2 and excelled at both. He’s brilliant, wealthy, and speaks like a constitutional law professor, because of course he is one. Nothing about him bears any resemblance to the people I admired growing up: his accent clean, perfect, neutral is foreign; his credentials are so impressive that they are frightening; he made his life in Chicago, a dense Metropolis, and he conducts himself with a confidence that comes from knowing that the modern American meritocracy was built for him. Of course he overcame much in his life, but that was before any of us knew him. President Obama came onto the scene right as a lot of people in my home town were realizing that the meritocracy wasn’t working for them. We know we’re not doing well. Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his jobs while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have jobs at all. His wife says we should be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it, not because we think she’s wrong, but because we know she’s right."

And in a separate interview, post-election, Vance added:

"There is an arrogance to Obama’s demeanor, he adds, that makes him especially difficult to relate to. “He talks in a way that a professor talks, he talks in a way that you sort of aspire to talk if you’re a young law student. Trump talks like a guy at a bar in West Virginia. Trump talks like my dad sitting around the dinner table.”

If you haven't read the book, he really doesn't force a lot of his own philosophy or opinion. He's mostly just describing the way it is in all of these abandoned, old factory towns. The part about Obama is also spoken in first person, but again, it's not his personal beliefs; simply a description of how Appalachia viewed/views Obama.

Also, it is a little confusing to me that apparently people genuinely want their drunk uncle, or that rando you overhear at the bar leading the country.

Yet they fall in love with rich people who inherited their wealth.

So what is the fix? Cater to the poorly educated with ideas that won't help them? Run candidates who aren't the best of us?

PhDeac said:

Yet they fall in love with rich people who inherited their wealth.

So what is the fix? Cater to the poorly educated with ideas that won't help them? Run candidates who aren't the best of us?

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He presents a pretty vague notion of slow but steady integration being the best solution. Apparently Obama and Hillary were either presenting that idea in too formal/hostile of a way, or giving them no reason to believe they truly meant it. That's a frustrating pill to swallow, but one that Dems need to work hard to fix. It's certainly not the first time that messaging or execution has gotten in the way of progressive ideas.

It really is a good book. I didn't think I'd get much out of it, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Integration with who?

steady integration of ideas to change the thinking of backwards rubes

PhDeac said:

Integration with who?

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People of higher economic standards. Those aren't his words, but that's the best way I can think to describe it. (Milhouse may say it better above) He's not defending the way his people think at all. He's simply explaining the problem, and trying to say from his own experience that he had no idea the types of opportunities that were even possible before he moved from his podunk town in Kentucky to a slightly less podunk town in Ohio, and then, ultimately, attended Ohio State and Yale.

Honestly, they just need to be integrated with people that have hope and faith that they can make it. I'm not sure they will trust any politician who goes in there and says they're going to fix it, but a guy like Trump at least pretended to be angry along with them.

I found it pretty disappointing. So much so that I stopped reading halfway through.

Subject matter aside, it's just not very well written. I haven't read a ton of memoirs so maybe that is just something you have to put up with when dealing with authors who aren't writers by trade.

I also just felt like it was at best a plea for understanding and empathy for struggling rural Americans that rural America isn't willing to give to anyone else and at worst an excuse for the shortcomings and prejudices of the culture he was raised in.

It reinforces the two false notions that cultural differences in America are starker than income differences and that rural white Americans are the only struggling group of people worth paying attention to.

It's a different take on the "liberal elite goes to rural America to see what the fuck happened and discovers they are real people" think piece so I'll give it credit for that. But I'd be far more interested in reading a book explaining to rural America that the people in West Baltimore or the Upper East Side are real people too.

RChildress107 said:

I found it pretty disappointing. So much so that I stopped reading halfway through.

Subject matter aside, it's just not very well written. I haven't read a ton of memoirs so maybe that is just something you have to put up with when dealing with authors who aren't writers by trade.

I also just felt like it was at best a plea for understanding and empathy for struggling rural Americans that rural America isn't willing to give to anyone else and at worst an excuse for the shortcomings and prejudices of the culture he was raised in.

It reinforces the two false notions that cultural differences in America are starker than income differences and that rural white Americans are the only struggling group of people worth paying attention to.

It's a different take on the "liberal elite goes to rural America to see what the fuck happened and discovers they are real people" think piece so I'll give it credit for that. But I'd be far more interested in reading a book explaining to rural America that the people in West Baltimore or the Upper East Side are real people too.

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Agree completely

I never once got the impression that he was saying other struggling people aren't real people and aren't worth helping. If anything, his grandmother preaches to him that the poor need to look out for one another.

He can't tell the story of a kid who grew up in West Baltimore. He's just giving his side of where he grew up. He's not even comparing it to any other places. He isn't saying "stop paying attention to West Baltimore and pay attention to us." He's saying "we need help too."

He doesn't excuse the actions of his fellow Middletonians. He acknowledges them and says that their ignorance comes from a lack of knowledge that stems from a lack of trying, that stems from a lack of hope and direction.

I also don't think he's saying that cultural differences are starker than income differences. I think he would say they are directly linked, and that Middletonians have a lot in common with people from West Baltimore. If you stopped reading halfway through, then you completely missed the part where he gets out of Middletown, and when he goes back, he feels like an alien. He sites a study saying that something like 80% of people who make it out of similar situations don't live in their home town. I would assume people who make it out of West Baltimore and experience other things do not choose to go back, and may have even been included in the study.

Demonwolverine said:

I never once got the impression that he was saying other struggling people aren't real people. If anything, his grandmother preaches to him that the poor need to look out for one another.

He can't tell the story of a kid who grew up in West Baltimore. He's just giving his side of where he grew up. He's not even comparing it to any other places. He isn't saying "stop paying attention to West Baltimore and pay attention to us." He's saying "we need help too."

He doesn't excuse the actions of his fellow Middletonians. He acknowledges them and says that their ignorance comes from a lack of knowledge that stems from a lack of trying, that stems from a lack of hope and direction.

I also don't think he's saying that cultural differences are starker than income differences. I think he would say they are directly linked, and that Middletonians have a lot in common with people from West Baltimore.

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I get that he can only write about his experience in a book about his experience. I just don't find his experience all that interesting. Contrary to popular belief it's not an experience that is particularly underrepresented in American literature or mainstream media.

I think my gripe is that I'm pretty sure a Manhattan prep school kid from a wealthy liberal family turned non college educated auto mechanic could write the exact same book in reverse. The fact that Vance doesn't seem to realize or acknowledge that bugs me.

He could have used his experience to write a story that establishes a bridge between two cultures rather than lecturing one culture about the other.

RChildress107 said:

I get that he can only write about his experience in a book about his experience. I just don't find his experience all that interesting. Contrary to popular belief it's not an experience that is particularly underrepresented in American literature or mainstream media.

I think my gripe is that I'm pretty sure a Manhattan prep school kid from a wealthy liberal family turned non college educated auto mechanic could write the exact same book in reverse. The fact that Vance doesn't seem to realize or acknowledge that bugs me.

He could have used his experience to write a story that establishes a bridge between two cultures rather than lecturing one culture about the other.

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First of all, I doubt many of those exist.

Second, that person still has advantages of that upbringing that he could cash in at any time.

I definitely get your point that people who show little understanding for others are begging for others to understand them. It is pathetic that undereducated rural people are sitting around begging for Trump to create jobs in Obama's full employment economy and they want to deport hard working immigrants.

PhDeac said:

First of all, I doubt many of those exist.

Second, that person still has advantages of that upbringing that he could cash in at any time.

I definitely get your point that people who show little understanding for others are begging for others to understand them. It is pathetic that undereducated rural people are sitting around begging for Trump to create jobs in Obama's full employment economy and they want to deport hard working immigrants.

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Obviously that hypothetical doesn't exist or is incredibly rare for obvious reasons. And I was more thinking of someone who chose to forego an Ivy League education to go be a car mechanic in WV. Such a person could write to an audience of Appalachians detailing his complex relationship with the flawed culture of his upbringing. It would be an equally shitty book but at least it would be unique.

America has a fascination with the "dwindling middle class," the collapse of coal or steel towns, the opioid epidemic, etc. There is this constant sorrow and attention for a group of people that had achieved some upward mobility in the 60's and 70's only to fall back down the socioeconomic ladder. On the flip side we ignore or view with disgust groups that have never experienced upward mobility, largely because they were never given the opportunity. Ignoring this fact, and the overwhelming role race plays in it, is detrimental to Vance's book and to the larger conversation as a whole.

meh, most people just don't like change because it's scary and uncomfortable. that's really all it is.

I legitimately though this was about Hillary and Bill Clinton.