This is a great 4th post.
Highland was easily the Tunnels New Poster of the year in 2017. Perhaps Poster of the Year. Every post is quality.
Two good reads on this topic. The first is a more direct response to Hillbilly Elegy.
Put down “Hillbilly Elegy” and read this book instead
Salon talks to historian Elizabeth Catte about her new book “What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia”
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/05/put-down-hillbilly-elegy-and-read-this-book-instead/
Catte's new book "
What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia" (Belt Publishing, out Tuesday) is an attempt to push back against destructive myths about the region, its people, and its future.
...
Appalachia has this history of serving as whatever the counterpoint is to our contemporary definitions of progress. For example, right after the Civil War, when progress was built into ideas about modernization and the development of industry, Appalachia emerged as this really backward place that could throw a wrench into the entire system by remaining backwards and primitive, even savage. And what that argument does is help industrialists bring people living in the mountains into this exploitative labor system. But there’s a precedent in the history of the region of people who are powerful — people who have the power to shape narratives and shape economic systems and politics — looking at Appalachia not as a place but as a problem to be solved. And I think that is an enduring element of Appalachian history that appeared with force during the 2016 election.
...
I’m going to ask you to generalize a little bit here. One class of people who really bought into this book and his ideas seem to be educated, media savvy, serious people. It’s a memoir with cultural generalizations painted around personal anecdotes and shaped by his own specific family story. What was it about this narrative that made people drop their skepticism?
I think it speaks with a very rare sense of authority about a region that can be misunderstood, and that’s part of the attraction. There have been authors who have also assumed this yoke of being seen as interpreters of their culture. One that always springs to my mind is Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Ta-Nehisi Coates, to my mind, has been really reflective about what it felt like when white liberals seized on “Between the World and Me” and his other writing as sort of
the blueprint for understanding African-American culture. Beyond the obvious differences between them, J.D. Vance has not, he seems thrilled to assume this role in public life and has not been reflective about it. He caps it off a bit with this humility thing that he does, but he’s really embraced the role of the explainer-in-chief of the Appalachian region, and the Rust Belt as well. He’s there, a talking head that will explain to you what the problems are. I don’t think J.D. Vance is clairvoyant. When he was setting this book in motion, there’s no way that he could predict that this political moment would develop in the way that it did specifically. But at the same time it’s a niche that’s presented itself to him that he’s enthusiastically assumed.
I think it is aligned with his eagerness to deploy certain conservative politics and certain conservative outlooks. It kills me that this is a book that liberals, in particular, and college-educated people think, “Well, he set his politics aside just to write from the heart.” They don’t understand, or perhaps they do and they dismiss it, but blaming poverty on poor people is a political opinion. These are people that would be mortified if they had to teach something out of Charles Murray’s bibliography, but they really love “Hillbilly Elegy” and what it says about the poor.
I wonder if there’s some permission being given to the upper-middle class here — from someone who, voting record aside, looks like them, travels in the same circles — to buy into a very conservative, simplistic narrative about poverty and bootstraps and discipline.
It doesn’t require anything of them, of the readers of the book. They don’t have to do anything, right? Because the problems are all in the individuals that he’s describing, they’re moral and cultural flaws. So if you’re reading this book, you’re not thinking, “what kind of work do I have to do on myself or within my community to help these problems?” You’re going to be relieved as hell when you feel, “I do not have to do anything. These people need to fix themselves.”
I think that’s a big part of the attraction to this book: this mercy that you can just read about problems and not feel obligated or guilty about [not] doing anything about them. You hear, especially from white liberals [the sentiment of], “Well, there’s only so much white guilt I can take.” So this is a book that makes them feel like they can be engaged with social problems without that sense of guilt that they are taught to carry out into the world and use as the basis for social action or social justice.
...
Central Appalachia is still one of the most concentrated areas for prison growth in the country. To me it’s a continuation of a logic that’s very common in our country: Economic development comes with certain acceptable risks, and it’s acceptable to harm certain people for the greater good. In Appalachia, the more recognizable story is through the coal industry — the idea that we have to unfortunately hurt the environment to be able to continue our way of life, and some people unfortunately will get very ill, and that’s just the way things go. The prison story has become that, too. It’s rooted in white supremacy, and in the idea that white people have to hurt African-Americans, or be complicit in the suffering of African-Americans, by doing the only work that is available to them and becoming part of the prison industrial complex. It’s really deeply disturbing.
An insider explains how rural Christian white America has a dark and terrifying underbelly
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/in...ian-white-america-dark-terrifying-underbelly/
Here are the honest truths that rural Christian white Americans don’t want to accept; until they accept these truths, nothing is going to change:
- Their economic situation is largely the result of voting for supply-side economic policies that have been the largest redistribution of wealth from the bottom/middle to the top in U.S. history.
- Immigrants haven’t taken their jobs. If all immigrants, legal or otherwise, were removed from the U.S., our economy would come to a screeching halt and food prices would soar.
- Immigrants are not responsible for companies moving their plants overseas. The almost exclusively white business owners are responsible, because they care more about their shareholders (who are also mostly white) than about American workers.
- No one is coming for their guns. All that has been proposed during the entire Obama administration is having better background checks.
- Gay people getting married is not a threat to their freedom to believe in whatever white god they want to. No one is going to make their church marry gays, have a gay pastor or accept gays for membership.
- Women having access to birth control doesn’t affect their lives either, especially women they complain about being teenage single mothers.
- Blacks are not “lazy moochers living off their hard-earned tax dollars” any more than many of their fellow rural neighbors. People in need are people in need. People who can’t find jobs because of their circumstances, a changing economy or outsourcing overseas belong to all races.
- They get a tremendous amount of help from the government they complain does nothing for them. From the roads and utility grids they use to farm subsidies, crop insurance and commodities protections, they benefit greatly from government assistance. The Farm Bill is one of the largest financial expenditures by the U.S. government. Without government assistance, their lives would be considerably worse.
- They get the largest share of Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
- They complain about globalization, yet line up like everyone else to get the latest Apple products. They have no problem buying foreign-made guns, scopes and hunting equipment. They don’t think twice about driving trucks whose engines were made in Canada, tires made in Japan, radios made in Korea, and computer parts made in Malaysia.
- They use illicit drugs as much as any other group. But when other people do it is a “moral failing” and they should be severely punished, legally. When they do it, it is a “health crisis” that needs sympathy and attention.
- When jobs dry up for whatever reason, they refuse to relocate but lecture the poor in places like Flint for staying in failing towns.
- They are quick to judge minorities for being “welfare moochers,” but don’t think twice about cashing their welfare checks every month.
- They complain about coastal liberals, but taxes from California and New York cover their farm subsidies, help maintain their highways and keep the hospitals in their sparsely populated rural areas open for business.
- They complain about “the little man being run out of business,” and then turn around and shop at big-box stores.
- They make sure outsiders are not welcome, deny businesses permits to build, then complain about businesses, plants opening up in less rural areas.
- Government has not done enough to help them in many cases, but their local and state governments are almost completely Republican and so are their representatives and senators. Instead of holding them accountable, they vote them into office over and over and over again.
- All the economic policies and ideas that could help rural America belong to the Democratic Party: raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, spending on infrastructure, renewable energy growth, slowing down the damage done by climate change, and healthcare reform. All of these and more would really help a lot of rural white Americans.
What I understand is that rural Christian white Americans are entrenched in fundamentalist belief systems; don’t trust people outside their tribe; have been force-fed a diet of misinformation and lies for decades; are unwilling to understand their own situations; and truly believe whites are superior to all races. No amount of understanding is going to change these things or what they believe. No amount of niceties will get them to be introspective. No economic policy put forth by someone outside their tribe is going to be listened to no matter how beneficial it would be for them. I understand rural Christian white America all too well. I understand their fears are based on myths and lies. I understand they feel left behind by a world they don’t understand and don’t really care to. They are willing to vote against their own interests if they can be convinced it will make sure minorities are harmed more. Their Christian beliefs and morals are only extended to fellow white Christians. They are the problem with progress and always will be, because their belief systems are constructed against it.