I just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. It is an amazing book and, I think, and
important one.
I
had imagined that Hillbilly Elegy
would be a kind of social culture study of the Scots-Irish who came to the U.S.
and settled in Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia. However, I was surprised—and then
delighted—to see that it was not that.
Instead, it was a very personal memoir by Vance, who grew up as part of
a hillbilly clan who had migrated from Kentucky to the steel mill town of
Middletown, Ohio.
What
hit me first was Vance’s personal story.
Like him, I grew up in a fractured family without a father and with few
male role models, but with a nearby extended family. My mother, my brother, and I lived with my
grandparents in a little one-bedroom house that had been meant as a temporary
residence, but which had been the family’s home for a couple of decades already
when I was born. My grandmother’s brothers and sisters had all
bought lots up and down the same street when the local farmer decided to
sub-divide, so I was rarely out of earshot of a relative. Down the street was my best friend, whose
aunt had married my uncle. It was all
family. We were also poor—in the midst
of an otherwise healthy middle class neighborhood— something we didn’t talk
about. So, it was rewarding to see
someone else talk honestly and in detail about growing up in a similarly
complex environment.
Vance,
who escaped the poverty of his youth to go to Ohio State and then Yale Law
School, gives us an insight into the inner workings of this group of
Americans—descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants who came to the U.S. in the
early 1800s and settled in the coal mining area of Kentucky and whose
descendants migrated to the coal and steel towns of what is now known as the
Rust Belt. The strong
multi-generational family culture, the willingness to fight “outsiders” who threaten
that culture, and the traps that tend to keep them from more fully integrating
into society are all explored as Vance tells his own story.
Vance
also takes time to analyze the white working class culture. He notes that the decline of the blue-collar
economy has increased cynicism about the position of working people in American
society, but that “there was something almost spiritual about the cynicism of
the community at large, something that went much deeper than a short-term
recession” (p. 188). Herein lies one
timely lesson of Vance’s memoir. It is a culture, he observes, that feels
increasingly isolated from the core of an American society that has rejected a
commitment to its working people. “If
Mamaw’s God was the United States of America,” he writes, “then many people in
my community were losing something akin to a religion. The tie that bound them to their neighbors,
that inspired them in the way my patriotism has always inspired me, had
seemingly vanished” (p. 190).
Vance asserts that
the news media and conservative politicians have encouraged working people to
look not to themselves but to government to blame for their inability to
succeed in today’s economy. “There is,”
he writes, citing a Pew Economic Mobility Project study, “no group of Americans
more pessimistic than working-class whites” (p. 194).
That pessimism is
very likely—and ironically—what has drawn working white men and women to the
radical right-wing views expressed by Donald Trump and the “alt.right.” In the mid-twentieth century, labor unions
had given steelworkers, miners, and many other occupations a level of financial
and social stability that they had never seen.
The very term “redneck” comes from the red bandanas of pro-union coal
miners in West Virginia. The 21st
century, however, has seen a weakening of the labor movement as corporations
take jobs out of the country in order to avoid reasonable wages for American
workers. Government has chosen not to
fight the corporations, leaving workers without support. While it is very strange that workers would
turn to one of the most opportunistic corporate leaders in this election, they
clearly hear his pitch, however insincere it may be.
The question for all
of us must be: how can we provide real
opportunities for working people to succeed in the new global information
society that has sprung up around us? This
was the message of Bernie Sanders.
Elements of that remain alive in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Politics aside,
what should we do? Some thoughts:
We need to move
beyond the current Affordable Care Act to a true national health system that
guarantees all citizens access to medical services. The issue should not be to make health
insurance more easily accessible; it should be to make access to health care a
right of citizenship.
We need to tax corporations
that move jobs overseas or that move corporate operations out of the country in
order to avoid taxes. Corporations that
benefit from the American economy must contribute to its health, pure and
simple.
We need a minimum
wage that allows anyone who works full time to be able to support his/her
family.
We need to explore
a modern counterpart to the Civilian Conservation Corps to ensure that all
Americans have access to work that feeds their families and contributes to the
community. The military must not be the
only refuge for people who cannot find employment. This might also serve as part of a “year of
service” expectation for young people between the time they leave school and
when they become full-time workers or move on to college.
Finally, we need
to make some level of postsecondary education available as a right of all
citizens. This may be a two-year period
that would allow someone to gain a license or an associate degree or make a
start toward a baccalaureate degree. Today’s economy requires that workers have
greater training. Ensuring that our
workforce is prepared for the economy is, ultimately, a national security
issue.
These solutions
are reminiscent of FDR. The key, as I
read the implications of Hillbilly Elegy,
is to empower people rather than put them on the dole. Underneath it all is the need for
government—“of the people, by the people, for the people”—to respect the needs of citizens rather than
cater to corporations. It is a “build
up,” rather than “trickle down” approach to creating a healthy economy.
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