JD Vance in Hillbilly Elegy, by J. D. Vance
On Budget & Economy:
Economic collapse due to social decay, not just job loss
When I mention the plight of my community [in Appalachia], I am often met with an explanation like this: "The prospects for working-class whites have worsened, because their economic opportunities have declined. If they only had better access to jobs,
other parts of their lives would improve as well."I once held this opinion myself. But experience taught me that this story of economic insecurity is incomplete.
Economists worry about the decline of the industrial Midwest and the hollowing out of
the economic core of working whites. They mean that manufacturing jobs have gone overseas and middle-class jobs are harder to come by for people without college degrees. Fair enough--I worry about those things, too. But this book is about something
else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 5-7
May 25, 2017
On Civil Rights:
Segregated neighborhoods invisible to white residents
As a kid, I sorted Middletown into three basic geographic regions. First, the area surrounding the high school. The "rich" kids lived here. Large homes mixed comfortably with well-kept parks and office complexes. If your dad was a doctor, he almost
certainly owned a home or had an office here, if not both. Next, the really poor kids lived near Armco, where even the nice homes had been converted into multi-family apartment units. I didn't know until recently that this neighborhood was actually
two neighborhoods--one inhabited by Middletown's working class black population, the other by its poorest white population. Middletown's few housing projects stood there.
Then there was the area where we lived--mostly single-family homes, with
abandoned warehouses & factories within walking distance. Looking back, I don't know if the "really poor" areas and my block were any different, or whether these divisions were the constructs of a mind that didn't want to believe it was really poor.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 48-49
May 25, 2017
On Corporations:
Downtowns fail when not enough consumers have jobs
City leaders have tried in vain to revive Middletown's downtown [Vance's childhood home in industrial Appalachia]. For reasons I can't begin to fathom, the city's brain trust decided to turn our beautiful riverfront into Lake Middletown, an
infrastructural project that apparently involved shoveling tons of dirt into the river and hoping something interesting would come of it. It accomplished nothing.Efforts to reinvent downtown Middletown always struck me as futile.
People didn't leave because our downtown lacked trendy cultural amenities. The trendy cultural amenities left because there weren't enough consumers in Middletown to support them.
And why weren't there enough well-paying consumers? Because there
weren't enough jobs to employ those consumers. Downtown Middletown's struggles were a symptom of everything else happening to Middletown's people, especially the collapsing importance of Armco Kawasaki Steel [the main industry in Middletown].
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 52-53
May 25, 2017
On Drugs:
Addictions based on grim future without hope
I wrote this book because I've achieved something quite ordinary, which doesn't happen to most kids who grow up like me. You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can
remember. I have a complex relationship with my parents, one of whom has struggled with addiction for nearly my entire life. My grandparents, neither of whom graduated from high school, raised me, and few members of even my extended family attended
college. The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future--that if they're lucky, they'll manage to avoid welfare; and if they're unlucky, they'll die of a heroin overdose.I was one of those kids with a grim future. Whatever talents
I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me. That is the real story of my life. From low social mobility to poverty to divorce and drug addiction, my home [in Appalachia] is a hub of misery.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 1-4
May 25, 2017
On Education:
Poor families recognize college as the way out
No one wanted to have a blue-collar career and its promise of a respectable middle-class life. We never considered that we'd be lucky to land a job at Armco [the local steel factory]; we took Armco for granted. Manual labor was honorable work, but it
was [our parents'] generations work--we had to do something different. To move up was to move on. That required going to college.
And yet there was no sense that failing to achieve higher education would bring shame or any other consequences.
The message wasn't explicit; teachers didn't tell us that we were too stupid or poor to make it. Nevertheless, it was all around us, like the air we breathed: No one in our families had gone to college; older friends and siblings were perfectly content
to stay in Middletown, regardless of their career prospects; we knew no one at a prestigious out-of-state school; and everyone knew at least one young adult who was underemployed or didn't have a job at all.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 54-56
May 25, 2017
On Education:
Uneducated people trust talent more than hard work
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 [in impoverished Appalachia] 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.It's not like parents and teachers never mention hard work. These attitudes lurk below the surface, less in what people say than in how they act.
The reasons poor people aren't working as much as others are complicated, and
it's too easy to blame the problem on laziness. For many, part-time work is all they have access to. But whatever the reasons, the rhetoric of hard work conflicts with reality. The kids in Middletown absorb that conflict and struggle with it.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 56-8
May 25, 2017
On Families & Children:
Working moms support families by doing "women's work"
For many [impoverished families], part-time work is all they have access to, because the [industrial companies in Appalachia and] the world are going out of business and their skill sets don't fit well in the modern economy. In this, as in so much else,
the Scots-Irish migrants resemble their kin back in the holler.In an HBO documentary about eastern Kentucky hill people, the patriarch of a large Appalachian family introduces himself by drawing strict lines between work acceptable for men and work
acceptable for women. While it's obvious what he considers "women's work," it's not at all clear what work, if any, is acceptable for him. Apparently not paid employment, since the man has never worked a paying job in his life. Ultimately, the verdict
of his own son is damning; "Daddy says he's worked in his life. Why not be straight about it. Pa? Daddy was an alcoholic. He would stay drunk, he didn't bring food home. Mommy supported her young'uns. If it hadn't been for Mommy, we'd have been dead."
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 58
May 25, 2017
On Foreign Policy:
WWII distrust of Japanese now applies to Chinese
Kawasaki, [who merged with Vance's hometown Armco steel mill], was a Japanese company, and in a town full ofWorld War II vets and their families, you'd have thought that General Tojo himself had decided to set up shop in southwest Ohio when the merger
was announced. The opposition was mostly a bunch of noise. Even [Vance's grandfather] Papaw--who once promised he'd disown his children if they bought a Japanese car--stopped complaining a few days after they announced the merger. "The truth is," he told
me, "that the Japanese are our friends now. If we end up fighting any of those countries, it'll be the goddamned Chinese." The Kawasaki merger represented an inconvenient truth: Manufacturing in America was a tough business in the
post-globalization world. If companies like Armco were going to survive, they would have to retool. Kawasaki gave Armco a chance, and Middletown's flagship company probably would not have survived without it.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 53-4
May 25, 2017
On Government Reform:
Politicians and even lobbyists are not all crooks
Though the GI Bill paid for a significant chunk of my education, and Ohio State charged relatively little to an in-state resident, I still needed to cover about twenty thousand dollars of expenses on my own. I took a job at the Ohio Statehouse,
working for a remarkably kind senator from the Cincinnati area named Bob Schuler. He was a good man, and I liked his politics, so when constituents called and complained, I tried to explain his positions.
I watched lobbyists come and go and overheard the senator and his staff debate whether a particular bill was good for his constituents, good for his state, or good for both. Observing the political process from the inside made me appreciate it in a
way that watching cable news never had. [My grandmother] Mamaw had thought all politicians were crooks, but I learned that, no matter their politics, that was largely untrue at the Ohio Statehouse.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p.181-2
May 25, 2017
On Homeland Security:
Marine Corps prepares students well for college
I met with a guidance counselor who talked me through my first college schedule, which put me in class only four days per week, never before 9:30 in the morning. After the Marine Corps and its 5:30 A.M. wakeups, I couldn't believe my good fortune.
By the time I started at Ohio State, the Marine Corps had instilled in me an incredible sense of invincibility. I'd go to classes, do my homework, study at the library, and make it home in time to drink well past midnight with my buddies, then wake up
early to go running. My schedule was intense, but everything that had made me fear the independent college life when I was 18 felt like a piece of cake now. I knew that Ohio State was put-up-or-shut-up time. I had left the Marine Corps not just with
a sense that I could do what I wanted but also with the capacity to plan [such as for Law School].
I loathed debt and the sense of limitation it imposed. the GI Bill paid for a significant chunk of my education.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p.179-181
May 25, 2017
On War & Peace:
Marines in Iraq trained on respecting Muslim culture
[In college] with four years in the Marine Corps behind me, more separated me from the other students than age. During an undergraduate seminar in foreign policy, I listened as a 19-year-old classmate spouted off about the Iraq war. He explained that
those fighting the war were typically less intelligent than those (like him) who immediately went to college. It showed, he argued, in the wanton way soldiers butchered and disrespected Iraqi civilians. I thought about the never-ending training on
how to respect Iraqi culture--never show anyone the bottom of your foot, never address a woman in traditional Muslim garb without first speaking to a male relative. I thought about the security we provided for Iraqi poll workers, and how we studiously
explained the importance of their mission without ever pushing our own political views on them. And here was this [19-year-old] telling our class that we murdered people for sport. I felt an immediate drive to finish college as quickly as possible.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p.186-7
May 25, 2017
On Welfare & Poverty:
Welfare queens are poor whites as often as black moms
I do hope that readers of this book will be able to take from it an appreciation of how class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism. To many analysts, terms like "welfare queen" conjure unfair images of the lazy
black mom living on the dole. Readers of this book will realize quickly that there is little relationship between that specter and my argument: I have known many welfare queens; some were my neighbors, and all were white.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.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 7-8&57
May 25, 2017
On Welfare & Poverty:
Homeownership policies moved bad neighborhoods to suburbs
As a 2011 Brookings Institution study found, "compared to 2000, residents of extreme-poverty neighborhoods in 2005-09 were more likely to be white, native-born, high school or college graduates, homeowners, and not receiving public assistance." In other
words, bad neighborhoods no longer plague only urban ghettos; the bad neighborhoods have spread to the suburbs. This has occurred for complicated reasons. Federal housing policy has actively encouraged homeownership, from Jimmy Carter to George W.
Bush. But in the Middletowns of the world, homeownership comes at a steep social cost: As jobs disappear in a given area, declining home values trap people in certain neighborhoods. Even if you'd like to move, you can't, because the bottom has fallen
out of the market--you now owe more than any buyer is willing to pay. The costs of moving are so high that many people stay put. Of course, the people trapped are usually those with the least money; those who can afford to leave do so.
Source: Hillbilly Elegy, by Sen. JD Vance, p. 51-2
May 25, 2017
On Principles & Values:
Failure to thrive comes from lack of personal responsibility
His family were what he calls "hillbillies": white, working class, mostly of Scots-Irish decent and with no education beyond secondary school. In his book, Vance remembers the family as proud, clannish and occasionally violent.Rather than sink into
a familiar pattern of sporadic employment, drugs and violence, he joined the Marines for four years and served in Iraq before going to Ohio State University. There, he gained a degree in political science and philosophy. He gained admission to Yale Law
School, where he began his memoir, published in 2016 just as Donald Trump was making his ultimately successful pitch for the US presidency.
While the book does not mention Trump, some commentators described it as a window into a conservative white
working class often overlooked by Ivy League-educated coastal elites. Profoundly conservative, Vance put the blame of the hillbillies' failure to thrive on culture and a lack of personal responsibility, rather than systemic issues of economics and policy.
Source: BBC News commentary on "Hillbilly Elegy"
May 3, 2022
On Principles & Values:
Memoir made into popular Netflix film in 2020
A conservative columnist wrote that [in 2016, Vance's memoir] gave poor white people "voice and presence in the public square" at a time when they were key supporters of Mr Trump. In 2020 it was turned into a film, directed by Ron Howard and starring
Glenn Close. Despite unfavourable reviews, it was one of the most-streamed films on Netflix at the end of the year.While Vance was no Trump loyalist--and was sometimes harshly critical--he repeatedly said he understood the reasons for his popularity.
Source: BBC News commentary on "Hillbilly Elegy"
May 3, 2022
On Principles & Values:
Met wife at Yale Law School as his "Yale spirit guide"
In 2017, Mr Vance moved back to Ohio from California, where he had been working in biotech. He married a Yale Law classmate, Usha Chilukuri (now Vance), who had clerked at the Supreme Court. In Hillbilly Elegy, he described her as his "Yale spirit
guide", who helped him navigate the socially treacherous waters of the Ivy League and the recruitment rounds of the big law firms. The couple now have a son.
Source: BBC News commentary on "Hillbilly Elegy"
May 3, 2022
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Vance explains the economically precarious white voter
J.D. Vance is the man of the hour, maybe the year. His memoir Hillbilly Elegy is a New York Times bestseller, acclaimed for its colorful and at times moving account of life in a dysfunctional clan of eastern Kentucky natives. It has received positive
reviews across the board, with the Times calling it "a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass." In the rise of Donald Trump, it has become a kind of Rosetta Stone for blue America to interpret that most mysterious of
species: the economically precarious white voter.Vance's influence has been everywhere this campaign season, shaping our conception of what motivates these voters. And it is already playing a role in how liberals are responding to Donald Trump's
victory in the presidential election, which was accomplished in part by a defection of downscale whites from the Democratic Party. Appalachia overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and Vance has since emerged as one of the media's favorite Trump explainers.
Source: The New Republic magazine on Hillbilly Elegy
Nov 17, 2016
On Principles & Values:
Trump speaks to my people, who are really struggling
Q: A friend who moved to West Virginia tells me that she's never seen poverty and hopelessness like what's common there. And she says you can drive through the poorest parts of the state, and see nothing but TRUMP signs. Reading "Hillbilly Elegy" tells
me why. Explain it to people who haven't yet read your book. A: The simple answer is that these people--my people--are really struggling, and there hasn't been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time.
Donald Trump at least tries.
The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic
interests because of social issues. From the Right, they've gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, and economic growth. Trump's candidacy is music to their ears. He criticizes the factories shipping jobs overseas.
Source: American Conservative Q&A with author of "Hillbilly Elegy"
Jul 22, 2016
On Families & Children:
Citing "culture" is a copout; we need policy interventions
It's so easy for conservatives to use "culture" as an ending point in a discussion--an excuse to rationalize their worldview and then move on--rather than a starting point. I try to do precisely the opposite in Hillbilly Elegy. This book should start
conversations, and it is successful, it will. Let's just think about what culture really means, to borrow an example from my life. One of the things I mention in the book is that domestic strife and family violence are cultural traits--they're just
there, and everyone experiences them in one form or another. But to speak "culture" and then move on is a total copout, and there are public policy solutions to draw from experiences like this: how could my school have better prepared me for domestic
life? how could child welfare services have [avoided] threatening me--as they did--with the promise of foster care? These are tough problems, but they're not totally immune to policy interventions. Neither are they entirely addressable by government.
Source: American Conservative Q&A with author of "Hillbilly Elegy"
Jul 22, 2016
On Families & Children:
We learn how to be a great spouse despite domestic strife
I learned domestic strife from the moment I was born, from more than 15 stepdads and boyfriends I encountered, to the domestic violence case that nearly tore my family apart (I was the primary victim). So predictably, by the time I got married, I wasn't
a great spouse. I had to learn, with the help of my aunt and sister (both of whom had successful marriages), but especially with the help of my wife, how not to turn every small disagreement into a shouting match or a public scene. Too many
conservatives look at that situation, say "that's a cultural problem, nothing we can do," and then move on. They're right that it's a cultural problem: I learned domestic strife from my mother, & she learned it from her parents.That's just one small
example, obviously, and there are many more in the book. But I think this unwillingness to deal with tough issues--or worse, to pretend they'll all go away if we can hit 4 percent growth targets--is a significant failure of modern conservative politics.
Source: American Conservative Q&A with author of "Hillbilly Elegy"
Jul 22, 2016
On Government Reform:
No government solutions; stop blaming faceless companies
Vance isn't interested in government solutions. All hillbillies need to do is work hard: "Public policy can help," he writes, "but there is no government that can fix these problems for us--it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless
companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better."Set aside the anti-government bromides. There is a more sinister thesis at work here, one that dovetails with many liberal views of Appalachia and its problems. Vance assures readers
that an emphasis on Appalachia's economic insecurity is "incomplete" without a critical examination of its culture. His great takeaway from life in America's underclass is: Pull up those bootstraps. Don't question elites. Don't ask if they erred
by granting people mortgages and lines of credit they couldn't afford to repay. Don't call it what it is--corporate deception--or admit that it plunged this country into one of the worst economic crises it's ever experienced.
Source: The New Republic magazine on Hillbilly Elegy
Nov 17, 2016
On Government Reform:
We can change social norms, like cultural flip on smoking
I'm a big believer in the power to change social norms. To take an obvious recent example, I see the decline of smoking as not just an economic or regulatory matter, but something our culture really flipped on. So there's value in all of us--whether
we have a relatively large platform or if our platform is just the people who live with us--trying to be a little kinder to the kids who want to make a better future for themselves. That's a big part of the reason I wrote the book: it's meant not just
for elites, but for people from my own clan, in the hopes that they'll better appreciate the ways they can help (or hurt) their own kin.At the same time, the hostility between the working class and the elites is so great that there will always be
some wariness toward those who go to the other side. And can you blame them? A lot of these people know nothing but judgment and condescension from those with power, and the thought of their children acquiring that same hostility is noxious.
Source: American Conservative Q&A with author of "Hillbilly Elegy"
Jul 22, 2016
On Welfare & Poverty:
We spend our way to the poorhouse
Hillbilly Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class. Vance's central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame for their troubles. "Our religion has changed," he laments,
to a version "heavy on emotional rhetoric" and "light on the kind of social support" that he needed as a child. He also faults "a peculiar crisis of masculinity." This brave new world, in sore need of that old time religion and manly men, is apparently
to blame for everything from drug addiction to the region's economic crisis."We spend our way to the poorhouse," he writes. "We buy giant TVs and iPads thanks to high-interest credit cards. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more
spending money, and declare bankruptcy. Thrift is inimical to our being." And he isn't interested in government solutions. All hillbillies need to do is work hard, maybe do a stint in the military, and they can end up at Yale Law School like he did.
Source: The New Republic magazine on Hillbilly Elegy
Nov 17, 2016
Page last updated: Jul 21, 2024