After finishing a reading of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, but before beginning to write these reflections on it, I got into one of my documentary-watching moods and ran across Ken Burns's The Dust Bowl. I am one of the legion of Ken Burns fans, but this one came out at a time when I could not get involved and so on a recent (coincidentally very windy) evening I decided to take it in. However, I wonder if unconsciously I was drawn to it now, not only because of the Trump supporter conundrum, but also because of reflections on my roots.
Both of my parents grew up in Oklahoma near the panhandle (but not in the exact "no man's land" of the documentary but instead to the east and slightly south of it near Woodward). They did tell me about the Dust Bowl, but as both came from educated, professional families, they were affected more by the Depression in general and were spared the horrors of the worst of the ecological disaster. Then I recalled what my father told me of his family's earlier generations in Appalachia as broadly conceived- northern Alabama. Somehow, farmers became teachers, then pastors, then doctors. And then there was my time in summer camp in Tennessee when I got to know a true hillbilly family slightly when I volunteered to help with the grooming of horses for the day's classes. There were lots of children, little food, and all their savings spent on a one big family event without caution or planning. It all added to my big WHY about what happened to my family that did not to others, what happened to the post-war boom that I have been lucky enough to have lived through, and what is happening now that is causing me not just to disagree with those on the other side of the aisle- in my case I am toward the left and they are toward the right- but to fear for the rejection of our core political assumptions that I thought were shared at the most basic level.
I enjoyed Vance's book even as I experienced astonishment at his emergence from a truly brutal childhood of real dysfunction in his immediate family. However, he communicates very well the role his grandparents played as his real, psychological parents. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine from a rural background. The chaos, lack of connection to literate or any form of what one calls "higher" western culture, violence and collapse of ambition felt harrowing. Vance himself is a study in the interplay of nature and nurture: his raw native and genetic intelligence miraculously won out over his ghastly but all-too-common circumstances. In Tennessee folks described this way were not farmers but miners, hired hands, or available for odd jobs. But even back a few decades, I observed as a privileged teenager that a fierce, admirable honesty existed alongside a strange lack of defined skills, like carpentry, metalwork...as if the old village of the nineteenth-century was populated with people who had sudden amnesia for how to do things. Into this void has come the end of much manual labor, old injuries, opioids, addition and collapse. Learning new skills is not really an option.
I found inspiring the way Vance zeroed in on what his grandmother in particular gave him: she cared. She actually thought learning was important and took the time to communicate this. According to J.D. Vance, this was what was so lacking in his friends and the communities in which he grew up. They did have to go where jobs and survival were, but nothing lasted and despair was common.
Then his narrative took an unexpected turn. He began to look back, after detailing how he aced the SAT and similar exams that no one knew enough to tell him were a big deal, excelled in the US Marine Corps, and then exhausted but educated himself at Ohio State, got into Yale Law, went for a visit home, and found....laziness. While I do not agree with some critiques of his attitude, it did surprise me. The subtitle of this book could be -White is the new Black.
And he has gone on to occupy that right wing side of the aisle. He does blame his poor while culture quite a bit even as he expresses a lot of love for his extended family. Being of the Scots-Irish myself, I can say he is lucky that he was not left as much on his own emotionally as I have been, but regardless of social class we all got a big dose of Calvinism that explains why only some of us are still even asking religious questions. I imagine this comes as a surprise to many readers of his book- the lack of interest in church at least in the Midwest area, as opposed to the South.
Finally, is he in fact explaining anything about Trump supporters? In many ways, yes, insofar as some are like the Dust Bowl farmers. Those former tenant farmers were sold huge tracts of land and told to plow it; they had no way to test it without some education in science and critical thinking, and so the land sharks and hucksters of the Oklahoma land rushes swindled them easily. They knew that wheat could not grow there long-term. And Trump also is nothing more than a con artist; it is the hyper-capitalist elites and fanatics like Steve Bannon who are the real dangers. In other ways, no, Hillbilly Elegy really does not tell us about racism and the onrush of technology that will take away jobs no matter what. I was really fascinated that Vance did not talk about African Americans really or immigrants. I learned from some web research that the wonderful woman he found to marry is of South Asian background- India- and at his website are pictures of their Christian-Hindu wedding! I wish he would send them to the white nationalists, although they would probably just blame Yale. And if the climate-change deniers feel superior to the Dust Bowl farmers, well, they are either just as gullible as the farmers or just as crooked as the land dealers. Anyone want to sell a house to a sub-prime borrower?
Only viable schools, the cultivation of empathy, and true open-minded curiosity can save our larger culture, and maybe that is where the new idealists need to be, like the civil rights advocates of years ago. If J.D. Vance can just cultivate a little more empathy he can contribute. He has some of the other two advantages and found out the "elites" are people, too.
Both of my parents grew up in Oklahoma near the panhandle (but not in the exact "no man's land" of the documentary but instead to the east and slightly south of it near Woodward). They did tell me about the Dust Bowl, but as both came from educated, professional families, they were affected more by the Depression in general and were spared the horrors of the worst of the ecological disaster. Then I recalled what my father told me of his family's earlier generations in Appalachia as broadly conceived- northern Alabama. Somehow, farmers became teachers, then pastors, then doctors. And then there was my time in summer camp in Tennessee when I got to know a true hillbilly family slightly when I volunteered to help with the grooming of horses for the day's classes. There were lots of children, little food, and all their savings spent on a one big family event without caution or planning. It all added to my big WHY about what happened to my family that did not to others, what happened to the post-war boom that I have been lucky enough to have lived through, and what is happening now that is causing me not just to disagree with those on the other side of the aisle- in my case I am toward the left and they are toward the right- but to fear for the rejection of our core political assumptions that I thought were shared at the most basic level.
I enjoyed Vance's book even as I experienced astonishment at his emergence from a truly brutal childhood of real dysfunction in his immediate family. However, he communicates very well the role his grandparents played as his real, psychological parents. A similar thing happened to a friend of mine from a rural background. The chaos, lack of connection to literate or any form of what one calls "higher" western culture, violence and collapse of ambition felt harrowing. Vance himself is a study in the interplay of nature and nurture: his raw native and genetic intelligence miraculously won out over his ghastly but all-too-common circumstances. In Tennessee folks described this way were not farmers but miners, hired hands, or available for odd jobs. But even back a few decades, I observed as a privileged teenager that a fierce, admirable honesty existed alongside a strange lack of defined skills, like carpentry, metalwork...as if the old village of the nineteenth-century was populated with people who had sudden amnesia for how to do things. Into this void has come the end of much manual labor, old injuries, opioids, addition and collapse. Learning new skills is not really an option.
I found inspiring the way Vance zeroed in on what his grandmother in particular gave him: she cared. She actually thought learning was important and took the time to communicate this. According to J.D. Vance, this was what was so lacking in his friends and the communities in which he grew up. They did have to go where jobs and survival were, but nothing lasted and despair was common.
Then his narrative took an unexpected turn. He began to look back, after detailing how he aced the SAT and similar exams that no one knew enough to tell him were a big deal, excelled in the US Marine Corps, and then exhausted but educated himself at Ohio State, got into Yale Law, went for a visit home, and found....laziness. While I do not agree with some critiques of his attitude, it did surprise me. The subtitle of this book could be -White is the new Black.
And he has gone on to occupy that right wing side of the aisle. He does blame his poor while culture quite a bit even as he expresses a lot of love for his extended family. Being of the Scots-Irish myself, I can say he is lucky that he was not left as much on his own emotionally as I have been, but regardless of social class we all got a big dose of Calvinism that explains why only some of us are still even asking religious questions. I imagine this comes as a surprise to many readers of his book- the lack of interest in church at least in the Midwest area, as opposed to the South.
Finally, is he in fact explaining anything about Trump supporters? In many ways, yes, insofar as some are like the Dust Bowl farmers. Those former tenant farmers were sold huge tracts of land and told to plow it; they had no way to test it without some education in science and critical thinking, and so the land sharks and hucksters of the Oklahoma land rushes swindled them easily. They knew that wheat could not grow there long-term. And Trump also is nothing more than a con artist; it is the hyper-capitalist elites and fanatics like Steve Bannon who are the real dangers. In other ways, no, Hillbilly Elegy really does not tell us about racism and the onrush of technology that will take away jobs no matter what. I was really fascinated that Vance did not talk about African Americans really or immigrants. I learned from some web research that the wonderful woman he found to marry is of South Asian background- India- and at his website are pictures of their Christian-Hindu wedding! I wish he would send them to the white nationalists, although they would probably just blame Yale. And if the climate-change deniers feel superior to the Dust Bowl farmers, well, they are either just as gullible as the farmers or just as crooked as the land dealers. Anyone want to sell a house to a sub-prime borrower?
Only viable schools, the cultivation of empathy, and true open-minded curiosity can save our larger culture, and maybe that is where the new idealists need to be, like the civil rights advocates of years ago. If J.D. Vance can just cultivate a little more empathy he can contribute. He has some of the other two advantages and found out the "elites" are people, too.
