A Sociological Response to J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy

The most complete rebuttal to J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy is Appalachian Reckoning; A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. It is an anthology written by a number of social scientists including sociologists as well as other humanities scholars. Here is a summary from the publisher's website,

With hundreds of thousands of copies sold, a Ron Howard movie in the works, and the rise of its author as a media personality, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What about Hillbilly Elegy accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil? Why have its ideas raised so much controversy? And how can debates about the book catalyze new, more inclusive political agendas for the region’s future?

Appalachian Reckoning is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow Hillbilly Elegy has cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Hillbilly Elegy to allow Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and photography. The essays and creative work collected in Appalachian Reckoning provide a deeply personal portrait of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. Complicating simplistic visions that associate the region almost exclusively with death and decay, Appalachian Reckoning makes clear Appalachia’s intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities.

Here is an NY Times review of Appalachian Reckoning.

Here is a partial table of contents:

Hillbilly Elitism by T. R. C. Hutton;

Social Capital by Jeff Mannp

Once Upon a Time in “Trumpalachia”: Hillbilly Elegy, Personal Choice, and the Blame Game by Dwight B. Billings

Stereotypes on the Syllabus: Exploring Hillbilly Elegy’s Use as an Instructional Text at Colleges and Universities by Elizabeth Catte

Benham, Kentucky, Coalminer / Wise County, Virginia, Landscape by Theresa Burriss

Panning for Gold: A Reflection of Life from Appalachia by Ricardo Nazario y Colón

Will the Real Hillbilly Please Stand Up? Urban Appalachian Migration and Culture Seen through the Lens of Hillbilly Elegy by Roger Guy

What Hillbilly Elegy Reveals about Race in Twenty-First-Century America by Lisa R. Pruitt

Prisons Are Not Innovation by Lou Murrey

Down and Out in Middletown and Jackson: Drugs, Dependency, and Decline in J. D. Vance’s Capitalist Realism by Travis Linnemann and Corina Medley

Additional critique of Hillbilly Elegy

From the New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/138717/jd-vance-false-prophet-blue-america

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 his mother’s drug addiction to the region’s economic crisis.

“We spend our way to the poorhouse,” he writes. “We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. 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. “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 that could have been ripped from a random page of National Review, where Vance is a regular contributor. 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.

From Contexts (2019),

In Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, W. Carson Byrd conducts a theoretical case study of the book, which has achieved wide-reaching notoriety since its 2016 release. In particular, Byrd interrogates how Vance’s use of color-blind framing and White ignorance (the purposeful position of ignorance toward issues of racial inequality) makes his account palatable to Whites, despite targeting a segment of Whites.

Byrd argues that Vance’s book gained acceptance by presenting racial inequality as the natural result of blending genetic determinism and racial essentialism. Vance even adopts culture of poverty explanations for the position of Appalachian Whites that mimic those used to stereotype inner-city Blacks (since at least the Moynihan Report). Byrd also highlights that Vance explicitly asks readers to avoid using a racial lens as they interpret his story. Combined with its focus on micro-level explanations for pathological behaviors and inequality, Hillbilly Elegy effectively erases the racial makeup of Appalachia (making it seem White and homogenous), thus removing race from the equation to allow space for Vance (and readers) to retain their White ignorance.

Pointedly, Byrd warns that Vance’s color-blind accounts of the plight of Appalachian Whites paint both intraracial and interracial inequality as inevitable by sensationalizing and giving legitimacy to racist and biodeterminist explanations of inequality. Byrd is critical, too, of how rewarding this book and other accounts that are similarly dismissive about structural solutions could negatively impact efforts toward systematic analyses of and potential policy remedies for inequality.

Social Class and the Connection Between Location and Education

 The Wall Street Journal published a study of data showing where graduates from different colleges move after graduating.  The article and interactive is here.

So you want to learn more about race or racism? Here's recommended reading...

Brief history of the recent sociology of race

 Brief history of the recent sociology of race

Historically, the approach to race has had some major evolutions especially within sociology.

As the U.S. emerged from the civil rights movement, by the 1980s, the emphasis for reacting to race in the U.S. was on colorblindness or acknowledging that race is a made-up social construct so we should no longer think in terms of race;  we should try not to see anyone's race, and move forward in the world ignoring race.

However, colorblindness did not reduce racism, instead, it ignored it.  This allowed racism to continue and allowed SOME people to claim they were not racist because they ignored race (but also ignored the racism)

This led to a new movement (late 90s) championed by sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.  He said we should strive to be race-conscious.  This means that we should acknowledge that though race is not a discrete biological category, it is in fact a social construct.  As such, it affects both how think about our own identity as well as how we think and act toward other people.  Some of these thoughts and actions might be explicit/conscious and some are implicit/unconscious.  Race consciousness emphasized trying to be conscious of all of these attitudes.

However, being race-conscious allowed SOME people to believe that they were doing their part to be not racist.  It was possible to feel that you understand the racial dynamics in America and that you were going to try hard to be aware of racist attitudes and actions and avoid them in your own life.  This could allow SOME people to go about their business feeling righteous about their own views on race, all the while allowing the status quo to continue.  And the status quo meant that racism could continue.  Sometimes there was a legacy of racism - such as the wealth gap which was generational, and other times there was racism embedded in social institutions.  The empirical data for this type of racial inequality is overwhelming.  (If you need data/examples here, I am happy to provide it)  

So it became clear that individuals claiming to be racially conscious and self-aware was not changing the system.  This led to Ibram Kendi's work called How to Be an Anti-racist.  Kendi's main thesis is that being race-conscious and working to not be racist as an individual is not enough to reverse the racism already embedded within society.  Doing so, allows racism to continue in really significant ways.  And so Kendi is trying to emphasize that simply denouncing racism without doing anything does not make one anti-racist.  In order to truly be anti-racist, one must actively work against the forces of racism that are already embedded in society.  

Some people want to criticize Kendi for being too extreme.  And I think that it is possible to be critical of specific aspects of being an anti-racist.  For example, there are some Americans perceived as whites who claim to be working against racism but not all Americans who identify as black will see their actions as such.  A great example of this are a number of instances during the George Floyd protests where well-meaning whites thought that by looting or rioting they were speaking out against the racism of the George Floyd incident.  These "woke" whites thought that they were taking to the streets to voice their displeasure with race relations.  They thought that they were working to be an anti-racist.  Plenty of Americans who identify as black spoke out against these looters/rioters.   There were stories of protesters who protected cops from being harmed by crowds and protesters who protected stores from being looted.   Clearly, there is disagreement or misunderstanding about what it means to be an anti-racist. And this is not surprising because society is complex and so are individuals.  And not only are they complex and multi-faceted, but they are dynamic: individuals and society are constantly changing.

But the general thesis of Kendi's idea is really simple to me;  if you truly opposed something, you will work to stop it.  For example, if you see a young child wander out into a busy street, you can stand by and say "I am really against letting children get by cars."  Or, you can actually help the kid even though you are a stranger.  You take an active role for something that you care about.  Take something like poverty.  You can claim to be against poverty or anti-poverty, but if you don't take steps in your daily life to end poverty, are you really anti-poverty? In other words, it is one thing to believe something, but it is something much more to actively work against it.  That is the simple takeaway from Kendi.

Meanwhile, Robin Diangelo has been working as a racial equity trainer throughout the different eras that I described above.  And what she has noticed is that SOME people who are in the various mindsets above, knee-jerk when they are challenged to be anti-racists as in the way that Kendi describes.  SOME people think that colorblindness is enough to be antiracist.  In fact, some people strive for colorblindness to the degree that any mention of race makes them uncomfortable.  I have experienced this with students myself.  Others think that race consciousness is enough and as long as they are aware of race, they do not feel obligated to work against laws or institutions that reinforce racial inequality.  When you say that being a bystander allows inequality and oppression to continue, they react defensively because they don't want to be implicated as a cause of continued racism.  The defensive feelings of people who identify as the majority are what Diangelo calls white fragility.  Discussing racism is hard and emotional so it makes people uncomfortable in ways that they have never had to feel.  And since whites are in the majority, they are not used to having to feel the emotion and discomfort of racial issues.  That, is what Diangelo describes as "white fragility".

Despite the history of sociological scholarship I mention above, it is true that both people and society are unique, complex and dynamic.   I think sociologists would be careful to not say, "The left thinks..." or "Conservatives think..." or "white people think..."  I thought about that as I was reading your text about "not all black people agree with the most progressive version of anti racism".  I agree with you and I think that overgeneralizations are a problem.  However I also think that failing to see the forest for the trees is a problem as well.  If you dismiss the overall thesis of Diangelo and Kendi because you get too bogged down in the minutiae, I think it misses the point.  

Regarding ERD - we would have to talk about the specifics of which ERD and what was being pushed.  I think it is naive to think that after hundreds of years of racism that anyone has the solution or even that there is one solution.  

But instead, I think the goal is to acknowledge that:

- Race is a social construct that shapes the obstacles and opportunities for people in the U.S. 

- Being aware of the ways in which race shapes the obstacles and opportunities can help us as both citizens and educators speak and act to mitigate the racial inequalities.

Those are the two basic ways that I approach race.  But I acknowledge that everyone is at a different understanding of those two things.  SOME (emphasis intended) people refuse to believe that race plays a roll in society and even moreso, SOME people will balk at the idea that they have contributed to racism.    

Complaining While Black

Jacob Faber from NYU explains his research about complaints against Chicago police and the correlation to race:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWl5Ui4udcA