Hillbillies

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Jess on Hillbilly Elegy

I thought I’d indulge myself by starting a new thread.  I’ve been reading J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and I couldn’t resist but share a few pages.  It’s an interesting moment in a fairly graphic narrative memoir of his white-trash upbringing where he attempts a more objective look at and the people who inhabit it (effectively a people many of whom explain Trump).  It resonates with my own upbringing, and there is no irony lost on me.  Discussions of empire and first-world problems fail to obscure the image of disfunction masquerading as entitlement. 
Hillbilly Elegy(4u)
 

Hillbilly Elegy(4u)-2

Phil responds: accounting for the generational shift in values

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I can identify with this.  HIs grandparents were both my g-parents and parents. His mom tho, is something else.  I am guessing we are talking boomer gen in her case.  If so, I think there is a lot of good social study that doesn’t so much explain the value shift as document it.  
He appears loathe to take on analysis that is common to the theoretical canon, yet even he cannot resist the descriptors “consumerist” and “isolated”.  I think political economy, such as Streeck’s analysis [I posted this eons ago], reveals the background circumstances.  Both education and media add to the fail.  Throw in drugs and perfect recipe for family/community breakdown and the rise of the isolated individual [lacking personal support]: the culture of “coping, hoping, doping and shopping.”
A graphic illustration of this disintegration and resulting despondency. 
 
 
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Jess points to class and Chandra concurs

J. The problem for J.D. Vance, a Yale-educated Hillbilly with a law degree, is that people misunderstand the white blue-collar discomfort with Obama as racism.  He sees it as class-ism.  They distrust someone so articulate, so civilized so moderate, qualities he has acquired through association with and assimilation by a his adoptive Ivy-league class and finds he has to dis-associate himself  from among his blue-collar peers.  I have a similar experience when I go to my brother’s cottage.  How do I respond genuinely to hockey and NASCAR banter?  How do I lose certain linguistic affectations. 

C. — I can relate with the idea that Hillbillies’ are suspicious of elites – white And black – who equate their distrust/dislike of Obama with racism.

 FWIW It doesn’t look like racism to me.

i’d think (like Vance) it is class-ism coded most glaringly  in the very form and content of our language.

Jess points to class and Chandra concurs

J. The problem for J.D. Vance, a Yale-educated Hillbilly with a law degree, is that people misunderstand the white blue-collar discomfort with Obama as racism.  He sees it as class-ism.  They distrust someone so articulate, so civilized so moderate, qualities he has acquired through association with and assimilation by a his adoptive Ivy-league class and finds he has to dis-associate himself  from among his blue-collar peers.  I have a similar experience when I go to my brother’s cottage.  How do I respond genuinely to hockey and NASCAR banter?  How do I lose certain linguistic affectations. 

C. — I can relate with the idea that Hillbillies’ are suspicious of elites – white And black – who equate their distrust/dislike of Obama with racism.

 FWIW It doesn’t look like racism to me.

i’d think (like Vance) it is class-ism coded most glaringly  in the very form and content of our language.

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