In 2016 J.D. Vance released a memoir of his formative years as a member of a hillbilly family just trying to survive. His story was about overcoming obstacles as he eventually made it out of his small town to attend college and Yale Law School.At the time, it was overwhelmingly praised as a reflection of poverty and the problems the poor face in this nation. It was so popular that liberal Hollywood took notice and Netflix released a movie version of the memoir directed by mega star Ron Howard that starred big hitters Glenn Close and Amy Adams.While the book remained on Amazon’s best seller list since its publication, there has recently been a seismic shift towards criticism as Vance made the fateful decision to accept the Vice Presidency nomination from Donald Trump. What was once called courageous and insightful is now called generic, over simplified and insulting.Why did the reviews change? Because the people described in Vance’s memoir were once the bread and butter of the Democratic Party. Having one of their own defect and run on the Trump ticket is scary as it could draw support from those who grew up like him. In many ways, Vance is an interesting conservative. The quote that came to mind while reading is, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The problem is this quote does not come from a conservative icon like Ronald Reagan, but from German-born political theorist Karl Marx. While much of the current political rhetoric today is about race, at its heart “Hillbilly Elegy” is a story of class struggle. Vance writes in the introduction, “In our race-conscious society, our vocabulary often extends no further than the color of someone’s skin—“Black people,” “Asians,” “white privilege.” Sometimes these broad categories are useful, but to understand my story, you have to delve into the details. I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.” Vance even suggests that in ...
