Hillbilly Elegy

“C’mon, don’t you think blacks have it harder [than whites]?” my friend implored me as we approached the tee box on the 8^th hole on a spectacular Sunday afternoon on a golf course on the North Shore, one of Chicago’s wealthier suburbs.  My answer is always the same, “Some.”

A few months earlier, another friend, who is black, sent me an article written by a woman, decrying the existence of “white privilege,” which reads in part,

"We constantly see it play out in our criminal justice system, where white men receive significantly less prison time when compared with their African-American or Latino counterparts for the same offense.  We've seen it in the workplace where white men who have less qualifications than women or minority candidates get the job, the promotion, or the raise because of relationships and the "old boys network."  We've seen it in exclusive neighborhoods and high-end department stores where African-Americans are profiled, followed, and presumed to be criminals despite any kind of evidence or wrongdoing."

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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance is an excellent and appropriate answer to the notion of white privilege, although it is not written as one.  Vance writes an authentic and heartfelt memoir of his youth in Appalachia (then transplanted to Ohio).  His account is neither self-indulgent, nor overtly political.  It is highly personal and intimate, yet not bitter, angry or blaming.  Through his own family experience, he describes a segment of society that has chronically been left behind.

One can’t help but draw parallels between Vance’s experience growing up and that of so many blacks in the inner cities in America.  He was largely abandoned by his biological father.  His mother battled drug addiction her entire life.  He lived in a home in which there was a revolving door of men in and out of the home, so there was no constant father figure for him to rely on.  Verbal and physical violence permeated his childhood.  He was reared largely by his grandmother, who instilled values of education in him.  His family situation was chaotic, “One of the questions I loathed, and that adults always asked, was whether I had any brothers or sisters.  When you’re a kid, you can’t wave your hand, say, “It’s complicated, and move on.”  As he recounts the anecdotes of his childhood experiences, we are horrified by them, amazed that Vance was able to make it out (as with many lower class kids, using the military as a first rung).    In his story, poverty is embedded in his upbringing.  “Violence and chaos were an ever present part of the world that I grew up in,” says Vance.

And, like many blacks in urban America, the society which Vance was reared has been ravaged by the decline in manufacturing employment that sustained these communities. As manufacturing employment in Ohio succumbed to foreign competition and greater efficiencies, those jobs evaporated, leaving despair and hopelessness behind in their wake.   Now, drug overdoses in his former community is the leading cause of death.  Run-ins with the law are not uncommon.  (One of the best tweets circulated recently read, “You know you come from White Trash when you count more ankle monitors than Fitbits at your family picnic.”)

Hillbilly Elegy resonated with me on a personal level.  When my African-American friend raised the issue of “white privilege” with me, I bristled.   As someone that grew up in one of the blue collar, ethnic enclaves in Chicago, I felt I had more in common with black kids that went to public schools on the South Side than with white kids that grew up in Kenilworth and went to New Trier.   My 2^nd grade class picture shows a classroom of 52 kids (some with special needs) and one grumpy old nun wielding a ruler to keep order.   Every street corner in my neighborhood had a tavern and alcoholism and family discord abounded.   Poverty, while hidden, was not uncommon, along with domestic abuse.   To get ahead in life in my neighborhood, it was helpful to curry favor with either the local ward committeeman or parish priest.   One got you a good job if you got out the vote.  The other saved your soul.

Hillbilly Elegy widens the lens on relative social and economic disadvantage beyond race.  The relative proportions may be different, but there are plenty of whites that are similarly disadvantaged.   Regardless of race, growing up in a single parent , unstable, unsafe family is a tremendous obstacle to overcome.  After reading Vance’s book and read the anecdotes of his upbringing, you will come away with more empathy for those that come from lower class America and their struggles-- regardless of race. 

While some blacks have struggled to seek solutions through groups like BLM, others, like Charles Barkley and former Dallas police chief David Brown have advocated taking greater personal responsibility and ownership.   Barkley recently said, “Unfortunately, as I tell my white friends, we as black people, we’re never going to be successful, not because of you white people, but because of other black people.   When you’re black, you have to deal  with so much crap in your life from other black people.  “It’s a dirty, dark secret; I’m glad it’s coming out.  One of the reasons we’re not going to be successful as a whole because of other black people.  And for some reason we are brainwashed to thing, if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough.  If you go to school, and make good grades, speak intelligent and don’t break the law, you’re not a good black person.  And it’s a dirty, dark secret.”

Vance asks very similar questions about his own poor white culture in Hillbilly Elegy, “Are we tough enough to look ourselves in the mirror and admit that our conduct harm our children?  Public policy can help but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.”

Vance is blunt, open, and honest about his life and the echoes  of his youth that undoubtedly plague him still, “Upward mobility is never clean-cut, and the world I left always finds a way to reel me back in.”

Hillbilly Elegy puts flesh and life on the bones of Charles Murray's important book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 and raises questions about upward mobility and the American dream in a segment of society that has been stuck for generations, and shows us that these issues are not completely race based.  And he does so in a sincere voice and without an agenda.

Vance's book validates my answer as correct.   Do blacks have it harder?  Some.  Are whites privileged?  Some.  Many clearly are not.

It will likely be my choice for nonfiction book of the year.