In 2016, President Donald Trump famously said: “I love the poorly educated.” For this, he took fire from the liberal media; in their view, Trump was a demagogue who can only gather support from stupid people, or as Hillary Clinton once put it, the “basket of deplorables.”

Trump’s choice for running mate in his current bid for the US Presidency suggests otherwise. J.D. Vance is not a scholar in the conventional sense, but he is certainly a smart man with an academic vein. Yet he is not an intellectual who talks down to the poorly educated. In fact, he was one of them, and with admirable capacity, pulled himself up by the bootstraps.

His 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, is a powerful testimony of that process. In this day and age, there is much talk of “white privilege” in the United States, and sure, some folks with low levels of melanin do get a sweet deal in life.

But pace the narrative of liberal media, it should be noted that white people can be at the receiving end of unfairness, too. If you only think of the world in terms of colour when you consider injustice, then you are missing a huge part of the story.

That is one of Vance’s most forceful points in the book:

“In our race-conscious society, our vocabulary often extends no further than the colour 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 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.”

In a world where hillbillies are basically subhuman inbreds – as depicted in the 1972 film Deliverance – and nobody gives a damn about them, Vance strives to remind the reader of their humanity, telling his life story engaging these people, both good and bad. We seem to care a lot about people of colour, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, etc., but as far as most people are concerned, rednecks should rot in their trailers. Vance is not taking it anymore, and rightly so.

Yet, you will not find in Hillbilly Elegy the ever-present victim mentality of our times. Yes, hillbillies have had it rough, but they also need to do some soul-searching. Vance is not shy about portraying many of the dysfunctional features of his culture, not least the abuse of welfare programs. He relates his experience as follows:

“I also learned how people gamed the welfare system. They’d buy two dozen-packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash. They’d ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer, wine, and cigarettes with cash. They’d regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.”

When Hillbilly Elegy was published, Vance was praised by many liberals. While his conservative views are clearly expressed in the book, liberals appreciated his critique of the culture from which Trump’s supporters originate. This is somewhat strange, given that sociologists and anthropologists who had expressed criticisms of the cultural values of people struggling with poverty, were severely scolded by liberals.

For example, when in his 1965 book The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested that a major cause of African Americans’ struggles can be traced to some of their cultural features – most notably, deficient fatherhood – liberals strongly objected. How can one explain this double standard? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that skin colour has something to do with it. Had the banjo-playing characters of Deliverance been people of colour, that film would be universally condemned.

In any case, it was foreseeable that liberals’ honeymoon with Vance would not last for long. They were interested in Vance’s criticisms of his own culture, but they did not care much about his efforts to humanize rednecks. Now that he is Trump’s running mate, it is open season on Vance.

Yes, Vance has some skeletons in his closet. He did once call Trump “America’s Hitler.” He does seem to think that Trump won the 2020 election. There may be legitimate concerns about some of his authoritarian leanings. But as usual, the liberal media is eager to engage in fear-mongering tactics targeting Vance, despite the fact that worse things may be happening on the Left. One wonders if a hillbilly can ever get a fair shake in American politics.

Vance has a long political road ahead of him, and as Trump’s potential political successor, he may even become President in the not-too-distant future. To this writer, however, his most important legacy will always be his intellectual contribution.

Hillbilly Elegy is a very good book.

Can anything good come out of Appalachia? Discuss. 

AUTHOR

GABRIEL ANDRADE

Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion, and psychology.

EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.