The White Working Class: J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy"

Book Review: J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy- Book review Name Institution Date In the book “Hillbilly Elegy” J.D. Vance,   chronicles his memories and family’s past in Kentucky as well as is experience growing up among white working class people.  In the memoir, Vance acknowledged that growing up in Middleton, Ohio the area deteriorated with rising unemployment, drug abuse, single parenthood and break up of many families in the white working class communities. Nonetheless, Vance was able to graduate from college unlike fellow Americans of Scots-Irish descent from the area where poverty seemed like a family tradition (Vance, 2016).   While the community he talks about who were previously sharecroppers, day laborers in the slave economy, they are now coal miners, machinists and millworkers (Vance, 2016).  The book focuses on social dysfunction in non-Hispanic white working class community   using commentary, personal history and evidence on the link despair, social isolation, family instability and downward mobility with social dysfunction former mining and manufacturing rural and small towns. To Vance, there is despair among the poor white working class in the heartland who feel ignored and even belittled by the rest of America. The main strength of the book is that Vance documents his life, including his family’s history while highlighting how culture and geography has influenced the way they and others have lived in rural and small mining towns.  In chapter 1, Vance mentioned that his Scots-Irish Americans tend to be unchanging and have strong bonds, and even as this is associated with strong loyalty, they tend to dislike outsiders and those different from them. To Vance, his family’s history and other of fellow Scots-Irish descended Americans how that culture and geography have influenced their place in the U.S.  Even though, the book is a memoir, Vance also quotes other writers and reports on the plight of white working class people in the U.S. this strengthened his argument that ‘hillbilly culture ‘was partly to blame for the difficulties that they faced.  For instance, Vance acknowledged that the pathologies of crime, drug abuse, broken single parent households and welfare dependency are common among the poor and studies further show that this threatens family stability and the likelihood of individuals and families escaping poverty (Vance, 2016). At the same time,   the author pointed out his observation   that religion promotes good habit, and he saw changes in his father who became less abusive as he began taking his faith seriously. This is consistent with research that regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, live healthier lives, attend  school and more likely to earn higher incomes than those who   do not go to church at all (Vance, 2016). The writer critiqued social welfare and emphasized that the welfare programs were not necessarily helpful in the long term as there were multigenerational families who depended on welfare, without the situation improving. Vance described living in an area where many of the neighbors and family members did not hold a regular job, and where there were high divorce rates and single parenthood. Social welfare did not improve the wellbeing of the people in this area and he rightly comments that social decay made it difficult to use money wisely.  Furthermore, social disintegration causes resentment among those who see the government doing too little and in communities like those in Middleton, Ohio, and those who believe that the government rewarded lazy people. There are also weaknesses in the book as Vance at times represents his observations and opinions as what ails the white working class and how others can be better achievers. While the book rightly addresses the dynamics associated with poverty in the Rust Belt towns, Vance oversimplifies the issue by mentioning the ‘Hillbilly culture’ but does not define this explicitly. As such, one can infer the shared cultural aspects between the white working class and the former sharecroppers can explain the bad and good traits that are common among today’s po...