Review of Hillbilly Elegy

Thirty-one year J.D. Vance, himself an Appalachian white of Scots-Irish descent, has written his memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, 2016.  It has quickly become a New York Times bestseller, deservedly so.  Much the same that has happened to Appalachian whites has happened to African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans and other ethnic groups who have the misfortune of meeting ethnocentric and oppressive White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who arrogantly assume they are God's favorites.

On the surface, there is much documentation of widespread individual, family, community and cultural dysfunction.  Unfortunately, this will be the takeaway that many readers conclude.  But if the reader reflects deeply, possibly reads the book a second time, she will discover hints that it is rich, white oppression that precedes and causes poor white dysfunction.  Never forget, oppression causes dysfunction; dysfunction does not cause dysfunction unless it has become so deeply ingrained because of generations of oppression that it does become self-perpetuating.

After reading The Truly Disadvantaged and Losing Ground, Vance concluded that though these book were written about inner city blacks that "they had described my home [family, town, culture] perfectly."

Vance writes several pages about ACEs or adverse childhood experiences or childhood PTSD.  Trauma by definition is caused by an outside force, not an inner weakness or inferiority.  Oppression, for example, causes trauma.  Some of the most common ACEs are:
     * "being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents.
     * being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you.
     * feeling that your family didn't support each other.
     * having parents who were separated or divorced.
     * living with an alcoholic or a drug user.
     * living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide.
     * watching a loved one be physically abused."

Vance experienced all of these traumas.  Vance writes that "ACEs happen everywhere, in every community.  But studies have shown that ACEs are far more common among" hillbilly culture.  "Children with multiple ACEs are more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression, to suffer from heart disease and obesity, and to contract certain types of cancers. . . . constant stress can actually change the chemistry of a child's brain."

"No other country experiences anything like this---[family instability, home chaos].  In France, the percentage of children exposed to three or more maternal partners is 0.5 percent. . . . In the United States, the figure is a shocking 8.2 percent---about one in twelve---and the figure is even higher in the working class.  The most depressing part is that relationship instability, like home chaos, is a vicious cycle."

"It's no surprise that every single person in my family who has built a successful home . . . married someone from outside our little culture."  As did J.D. Vance.

Vance sadly reports that "chaos begets chaos.  Instability begets instability.  Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly."

Remember though, that oppression precedes and causes dysfunction; oppression causes trauma and then trauma causes dysfunction

The church needs to specialize in identifying and eliminating systems of oppression.  For whites, this begins awfully close to home.