Oppression Causes Dysfunction

Oppression causes individual, family, community and cultural dysfunction often resulting in PTSD.

Once established, dysfunction creates more dysfunction.  Most theologians and sociologists look at the dysfunction creating more dysfunction, but miss the oppression causing dysfunction part.

All great books  deserve a rereading so I have just reread Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, himself an Appalachian white, a despised and exploited Scots-Irish white, exploited and despised by Anglo-Saxon whites.  Hillbilly Elegy excels in its analysis of of dysfunction but is weak in its analysis of oppression.  Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio but his families' cultural heritage came from the coal country of eastern Kentucky, namely Jackson, KY.  Coal made this area rich (for the coal companies) but this area was full of poor people (exploited coal miners).

Hillbilly Elegy is a personal story, a family story, not a historical treatise nor a sociological analysis though there are bits and pieces of both historical and social analysis.  This book is a true story, but it is not the whole truth.  An important half truth about individual, family and community dysfunction.  But if the half-truth is taken as the whole truth, it is a deceptive half-truth.  Since most readers will be individualistic Americans with little in depth understanding of either history or sociology, Hillbilly Elegy will be understood by them as the complete truth.

I am not an expert on Appalachian history and sociology so I cannot point the reader to the book on Appalachia that would complete the story.  But about 40 years ago I showed a documentary film on Appalachia titled Rich Land, Poor People---rich coal companies and poor miners.

Over Christmas, I met a gentleman who was teaching at an Indian school in South Dakota.  He had read Hillbilly Elegy so I asked him if similar dysfunction existed on Indian reservations.  He said, Yes.  Vance himself said poor hill whites shared similar individual, family and cultural dysfunction with poor blacks.

Possibly Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism and oppression equally crushed Scots-Irish white, poor blacks and Indians.  Oppression causes trauma, dysfunction and stress.  Stress can cause miscarriages; Vance's grandmother had nine miscarriages.  It was recently reported that the likely cause of the much higher rate of premature births among blacks is prolonged stress.

Oppression causes dysfunction, trauma, stress, poverty, illiteracy---a witches brew of social toxins.

Vance:  "Writing this book, . . . I learned much I didn't know about my culture, my neighborhood and my family.  And I relearned much that I had forgotten."

Neither religion (God) nor country (patriotism), both highly revered among hill whites, came through for Appalachian whites when the chips were down.  Religion (God) turned out to be only spirituality without justice; only justice ends oppression.  Nation/country exploited hill patriotism---labor without fair compensation and full citizenship.

These myths have left hill people pessimistic and disillusioned; they have provided no answers.  Broken spirits, internal conflicts and now drug addiction along with poverty.