J.D.Vance’s Climb

For decades, impoverished white people of the Rust Belt were the invisible face of American poverty. But in 2016, Donald Trump rode to the White House on a wave of white working-class anger, and the memoir J.D. Vance published that year about growing up in poverty in Appalachia rocketed to the top of The New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists.

Vance’s book shed new light on poor rural America and made the author a media sensation as he tried to craft a coherent explanation for why – at the time – many lower-class white voters went against their economic interests and voted for political outsider Trump, a wealthy New Yorker.

Today, Trump is running again for the presidency, and Vance, 39, is his vice presidential nominee. Vance escaped his hardscrabble upbringing by serving as a US Marine. He then went to Ohio State and Yale University Law School, worked in finance, and eventually won a seat in the US Senate representing Ohio.

I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish ancestry who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition.J.D. Vance

Vance also delivers an honest, evocative account of his life and the lives of many Appalachians who migrated to Rust Belt towns. He regards white people from the Kentucky coal country, people like his ancestors, as tough, loyal, and suspicious of outsiders. They fight, feud, drink, take drugs, steal, and loaf. Despite their flaws, he feels a deep sense of belonging to this tight-knit society.

Vance’s family of Kentucky natives moved to a working-class town in Ohio in search of work. He candidly describes his kin as deeply dysfunctional. His mother battled drug addiction and was a volatile, corrosive person who once threatened to kill her son. Vance’s father was comforting but made only occasional appearances in the young boy’s life. His grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, raised him. These two plainspoken hillbillies, despite their chronic chain-smoking and lack of education, put Vance on a path to escape the trap of poverty that still ensnares most of his childhood compatriots.

His story offers these lessons and highlights:

“We hillbillies are the toughest…people on this Earth.”   

And they’re some are the most self-destructive. Vance’s Uncle Pet once beat a man unconscious and then mutilated him with an electric saw – because the man called Uncle Pet a “son of a bitch.” Vance witnessed the ongoing war between Mamaw and Papaw. During one fight, she hurled a vase that hit him between the eyes, leaving a gash. Mamaw told the hard-drinking Papaw that she’d kill him the next time he came home drunk.

Mamaw came from a family that would shoot at you rather than argue with you.SOURCE

A few days later when Papaw passed out drunk on the couch, Mamaw doused him with gasoline and set him afire. Their 11-year-old daughter put out the flames.  

Vance’s Mother Caused Constant Upheaval and Unpredictability.

Vance remembers that his mother was prone to erratic behavior. When he was about 12, his mother became enraged while driving and threatened to “crash the car and kill us both.” She stopped the car to beat Vance instead. He ran to a nearby house. The occupant called the police, who arrested Vance’s mother. She developed a drug addiction and cycled through boyfriends, domestic disputes, and personal chaos. Her drug use led to arrests and visits from social workers and children’s services.

Vance had to adapt to new men in the house and frequent moves. For a time, he lived with his father, who was a calming influence, but Vance eventually returned to living with his mother.

Mamaw Provided a Stable, Safe Home.

Thinking of the ceaseless fighting and screaming fights of his childhood, Vance writes, still evokes, “an intense, indescribable anxiety.” He lost interest in school and started smoking marijuana when he moved in full-time with Mamaw. For all of her colorful language, wacky past, violent streak, foul mouth, and quick temper, Mamaw became a valuable model of fortitude for young Vance.

She urged him not to fight with other boys, but she made an exception when a school bully tormented one of his classmates. Mamaw told Vance to punch the boy in the stomach and even taught him how to rotate his hips to knock the wind out of the hellion. 

The US Marine Corps Showed Vance He Could Change His Fate.

Under Mamaw’s care, Vance earned a high score on the SAT college entrance test and was set to enroll at Ohio State University after high school. But something told him he wasn’t ready. He was clueless about the financial aid forms that arrived in the mail and fearful of taking on a load of debt.

Seeking order and discipline, he enlisted in the Marine Corps on the eve of the Iraq War. He learned to endure the physical rigors of boot camp and the barbs of drill instructors. The Marines helped Vance shed the “learned helplessness” of his youth. During the chaos of his childhood, he’d fallen into the habit of believing he had no control over his life. The Marine Corps taught him that he had the ability to shape his destiny. Vance lost 45 pounds, learned to eat healthfully, and gained a new self-confidence.

The Marines also taught him financial literacy. When he nearly agreed to a car loan with a 21% interest rate, an older Marine chewed him out and steered him toward a much cheaper deal from the Navy Federal Credit Union.

College Gave Vance a Community Safety Net.

After his military service, Vance attended Ohio State and then went on to Yale Law School. He found the coursework challenging, but not impossible, and his classmates intelligent but not intimidatingly so. For a kid from “the holler,” the biggest adjustment was social.

When he attended his first law firm recruiting dinner, Vance didn’t know that Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc were types of white wine. He was startled to find that sparkling water was carbonated. The array of flatware perplexed him. He snuck out of the meal to call his girlfriend for advice.

But perhaps the biggest surprise was the strength of Yale’s “networking power” – a support system of professors and classmates who reinforced students’ success. The network helped him cover for small mistakes such as spitting out the Pellegrino or flubbing an interview question.

Hillbillies Have Difficulty Transitioning into the Social Mainstream.

What’s wrong with hillbillies? Why can’t they just follow Vance’s path – go to college, get good jobs, and stop drinking and abusing drugs? The hillbilly penchant for fighting and avenging slights might work in the holler. But in broader society, it often leads to jail.

I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America. Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.J.D. Vance

During high school, Vance took a job bagging groceries. He could only chafe at what he saw as unequal treatment. The store manager allowed middle-class customers to run significant tabs, but if Vance’s clan of gun-toting hillbillies had tried to buy food on credit, the manager would have refused.

But Vance also sees hillbillies as their own worst enemies. For instance, his neighbor Pattie once phoned her landlord to complain about a leaking roof. The landlord arrived to find Pattie topless and passed out on the couch while the upstairs bathtub overflowed and ruined her family’s possessions. “This is the reality of our community,” Vance writes. “It’s about a naked druggie destroying what little of value exists in her life.” 

Lack of Self-Discipline Has Become an Epidemic in Hillbilly Neighborhoods.

In one telling example of how lack of self-discipline undermines his hometown crowd, Vance writes of his temporary summer job in a tile warehouse in Ohio. The work was physically demanding, but it paid $13 to $16 an hour during a period of high unemployment. Vance showed up regularly and took extra hours because he needed the money. But the company could scarcely coax his co-workers – fellow hillbillies – to show up for work, even though the job came with steady raises and plenty of overtime and it paid more than a living wage in their low-cost town.

During Vance’s short tenure there, the boss hired a young man and his pregnant girlfriend but eventually fired them. The young woman rarely showed up for work, and the man disappeared for hour-long bathroom breaks. Vance dismissed his sorry co-worker as just one more example of “too many young men immune to hard work.” Vance describes himself as politically conservative and downplays government solutions to the problem of white poverty. He believes in and promotes the importance of personal responsibility, sometimes to the point of overgeneralizing – even though he’s writing the story of people he clearly cares about deeply.