If
you’re not focusing on class as your primary thing, then I can’t see how you
can build an anti-racist program or anti-sexist program, unless it just means
purely yelling at people and changing consciousness. –
Bhaskar Sunkara, Founding Editor at Jacobin
Magazine
I.
Introduction
Within intellectual circles, a debate revolving around
culture rages on. In this debate, many crucial questions have been raised about
asked. What is culture? How is it created? What does it take to change it? In
2014, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, many people tried
to ask these questions about the culture of impoverished black communities. Some
argued that poverty and all its trappings—violence, hunger, inadequate
housing—are mainly a product of a culture that promote ignoble values. In “The
Wounds Public Policy Can’t Heal,” an article that frequently alludes to black
culture, David French, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute,
reprimands libertine, progressive elites, like the founders of Black Lives
Matter, for “offering government band-aids to cover the gaping wounds created
by living the very life of sexual self-indulgence and radical personal
autonomy” (French). Others claimed that focusing on the supposedly “deficient” culture
of marginalized people allows people to ignore systemic issues like
institutional racism and classism. In “The Poverty of Culture,” Heideman and
Jonah Birch chastise their liberal cohorts for legitimizing the idea of a
cultural “black pathology,” a notion that “give[s] succor to those who seek to
block any attempt at addressing the real causes of racial inequality” (Heideman
and Birch).
Now, with the rise of Trump, intellectuals are asking the
very same questions about the Appalachian hillbilly, a group plagued by drug
addiction, health problems and unemployment. Similar to the argument
surrounding black culture, within this conversation, there are two dominant
perspectives. On one end of the debate, people posit that Appalachians, by
holding onto their deficient culture, are responsible for their own turmoil. Exemplified
by J.D. Vance’s critically acclaimed Hillbilly
Elegy, this theory holds that, if Appalachians want to escape their chaotic
situation, it is incumbent on them, not the government. “I don’t know what the
answer is precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or
faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better”
(Vance 178-9). On the other side of the spectrum, there are some who see
culture inextricably tied to class. To them, culture is not something that is
created by the individual, but rather, it is shaped by nefarious social forces
that keep people trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty. Emblematic of this
perspective is Michael Harrington’s seminal 1962 book, The Other America. In Harrington’s world, “The first step toward
the new poverty was taken when millions of people proved immune to progress.
When that happened, the failure was not individual and personal, but a social [emphasis added] product”
(Harrington 9-10).
While both Vance and Harrington’s
frameworks make convincing arguments, Harrington’s is more insightful because
it recognizes the current cultural landscape of impoverished communities while
still acknowledging the economic and political trends that led them there. If
one wishes to diagnose, and provide a prescription for, the chaos of Appalachian
society, one must emphasize how structural factors shape hillbilly values, as Harrington
does in The Other America. Indeed, while
culture plays a part in deciding whether a group—geographic, ethnic, economic,
etc.—of people flourish, it is important to recognize how one’s culture is
defined by their socioeconomic limitations. An honest account of why
Appalachian values prove self-destructive would better emphasize their history as
an exploited and politically alienated group. Accepting this reality, society
must enact a series of governmental interventions that brings prosperity to a
community so often expected to pick itself up.
II.
What Is
Culture?
In trying to conceptualize the terrible culture
of Appalachian, J.D. Vance uses an ethncultural argument that racializes his
fellow Appalachians, linking them to a Scots-Irish ethnicity. Though seemingly innocuous,
describing Appalachians in ethnic terms has pernicious effects that cannot be
ignored. Comparing Appalachian migrants in the Rust Belt to “southern blacks
arriving in Detroit,” Vance uses a racial attack to criticize hillbillies. “…these
migrants disrupted a broad set of assumptions held by northern whites about how
white people appeared, spoke, and behaved…the disturbing aspect of hillbillies
was their racialness [emphasis
added]” (Vance 43). Offensive to both groups, Vance’s assertion that “southern
blacks” and “Appalachians” carry a distinct “racialness” lacks veracity and
nuance. According to Prof. Bob Hutton, “…Scots-Irish, hillbilly, and even the
term ‘culture’ serve as shorthand that make for a much simpler story than one
that explores the contingencies of Appalachian poverty” (Hutton). Indeed, to
Hutton, much of Vance’s work “…smacks of racial determinism, even if ‘culture’
replaces biology in his account” (Hutton). Using this racial attack, Vance ties
all Appalachians to a common ethnicity, enabling him to attribute their culture
to a shared set of ethnic values.
From Vance’s perspective, Appalachians
exist as an ethnic group who hold specific values. To Vance, many of these
values exist as terrible aspects of a culture that keeps people locked into a
state of decrepitude. “We do not like outsiders or people who are different
from us, whether the difference lies in how they look, how they act, or, most
important, how they talk. To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish
hillbilly at heart” (Vance 6). To show how these “bad” Appalachian attitudes
foster irresponsibility, Vance uses the bigoted tropes of the lazy welfare
queen and the promiscuous mother This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First,
these Appalachian archetypes, and Vance’s definition of Appalachian culture as
a whole, are dubious because they rely “exclusively on personal experiences,”
like “Caudill and Weller[‘s]…culture of poverty theories” (Haynes 16). He has “known [emphasis added] many welfare
queens” and others who “gamed the welfare system” (Vance 9). And he “noticed [emphasis added] that a Facebook
friend (an acquaintance from high school with similarly deep hillbilly
roots)…was constantly changing boyfriends—going in and out of relationships...with
four children” (Vance 107). Second, these clichés, co-opted from the language
of racism and classism, see Appalachians, not as an exploited class, but as a
lazy, violent ethnicity. Though writing in the 1960s, Harrington’s criticism of
this theory is pertinent. “Here is the most familiar version of social
blindness: ‘The poor are that way because they are afraid of work…they prefer
to live on the dole and cheat the taxpayers” (Harringotn 14). Instead of
researching the economic and political histories of the Appalachian community,
Vance lazily promotes an unfounded and stereotypical portrait of the hillbilly.
Though Harrington’s position certainly
warrants some criticism, it is still substantially more edifying than Vance’s because
it defines culture in economic terms. Indeed, Harrington is not perfect. Like
Vance, he uses the term “hillbilly” and gives rural and urban Appalachians a
distinct identity (although it is one based on their poverty, not their
ethnicity). Prof. Ada B. Haynes calls this approach into question, when, criticizing
Harrington’s “culture of poverty,” she states, “When taken to the extreme,
culture of poverty theories posit the Appalachian culture not only as deviant
but as pathological” (Harington 15) (Haynes 15). Also, Haynes, using a study by
Thomas Ford, discredits the notion that Appalachians are distinct in their
cultural attitudes. “The Southern Appalachian people…to be sure…retain the
impress of their rural heritage, but for the most part their way of life…their
aspirations are not radically different from those of most other Americans”
(Haynes 17). Still, Harrington’s analysis holds water. While Prof. Haynes offers
up some sharp criticism of Harrington’s work, Harrington’s “culture of poverty”
is somewhat misunderstood by Haynes. Contrary to Haynes’ belief that “none of
the culture of poverty theories focus on the material conditions which shape
the culture (Keefe, 1988),” Harrington goes to great lengths to show you the “mighty
historical and economic forces that keep the poor down” (Harrington 14). Furthermore,
Harrington’s “culture of poverty” is compelling because, unlike Haynes, it tackles
Vance’s argument head-on, attempting to explain the violence, drug abuse and
prejudice Vance sees in Appalachian culture using an economic lens, as opposed
to a racial one. “Poverty in the United States is a culture, an institution, a
way of life” (Harrington 16). Tying poverty and culture together, Harrington,
unlike Vance, uses a well-reasoned, material framework that allows him to see
“bad” ethnicities (i.e. Appalachians) in terms of their class, not their race.
III. Blame Game
As he does in his description of
hillbilly culture, Vance, using anecdotal evidence, shows that economic
insecurity cannot explain why Appalachians hold onto their destructive culture.
His experiences taught him “that this story of economic insecurity, at best, is
incomplete” (Vance 8). As opposed to Michael Harrington, Vance concludes that political
and economic marginalization do not explain why Appalachians continue to live
in squalor. Stemming from a worldview that thinks everyone has the ability to
choose how they live their lives, Vance, instead, ignorantly blames the
beleaguered Appalachian for their own cultural deterioration. This feeling is
apparent when he, self-righteously, points out that despite the dwindling
numbers of available factory jobs, there were still positions open to laborers
who wanted them. The problem, however, was that Appalachian men were too
irresponsible to fill them. “The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run
far deeper than macro-economic trends and policy. Too many young men immune to
hard work…There is a lack of agency here” (Vance 9). Looking from Vance’s
vantage point, National Review’s
Kevin D. Williamson echoes this sentiment. In “The Father-Führer,” Williamson
bluntly criticizes Appalachians for being “morally…indefensible.” “Forget your
sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy
theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs…The white American
underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are
misery and used heroin needles” (Williamson). Though Williamson is a bit
crasser than Vance in his evaluation, his critique reinforces Vance’s theory. “These
problems were not created by governments or corporations or anyone else. We
created them” (Vance 178). From Vance and Williamson’s parochial perspective, Appalachians
take the lion’s share of the blame for their milieu.
Unlike those who adopt a class framework that relies on
historical and analytical evidence, Vance and Williamson base their conclusions
on piety and “ignorant, smug moralisms.” People in Vance’s intellectual camp “view
the effects of poverty—above all, the warping of the will and spirit that is a
consequence of being poor—as choices
[emphasis added]” (Harrington 15-6). Ignoring the brutal economic assault that public
and private sector have mounted against poor Appalachians, or “material conditions
which shape the culture” they think that culture is something that exists
separately from economic status (Haynes 16). For Vance and Williamson, poverty
does not create culture, but rather, culture creates, and sustains, poverty. To
substantiate this claim, they use personal experience, an incredibly biased
source of evidence, to supplement their arguments. A propos J.D. Vance, Prof. Bob
Hutton states, “If faced with empirical evidence that suggests his experience
is more exception than rule, he can always fall back on the position that Hillbilly
Elegy is simply his own personal ‘journey’ — a brilliant, infuriating
paradox for anyone looking to criticize him” (Hutton). Though they write
eloquently about the problems facing the hillbilly, their warrants are grounded
in shaky evidence that leads them to ignorantly blames poor Appalachians, not economic
and political domination, for the inability of the hillbilly to lift themselves
out of poverty.
Instead of excoriating Appalachians for hanging onto a
culture that prevents them from changing their economic reality, Harrington and
Haynes use empiricism to explain how poor Appalachians suffered significant
economic and political abuse. Starting as early as the 19th century,
capitalists sought to exploit Appalachian land and labor as a way to
unscrupulously make a profit. “The separations of producers from the means of
production became the primary untdertaking of the corporations upon initial
contact with the region (Gaventa,
1976; Lewis, 1976)…Not only outside industrialists, but the local elite
also participated in this separation of labourers from the means of production”
(Haynes 49). In the subsequent century, economic and political abuse continued
to negatively impact Appalachians. During the 1930s, many of the poor did not
feel the beneficial effects of “unemployment compensation [and] the Wagner
act,” and were left out of the burgeoning middle class of the post-World War II
era (Harrington 9). “These were people in the unorganizable jobs, in the South,
in the minority groups, in the fly-by-night factories that were low on capital
and high on labor” (Harrington 9). Appalachians felt this acutely when, during
the mechanization of the post-War period, many hillbilly farmers remained poor
while “the big corporate farms gained” (Harrington 39). And, for the
hillbillies who migrated to urban centers, they were forced to live in “the
slums…and…work…the dirtiest and most menial jobs” (Harrington 96). In short, since
the early stages of industrialization, the highest strata of economic and
political power were the primary shapers of Appalachian society, as they
expropriated private property, controlled labor laws and enforced racial
segregation.
Lastly, structural barriers trap Appalachians that prevents
people from obtaining financial and cultural stability. As previously
mentioned, a group of people’s culture is intimately tied to their economic
standing. In reality, no matter the ethnicity, if a group of people are ravaged
by nefarious economic and political actors, they are bound to live in a state
of material and cultural poverty. Poor people were “born…in the wrong section
of the country, in the wrong industry, or in the wrong racial or ethnic group”
(Harrington 14-5). Furthermore, those who live in this poverty are stuck there,
due to, what Harrington calls, “a vicious circle” (Harrington 15). Of course,
considering their total dismissal of the economic and political background of
Appalachian life, Vance and Williamson disagree with this. When Vance states,
in reference to his drug-addicted mother’s rough childhood, “No person’s
childhood gives him or her a perpetual moral get-out-of-jail-free card,” he is
speaking to the fact Harrington’s “vicious circle,” does not give people the
license to be immoral. While, on a superficial level this may be true, it
ignores how poverty forces people into making decisions that exacerbate their
situation. Showing how “the poor get sick more than anyone else in the
society,” Harrington demonstrates how the “vicious circle” functions. “The poor
get sick more than anyone else in the society. That is because they live…under
unhygienic conditions; they have inadequate diets, and cannot get decent
medical care…they lose wages and work, and find it difficult to hold a steady
job. And because of this, they cannot pay for good housing, for a nutritious
diet, for doctors” (Harrington 15). Clearly, the rapacious greed of powerful
capitalists and politicians, not the uncouth behavior of the Appalachian, placed
hillbillies into poverty (which, as Harrington laid out, is not only a class
distinction, but also a culture), trapping them into a vicious cycle of
poverty, sickness and hopelessness.
IV. Burn The Bootstraps
For those who implicate Appalachians in the creation and
perpetuation of their poverty-creating culture, only the hillbilly can fix
her/his community. If, like David French, one believes that, “…millions of
Americans aren’t doing their best. Indeed, they’re barely trying,” the only
solution to Appalachian poverty, then, is for hillbillies to start trying
“their best” (French). Though a somewhat laughable idea, this prescription acts
as the main argument for many intellectuals, including Vance. Indeed, since
Appalachians “created” the problems, “only [Appalachians] can fix them” (Vance
178). From Vance’s perspective, the predicament Appalachians find themselves in
cannot be fixed by a policy proposal; no government intervention can enlighten
the Appalachian masses. “Public policy can help, but there is no government
that can fix these problems for us.” Ignoring the economic and political
marginalization that Appalachians face, Vance offers up a nonsensical, cruel solution
to the hillbilly: Save yourselves.
Although Vance and his friends at National Review do offer up some policy reforms, these reforms
exist as paternalistic solutions that do not provide any material assistance. While
Vance’s proposal to stop Section 8 housing segregation is noble this one small
solution, one of the few that he provides, does not get to the core of the
problem—economic and political abuse and alienation. In his National Review piece, “Social Inequality
Matters as Much as – or More Than – Economic Inequality,” Oren Cass exemplifies
this problem, arguing that social reforms, not economic stimulus, are the only
ways to improve the situation of impoverished people. His research “suggests that
today’s emphasis on economic resources is a mistake. The focus should be on
disrupting the cycle of poverty in which social decay in one generation
inhibits the development of the next, individuals ill-prepared for life and
work face limited opportunity, and their ensuing struggles cause further social
decay” (Cass). For Vance, who loathes how people “gamed the welfare system,”
and Cass, if the government has any role in helping poor people, it is in their
ability to stop enabling bad behavior, particularly in the realm of welfare
dependancy. In reference to Appalachian laziness, David French states, “And
that’s where disability or other government programs kicked in…You don’t have
to do any work (your disability lawyer does all the heavy lifting), you make
money, and you get drugs” (French). In this myopic perspective, if society is
to help, it should only be through making the working class more “responsible”
for their own lives and less dependent on government assistance.
In lieu of a program of “personal responsibility,” Harrington’s
suggests that the American government provide Appalachians with substantial economic
relief. Fully dismissive of the idea that poor people are somehow “dependant,” Harrington,
based on the history of poverty in America, sees large-scale interventions as
the only way for society to alleviate the pains of Appalachian poverty. “To a
large extent, the answer…will be determined by the political response of the
United States…If serious and massive action is not undertaken, it may be
necessary for statisticians to add some old-fashioned, pre-welfare-state
poverty to the misery of the other America” (Harrington 14). As opposed to
those who “base their culture of poverty theories exclusively on personal
experiences,” Harrington uses evidence to prove that the only way to solve a “culture
of poverty” is with political action (Haynes 16). “Because of this, the new
poverty is something that cannot be dealt with by first aid. If there is to be
a lasting assault on the shame of the other America, it must seek to root out
of this society an entire environment, and not just the relief of individuals”
(Harrington 11). Specifically, if society wishes to ameliorate the dire
situation of Appalachians, there must be a major investment into Appalachian
infrastructure and social services. In his chapter on Appalachian life,
Harrington states, “The whole structure of backwardness and decay, including
bad public facilities, lack of water control, and the struggle with soil
erosion, could be dealt with. But such a program would be truly massive. It
would require a basic commitment from the Federal Government” (Harrington). To
Harrington, an economic and political response to the exploitation of the Appalachian
community, not a lecture on morality and responsibility, is the key to solving
the “backwardness” of hillbilly culture.
Though a drastic change in the
material conditions of the Appalachian is not the panacea for all the cultural
attitudes that keep Appalachians “immune to progress,” it is a fulcrum part of
any plan which aspires to solve the problems of hillbilly culture. When it
comes to certain aspects of hillbilly culture—racism, sexism and xenophobia—it
is apparent that there are serious problems that economic redistribution cannot
solve. “…working on ending economic inequality
alone will not change the reality of racism and discrimination that people of
color continue to face on a daily basis. Let’s not forget that if a fair and
just society is the goal, racial equity needs to be a priority,” says Elaine
Gross, President of Erase Racism (Gross). However,
this does not mean that the government should not try to improve the economic
and political reality of today’s Appalachia. Take the white working class support
for Trump. To Seth Ackerman of Jacobin
Magazine, even if many Trump’s voters (many of them Appalachian) support
him because of their racist culture, that is no reason to ostracize them even
more, pushing them deeper into poverty. “if a cordon sanitaire is
placed around that demographic territory and hung with the notorious label, ‘Trump
Vote,’ the Democrats will be even more likely to let the party system drift
down its current path: into the culture-war politics of the reactionary
Tammany-versus-Klan 1920s” (Ackerman). So, though a material solution may not
fully eradicate racism and sexism from Appalachian culture, if we ever hope to
fix hillbilly culture, we must reach out them and offer up a material solution.
As Bhaskar Sunkara said in his Vox interview,
“yelling at” Appalachians will only exacerbate their economic pains, sinking
them deeper into poverty, despair and bigotry.
V.
Conclusion
In conclusion, when plumbing the nuanced debate surrounding
Appalachia’s deficient culture, it is readily apparent that economic and
political abuse play a much more significant part in shaping Appalachian
culture than ethnicity, race or traditional values. Moreover, wee see that the
materialist framework of Harrington and his ideological allies better explains
Appalachian culture and poverty than Vance’s ethno-cultural framework. Contra
Vance, Harrington proposes that Appalachian culture is simply a manifestation
of the poverty hillbillies live in. Refusing to blame the culture of the
Appalachian for their destitute society, Harrington uses historical and analytical
data to show how economic abuse and political exclusion are the true causes of the
destruction of the hillbilly community. While Vance insists that Appalachians
have to clean up their own mess, Harrington, in recognizing Appalachian
history, correctly pushes for a massive economic intervention by the
government, one that would help bring much-needed progress to a group of people
stuck in a fraught situation. Indeed, instead of lecturing hillbillies on the
virtues of responsibility, we should acknowledge the domination of economic and
political over the Appalachian community. With this recognition, then, society
as a whole can push for a material solution that gives the hillbilly economic
security and a political voice.
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