The Myth that J.D. Vance Bootstrapped His Way to the Top
It’s time to question what J.D. Vance can actually do for working class Americans, writes Bobi Conn.
I grew up in eastern Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, immersed in all that the region has to offer—lush forests filled with oak trees and wild orchids; lively streams, teeming with crawfish and minnows. Life abounded and flourished and though gunshots sometimes ricocheted off the hills I loved to climb and explore, I knew the forest to be safe. Copperheads lurked there, sure, but no grown-ups ever followed me into the woods, carrying danger with them. My home held a different story—a story of childhood anguish—which I learned to tell through written words only, knowing silence was a tool for survival.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]With J.D. Vance’s recent nomination as Trump’s VP pick, there’s a renewed interest in our region as his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, has once again become a bestseller, much to our community’s collective frustration. Appalachians have spoken out in droves to reclaim our “hillbilly” identity that Vance co-opted while prescribing bootstrapping as a solution to our problems.
Read More: J.D. Vance’s Vision of Appalachia Is Nothing New
But for those of us who grew up mired in poverty, surrounded by addiction, these systemic problems feel like being trapped in quicksand that only wants to pull you further into despair. There are no boots nor bootstraps, no solid ground to get your footing, when each day is a struggle for survival. But neither the outcry of offended Appalachians nor the book’s glaring inconsistencies mattered to readers or voters in the past; it seems unlikely they will impact Vance’s narrative now.
His story still matters, though. Most notably because, while his memoir resonated with readers for its quintessentially American narrative of a self-made man, the reality is he did not get here alone. He got here because of the policies and programs that support working class people. In fact, it’s one of the few things he and I have in common.
Despite his middle-class upbringing in the Rust Belt, J.D. Vance and I both grew up suffering with the chaos and pain that come with having an addicted parent, violence in the home, and familial mental illness. Any one of those factors will have a negative impact on a child’s well-being and future prospects; growing up with all three, studies show, sets a child up for failure.
Vance and I also both received valuable higher education due to the generosity of others who funded our scholarships. I went to Berea College, a tuition-free college here in Eastern Kentucky where every student works and which has a stated mission to educate low-income Appalachians just as it has educated men and women, Blacks and whites, since its inception in 1855. Vance attended Yale Law School on a generous scholarship, which is a benefit some of our nation’s top schools offer to low-income students. But it’s hardly well-known to most Americans who are just trying to survive. We were lucky to even have known about these schools, much less to get in.
It wasn’t just higher education that helped Vance and me pull ourselves out of the circumstances we grew up in. Despite its imperfections, our national public school system provided a foundation to attend college and even to become writers. My parents and later I, as a single mother, benefitted from social programs like food stamps and medical cards. Welfare programs often keep children fed and even alive—which means that some of us can grow up to become productive adults who not only pay our taxes, but make invaluable contributions to society and our families.
Vance helped perpetuate stereotypes about the “lazy poor” in his memoir when he shared his frustration about discovering, at 17 years old, that there are adults on welfare who dare to own cell phones and buy things that food stamps doesn’t cover (i.e., alcohol and cigarettes). However, he is seemingly also aware of another point that is critical to this discussion, though it isn’t a popular topic in political discourse: Our choices are shaped by our culture, and none of the class issues he critiques can or should be chalked up to immorality.
Read More: The Demonization of Rural America
The reality is that these complex problems require careful thinking and sometimes, complex solutions. Not everyone needs or wants to go to college, and it’s not a guaranteed path to success for those who do go. Addiction and mental illness have become dire problems in our country while resources for treatment have dwindled. Working Americans struggle to keep up with the cost of groceries and utilities, while a lot of mental health support and medical care is prohibitively expensive.
Some of Vance’s political views are easy to identify, like his stance on border control and immigration, while his thoughts on abortion (and even Trump himself) have covered broader ground. And there’s plenty of detailed coverage of his thoughts on digital currency and other financial topics. But there’s far less to be found regarding his stances on ensuring high-quality public education for all American children or social welfare programs that support struggling families—which are often in the crosshairs of Republican spending cuts.
This exclusion leads me to wonder: Has Vance forgotten how he rose to his position? Does he think about the other kids in Middletown and throughout Cincinnati who are suffering like he once did, and the parents who are raising them, also struggling to cope?
Vance and I are both lucky to have come out alive, much less as functional and successful adults. What we have in common is grit, yes, but we didn’t just save ourselves: our educational and even our job opportunities offered a path forward. Others who are just like us need mental health support, job training, and the benefits of being taught self-discipline and structure, like the Marines offered Vance.
The economic and cultural pressures we are facing have left American families in turmoil, and children are the ones who bear the greatest burden. They also represent the next generation of our country, whose success we all should be highly invested in. The lifelines that paved the way for both me and Vance have not just served countless Americans; they are crucial to our country’s greatness.
More than 15 years ago, I taught undergraduate classes as an adjunct instructor in English at Eastern Kentucky University for a time after getting my master’s degree there. I had a student in one class who liked to share his political views. I listened but didn’t offer my own. One day, he told me how he thought all social programs should be eliminated.
“What do you think should be done for sick people who can’t afford medical care?” I asked.
And he told me, “We should let them die.”
He would have been 18 or so. I knew there was a chance a lot of his beliefs would change in the near future. As shocking as it was to hear him say that, I know it’s a lot easier to see things in black-and-white when we’re younger, still naïve in ways, before we find ourselves in the midst of complicated situations. I’m sure he couldn’t fathom what it really looks like when we abandon the most vulnerable among us to die in underfunded hospitals or on the streets themselves. And like so many firmly held political beliefs, it’s easier to condemn the people we don’t identify with and think we never will.
If that was 15 years ago, I’m dismayed by some of the ways we are demonized now. When I’m inundated by the obituaries of my former classmates in Eastern Kentucky, lost to opioids in middle age, or horrified by the rampant homelessness and addiction in our cities, I want to know how politicians like Vance will address the despair that has permeated our communities—his community. How will the working class in Appalachia and beyond—which has always fueled our nation’s success, with our coal and timber and bodies—be fairly recompensated? How will we move beyond the impotent speeches about wages and inflation to actually ensure American families aren’t stuck in survival mode?
Our country’s well-being includes the well-being of all. Your neighbor’s addiction or poverty or pain remains isolated for only so long. Our leaders—Democrat, Republican, or otherwise—need to attend to the problems we see all around us, which are not indicative of individual weakness, but of our greater cultural struggles.
Our great country faces a number of challenges, but we also have a myriad of tools and solutions to help us create a better way forward. J.D. Vance has experienced firsthand some of the ways we can do this, and they don’t include the bootstraps he prescribed in his memoir.
Throughout his career, Vance has developed opinions on every hot-button issue in our political landscape. He claims to be for the working class. But it’s now time to ask what will he actually do for us? After all, we know what the working class has done for him.