Author J.D. Vance Talks Politics, Poverty And His Hillbilly Upbringing

BY BLAIR DONOVAN
Miami University journalism student

Bestselling author J.D. Vance spoke to a packed room in the Armstrong Student Center at Miami University Wednesday in a talk titled “J.D. Vance: From Middletown to Yale to Scholar of Hillbilly Culture.” During the talk, he read excerpts from his book, followed by a Q&A session and a book signing.

The 32-year-old conservative has been dubbed the "Trump whisperer" since publishing his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family Culture in Crisis earlier this year. He decided to make his book a memoir so that he could tie in his own upbringing to make his research more credible.

“If I opened up my own life and put in personal faces, it would be easier for people to digest the ideas and not caricature my arguments,” Vance told more than 300 people from the university and wider community.

His book has been described as a key to understanding the 2016 presidential election. Without mentioning President-Elect Donald Trump by name, he helps explains Trump's appeal to white working class Americans using his own life to explore the cultural divide between social classes. Trump appealed to white, working class citizens, he said Wednesday, by honing in on the feeling that "the gatekeepers are never going to let you in."

"One of the biggest drivers in Trump support was the fear that 'My kid would have a worse life than I did,' " said Vance.

It's complicated

During the talk, Vance argued that America has a complicated mess of problems that make it difficult for the poor to rise. He said class differences are affecting U.S. politics.

"One of the conclusions I took is that we really have a problem in this country, where the kids who grew up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks think it’s difficult to get ahead," said Vance.

Among working-class Americans, some work hard, while others feel so cynical about their situations that they don't even try to get ahead, Vance said. The country must encourage them to find jobs, but also to understand that they face obstacles and unfair circumstances, he said.

"I think that old-fashioned American ethic of 'life is sometimes unfair' wasn’t in Trump’s campaign and it should have been," said Vance.

Vance's interest on the cultural divide in America grew as he considered his education at Yale Law School and his upbringing in a chaotic "hillbilly" family.

"It seemed to me these people were from a different species or a different culture," Vance said. "People like me weren't that represented at Yale."

Family struggles

Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and Jackson, Ky. His grandparents -- Mamaw and Papaw, as he called them -- moved out of the Appalachian area to start a middleclass life in Ohio. But just because a family moves up in a social class doesn't mean they feel comfortable in it, Vance said. His family struggled to adapt, which was one of the main themes in the book. Generations of violence, poverty and addiction plagued Vance's childhood.

However, despite his troubled life at home, Vance said his extended family provided the core support in his life to make sure he didn't slip through the cracks.

Vance's story is one of upward mobility, but he said he wrote his book to highlight the current lack of options in certain areas of the country, especially Kentucky and Ohio.

"We are supposed to be a 'classless' society where you have the opportunity to start better than where you came from," said Vance. "The problem is that if you look at the data, that's not true. People who grew up in Ohio have less a chance of rising than someone in, say, Utah."

The media can help bridge the cultural divide, Vance said, by covering stories on the ground rather than just reporting data about cities and states between the East Coast and West Coast. He also thinks students from working class areas who go away to college should considering returning to their hometowns.

"I’m very worried by how many high talent and high achieving people who go off to universities don’t want to come back to their hometowns," said Vance. "The people who really need those students are in their hometowns."

Photo: Vance signs books for an audience member after the talk. -- Photo by Blair Donovan