In J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy, he uses his life story to critique the notion that economic insecurity is the root cause of the hardship his fellow hillbillies must endure. Rather, Vance argues that the very culture he claims to love is actually responsible for the social decay that he and millions of others have had to live in, and that hillbillies’ inability to recognize this has led to their political estrangement.
To fully grasp the impact of hillbilly culture on the level of social decay that many hillbillies fall victim to, it is imperative to first have a firm grasp of the history of the Rust Belt and the current cycle of poverty. For generations, the states of Appalachia were quite poor, and the vast majority of jobs: such as coal mining and farming, required hard physical labour and often received very little pay or job security. However, when the Second World War ended in 1945 the American economy began an unprecedented period of growth in the
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While most economists stress an emphasis on education as the best way to improve your success in life, few hillbillies accept this. As Vance writes, “Most won’t graduate from college… Students don’t expect much from themselves, because the people around them don’t do very much”. Vance even recognizes how lucky he was to have his grandparents intervene in his life, because without them he almost certainly would have succumbed to the environmental pressures around him. And this lack of focus on education is nothing new for hillbilly culture either, as the vast majority of those employed within the factories did not attend post-secondary education. The only difference is that in the modern economy education is critical, yet hillbillies are either unable, or unwilling, to recognize this
Recently, many have begun to attack and degrade higher education in the United States. In the book How College Works, authors Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs claim, “As state support has eroded, and as more students attend college in an increasingly desperate attempt to find viable jobs, the price to students of attending an institution of higher education has gone up, especially at more selective institutions” (172). So is college even worth it? Caroline Bird’s excerpt from her book Case Against College “Where College Fails Us” is an adequately written article that agrees with those who question whether college is a good investment. Bird argues that although some students would benefit from college and succeed, many fall short, wasting
Thesis: Ted R. Worley’s article: “The Arkansas Peace Society of 1861: A Study in Mountain Unionism” argues that the secession vote did not accurately emulate the opinions of the people in the Arkansas upcountry. Worley asserts that birthplace and culture play an important role in the peace societies and insurrection against secession. Evaluation of the Argument:
Rhetorical Analysis on “Southern Discomfort” In “Southern Discomfort” George Packer initially constructs a foundation on which he can build his coming argument by mentioning a recent vote in Congress in which southern republicans dissented from the rest of the party by making up half of the “no” votes. Packer then goes on recall the history of the South, touch on some major political issues and controversies, and just generally establish himself as a credible and knowledgeable individual on the South. Throughout the article, Packer makes numerous implications that both the South as well as its culture is out-of-date; a sort of antiquated representation of America from 1970 to 2008, one filled with the cliché southerner who only loves country, guns, and football.
A scholar by the name of Roger Cunningham creates a strong example of culture. Cunningham stated that a meaningful systematic structure that implies location to the universe. Due to interaction of systems, Appalachia is continuously restructuring. There is a predisposition to protect Appalachian culture in a secure, inflexible way. The social and cultural aspects are able to change and are not simplified to a few distinct directories (Maloney & Obermiller, 2011).
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff argues the difference between “book smarts” (intellectualism) and “street smarts.” Graff explains that some people take on different approaches and interests certain subjects not related to “book smarts”, such as sports, television, fashion, etc. Everyone has a variation of both “book” and “street” smarts, but one is more profound than the other in a person, thus making the other a form of “hidden intellectualism”. He then claims that intellectualism in someone is often belittled and labeled as being geeky. As a kid, he was afraid to show his intellectual side in fear that he would be bullied and made fun of.
The nature of the Old South depended on a firmly structured society where plantation owners, or a small white body of southerners, existed as the elites of society, “crackers,” who were sometimes depicted as poor whites but, in this case, refer to those whites in the south who represented a culture which drew from its Celtic origins, and, most importantly, African American slaves who were firmly regimented in state of inferiority to both crackers and planters. In terms of ethics and economics, the nature of the Old South created for itself a unique civilization where, ethically, southerners possessed a high degree of honor and were in a constant state of fear of humiliation, and, economically, southern society was unique for its reliance on
The main point they make is higher education equals higher income. Becker and Murphy point out the difficulties in paying for college, but they look at the returns being worthy
The hopes formed by the Kansas Exodus of living a normal, free life were shattered as many couldn’t afford to take up farming and resumed their role on the lowest rung of society. The North also sparked false hope, as industry expanded at an intangible rate, it also created countless jobs, but factory owners “refused to offer jobs to blacks in the expanding industrial economy, preferring to hire white immigrants” (Foner 523). Consequently, African Americans fought to obtain any job they could. Moody’s stepfather, Raymond, was tired of looking for menial work in the South and decided to head west in search of a job that could provide for his family. He had been hard set on making it as a Mississippi farmer, but continued failure left him no choice than to go see his family in Los Angeles for work.
The most popular examinations of Appalachian whiteness deal with the stereotypes of “poor white trash” or “the hillbilly.” Although they position the inhabitants of Appalachian as a people apart, that is separate and different from mainstream urban industrializing America, those arguments often hedge on class instead of racial differences. When people of color are included, they are only useful in as much as they provide a point of juxtaposition that allow whites to define themselves against what they are
At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was booming with new industrial innovations because of new technologies, and it was becoming one of the leading economies in the world. This economic boom came to a sharp halt as events such as the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl hit, causing millions of Americans to face economic struggles. “The Strenuous Life,” a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, displays the ideas of American work ethics that led to economic growth in the early 1900s. These ideals of work ethic not only prompted the cause of the Dust Bowl, but were continued on into the lives of the affected farmers as Americans displaced and in poverty from this event continued to participate in migrant work with awful living
J.D Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a personal psychological, cultural and sociological analysis of poor white working-class Americans. Specifically, Hillbilly Elegy examines the life of the author in Middletown Ohio, a once booming post war steel town that today has a struggling economy, diminishing family values and a rapid increase in drug abuse. At the beginning of the memoir, Vance perfectly situates the reader to the uniqueness from his life in Middletown. Vance repeatedly wrote throughout the memoir that the youth living in this Ohio steel town has a bleak and troubling future. Vance illustrates the statistics that children like him living in these towns were lucky if they just manage to avoid welfare or unlucky by dying from a heroin overdose.
Do you think someone with a higher education-level job requires more from the worker than someone that started working right from high school? Or do you think that not going to college after high school means that you just stop learning? One of Mike Rose’s main ideas in the Blue-Collar Brilliance is the question, is there really a difference between white and blue collar worker? Mike Rose is being persuasive in the text because he shows how his family went through blue collar work. I think Mike Rose is being persuasive in writing this.
The informal language, creative word choice, and diction used by all of the characters in this story are true to the Southern Gothic genre short story style (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). Southern imagery extends beyond the characters to the setting and language. As we read about dirt roads, southern plantations, “red clay banks”, and crops in the field, we are
Living where we live, you begin to comprehend that living off of $11.00 per hour including with your family will never suffice your needs. Getting a college degree can ensure the graduate a higher chance of being able to earn more financially. In the article “Why College Isn't And Shouldn't Have to be For Everyone” by Robert Reich, he states that “A degree from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools and law schools-and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions. ”Even though Reich’s article is on the opposing side of the argument, he fails to overlook the fact that in the long run having a college degree will, and can open doors to many new opportunities. One of those opportunities is to be able get a well paying job that can earn more than the average non college graduate.
In the article “ Why college isn’t( and shouldn’t have to be) for everybody” it states “For example, the emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service, and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and factories.”(26) . “ Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” They feel they are compelled to get a college degree because they’ve been told that it was necessary to get a college degree, some people also think that if you go to a four-year college everyone would look down to their nose if they don’t have a college degree.. “ I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver.