“She was more roommate than parent, and of the three of us - Mom,, and me - Mom was the roommate most prone to hard living” as she partied and stayed out ‘til the wee hours of the morning. Though she’d trained for a good job, as a nurse, Bev’s drug use and frequent churn of male partners led to the instability associated with the “hard living.” Indeed, at one point Vance uses that very term to refer to his mother: “Mom’s behavior grew increasingly erratic,” Vance writes. They even judged their daughter, Vance’s mother, Bev. Academics refer to these groups as the “settled” working class and the “hard living.”Īl Behrman/AP Photo and Drew Angerer/Getty Imagesįrom that perch, Vance’s grandparents harshly judged neighbors who didn’t work. Vance (bottom) grew up in the shadow of the steel mills in Middletown, Ohio (top), where he became very familiar with two distinct groups of working-class whites. Though they were crass and unconventional by polite, mainstream standards, Papaw and Mamaw’s work ethic positioned them in the settled working class. Indeed, it was such a good job that Mamaw could stay home and take care of the kids. Papaw had a steady job at the Armco steel mill-one good enough to draw him and hundreds like him out of the Appalachian Kentucky hills to Middletown, Ohio. Vance’s beloved grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, represented hard work. Though Vance described this divide in Hillbilly Elegy, readers unfamiliar with the white working class may not have picked up on it. They called these folks “white trash,” the worst slur they knew. They were talking about their lazy neighbors. We lived in an all-white corner of the Arkansas Ozarks, so my parents weren’t fretting about the Black folks Ronald Reagan would later denigrate with the “welfare queen” stereotype. Want to read more stories like this? POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. The latter are thus more likely to fall into destructive habits like substance abuse that lead to further destabilization and, importantly, to reliance on government benefits. In academic circles, these two groups are sometimes labeled the “settled” working class versus the “hard living.” A broad and fuzzy line divides these two groups, but generally speaking, settled folks work consistently while the hard living do not. In his memoir, Vance pitted two groups of low-status whites against each other-those who work versus those who don’t. What the pundit class isn’t talking about, however, is an important consistency between 2016 author Vance and 2022 politician Vance. Vance now also dabbles in conspiracy theories and has taken on a belligerent, Trump-like tone. Since then, Vance’s positions on polarizing issues like immigration have lurched to the right and he sought - and won - Trump’s endorsement. The book brought Vance fame and a platform that he used, among other things, to criticize Donald Trump. Vance became the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio, journalists and pundits have been preoccupied with how Vance’s politics have shifted since the 2016 publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
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