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diff --git a/jones-la/vance/essay.tex b/jones-la/vance/essay.tex index c1bdc33..0131791 100644 --- a/jones-la/vance/essay.tex +++ b/jones-la/vance/essay.tex @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ \def\ifcited{\expandafter\iftrue \def\ifcited{\iffalse}} \def\vancite#1{%cites J.D. Vance in particular \cite{\ifcited \newcite \nameinline \fi - \name{Vance}{Vance, J.D.}% + \name{Vance}{Vance, J.D}% \contain{Hillbilly Elegy}% \publish{Harper Press}% \pubdate{Jun 2016}% @@ -26,22 +26,28 @@ \header \title{{\it Hillbilly Elegy} on the American Dream} -The American Dream is nebulous. One thing {\it is} clear, however: it is a dream, an aspiration. It could comprise a personal hope, a hope for society, or both. If there were a personal aspiration, the American Dream is about prosperity, so it would probably be to prosper. However, almost everyone is motivated by that, so that couldn't be a part of the American dream. The hope for society would be similar: for everyone to prosper. But this wouldn't work because if everyone prospers, no one prospers. Therefore, there must be a discriminating factor. According to James Adams, this factor is ability or achievement: ``[The American Dream is] that dream of a land that should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.'' This is upward mobility at its most meritocratic, which is only possible in theory. J.D. Vance wrote his memoir, {\it Hillbilly Elegy}, about those failings of the meritocracy. Meritocratic approaches fail for both the very poor and the very rich, as Vance observed firsthand. -%determine and strengthen thesis +The American Dream is nebulous. When investigating its meaning, we see a personal aspect and a social aspect. Prosperity plays a major role in both. But it needs some differentiation between who succeeds and who doesn't because scarcity exists. The American Dream posits that those who prosper should practice productivity and diligence. %reword, super awkward +``[The American Dream is] that dream of a land that should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement,'' claims John Adams. +%THESIS +J.D. Vance's memoir {\it Hillbilly Elegy} argues that factors outside of individual control affecting attitudes and opportunities obstruct the American Dream for a large segment of the population. +%I really want to include "Such a pure meritocracy can only exist in theory" -Vance starts by describing Appalachian culture in broad strokes. They honor their families to a fault. ``I doubt that any deed would make me as proud as a successful feud'' \vancite{24}. -They have a close-knit community unwelcoming to outsiders (even when those outsiders come from their own communities). They act like their problems don't exist. And they often ``[leave] a trail of neglected children, cheated wives, or both'' \vancite{17}. Their flaws -have a bigger effect than just unhappiness. It propagates, importantly, into a lack of economic successes for those children. -%bruh is that a summary +%Assume that all readers have already read the book -There's a sense that those people deserve to not succeed, especially understandable through Vance and Mamaw's observations of ``welfare queens.'' %clarify -Mamaw has ``an almost religious faith in hard work and the American Dream,'' but she is deeply ambivalent if welfare queens deserve to fail without a gover\kern0.05pt\relax nment support safety net \vancite{35} \vancite{141}. People who work hard and make the right decisions unambiguously deserve to succeed and prosper---to be upwardly mobile. The hillbilly communities, however, suggest this is unrealistic: hard workers without the emotional, social, educational, and financial backing to succeed don't. Even if they were innately able to make every right choice, social support structures are lacking if they exist, and defensive behavior lear\kern0.05pt\relax ned from childhood trauma prevents most from sustaining relationships long enough to develop personal support structures. This points to the unhappy truth that the American Dream, where society is now, is unattainable for certain people. +Childhood adversity develops those attitudes possibly more than any other single factor. It impacts Vance most strongly in his earliest years. ``I began to do poorly in school. Many nights I'd lie in bed, unable to sleep because of the noise---the furniture rocking, heavy stomping, yelling, sometimes glass shattering'' \vancite{71}. +His experiences with Mom begin to shape him into a person with all of the trademark Appalachian flaws: excess hostility to outsiders, drug abuse, a complete lack of work ethic, and poor parenting. +However, Mamaw gave Vance an option most of his peers didn't have---a stable home which supported his education. ``If Mamaw could drop \$180 on a graphing calculator $\ldots$ then I had better take schoolwork more seriously'' \vancite{137}. +This, of course, opened many doors directly: finishing his high school education let him get into the military, Ohio State, and eventually Yale Law. More importantly, he uses the work ethic he learned in high school to succeed in boot camp---another door opened by good parenting, a luxury in the Rust Belt. -In the broken families and abusive relationships, kids don't lear\kern0.05pt\relax n how to make their own relationships work. Vance had this same problem in his marriage---he couldn't deal with his emotions healthily by talking to his partner. Instead, he ``tried to get away, but Usha wouldn't let [him]. [He] tried to break everything off multiple times, but she told [him] that was stupid unless [he] didn't care about her'' \vancite{225}. This is because poor kids in Rust Belt cities ``are constantly ready to fight or flee, because there is constant exposure to the bear [an environmental stressor], whether that bear is an alcoholic dad or an unhinged mom'' \vancite{228}. If he weren't married to an ``outsider,'' he wouldn't have had the necessary loving support to lear\kern0.05pt\relax n how to break those habits, and he would have continued the cycle of poverty (emotional and financial) because he couldn't deal with stress. %this is poorly written +Those opportunities which Vance describes as provisions of ``family, faith, and culture'' can't be given through government programs \vancite{238}. But the government still tries, creating the desolate class of ``welfare queens.'' Mamaw feels deeply ambivalent on if the welfare queen actually deserves to fail. %Is this quote-worthy? +On one hand, she feels wronged by them, having achieved her position through hard work \vancite{141}. +But she also recognizes that the degraded economy and environment produced them. People who work hard deserve unambiguously to succeed, but are those who never learned to work hard equally liable to do so? No reasonable person can hold them to such standards because regardless of their inherent abilities, they have none of the emotional, social, educational, and financial backing to achieve upward mobility. -Vance, however, didn't continue the cycle of poverty. This was due to his partner, but it's also partially a result of Mamaw's saving grace: her stable home, her consistent guidance, hers and his Mom's encouragement of learning. Factors which allowed Vance to get into college were even more complex; he had to make up for missing social knowledge by joining the military, which worked but wouldn't have happened with every Middletonian student in the same situation. For getting to any high-paying professional job, he would have need to learned networking is necessary (which took him a while even at Yale) and then applied it. ``The problem is, virtually everyone who plays by those rules fails. $\ldots$ Successful people are playing an entirely different game $\ldots$ They network'' \vancite{214}. The presence of any of these factors are uncommon in any hillbilly family, but the presence of all of these factors---what was necessary to lift Vance out of poverty---is extremely rare. Someone born into that class already has every single one of those boxes ticked. +Concretely, that backing necessary to succeed is social capital. ``Virtually everyone who plays by those rules fails %Specify? +$\ldots$ Successful people are playing an entirely different game $\ldots$ They network'' \vancite{214}. Hillbillies don't network for two reasons. First of all, their immediate surroundings don't have anyone with whom a connection would be valuable because everyone who could leave left, following the jobs. Second, they simply don't learn to do it. The knowledge, social capital, and actual capital all concentrate at the top of the pyramid. -Vance supports the meritocracy to a degree. He believes that hard work is valuable and should be rewarded, but he also recognises that no one starts on a level playing field. He is a firm believer in the American Dream, the right to opportunity, but he knows that to provide it is a long process which for at least one group, the Irish--Scots, can only occur from inter\kern0.05pt\relax nal change of values which are extraordinarily stagnant. %add citation from original (is this thesis?) +Extending networking, relationships are also poorly modeled in Appalachian families. ``Caught between various dad candidates, Lindsay and I never learned how a man should treat a woman'' \vancite{89}. Vance's relationship with Usha starts to show some of the same poor communication. ``Put two of me in the same home and you have a positively radioactive situation,'' he writes \vancite{230}. But, because Usha is an outsider (usually completely shunned by the Irish-Scots fierce sense of family), she didn't have the same issues. ``I tried to get away, but Usha wouldn't let me. I tried to break everything off multiple times, but she told me that was stupid unless I didn't care about her'' \vancite{225}. Vance has less than no relationship skills. In order to survive as a child, he learned a set of aggressive, defensive, and evasive strategies, which don't transfer at all into adult life. +Vance supports the ideal meritocracy completely. He believes that hard work has value and should be rewarded, but he recognises that in real life no one starts on a level playing field. He, like Mamaw, is a firm dreamer of the American Dream, the right to opportunity with respective achievement, leading to his criticism of the stagnant internal values and harmful external structures such that the Irish-Scots ``were people with serious problems, and they were hurting'' \vancite{142}. \biblio \bye |