In the Zeitgeist

Two years ago, I forced myself to read J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”, but the recent movie adaptation convinced me to put my thoughts on paper. A university supervisor had suggested that Vance’s story could give my research on chronic poverty and upward mobility in Appalachia an “inspired perspective.” Suppressing a grimace, I told him that I was raised in Appalachia, in the Tennessee Valley and in Western North Carolina.

Appalachia is a cultural and geographic region that stretches through the hills, valleys and summits of the U.S.’s oldest mountain range. I associate it with my hardworking family and friends, comforting but rugged landscapes and a culture of unwavering authenticity. When I moved to New York City, I realized that to outsiders, Appalachia is known best for other things: folk music, moonshine, Dolly Parton and poverty. 

Maps of U.S. chronic poverty, infant mortality, food deserts, illiteracy, opioid usage, education access, internet access or healthcare access carve a dark scar through Central Appalachia. For decades, the federal government has poured money into the hills. But, because their misguided policies are based on inspired elegies and not hard economic realities, they do little to help. 

Vance’s book peddles an attractive Hollywood explanation for Appalachian hardship. He believes that Appalachians fail because “Appalachian culture failed them.”  The narrative has been around at least since Jack Weller published “Yesterday’s People” in 1965. Weller made the argument that the Appalachian “culture of poverty… does not allow them [Appalachians] to succeed in the modern world …. because their Scotts Irish heritage makes them adverse to change, breeds distrust in the government,” as well as  gives them less interest in education. He goes so far as to claim that the mountain isolation is how the “backwards” culture has been preserved through “barefoot” generations. 

The offensive narrative continues to be alarmingly popular amongst economists and policy advisors on both the left and the right. Political commentator Kevin Williamson recently wrote that Appalachia would be “called a reservation if it was not 98.5% white” in his book entitled “Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in Dank Woolly Wilds of the “Real America.”” And, Brookings Institution’s Carol Graham claims that Appalchians are poor because they have less hope, less belief in hard work and less faith in the American Dream. Some of it is true. Appalachians in the lowest income quintile do report having less optimism, and alarmingly, the mortality rate for white men in Appalachia is going up largely due to suicide, drug overdoses, and opioid use. But, Appalachian culture is not the reason for the region’s economic hardship. 

The story of Appalachia’s economic development begins a hundred years before Weller diagnosed Appalachian culture as a detriment. In the 1870s, coal mining companies came into the mountains and carved up the slopes. Locals got labor and wages, but absentee land ownership meant that all the long term investment flowed out to East Coast cities. Appalachia’s continued dependence on coal, despite coal’s decline, means a lack of high skilled jobs and sensitivity to external shocks like recessions, technological advancement, and trade. Like many economies in Latin America and Africa, resource extraction leads to disastrous impacts on human health and the  environment. 

To make matters worse, political and economic development- or underdevelopment- go hand in hand. This makes for weak political and economic institutions. While it is exceedingly rare in the rest of the country, certain counties in Appalachia with entrenched political networks remain subject to absentee ballot fraud, vote buying, and money laundering. Mingo Count made headlines in the 1970s when Huey Perry wrote a book that revealed a complex entanglement between law enforcement, party officials, and drug markets. Forty years later the same shenanigans are happening. In 2013, Mingo County’s chief magistrate pleaded guilty to election fraud and to bankrolling a local cocaine dealer. Since 2000, there have been 14 cases of election fraud in West Virginia and over 20 in both North Carolina and Tennessee. 

Ever since President Johnson’s 1960s War on Poverty, well meaning but ill-informed federal policy has tried to get Appalachia on its feet.  Federal grants come into the region, but they are shackled to Washington restrictions that make little to no sense for the local economies. Millions of dollars of federal investment, including $160 million in 2020, provide short term stimulus but little long term growth. For instance, a 2017 grant spent $1 million to grow lavender on old coal mining plots. Locals moved their homes and spent months learning lavender farming. Unfortunately, when the grant ran out, there was no lavender business, no market demand for lavender, and not one local was ever employed. It is as if Washington saw Appalachia as a depressed coloring book page. “Send them some lavender from the federal crayon box, that will make the coal kids smile!” What Appalachia needs is not a Washington savior complex. It needs an understanding of the region’s economic and historic complexity.

Sustainable economic policies are written by the people who best understand the region: locals. Appalachia’s reliance on a dying and unstable natural resource industry means that its number one investment priority should be developing labor flexibility. Innovative state level policies like the Tennessee Promise do exactly that. By providing vocational training, technical education, and community college programs, the Tennessee Promise is bridging the skills gap. Unique to its kind and one of the most progressive education policies in the U.S., the Tennessee Promise demonstrates that Appalachian policymakers are looking forwards, not backwards. If and when federal grants are given, they should be at 100% local discretion. When Appalachians are given autonomy, they build businesses that last. The record breaking growth of the tourism industry in East Tennessee is case in point. Local efforts to develop Dollywood and Gatlinburg have made the Smoky Mountains the number one visited national park in the nation. Every year, 12.5 million visitors come to explore the trails, cabins, black bears, and yes, Appalachian culture.

When I told my supervisor where I was from, he said something to the tune of, “Wow you must have seen some things.” Ever since I came to New York, I have heard everything from “How was that…down there” to “You know, you are a lot smarter than I expected for someone where you are from.”  I wonder what response people expect. They probably would like to hear a story like the one Vance wrote. I could talk about how my neighbor drank himself to death in a tipi last fall. I could mention that I was told at 14 that university was a waste of my motherly potential. I could say that I have over 40 cousins and I grew up splitting and stacking firewood after school. And, yes, I could say I prefer not to wear shoes.

That would all be true. But, it would be the truth filtered through the guardrails of stereotypes that Vance and others before him set up. Sure, I have 40 cousins, but their immense ideological, racial, and economic diversity taught me to be open minded. Yes, I spent this Thanksgiving break splitting and stacking firewood for the winter, but I did so alongside a loving family who taught me how to work hard. Truths are shaped by the stories we tell, and Appalachia needs stories that rewrite stereotypes, not ones that reinforce them. Chronic poverty, family struggles, and addiction are real. They are real in Appalachia, in New York City, and in just about any community. Economic policy requires a consideration of human dignity, complexity and empathy, and that can be built through storytelling, just not the type of storytelling that Vance did. Appalachia is not a finished product, it’s a process. And, it’s a process that requires policies grounded in understanding, not inspired by pity. If you read “Hillbilly Elegy,” also read “Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy.” Read Jeanette Walls’s novel “Glass Castle” in which she tells her story of growing up in Appalachia, but unlike Vance, she does not attempt to tell the story of Appalachia. Browse “The Bitter Southerner” journal, listen to the “Inside Appalachia” podcast, or get a copy of my neighbor’s book “Stand up that Mountain.” Those are all stories by diverse, hopeful, authentic, and resilient Appalachians. Together, they show how Appalachian culture is part of what makes the region strong, not poor.