Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance

This memoir of a chaotic childhood, told by a survivor, is not the first, nor final, glimpse into an American subculture that in many ways resists attempts to improve the lives of its denizens. I'm sure Vance would agree that you can take poor Scots-Irish families out of the Appalachian hollers, but you can't take the hollers out of those families.

His mother, a drug addict with numerous failed marriages, dragged J.D. and his older sister through her minefield of a life. Her parents, his beloved Mamaw and Papaw, despite screaming fights, were the shelter from stormy lives that the children needed. Hillbilly culture took pride in rebellion, in avenging one's honor, in family loyalty, and in never admitting the desperation of one's circumstances. A mom's apology and kind acts were ploys to let your guard down, so she could damage you. Mamaw, who threatened many people with a gun and as a girl did shoot someone, forced Papaw to move out when his drinking became intolerable - then he spent the next decade visiting every day to play cards and watch TV with her.

Vance stresses that until his stint in the Marine Corps, he was unfocused and undisciplined. Surrendering body and mind to drill instructors simplified his life in liberating ways: their demands were immediate, imperative, impossible to ignore. When he did find himself with the leisure to reflect, he saw that he could drive himself the way they did, and succeed where the devastation of his family life predicted failure.

In his summing-up, he discusses the psychological effects of violence, physical and verbal; substance abuse; splintered families; and an insular culture of very low expectations. I was reminded of studies of people displaced from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - though they missed their families and friends, those who stayed away have fared much better economically and socially than those who returned.

Vance makes the point that Section 8 (subsidized) housing, when concentrated in specific urban areas, exacerbates poverty. It is when children of poverty have schoolmates and neighbors in better circumstances, that they can see alternatives to their families' lives. This is not news. This truth stands behind the Brown vs Board of Education school desegregation decision of 1954, that declared separate to be inherently unequal.

Schools are in the main as segregated now, economically and racially, as they were when the Supreme Court heard that case. Erosion of support for public schools intensifies this inequality: private schools can deny admission to a student based on misbehavior, physical or mental challenges, or poverty. Public schools must accept any student, no matter how troublesome his/her circumstances. While teachers' unions have become the whipping-boy of conservatives, teachers themselves cope every day with students who have unstable, dangerous lives, who may be hungry, traumatized, afraid to go home, and who are likely to react violently to perceived slights or threats. They are ill-equipped to benefit from efforts to educate them. "Saving money" by packing more students per classroom virtually guarantees failure.

Educate means "to lead out" - but that can only work when children have supporters: a teacher who takes time to show interest; a loving family member who provides safe haven in a chaotic upbringing; someone who expects more than the minimum; examples close to hand of people who have escaped the cycles of ruin, and now thrive.

Funding for HeadStart, and for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) - parent of AmeriCorps, Teach for America, VISTA, City Year, Senior Corps, and other community supports that send volunteers into underserved areas to devise programs and strategies to break the downward trajectory of young people - is under threat from politicians in the guise of "saving money" by kicking children's problems down the road, where they become more severe and intractable.

It is a terrible irony that the very people most in need of such programs swung the 2016 elections in favor of a candidate moving as fast as possible to dismantle the last shreds of their safety net. At least we're bringing back for-profit prisons - good to know the Trump Administration has a destination for these folks.