Who's to Blame for White Poverty?

A review of Hillbilly Elegy

Before recently starting Hillbilly Elegy, I had heard that it was harsh on poor whites. Yet other reviews hadn’t prepared me for just how negatively it portrayed them. Not only does Vance tell us that they do drugs, neglect their children, and spend recklessly, but he also spends a good bit of time psychologically analyzing what’s wrong with his people, at a few points mentioning how Obama made them feel inferior. It’s one thing to talk about the behavior of a group, but once you go into the realm of psychological explanations for their pathologies and all the ways in which they delude themselves, it feels different. This is something that you do after you have achieved some distance.