Tag: culture wars

Why Hillbilly Elegy Makes Me Angry

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Just a quick post throwing together many great essays and discussions that explain why I’m not in to Hillbilly Elegy, movie and book, now that it’s getting even bigger. I know some people in my life have found it compelling, because I know it does show some things that some of us identify with, and that most people really want to see ourselves and the conditions of our lives represented in books and movies. But I think we can and should find better versions of this representation, and this is why:

  1. Most importantly: JD Vance’s personal politics are terrible – he hobnobs with Charles Murray and the American Enterprise Institute, he does not believe that people need or deserve social assistance and actively promotes policies to cut food, shelter, healthcare for others. Ask yourself why this person has written this book and what its purpose is. This podcast is a great summary (on this and the whole thing): https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-review-netflixs-charles-murray-themed-hallmark-film-hillbilly-elegy
  2. The whole thing REEKS “culture of poverty” – when will we be done with this idea and the damage it has caused?
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/hillbilly-elegy-review-jd-vance-national-review-white-working-class-appalachia/
  3. “The problem with Hillbilly Elegy’s version of the Pygmalion story is that it never reckons with the fact that J.D.’s whiteness—bought and paid for, in part, by Scots-Irish ancestors through bloody colonial warfare—is not just incidental but integral to his triumph. Hillbilly Elegy is a Bildungsroman about becoming middle-class white that never asks why that gold standard is problematic.” The book and the author’s politics are absolutely about promoting biological notions of race and other forms of white supremacy, even more so because it is claiming not to be about race (again, look up Charles Murray!):
    http://bostonreview.net/arts-society/ellen-wayland-smith-mythic-whiteness-hillbilly
  4. There are real questions of “poverty porn,” driven particularly by questions about who made the movie and who wrote the book (Vance doesn’t seem to be particularly tied to the community, or maybe what I mean is, allied with it – is he really writing about himself?). More to the point there is a long history of harmful representation and Appalachian stereotypes: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2020/11/25/hillbilly-elegy-poverty-porn-239358
  5. This story disappears many other communities in Appalachia – what do we get by continuing to only represent/consume this subset of experiences? https://theoutline.com/post/3147/elizabeth-catte-what-you-are-getting-wrong-about-appalachia-interview?zd=1&zi=ymnfodks
  6.  It’s a terrible (inaccurate) way to understand the “white working class,” which is precisely what many “coastal elites” have tried to do with this book: https://prospect.org/culture/books/unlearning-lessons-hillbilly-elegy-nov20/
JD Vance, a white man, with a blue tie and light gray jacket, with his mouth open at a podium.
JD Vance

When They Come For You (Guest Post)

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The Rebel Prof is honored to present a guest post written by anthropologist and professor Jelena Radović Fanta.

The words that were made by this country’s president on birthright citizenship was a punch in the gut. When I first heard it, it didn’t feel that way. I rolled my eyes, thought “here we go again,” took it with some humor, and then thought, well, many groups of people have been targeted by this government and his rhetoric and his executive orders over the last two years. Surely, I can’t compare this with what my fellow compañerxs have been going through. Because I have privilege and I’ve benefited from it. I’ve flown in and out of this country with my U.S. passport, I don’t need to worry about having a visa, or having a school pick-up or speeding ticket turn into a deportation. Who am I to complain.

But as I went through the day earlier this week, I had a pit feeling in my stomach. I brushed it off thinking is was due to little sleep, the list of things I need to tackle, the shorter days and darker mornings. Until a student asked me “and how are you doing?” And I realize that I had been punched in the stomach. I had a chill on my skin, my walk was slower, and my heart was heavy.

I know the (im)possibilities of this happening. And under the very improbably circumstances that this happens, I have other options. I am married to a U.S. citizen (you know, the more legit kind of citizen) and I am a citizen of another country I can go back to (a country also with birthright citizenship, DJT do your f*** research). If anything, there’s always the employment sponsored visa which I can hope to attain.

But the weeding out of everyone who does not look like or think like Trump continues. We were talking in my classes about the irreversible damage that is being done, where now 45-supporters will turn to people who seem gringo but might have that slight accent, look a little different, speak more than one language, travel back and forth, or simply have a different political viewpoint and say “You! Where are your parents from? Go back to where your parents came from!”

deport-trump

Art by Nicholas Lampert

I owe this country nothing. I am not going to list what I consider “accomplishments” that I’ve had in my life. I should not have to. But if we are going to talk about it, well than yes, I have given a lot to this country. And this country has given me a lot. There are many reasons why I am here. And if we are going to talk about immigration, let’s talk about it. If we’re going to talk about crime, let’s talk about crime and how immigrant crime rates are not higher than US born people. If we’re going to talk about social welfare, let’s do so and talk about how undocumented people are not eligible for federal public aid programs. You do not get to throw out half-ass “arguments” and logic that all they do is draw on emotion, on white fragility, on anxiety about the “browning” of this country, and other baseless bullshit “arguments.” All it does is reveal your xenophobia and fear of “other,” who, by the way has never, ever really been an other, but a “right here.” Right here next door neighbor, right here at the food truck, right here landscaping your yards, cleaning your bathrooms. Right here opening doors, driving taxis, caring for your children, educating students, doing your nails, creating art, and start up shops. There has never been an “over there.” The “over there” has only been there because you placed it there. And don’t get me started with the legality of how your grandparents came here. There was no “legal way” back then. People arrived on ships and if they were healthy and part of a support system, in they came.

I had always heard that things don’t really hit you until they become personal. Attacks on Muslims, Undocumented Immigrants, African Americans, the Queer community, and Women are for me offensive, unacceptable, and must be fought. Always. Yet there’s this extra blow when I realized “Hey, he’s talking about me. And my family.” The sting is extra sharp. And it hurts a little more. And I hope that the bitterness and anger I feel will never stop pushing me to do something about it.

Saturday Rec: Jane the Virgin

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Jane the Virgin

Pairs well with: summer, popcorn, resting up before and after organizing around migration issues

Photo with four characters from show walking in Target store: Xo looks determined, Jane is smiling, Rafael seems unhappy and has baby Mateo strapped to him, and Alba is smiling and playing with the baby.

This is a light-hearted show with shockingly good feminist and racial politics. I never feel guilty after watching it (although one downside is that there is a cop  who is a “good guy” character). The show actually has amazing immigration politics, including a plotline that basically showcased Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s research.  Some of the other things I appreciate about it are that one character never speaks English; Jane’s mom is unapologetically sex positive although Jane has a more conservative (titular) approach; the family and show is based in Miami but they are Venezuelan, not Cuban; feminism is sometimes an explicit topic of the show; and it is simply very nice to watch a show that is led by a POC cast and not full of white people. Plus, it’s a very funny show with some smart jokes.

Reading on the Chaos in the UW system

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Today I’m presenting a master list of high quality commentary and analysis on what has been going on in the University of Wisconsin system over the last several months, particularly around the merger of the UW Colleges and the extensive program cuts at UW-Superior and UW-Stevens Point.

I am a sociologist, and we are fond of saying that our discipline does not give us the tools to read the future. That being said, if I was the kind of person who made bets, I would be willing to place money on the fact that we will soon see another announcement of deep program cuts to another UW campus, made in the absence of faculty, student, and community input. Too much groundwork has already been laid for this to be the end of it. I think it will be important to be informed about what the situation is in Superior, at Stevens Point, at the Colleges, and throughout the UW system, as these cuts continue to roll forward.

Clenched blue fist in the shape of the state of Wisconsin with the text Stand with Wisconsin at bottom.

lazy professor up at night

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Last fall my university made the very sudden announcement to close the sociology program as well 24 others. Part of this experience as a faculty member is being told that it’s our fault, constantly. We are implicitly and explicitly blamed for not doing enough before this point. Chancellor Wachter has said over and over again that the “students voted with their feet,” which is just a way of saying if I/we had been offering worthwhile classes, I/we wouldn’t be in this situation (among other problematic implications of this phrase she loves so much). And yet here I am, literally awake at night, either still thinking (uselessly) about what I could do to try to stop these cuts from happening, or about what I could do make our program better, or about how I could recruit more students. The other night I lied in bed with a new idea for bringing back successful graduates (which is most) to meet our current students. I had pretty much fully developed the idea before I realized the entire thing is moot. There is no sociology program to recruit anybody in to. There is no reason to ease anybody’s fears about majoring or even minoring in sociology. In fact, perhaps students have good reason to be afraid of these majors and minors. Perhaps they should be afraid the administration will eliminate them, or the faculty time and resources need to sustain them. Working to recruit more students at this point would just be more time I’d spent on something that wouldn’t be valued, and if successful, I’m afraid it would ultimately place more students in the path of destruction.

But thinking about such solutions has become almost like a reflex for me, so that even six months later it’s still hard to stop. So I still haven’t been able to stop. And I don’t know when I will be able to, because ultimately I love(d) what I do. And I wasn’t coming up with ideas to recruit students to the major just to satisfy some bureaucrat or looking for ways to assuage student fears about what it would mean to major in sociology to bolster our numbers, but I was doing it because I wanted to teach. Because I thought that majoring in sociology would actually be meaningful for students, and because I know our graduates are actually out in the world happy with their work and I’d love to see more people doing that. It’s hard for me to turn that off, because it’s hard to accept the destruction of that possibility.

I see the same difficulty turning this impulse off in my colleagues too. We keep trying to do our jobs as if the old things mattered, although we have been pretty much told over and over again by our bosses that none of what we do matters, or at least not a lot of it. But old habits die hard, and it’s precisely because we believed passionately in those old habits. Because we weren’t and still aren’t the people we’re accused of being. And that’s one of the most painful bits. We’re accused of being these lazy arrogant out of touch people who don’t care at all for our students by people who actually seem to be all of those things.

Sheep alone awake in a field at night.

Cartoon by Graham Licence

I’m left with a few hanging sociological questions for another day about the myth of the lazy professor: Who does the myth connect with? Who believes it? Anyone? Our students’ parents? Do the administrators and politicians who deploy it, or is it used totally cynically? (I don’t think the administrators believe it; I suspect they know it’s untrue and that’s why it will offend us so much.) Why does it hurt me so much if I’m not sure who believes it?