{"id":14248,"date":"2024-07-17T19:42:41","date_gmt":"2024-07-17T19:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14248"},"modified":"2024-07-17T19:42:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T19:42:41","slug":"i-know-what-a-true-hillbilly-is-and-its-not-j-d-vance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14248","title":{"rendered":"I know what a true hillbilly is, and it\u2019s not J.D. Vance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By\u00a0<\/strong>Gustavo Arellano<\/a>, LA Times<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the moment I learned about hillbillies as a child, I was entranced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good ol\u2019 boys and girls born high up in the mountains? That\u2019s my parents. People who moved from rural towns to metro areas in search of a better life? Story of both sides of my family. Working class? My upbringing. Lovers of things \u2014 food, fashion, music, diction, parties \u2014 that polite society ridiculed? Yee-haw! Stubbornly clinging to their ancestral lands and ways? \u00a1Aj\u00faa<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned to love bourbon, bluegrass, \u201cHee Haw\u201d reruns and Jeff Foxworthy\u2019s \u201cYou Might Be a Redneck If …\u201d series. As an adult, I drove through the small towns of central and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, feeling at home in areas even my white friends warned wouldn\u2019t take kindly to \u201cmy type.\u201d I might not have outwardly resembled the \u2019billies I met \u2014 I\u2019m a cholo nerd, after all \u2014 but we got along just fine, because they were my brothers and sisters from another madre<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why I was intrigued when J.D. Vance\u2019s memoir, \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d<\/a> was released in 2016. From what I heard about it, the familial dysfunction, generational poverty and inherent fatalism that Vance overcame were similar to the pathologies of my own extended clan. The up-from-bootstraps message he preached in interviews was what my parents had always preached, and what I still subscribe to. Vance\u2019s critique of conspicuous consumption among the poor is something everyone should consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the parallels between the clean-cut Vance and me only went so far. He was a Yale graduate and venture capitalist, while I\u2019m a community college kid who chose a dying profession. He was far removed from his roots, while I experience mine nearly every other weekend at family parties. More importantly, Vance cast himself as an extraordinary exception to his fellow Appalachians, describing \u2019billies as encased in a toxic amber that kept them from improving their lot and left them embittered with a country that has moved on without them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Mexican hillbilly family never had time to whine and mope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My parents\u2019 generation found blue-collar jobs,\u00a0bought homes<\/a>\u00a0and are now retired and enjoying the fruits of their blood, sweat and tears. Most of my cousins got white-collar jobs\u00a0or joined the public sector<\/a>. Their children are going straight to four-year universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all made it in a society that never gave us a handout and wanted us to fail, embracing it as ours even as we hung on to our rancho traditions. Even Vance expressed admiration for our trajectory, writing in \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d that white Appalachians wallow in pessimism, unlike Latino immigrants, \u201cmany of whom suffer unthinkable poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never got around to reading all of Vance\u2019s memoir \u2014 it seemed like poverty porn for the elite he now belonged to. I did read his stream of essays for liberal publications explaining why working-class whites were so enthralled with Donald Trump, a man he would go on to call a \u201cfraud,\u201d \u201ca moral disaster,\u201d \u201ccultural heroin,\u201d \u201creprehensible\u201d and a \u201ccynical a\u2014hole\u201d who might turn into \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hitler.\u201d I appreciated that Vance didn\u2019t blame immigration for America\u2019s supposed decline as much as other right-leaning pundits did, and even called out Trump for his rank racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a difference running for office makes. In 2022, Vance sought a U.S. Senate seat as a Trump-worshiping xenophobe. What changed his mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you a racist?\u201d a now-bearded Vance cheerily asked in a commercial released for his campaign. \u201cDo you hate Mexicans?\u201d \u201cThe media\u201d maligned \u201cus\u201d with those charges, he said \u2014 \u201cus\u201d meaning those who supported Trump\u2019s border wall \u2014 and went on to claim that unchecked migration under the Biden administration was \u201ckilling Ohioans\u201d with \u201cillegal drugs and Democratic voters pouring into this country.\u201d Vance ended his 30-second spot by blaming the \u201cpoison coming across the border\u201d for nearly killing his mother, whose struggles with drug addiction Vance documented in his book and a Netflix film of the same name<\/a> as his memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commercial made\u00a0California Gov. Pete Wilson\u2019s infamous \u201cThey Keep Coming\u201d 1994 reelection ad<\/a>\u00a0seem as pro-Mexican as a taco truck. Many Latinos\u00a0immediately ridiculed Vance\u2019s campaign gambit<\/a>\u00a0as the woe-is-me blamefest that it was. But it worked: Trump endorsed him,\u00a0he won<\/a>, and he has continued his anti-Mexican crusade ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the senator introduced a bill seeking to establish English as the official national language. He has endorsed the use of American military forces to go after drug cartels in Mexico while opposing amnesty for immigrants illegally in the U.S. and federally funded healthcare for DACA recipients. Last week, Vance supporters received a fundraising plea<\/a> that called for the deportation of \u201cevery single person who invaded our country illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, he is Trump\u2019s choice for vice president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump has long made clear that he wants nothing but lickspittles surrounding him in a second administration. He also wants someone young enough to implement Trumpism in all branches of American life and government for decades to come. Who better than a 39-year-old white guy from Ohio? Trump is looking toward the future by choosing Vance \u2014 but through a lens reflecting the gringo past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long considered a bellwether state essential for any successful presidential run, Ohio is also an anomaly. White people, who make up 58% of the U.S. population, are 77% of residents in the Buckeye State. Ohio under-indexes for African Americans and Asian Americans but especially Latinos \u2014 we\u2019re nearly 20% of this country\u2019s population but just 5% of Ohioans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance\u2019s job for Trump is to campaign in Rust Belt swing states, arguing for a defense of whiteness against the browning of America. Neither will explicitly admit that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing \u2014 how can they be anti-immigrant when Trump is married to an immigrant and Vance\u2019s wife was born to Indian immigrants?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the proof was visible Monday, on opening night of the GOP convention. Not a single Latino sat in Trump\u2019s VIP section. All three Latinos who spoke propped themselves up, Vance-like, as exemplars of their community and thus worth paying attention to. The most prominent one, Goya Chief Executive Bob Unanue, spent his five minutes trashing open borders and making fun of Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 first name in Spanish, a joke that fell flat because few in the audience habla <\/em>espa\u00f1ol<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe Trump\u2019s advisors think that Vance\u2019s background and life story will appeal to Latinos in swing states like Nevada and Arizona, especially in light of recent polls showing that Latino antipathy against illegal immigration<\/a> is higher than it\u2019s been in decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But part of the bootstrap mentality is not to blame others for your circumstances. And Vance has plenty of blame to go around. In \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d he faulted Appalachian culture for keeping his people down. He now insists that it\u2019s actually his fellow elites who have destroyed the United States. Mexico, Vance now says, is the reason his mother and too many others became addicted to opioids. There is no concept of personal responsibility in Vance\u2019s worldview \u2014 or Trump\u2019s, for that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance is a classic example of a convenenciero<\/em> \u2014 someone who goes through life with no principles other than getting ahead, and no loyalty to a community other than his own. Hillbillies of all backgrounds loathe such pendejos<\/em>, which is why nearly all of my Southern friends ridiculed \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d and warned the liberals enamored with it that they were propping up a false prophet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, Vance has a very good chance of becoming the second-most powerful person in the United States \u2014 courtesy of Trump, the undisputed king of false prophets. Heaven help us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gustavo Arellano, LA Times From the moment I learned about hillbillies as a child, I was entranced. Good ol’ boys and girls born high up in the mountains? That’s my parents. People who moved from […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,65],"tags":[92],"class_list":{"0":"post-14248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider","8":"category-culture","9":"tag-2024-election"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14251,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14248\/revisions\/14251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}