The book is chock full of references--implicit or explicit--to the patriarchy that thrives in rural America. (That's a topic I wrote about here). She also talks a lot about the links between the patriarchy and religion. What follows is an excerpt from Potts' book that illustrates the phenomenon, with implicit reference to what I've written about as "white trash" (also here):
Children and teenagers were sorted into another binary as well: the upstanding citizens and the ne’er-do-wells. The “good” kids were those bound for college. They avoided partying or did it only discreetly, played sports, spent nights and weekends at ballgames and church events, and formed monogamous relationships early. Parents encouraged their teenage relationships, chaperoning and ushering them on dates and folding them into family events. Their families went to church every Sunday, nicely dressed in church clothes, and went to lunch afterward at the Ozark Café or some other restaurant in town, or to a grandmother’s house for a pot roast. Those students were destined to enter adult life early, marry at a young age, and move seamlessly into roles their parents fulfilled: teachers, doctors, dentists. Their social spots seemed almost inherited.
My friend April, who moved back to Clinton to raise her two children, saw this clearly as an adult. “Like, Kid A: ‘We’re thinking you’ll go to college and make something out of yourself, so we’ll put more effort into you.’ ” Her own kids benefited from the reputation she’d had as a good student. The teachers, who were her peers and sometimes friends from her own school days, automatically trusted her.
By contrast, the “bad” kids were those who sneaked out of their homes and partied on weekends. It was an unspoken assumption that they wouldn’t make it to college. They got into trouble at school. We kids gossiped about them, and so did some of the adults. As April put it, “Kid B: ‘Well, you come from a line of poverty and living off the system, so we’ll just hope you don’t get knocked up.’ ” It could be hard, living in a small town like ours, to escape family history. “I don’t think it’s spoken,” April said, “but it’s kind of hard not to pass that history on in a lot of ways.”
She told me that two boys from her class—rowdy, athletic, good-natured class clowns and troublemakers—now had young sons of their own in the same class at school. A teacher looked at the young pair and joked, “Here we go again!” Everyone laughed, as if the sons would inevitably be the same as the fathers—the same story would play over and over with each new generation. Seeing this cycle helped me understand why my mom had felt strongly about cutting off my dad’s family, and why I had been so careful not to follow in what I thought were his footsteps. People who tried to break the pattern were often alone, set against the larger forces of small-town thinking and small-town gossip.
Darci was getting a reputation as a partier, and hanging out with her became increasingly fraught. During Darci’s fourteenth birthday slumber party, half the girls sneaked out and half didn’t. After that, the “good” girls stopped going to Darci’s house. They also avoided Thriftway parking lot parties, where teenagers sat in cars and got drunk and hooked up. Instead, the “good” kids had serious boyfriends and wore promise rings. Their lives were already revolving around their futures as wives and mothers, regardless of any potential career.
As a child, I felt trapped by this system. I didn’t want to be judged by those around me, but I didn’t have the power to ignore their judgments, so I became judgmental too. And though I never really fit in with either the “good” kids or the partiers, I decided to align with the “good” kids. Today it’s sometimes painful, or laughable, to look back at how severe I was. I didn’t believe in the religious prohibitions on sex before marriage, but I did see the social consequences in Clinton that those who failed to follow them suffered. I can see now that I had few options as a teenager. I was still close to Darci, but in order to make sure others saw the differences between us, I was more judgmental than I might have been. I also felt that in a town where people married and had children young, teenagers’ missteps carried a lot of weight.
I'll write more about Potts' book--and include more excerpts--in a future post.
Here is an earlier post about the book, when it was excerpted in The Atlantic. And here is the New York Times review of the book, by Rachel Louise Snyder, who questions the ethics of what Potts' reveals about Darci in relation to what Potts told Darci she was going to reveal.
Here is a post about a 2019 NYT op-ed by Potts about Clinton and Van Buren County politics in relation to national trends.
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