J.D. Vance's rise prompts hillbilly musings from Latino columnist

Columnis Gustavo Arellano writes in today's Los Angeles Times under the headline, "I know what a true hillbilly is, and it's not J.D. Vance."  Here's an excerpt, which at least nods to the rural connotation of hillbilly:  

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 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 — food, fashion, music, diction, parties — that polite society ridiculed? Yee-haw! Stubbornly clinging to their ancestral lands and ways? ¡Ajúa!

I learned to love bourbon, bluegrass, “Hee Haw” reruns and Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck If ...” 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’t take kindly to “my type.” I might not have outwardly resembled the ’billies I met — I’m a cholo nerd, after all — but we got along just fine, because they were my brothers and sisters from another madre.

That’s why I was intrigued when J.D. Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” 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’s critique of conspicuous consumption among the poor is something everyone should consider.

But the parallels between the clean-cut Vance and me only went so far. He was a Yale graduate and venture capitalist, while I’m 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 ’billies 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.

My Mexican hillbilly family never had time to whine and mope.

And that's where I'm more like Arellano than Vance, even though I'm non-Hispanic white.  I wasn't raised to talk about how the deck was stacked against me.  I was raised to reach for what I wanted, for what would empower me.  No one ever suggested any shame at the public university route to that success.  

But we live in a different time.  Now, everyone is encouraged to play up their disadvantages and to downplay their agency.  And that is as big a difference b/w Arellano and Vance as their different ethnicities--indeed, I'd say it is a greater difference.  

Cross-posted to Working Class Whites and the Law.