J. D. Vance, like many–including me–see a culture in crisis. Towards the end of Hillbilly Elegy, he cites a study from The Pew Economic Mobility Project in which they examined how Americans evaluated their economic futures and prospects. He writes:

There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites—by far the highest number in the survey—report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents’.

No group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites? Contrary to what most Americans undoubtedly believe, the pessimism, the malaise, and the sense of futility that pervades the working-class whites are even more significant than that of other groups. In the past decade of my teaching career, I have witnessed many Latino parents (mother and father) faithfully attend parent teacher conferences. Even when language barriers prevented us from communicating with more than a few words, their hope for their children’s future and their steadfast belief that this future would be better than theirs was palpably evident.

I wish I could say the same about most of the white working-class poor students and their parents. If a parent or guardian attended conferences, it was generally just one. A mother, usually–sometimes a father or grandparent. I recall a conference with a mother of one of my male students in which I had to tell her that her son was failing because he simply couldn’t stay awake in class. He slept daily, his hood pulled over his head, which rested squarely on the flat of his desk. He drooled and sometimes snored. His mother grinned and said, “You know, I can’t keep him awake at home either. He likes to play video games late into the night.” What was I to say to a woman who refused to parent her own son, to set reasonable limits on computer use, or–if all else failed–to literally pull the plug? When I asked what her son’s plans after high school graduation were, again she grinned, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I don’t know.” I’m sure that she didn’t, and I’m sure that her son hadn’t thought much beyond purchasing his next video game or beating the next level on his current game.

As a second semester junior with a single parent on a limited income, my student had real opportunities for post-secondary education: scholarships for those with legitimate need, assistance securing and completing his financial aid forms, academic counseling and scheduling of classes, grants–not loans–and continued financial and academic support in the college he would attend. And yet, he would essentially thumb his nose at all of these, choosing instead to remain with his mother, sleep during the day, and play video games at night. Neither he nor his mother believed that he would live a life that was more economically successful than his parent’s. In truth, neither gave much thought to the future at all.

Vance laments the futility and instability present in many working-class poor homes. He describes the extent of this instability in his book:

By almost any measure, American working-class families experience a level of instability unseen elsewhere in the world. Consider, for instance, Mom’s revolving door of father figures. No other country experiences anything like this. In France, the percentage of children exposed to three or more maternal partners is 0.5 percent—about one in two hundred. The second highest share is 2.6 percent, in Sweden, or about one in forty. In the United States, the figure is a shocking 8.2 percent—about one in twelve—and the figure is even higher in the working class.

Ultimately, he claims that  “Chaos begets chaos. Instability begets instability. Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly.” And, as a natural consequence, welcome to life in many communities, businesses, health and social service agencies, schools, etc.

This chaos, Vance explains, is often the cause of what psychologists currently call ACEs, “adverse childhood experiences.” These are traumatic childhood events, physical, psychological and/or emotional, whose effects last long into adulthood. Vance identifies some of the most common ACEs:

• Being sworn at, insulted, or humiliated by parents
• Being pushed, grabbed, or having something thrown at you
• Feeling that your family didn’t support each other
• Having parents who were separated or divorced
• Living with an alcoholic or a drug user
• Living with someone who was depressed or attempted suicide
• Watching a loved one be physically abused

You don’t have to be a psychologist or expert to recognize the pervasive presence of ACEs in lives all around you. Nor do you have to be a pediatrician or medical specialist to see the consequences of such childhood trauma on cognitive and emotional development. Vance explains that he and his sister were casualties of many ACEs, which resulted in a “fight or flight” response to any type of conflict. When I think of the countless students I’ve had over the course of my career, there were far too many that, like Vance, either fought their way out of conflict or simply ran away. In either case, it goes without saying that it was difficult–if not impossible–to teach such students. And most days, I’m ashamed to say, it was difficult to like and care for them.

To conclude his book, Vance writes:

People sometimes ask whether I think there’s anything we can do to “solve” the problems of my community. I know what they’re looking for: a magical public policy solution or an innovation government program. But these problems of family, faith, and culture aren’t like a Rubik’s Cube, and I don’t think that solutions (as most understand the term) really exist. A good friend, who worked for a time in the White House and cares deeply about the plight of the working class, once told me, “The best way to look at this might be to recognize that you probably can’t fix these things. They’ll always be around. But maybe you can put your thumb on the scale a little for the people at the margins.”

In his own life, Vance admits that “there were many thumbs put on my scale”: his Mamaw and Papaw, his Aunt Wee and her family, his sister, Lindsay, his mother (in spite of her drug addiction, she instilled the value of education in him), the men in his mother’s lives (who came and went but were generally kind), and countless teachers, friends, and community members. Vance credits these individuals with helping him defy the hillbilly odds: graduation from Yale Law School, marriage, and meaningful, stable employment.

After talking with his former high school teachers, Vance writes: “So I think that any successful policy program would recognize what my old high school’s teachers see every day: that the real problem for so many of these kids is what happens (or doesn’t happen) at home.”

And there it is: the proverbial elephant in the room. While many have turned to teachers, social workers, government agents and agencies as whipping boys for the crisis in our culture, there are far too few who have been willing to look to the dissolution of the family as the most significant cause of the chaos, instability, and futility that threatens the very culture in which many of us have flourished. The very culture that, for all its warts, is still the legacy that most of us hope to leave our children and their children.

Ultimately, Vance claims that “we hillbillies are the toughest goddamned people on this earth.” And then he asks if hillbilllies are tough enough to care for their own, those who are often left without love or support, if they are tough enough to “build a church that forces kids like me to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it,”and if they are tough enough to “look ourselves in the mirror and admit that our conduct harms our children.”

We all would do well to ask ourselves these same questions, for it will take tough individuals to save a culture in crisis. I admire and respect J. D. Vance more than I can say. In the fallen world in which we live, he recognizes the fallibility of human nature, the sin of learned helplessness, addictions, indulgences, and blame. He understands the power and necessity of human agency, for if individuals cannot see themselves as agents of change–in their own lives and their culture–we are essentially throwing in the towel and calling our culture dead. Time of death: imminent.

Vance argues that “public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.” He proposes that hillbillies need to “stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”  Finally, he asks that as hillbillies look inwardly to help themselves, others look outwardly, beyond themselves and their situations, to genuinely understand the real challenges that face hillbillies like him. And then to act with compassion and urgency.

Regardless of who becomes our next president, this cultural battle will ultimately be won or lost by individuals like me. Like you. Because we are in the trenches daily. And, like it or not, we have been called to fight. At the very least, we have been called to put our thumb[s] on the scale a little for the people at the margins.