| Re: Hillbilly Elegy [message #93215 is a reply to message #93210] |
Fri, 26 February 2021 09:32   |
Rusty
Messages: 1174
Registered: May 2018
Location: Kansas City Missouri
|
Illuminati (3rd Degree) |
|
|
I can relate this author to a real remembrance I have. Where I used to work we would get students trying to better themselves. Though doing so through the high cost privatized trade school route. One student was a mix of Caucasian hillbilly extraction and American Indian. She was intelligent, a good hands on learner, was dependable and willing to take on responsibility. We wanted to have her to come work with us. Her tragic flaw we came to find was a total lack of educational discipline. We learned from her talking about her two cultural heritage's, a home life and extended families prone to stubborn poverty and complacency. She was like a family matriarch next inline to her hillbilly mother that had worked at a McDonalds for decades. Her American Indian father had died in his 50's. She continually fielded cell phone calls from family members beset with petty problems needing her guidance.
Students in the Radiologic trade are required to pass a comprehensive national registry. We tried to impress upon her the preparation needed to be successful, bought educational study guides in that regard to help her, and finally arranged for a tutor to help her cram for the test. She was overwhelmed too late, too unprepared. She fawned disrespect our interventions with misplaced personal pride. We soon lost contact with her and always lamented and wondered what plight faced her. Paying off high cost student loans without the ability of an income to do so. She wouldn't be able to work in the field without that sheepskin. Truly, a microcosm study of the disfunction the author depicts in his book.
A tale of two polar opposites in these two articles. Coming together in unison with the broad introspection Vance bridges in our class system, culture, economy and nation.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-lives-of-poor-white-people
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-us-politics-poor-whites/
|
|
|
|
Posting Rules
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Get a T-Shirt!
