Opinion: I’m from Appalachia. J.D. Vance got rich lying about us.

Hillbilly. The word is used to bring up images of racist white people with too little money for shoes and too few teeth for smiling. These caricatures of my culture that play out on movie and tv screens have been utilized by outsiders to shame us for generations. They depict us as pitiful, inbred creatures with more dust in our heads than sense or as ignorant and shameless drunks with a taste for violence. None of these images are accurate. So, I offer up my image of my home, in contrast.

The story of my culture is one of struggle, collaboration, independence, and an unwillingness to kneel. Native Americans lived in harmony with these mountains for generations before anyone else. Many of our counties, landmarks, and roadways still bear the names they gave us for them. And many of us owe our lives to their willingness to teach our ancestors about surviving off the land here; a tradition still passed down from generation to generation.

Non-native Appalachian people originally arrived in this country as slaves, indentured servants, or victims of famine and war. They sought refuge in these mountains from the systems that oppressed them, subjugated them, or outright starved them. They chose to embrace their struggle and potential starvation, instead of allowing it to be placed upon them by others. That stubbornness is another tradition we keep alive.

Unfortunately, living outside of the systems that govern and oppress us has become less and less possible as their reach continues to expand. Now, more than ever, we have to stop blaming ourselves, our neighbors, and our parents for the struggles placed upon all of us by a ruling class that is more concerned with their money than my people. The most insidious contemporary example of that ruling class being Hillbilly Elegy writer and Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick JD Vance.

Some people have found Vance’s story and subsequent rise to political power inspirational. I have not. As an Ohio native and an outsider to Appalachian culture, JD Vance chose to line his pockets by using the same historically belittling caricatures of my culture as a tragic backdrop for his self-aggrandizing memoir. In it, Vance posed the question: “How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children?” 

Conveniently, Vance blames my people for their struggles and paints them as lazy while blaming his circumstances on his mother and her battle with addiction. He seems to believe that all his traumas should be attributed to a culture that is not even his. Meanwhile, he credits himself, alone, for every gifted piece of power he amasses from turning his back on his family and shaming Appalachian people and our culture. While he claims to be our kin, he profits from maligning us and supports policies that worsen our suffering and risk our lives. 

If our culture is in crisis, as Vance has proclaimed, it is because men like him are willing to vilify it as a way to gain favor with those in power and parlay that favor into personal profit, at our expense. While kneeling at the feet of our oppressors, his hypocritical message is that my people are not doing enough. That we are not enough. 

But, I know better. I see my people work multiple jobs to make sure the landlords and banks can’t take the roof over the heads of their loved ones. I see my people battle addictions to drugs that their doctors told them were safe and how they continue to overprescribe to them, even when they know otherwise. I see my people come together for one another any time tragedy strikes, with enough home cooked food to feed an army in hand. 

We all know that we fight unearned trauma and hardship everyday of our lives just to be able to survive in the face of a world that views our multitude and diversity as a one-dimensional less-than-human character they can cast in a movie as the antihero in their story. And we know we deserve better than JD Vance.