JD Vance - The 'Scots-Irish hillbilly' taking a break in Scotland

BBC News

10 hours ago

When JD Vance stepped onto Scottish soil on Wednesday he became the second inhabitant of the White House to visit the country in a month.The vice-president is believed to be staying in Ayrshire, just north of Galloway, the area he says his forebears left in the 17th Century.But while his boss, President Donald Trump, is half-Scottish - his mother was born in Lewis in the Western Isles - Vance's claim to Caledonian blood has come under some questioning.And this is important because in his own way the vice-president is a follower of the modern creed his Maga allies claim to hate - identity politics. That's loosely defined as people of a particular group - perhaps racial, sexual or social - putting that group's goals ahead of traditional party politics.Or as Vance once put it: "To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart."
He made that claim in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, a bestseller which was subsequently turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.The book describes a childhood spent surrounded by poverty and substance abuse in Appalachia, the broad mountainous region which extends across the eastern USA from Canada to the Deep South. It's estimated that about 90% of the area's early European immigrants came in the 17th Century from the lands which stretch along both sides of the Scottish-English border. These included Ayrshire, Galloway, Dumfriesshire and the areas now known as the Scottish Borders. Vance claims his ancestors were from Galloway and were part of this migration.The terms Scots-Irish, Scotch-Irish and Ulster-Scots relate to people who left Scotland, settled as part of the Ulster plantation and then moved on to North America.Appalachia today includes pockets of extreme poverty and its inhabitants are often offensively depicted as "hillbillies" - simple, unsophisticated and poor. Vance's memoir is an attempt to reclaim that tradition. He writes: "I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) of the Northeast. "Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. "To these folks, poverty is the family tradition... Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbours, friends and family."The book sets out Vance's developing political ideas as it charts his move towards conservatism. And though he was at the time a critic of Donald Trump, the book explains why poor rural voters in places like Appalachia were becoming attracted to the Maga movement.
But while Vance makes explicit links between his family heritage and his political views, others are more sceptical. Speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme, Prof Angelia Wilson of the University of Manchester said Vance has used his Scots-Irish heritage to craft his image."What we know about his background is often what he wants us to know about his background and his construction of the narrative has been very much based on the American dream," she said."Everybody who is white and working class in the American south claims to be of some sort of Scotch-Irish heritage. There is some absolute truth there."There's also a bit of cultural construction happening because it was those in the north-east, those 'damn Yankees' that claimed to be English.Prof Wilson believes the administration Vance is now part of does not especially represent the heritage he likes to embrace."The values that he may have grown up with, that might ring true with Scottish stereotypes about being financially conservative and valuing families and community and helping those in need, are certainly not values that Trump and Maga talk about now."So he is now not a man of Scottish values," she said.
Prof Ewan Hague of DePaul University in Chicago is an expert in white racial identities and the cultural relationships between Scotland and America. He believes Vance's identification with the Scots-Irish community has actually brought him definite political benefits."He can align himself with the Trump voters," he says. "In 2016, he was strongly against Donald Trump. I think that's well known. "I think part of it is these are the kinds of self identities that Trump has that have really moved towards sort of supporting Trump. The sort of lower income rural white population. "And so by emphasising that as part of his core identity, JD Vance, I think, can tap into those connections. And these ideas of strength, self-reliance, very kind of "small c" conservative connection to family and patriotism and nation. "The Scots-Irish becomes a kind of shorthand for a lot of the things that we're seeing from the kind of cultural perspectives of the current administration."
If this all sounds a little politically cynical, it should be said there are many things to celebrate about the links between Scotland and the United States.Over the past 26 years, Tartan Day has grown into a huge celebration. Set up to mimic the traditional St Patrick's Day celebrations enjoyed by the Irish-American community in cities across the USA, it brings celebrities, pipe bands, business leaders and politicians out on the streets of New York every April.It is seen as a key way of promoting Scotland across North America.Politicians from different parts of the political spectrum have said Scots should make every effort to get along with President Trump as a means of getting any political and economic advantage out of his recent trip to his mother's homeland.The Vance trip is another opportunity to do that, though this visit promises to be a much more low-key, private affair.After all, he may well at some point succeed his boss into the West Wing. A future President Vance would see himself as the second chief executive in a row with Scottish heritage.Others may question just how Scottish he is or how much that even means. But if it's how he sees himself, it is a factor this week and for the future.