"There can be no single emissary for the more than 80 million people who make up 'the White working class' nationwide..."

"... (not all of whom have ties to Appalachia, itself a wildly heterogenous region). Force of personality — or in Vance’s case, rustic kitsch — is no substitute for research. In his recent book 'Elite Capture,' the philosopher Olufemi O. Taiwo warns of the eponymous phenomenon, whereby privileged members of oppressed groups become spokespeople for those groups — and, in so doing, co-opt them. For instance, the members of the 'black bourgeoisie' who are so often the face of movements for racial justice emphatically do not speak for the majority of Black Americans.... This is one problem with identity politics, with its mania for electing envoys: The members of a marginalized group who enjoy enough of a public platform to speak on its behalf are often not representative. Vance, who went on to land a lucrative job at Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm after law school, is hardly a typical hillbilly, and there is no guarantee that he has the interests of his less fortunate peers at heart."

Writes Becca Rothfeld, in "'Hillbilly Elegy' and J.D. Vance’s art of having it both ways/In his memoir and for some time after, Vance told liberals what they wanted to hear — but then he wanted power" (WaPo).

The attack on Vance as an attack on identity politics?