WEBVTT

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I remember the very first time
I went to a nice restaurant,

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a really nice restaurant.

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It was for a law firm recruitment dinner,

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and I remember beforehand
the waitress walked around

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and asked whether we wanted some wine,

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so I said, "Sure,
I'll take some white wine."

NOTE Paragraph

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And she immediately said,

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"Would you like sauvignon blanc
or chardonnay?"

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And I remember thinking,

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"Come on, lady,
stop with the fancy French words

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and just give me some white wine."

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But I used my powers of deduction

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and recognized that chardonnay
and sauvignon blanc

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were two separate types of white wine,

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and so I told her
that I would take the chardonnay,

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because frankly that was
the easiest one to pronounce for me.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I had a lot of experiences like that

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during my first couple of years
as a law student at Yale,

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because, despite all outward appearances,
I'm a cultural outsider.

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I didn't come from the elites.

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I didn't come from the Northeast
or from San Francisco.

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I came from a southern Ohio steel town,

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and it's a town that's really
struggling in a lot of ways,

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ways that are indicative
of the broader struggles

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of America's working class.

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Heroin has moved in,

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killing a lot of people, people I know.

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Family violence, domestic violence,
and divorce have torn apart families.

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And there's a very unique
sense of pessimism that's moved in.

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Think about rising mortality rates
in these communities

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and recognize that
for a lot of these folks,

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the problems that they're seeing

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are actually causing rising death rates
in their own communities,

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so there's a very real sense of struggle.

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I had a very front-row seat
to that struggle.

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My family has been part of that struggle
for a very long time.

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I come from a family
that doesn't have a whole lot of money.

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The addiction that plagued my community

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also plagued my family,
and even, sadly, my own mom.

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There were a lot of problems
that I saw in my own family,

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problems caused sometimes
by a lack of money,

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problems caused sometimes by a lack
of access to resources and social capital

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that really affected my life.

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If you had looked at my life
when I was 14 years old

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and said, "Well, what's going
to happen to this kid?"

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you would have concluded
that I would have struggled

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with what academics call upward mobility.

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So upward mobility is an abstract term,

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but it strikes at something
that's very core

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at the heart of the American Dream.

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It's the sense,

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and it measures whether kids like me

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who grow up in poor communities
are going to live a better life,

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whether they're going to have a chance
to live a materially better existence,

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or whether they're going to stay
in the circumstances where they came from.

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And one of the things
we've learned, unfortunately,

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is that upward mobility isn't as high
as we'd like it to be in this country,

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and interestingly,
it's very geographically distributed.

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So take Utah, for instance.

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In Utah a poor kid is actually doing OK,

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very likely to live their share
and their part in the American Dream.

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But if you think of where I'm from,

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in the South, in Appalachia,
in southern Ohio,

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it's very unlikely
that kids like that will rise.

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The American Dream
in those parts of the country

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is in a very real sense just a dream.

NOTE Paragraph

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So why is that happening?

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So one reason is obviously
economic or structural.

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So you think of these areas.

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They're beset by these
terrible economic trends,

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built around industries
like coal and steel

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that make it harder
for folks to get ahead.

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That's certainly one problem.

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There's also the problem of brain drain,
where the really talented people,

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because they can't find
high-skilled work at home,

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end up moving elsewhere,

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so they don't build a business
or non-profit where they're from,

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they end up going elsewhere
and taking their talents with them.

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There are failing schools
in a lot of these communities,

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failing to give kids
the educational leg up

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that really makes it possible for kids
to have opportunities later in life.

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These things are all important.

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I don't mean to discount
these structural barriers.

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But when I look back at my life
and my community,

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something else was going on,
something else mattered.

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It's difficult to quantify,
but it was no less real.

NOTE Paragraph

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So for starters, there was
a very real sense of hopelessness

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in the community that I grew up in.

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There was a sense that kids had
that their choices didn't matter.

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No matter what happened,
no matter how hard they worked,

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no matter how hard
they tried to get ahead,

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nothing good would happen.

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So that's a tough feeling
to grow up around.

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That's a tough mindset to penetrate,

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and it leads sometimes
to very conspiratorial places.

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So let's just take one
political issue that's pretty hot,

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affirmative action.

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So depending on your politics,
you might think that affirmative action

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is either a wise or an unwise way
to promote diversity in the workplace

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or the classroom.

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But if you grow up in an area like this,

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you see affirmative action
as a tool to hold people like you back.

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That's especially true if you're
a member of the white working class.

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You see it as something
that isn't just about good or bad policy.

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You see it as something
that's actively conspiring,

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where people with political
and financial power

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are working against you.

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And there are a lot of ways that you see
that conspiracy against you --

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perceived, real, but it's there,

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and it warps expectations.

NOTE Paragraph

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So if you think about what do you do
when you grow up in that world,

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you can respond in a couple of ways.

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One, you can say,
"I'm not going to work hard,

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because no matter how hard I work,
it's not going to matter."

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Another thing you might do is say,

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"Well, I'm not going to go
after the traditional markers of success,

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like a university education
or a prestigious job,

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because the people who care
about those things are unlike me.

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They're never going to let me in."

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When I got admitted to Yale,
a family member asked me

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if I had pretended to be a liberal
to get by the admissions committee.

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Seriously.

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And it's obviously not the case
that there was a liberal box to check

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on the application,

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but it speaks to a very real
insecurity in these places

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that you have to pretend
to be somebody you're not

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to get past these various social barriers.

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It's a very significant problem.

NOTE Paragraph

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Even if you don't give in
to that hopelessness,

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even if you think, let's say,

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that your choices matter
and you want to make the good choices,

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you want to do better
for yourself and for your family,

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it's sometimes hard
to even know what those choices are

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when you grow up
in a community like I did.

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I didn't know, for example,

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that you had to go
to law school to be a lawyer.

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I didn't know that elite universities,
as research consistently tells us,

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are cheaper for low-income kids

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because these universities
have bigger endowments,

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can offer more generous financial aid.

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I remember I learned this

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when I got the financial aid letter
from Yale for myself,

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tens of thousands of dollars
in need-based aid,

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which is a term I had never heard before.

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But I turned to my aunt
when I got that letter and said,

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"You know, I think this just means
that for the first time in my life,

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being poor has paid really well."

NOTE Paragraph

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So I didn't have access
to that information

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because the social networks around me
didn't have access to that information.

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I learned from my community
how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well.

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I learned how to make
a damn good biscuit recipe.

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The trick, by the way,
is frozen butter, not warm butter.

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But I didn't learn how to get ahead.

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I didn't learn how to make
the good decisions

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about education and opportunity

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that you need to make

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to actually have a chance
in this 21st century knowledge economy.

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Economists call the value
that we gain from our informal networks,

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from our friends and colleagues
and family "social capital."

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The social capital that I had
wasn't built for 21st century America,

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and it showed.

NOTE Paragraph

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There's something else
that's really important that's going on

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that our community
doesn't like to talk about,

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but it's very real.

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Working-class kids are much more likely

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to face what's called
adverse childhood experiences,

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which is just a fancy word
for childhood trauma:

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getting hit or yelled at,
put down by a parent repeatedly,

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watching someone hit or beat your parent,

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watching someone do drugs
or abuse alcohol.

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These are all instances
of childhood trauma,

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and they're pretty
commonplace in my family.

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Importantly, they're not just
commonplace in my family right now.

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They're also multigenerational.

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So my grandparents,

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the very first time that they had kids,

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they expected that they
were going to raise them in a way

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that was uniquely good.

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They were middle class,

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they were able to earn
a good wage in a steel mill.

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But what ended up happening

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is that they exposed their kids
to a lot of the childhood trauma

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that had gone back many generations.

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My mom was 12 when she saw
my grandma set my grandfather on fire.

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His crime was that he came home drunk

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after she told him,

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"If you come home drunk,
I'm gonna kill you."

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And she tried to do it.

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Think about the way
that that affects a child's mind.

NOTE Paragraph

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And we think of these things
as especially rare,

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but a study by the Wisconsin
Children's Trust Fund found

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that 40 percent of low-income kids face
multiple instances of childhood trauma,

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compared to only 29 percent
for upper-income kids.

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And think about what that really means.

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If you're a low-income kid,

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almost half of you face multiple
instances of childhood trauma.

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This is not an isolated problem.

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This is a very significant issue.

NOTE Paragraph

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We know what happens
to the kids who experience that life.

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They're more likely to do drugs,
more likely to go to jail,

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more likely to drop out of high school,

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and most importantly,

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they're more likely
to do to their children

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what their parents did to them.

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This trauma, this chaos in the home,

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is our culture's
very worst gift to our children,

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and it's a gift that keeps on giving.

NOTE Paragraph

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So you combine all that,

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the hopelessness, the despair,

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the cynicism about the future,

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the childhood trauma,

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the low social capital,

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and you begin to understand why me,

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at the age of 14,

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was ready to become
just another statistic,

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another kid who failed to beat the odds.

NOTE Paragraph

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But something unexpected happened.

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I did beat the odds.

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Things turned up for me.

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I graduated from high school,
from college, I went to law school,

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and I have a pretty good job now.

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So what happened?

NOTE Paragraph

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Well, one thing that happened
is that my grandparents,

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the same grandparents
of setting someone on fire fame,

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they really shaped up
by the time I came around.

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They provided me a stable home,

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a stable family.

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They made sure

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that when my parents weren't able
to do the things that kids need,

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they stepped in and filled that role.

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My grandma especially
did two things that really matter.

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One, she provided that peaceful home
that allowed me to focus on homework

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and the things that kids
should be focused on.

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But she was also
this incredibly perceptive woman,

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despite not even having
a middle school education.

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She recognized the message
that my community had for me,

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that my choices didn't matter,

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that the deck was stacked against me.

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She once told me,

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"JD, never be like those losers who think
the deck is stacked against them.

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You can do anything you want to."

NOTE Paragraph

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And yet she recognized
that life wasn't fair.

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It's hard to strike that balance,

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to tell a kid that life isn't fair,

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but also recognize and enforce in them
the reality that their choices matter.

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But mamaw was able
to strike that balance.

NOTE Paragraph

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The other thing that really helped
was the United States Marine Corps.

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So we think of the Marine Corps
as a military outfit, and of course it is,

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but for me, the US Marine Corps
was a four-year crash course

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in character education.

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It taught me how to make a bed,
how to do laundry,

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how to wake up early,
how to manage my finances.

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These are things
my community didn't teach me.

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I remember when I went
to go buy a car for the very first time,

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I was offered a dealer's
low, low interest rate of 21.9 percent,

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and I was ready
to sign on the dotted line.

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But I didn't take that deal,

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because I went and took it to my officer

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who told me, "Stop being an idiot,

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go to the local credit union,
and get a better deal."

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And so that's what I did.

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But without the Marine Corps,

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I would have never had access
to that knowledge.

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I would have had
a financial calamity, frankly.

NOTE Paragraph

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The last thing I want to say
is that I had a lot of good fortune

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in the mentors and people

00:12:19.480 --> 00:12:21.616
who have played
an important role in my life.

00:12:21.640 --> 00:12:24.696
From the Marines,
from Ohio State, from Yale,

00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:25.976
from other places,

00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:27.656
people have really stepped in

00:12:27.680 --> 00:12:30.496
and ensured that they filled
that social capital gap

00:12:30.520 --> 00:12:32.920
that it was pretty obvious,
apparently, that I had.

00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:35.040
That comes from good fortune,

00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:39.136
but a lot of children
aren't going to have that good fortune,

00:12:39.160 --> 00:12:42.856
and I think that raises
really important questions for all of us

00:12:42.880 --> 00:12:44.642
about how we're going to change that.

00:12:45.600 --> 00:12:49.576
We need to ask questions about
how we're going to give low-income kids

00:12:49.600 --> 00:12:53.136
who come from a broken home
access to a loving home.

00:12:53.160 --> 00:12:54.416
We need to ask questions

00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:56.776
about how we're going
to teach low-income parents

00:12:56.800 --> 00:12:58.936
how to better interact
with their children,

00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:00.456
with their partners.

00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:04.936
We need to ask questions
about how we give social capital,

00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:08.336
mentorship to low-income kids
who don't have it.

00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:11.416
We need to think about
how we teach working class children

00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:13.936
about not just hard skills,

00:13:13.960 --> 00:13:16.056
like reading, mathematics,

00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:17.416
but also soft skills,

00:13:17.440 --> 00:13:20.280
like conflict resolution
and financial management.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:21.440 --> 00:13:24.656
Now, I don't have all of the answers.

00:13:24.680 --> 00:13:27.600
I don't know all of the solutions
to this problem,

00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:29.560
but I do know this:

00:13:30.600 --> 00:13:32.336
in southern Ohio right now,

00:13:32.360 --> 00:13:36.136
there's a kid who is
anxiously awaiting their dad,

00:13:36.160 --> 00:13:38.536
wondering whether,
when he comes through the door,

00:13:38.560 --> 00:13:40.960
he'll walk calmly or stumble drunkly.

00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:43.200
There's a kid

00:13:44.560 --> 00:13:46.896
whose mom sticks a needle in her arm

00:13:46.920 --> 00:13:48.416
and passes out,

00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:51.336
and he doesn't know
why she doesn't cook him dinner,

00:13:51.360 --> 00:13:53.160
and he goes to bed hungry that night.

00:13:54.400 --> 00:13:58.336
There's a kid who has
no hope for the future

00:13:58.360 --> 00:14:01.616
but desperately
wants to live a better life.

00:14:01.640 --> 00:14:03.840
They just want somebody
to show it to them.

00:14:04.680 --> 00:14:06.536
I don't have all the answers,

00:14:06.560 --> 00:14:11.496
but I know that unless our society
starts asking better questions

00:14:11.520 --> 00:14:13.616
about why I was so lucky

00:14:13.640 --> 00:14:16.696
and about how to get that luck
to more of our communities

00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:18.376
and our country's children,

00:14:18.400 --> 00:14:21.656
we're going to continue
to have a very significant problem.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:21.680 --> 00:14:22.896
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:22.920 --> 00:14:25.320
(Applause)