The impact of place on who gets ahead

I've read lots of books about the impact of place on who gets ahead in life--and who does not.  I assign excerpts of many of them to students in my seminars on Law and Rural Livelihoods and The First-Gen Experience in Scholarly and Popular Literature.  We read excerpts, for example, from Sheryll Cashin's Place, Not Race.  The famous economist Raj Chetty has also focused on zipcode as destiny.   

So I was particularly interested to see coverage in the Daily Yonder (a news source oriented to rural issues) of a new book by a famous sociologist who studies poverty and inequality, Kathryn Edin, and colleagues Timothy Nelson and Luke Shaefer:  The Injustice of Place:  Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America.  Here are some excerpts from early in the book that mention rural places specifically, including in the first two paragraphs, which follow:   

IT IS HARD TO SAY exactly when we first noticed the pattern. Just before we hit the outskirts of a Cotton Belt town, the fields would give way to a string of gleaming white antebellum homes with large lawns, old-growth trees, and grand entrances framed by columns reaching two or three stories high. Merging onto the majestic arterial boulevards leading into town, we would see more imposing homes presiding over meticulously manicured grounds. 

In Sparta, a rural hamlet near Augusta, Georgia, it appears as though someone has invested millions to restore an elegant Greek Revival home. New windows and shutters gleam. Yet just across the street lies a dilapidated shack, one room deep, with a sagging roof. Over in Demopolis, Alabama, sits the venerable Gaineswood, a massive structure known for its elaborate interior suites, including domed ceilings, remarkable decorative arts, and original antebellum furnishings. Left out of the photos on Gaineswood’s website and tourist brochures are the aging wood cottages in varying states of disrepair, the tumbledown trailers, and the sagging modular houses that flank the historic home.  (page 1) 

The scholars undertook in this book to study poor places, whereas they had previously studied poor people.  They also decided to study health in addition to income.  Here's more on their methodology:

To assess the level of disadvantage in a community, such as a county or a city, we combined traditional income-based measures with other markers, including health. Especially in the United States, health outcomes vary tremendously by race, ethnicity, and income. In 2008, life expectancy for highly educated white males was eighty years, but only sixty-six for low-educated Black men, whose average life span resembled numbers seen in Pakistan and Mongolia. In 2011, the infant mortality rate for Black mothers in the United States was comparable to that in Grenada and just a bit better than that in Tonga. The rate for non-Hispanic whites was much closer to that in Germany and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, a tidal wave of new research was showing that a person’s health is shaped more by their context—their income, family circumstances, and community characteristics, for example—than by their genetic profiles or the medical care they receive. 

Ultimately, as the scope of our study of place-based disadvantage grew, we chose to incorporate two well-measured health outcomes, one that captured conditions at the start of life and the other at the end. In a particular community, what were a baby’s chances of being born with low birth weight, which is closely associated with infant mortality and other threats to children’s health? In that community, how long could the average person expect to live? 

We also recognized the importance of measuring whether disadvantage in a particular place persisted for children growing up there. Especially in the American context, it is almost an article of faith that kids should have the opportunity to do better than their parents. Recently, a team of economists employed confidential IRS data to create a measure of intergenerational mobility (the chance that children born low-income could rise up the economic ladder) for every city and county in the nation. These researchers used tax records to follow children born in the 1980s through adulthood to see where they stood on the income ladder compared to their parents. It was already understood that there were big differences in intergenerational mobility by parental income, ethnicity, and race, but the most stunning revelation of this new research was how much variation there was by place. In some communities, a child born into poverty would probably stay low-income as an adult. Yet in others, they had a much better chance of reaching the middle class. It seemed clear to us that to measure the depth of disadvantage in a community, it would be important to include the rate of mobility from one generation to the next. (pp. 3-4) 

This follows several pages later--and reveals a rural surprise to the authors:    

Immediately, we could see from the rankings that the geographical pattern was stark. The first surprise—especially for three professors who had spent our careers studying urban poverty—was that the “most disadvantaged” places on our index were mostly rural. There is considerable poverty in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. But in our apples-to-apples comparison, none of those cities ranked even among the 600 most disadvantaged places in the nation. For the most part, the only cities and urban counties to find themselves among the most disadvantaged were a relatively small number of industrial municipalities in the Northeast and Midwest, such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Rochester. 

Among the rural counties at the top of the list, what we found didn’t fit what most people think of as “rural.” While some of these were majority-white, many, indeed most, were communities of Black and Hispanic Americans. We could see, too, that many places with large Native American populations ranked among the most disadvantaged in the nation (19 of the top 200). Beyond these, though, not one community in the western part of the United States registered among the “most disadvantaged” (those in the top fifth). While some might say we ought to have considered the impact of the high cost of living on poverty—those costs are higher in some places—there are trade-offs. Although people pay more for housing in those places, there are at the same time structural advantages in those areas of the country, such as good health care systems, a more generous safety net, public transportation, and higher-quality schools. This, we think, is why some high-cost big cities like San Francisco and Seattle fall further down our index than expected. We also found that those living in the 200 most disadvantaged places on our index were just as prone to have major difficulties paying for housing as those in America’s 500 largest cities. 

Apart from predominantly Native American communities, the places that our index identified as “most disadvantaged” most often are found in three regions—Appalachia, South Texas, and the vast southern Cotton Belt running across seven states. (pp. 5-6) 

* * * 

Across rural America, monuments, celebrations, and museums are markers of local pride. Indeed, Crystal City has vigorously defended its claim to the title “Spinach Capital of the World” against upstart Alma, Arkansas—also a former spinach mecca that has erected multiple statues of Popeye. Yet in South Texas, the vast Cotton Belt, central Appalachia, and the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, these symbols celebrate a past that is fraught, to say the least. They commemorate the very industries that, for a century or more, spelled misery and hardship for thousands, if not millions, while profiting only a few. They memorialize the intensive resource extraction and resulting human exploitation that made these places America’s internal colonies. 

How did the identities of these communities become so bound to the economic legacies of the past? (p. 21) 

And, skipping to much later in the book, this is especially intersting regarding the diploma divide and how higher education is increasingly seen by some as a culprit: 

Most often, emerging leaders trying to set a new course have the odds stacked against them—as was the case with Cornejo’s coalition and later with the slate of La Raza candidates who came into office in South Texas in the early 1970s. People at every level are hoping for their failure: when they stumble, it is all the easier to blame the community for its own problems. Universities could certainly play a role in helping to equip local leaders with the tools needed to succeed, perhaps through a model like the USDA’s community- and university-based Cooperative Extension System. Recently, one community leader told us that while his state’s flagship university is not beloved in most rural towns, the extension service is immensely popular because it provides knowledge and resources the community values. Using university extension programs as a conduit for equipping local leaders might help higher ed prove its worth in many far-flung communities. (p. 237) 

Altogether, the book uses the word "rural" 67 times, but many of those are in end notes/sources.  Here's a WHYY segment on the book.  

Edin's prior books did not pay particular attention to rural poverty or other rural issues.  She is perhaps most famous for Promises I Can Keep:  Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage (2005) (with Maria Kefalas); Doing the Best I Can:  Fatherhood in the Inner City (2013) (also with Nelson) and $2.00 a Day:  Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015) (also with Shaefer). 

Crossposted to Legal Ruralism.  

We have a long way to go

In “What’s Wrong With Being From the South? Just ask an Academic From the North,” Adam Kirk Edgerton, a Ph.D. student in education policy at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses regionalism and how geographical biases have created a divide between Americans in the North and South. 

Towards the end of the article, Edgerton shares a story about a conversation he had with a student after the October 1, 2017,  Route 91 mass shooting in Las Vegas. The student said she didn't feel any sympathy for the victims of the shooting because she assumed that, if they were at a country music festival, they were probably Trump supporters which meant they deserved what happened to them.

This account resonated with me for several reasons. First, having been raised mostly in Las Vegas, I vividly remember the October 1 massacre and how it shook the entire city. After all, it was the largest mass shooting in American history. Second, I can tell you that regardless of where one fell on the political spectrum, we were all devastated about what happened.

I remember when my neighbor appeared a month or so after the shooting and told us that she had been shot while attending the concert and was later hospitalized due to complications resulting from her injuries. Although she admittedly identifies as a Republican, I never once thought her views made her injuries justifiable simply because her views differed from my own. 

And to be clear, though I do not condone the rhetoric and societal harm often perpetuated by those who support Trump, I don’t think that it is fair or proper to essentially write off an entire region on the basis of a presumed political belief. 

I say this because, in doing so, we essentially write off marginalized groups existing within those regions who are just as deserving of advocacy and resources as those in the North, West, and East. For example, I remember when the news broke that Roe v. Wade had been overturned. I was at work, and someone in the office stated that they weren’t concerned because we live on the West Coast and that Roe basically is only an issue “for the red states.” 

This comment surprised me because, while many of us on the West Coast will likely not be impacted by the decision, millions of Black and Brown women in the South have been--and will be continue to be--disproportionately impacted by the decision. If we do not recognize this disparity, how will we be any better than the folks we say we don’t want to be?

I think the same holds true when we discuss anti-racism. Whereas it is not enough to be complacent, we must be active in our efforts against racism. And just as we must be active in our efforts against racism, we should be active in supporting marginalized folks in all regions of the country, not solely on those in the places we deem most deserving of our activism.

In fact, I think if we reflect on how marginalized groups are treated even on the West Coast, we will realize that we, too, have a long way to go. Just this month, members of the Los Angeles City Council were exposed for attempting to dilute the Black vote in the council district and comparing the Black child of a fellow council member to a monkey. 

In this case, we are talking about one of the most diverse and so-called ideologically progressive cities in California, which is highly progressive in its entirety. Even in that context, racism and bigotry are disgustingly pervasive.

Edgerton's article also reminded me of when I was first admitted to King Hall and a fellow Black student who was a 3L at the time (who happened to be from the rural South) expressed that the racism he experienced in Davis wasn’t very different than what he experienced as a Black man in the South. He said that was just a bit more subtle in Davis, but that subtlety did not diminish the harm it caused or the impact it had on his experience. 

With all of this in mind, I think it is important that we as a society focus on trying to be better as a whole. This requires us to actively work towards progress for our entire country rather than falling susceptible to performative progressivism by picking and choosing who and where we dedicate our efforts.

Reversing the Rural Brain Drain and my guilt for contributing to the problem

This past week in class we discussed elitism in higher education and the social, intellectual, and physical disconnect between more highly educated individuals and lower-class communities. Rob Henderson's article perfectly describes the alienation of the working class from the T.V.-like lives of the elite. We also talked about the rural brain drain, a phenomenon arising out of the exodus of more highly educated individuals from their rural, lower-class communities to concentrated bigger cities. Studies have shown that the rural brain drain is especially potent in rural California.

This discussion reminded me of a recent experience I had that brought my own guilt for contributing to the rural brain drain into focus. During my 2L fall at UC Davis's Aoki Water Justice Clinic, I worked on a water rights project in unincorporated Tulare County. My supervising attorney and I took a road trip down to meet with the owners of a remote gas station. The goal was to convince the owners to sign an easement allowing a local mutual water company to access their property and expand the water storage tank for the surrounding homes. We had reason to believe this would be difficult given the stay-out-of-my-business mindset of the owners.

Picture of the gas station in Tulare.

Before we left, my supervising attorney warned me that the owners may not trust us because they would think of us as "big city" attorneys and they might even liken us to big government. Studies have shown that rural Americans tend to distrust the federal government. Because of that, he recommended that we wear casual clothing and refrain from using legal jargon. My response was incredulous: Is Davis a big city? Am I the out-of-touch liberal that Fox News warned my uncles about? Could someone really mistake me for an attorney?

I tried to explain to my supervisor that I was so clearly not a "big city" attorney. For one, I had no idea what I was doing. On top of that, I spent a good portion of my life with my family in the Central Valley (Newman, California to be exact). Newman, located in sunny Stanislaus County, looked almost exactly like this area of unincorporated Tulare (it smelled like it too). Surely, that fact would win me some trust from the owners of the gas station.

Picture of "bustling" downtown Newman.

It didn't. The first thing the owners asked us was where we were from. One owner explained that this was very important to them because things "ran differently" down there and we wouldn't understand unless we were actually from there. I tried to explain that although I was from the Bay Area, I had a connection to the Central Valley through my family. That wasn't good enough. He dismissed us with a "you would never understand." Our field trip was a bust.

In the end, we were lucky that another student at the clinic was from Tulare. Over the phone, she and the owners bonded over local Mexican restaurants and dive bars. We managed to convince the owners to sign the easement by communicating through her. This equalizing factor, that they were all from Tulare, was necessary to foster trust and close the deal.

For me, this experience illustrated the air of elitism and pretentiousness in higher education that is immediately recognized and distrusted by rural, working class communities. It also proved that the most effective way to bridge this gap is through the return and reestablishment of more highly educated class migrants in their respective communities. This would avert the "you would never understand" impulse.

This whole experience reminds me of my role within the rural brain drain. I can't help but feel guilty that I don't plan to return to my community in Newman. My mom told me many stories about how my grandparents were forced to work long hours in subpar conditions for below minimum wage. Hearing about the way that farm owners and corporations took advantage of my migrant grandparents disgusted me to my core. I wish someone had come and provided them with legal help. Wouldn't it be moral for me to move back and provide that assistance for others?

Picture of my siblings and my vovô in his Newman backyard on Easter.

But then I start to think about what it would be like for me if I actually went back. The last time I was in Newman, Main Street was lined with Blue Lives Matter flags. The latest news was a hate crime that occurred when a group of men knocked down the mailbox of a gay couple and threw rocks at their house. My uncle, a typical resident of Newman and a lifelong Republican, told me he wouldn't speak to me anymore because I had come out as gay.

I know in my heart that no matter how much I might want to give back to Newman, I would never feel safe if I returned. Hate crimes in California, against both gay and Asian people, are on the rise. This is especially true in Trump supporting counties. My choices would seem to be staying away from Newman or sacrificing my identity and hiding who I am. For me, the latter is inconceivable. For now, I will have to contribute to the rural brain drain.

One of the trade-offs first gen students make: loss of place

With my maternal grandparents, Effie and Elver Shatwell
at their home in Vendor, Arkansas (1995)

At our first class meeting of the fall semester last week, we discussed this Nov. 2020 episode of The Hidden Brain podcast when Jennifer Morton was Shankar Vedantam's guest.  She's a philosopher, now at the University of Pennsylvania, who has published a book called Moving Up without Losing Your Way (Princeton University Press 2019).  In it, she brings her perspective as a philosopher to think about what I call the class migration phenomenon.  Specifically, Morton talks about the trade-offs students must make when they pursue a course different from that of their families of origin.  Vedantam introduces Morton's work:   

Morton argues there is [a] less obvious ingredient in the story of upward mobility: a willingness to make ethical trade-offs. She doesn't mean lying or cheating, but something subtler and far more consequential.

* * * 

[S]trivers are, as you might expect, ambitious, hard working, smart, but also I think are willing to make trade-offs in the pursuit of those ambitions. Some of those trade-offs in some cases are quite difficult and painful.

My mother at a family cemetery
in Newton County, Arkansas 
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

We talked in class about some of the trade-offs--we could even call them sacrifices--that we, as first gen students, have made as we have pursued higher education.  A lot of us spoke about giving up time with family--even the opportunity to get to know family members, such as older relatives, or attend their funerals.  That reminded me of the visit captured in the photo above with my maternal grandparents, a few years before my grandfather died.  I was glad I got to see him the weekend before his death but sad I could not be at his funeral to honor and remember him.  It was just too far to travel from California, mid-semester, the first year I taught at UC Davis.  Unfortunately, for similar reasons, I was also unable to attend the funerals of my other grandparents, as well as that of a great grandmother.  All died while I was living too far away or doing work that made it impractical (sometimes just prohibitively expensive) to go home to their funerals in the small Arkansas community where I grew up and where they all lived.  

We talked in class about how some parents arduously protect the time of their "striver" children, while others are oblivious to the twin demands of higher education and family, expecting the sacrifice of the former in the name of family duty.  My mom was in the former category.  She never put pressure on me to attend a grandparent's funeral because she knew it would distract from my school work or my job--and also that it would be a big financial burden. 

One thing we didn't talk much about in class as part of this discussion is loss of place, though it was implicit in some of our answers, like those referencing family.  What I mean by loss of place is that many people can't or don't remain near their families of origin when they go to college.  This means they experience not only diminished family connections, they also experience diminished connections with the place they grew up, the place they consider home.  

The house where I grew up, a few weeks before my family 
moved in, fall 1964

This can refer to the community, the state or even the house where one grew up.  I recently wrote this about the house where I was raised.  We moved into it when I was three weeks old, and my mother still lives there.  I will always be attached to that house and wish I could see it more often; unfortunately, I've not even set foot in Arkansas during the pandemic, though I'm excited to visit The Natural State next spring, when there will be a reunion/Birthday Party for the 8th Circuit judge for whom I clerked, who has taken senior status but still works in Little Rock. 

Same house where I grew up, after some improvements
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

The loss of place may be a particular loss for students who grew up in rural places because those rural areas are associated with attachment to place.  This is because many rural residents live on land passed down from their ancestors, and rural land is more likely than urban land to remain in a family over the course of generations.  

That was the case with me.  I am the fifth generation on both sides of my family to grow up in a rural county in Arkansas.  Both my mother's family and my father's homesteaded the land on which they lived, and I was raised on part of the farm that had been in my father's family since the late 1800s.  There is even a town--really a wide spot in the road that used to have a post office and is now an access point on the Buffalo National River--called Pruitt. 

With my son and my mother
on the Buffalo National River
Pruitt access point 2015

It is a little known fact that many students attend the college nearest their home--if, that is, there is one.  Lack of a nearby college or university is one reason that many rural high school graduates don't continue on to college.  

I was a rural high school graduate who didn't have the opportunity to attend a college within commuting distance from my parents' home (there was a two-year community college 20 miles away), but I was lucky in that the state's flagship land grant university was just 80 miles away.   So, I got a good education, while also being able to maintain many family connections. 

Still, when it came to careers, I was unable to return home to fulfill my professional destiny.  First, I earned an undergraduate degree in journalism, but there was only a weekly newspaper in my hometown, and they didn't have the budget to hire people with journalism degrees.  Indeed, the journalism market in Arkansas is one reason I decided to go ahead and undertake law school, which had long been a dream.  (At the time, journalists in Arkansas earned about $10K/year, which seemed barely enough to service my student loans). 

I had only been in law school a short time when I realized I'd never "go home" to the county where I grew up (Newton) to practice law, simply because there was no market there.  My county of 8000 residents was home to one attorney.  They didn't need another, and there was no one there to mentor me.  Eventually, law school channeled me to the city anyway and to what passes for "big law" in that region.  I had summer associate gigs in Little Rock, Tulsa and Kansas City before deciding to pursue a PhD, which took me to London (because that's where the best scholarship opportunity was).  That led to a decade living and working abroad.  

Then, when I went on the law school teaching market, I'd hoped to be offered a job back in Arkansas, but that didn't happen.  (It is typical for law schools, unless they are T14, not to hire their own graduates, though I note that exceptions get made for men more often than for women). I wound up in California, where I still live and work 23 years later.  I'm very grateful for my career--and the opportunity to raise a Californian--but I still lament that many (though certainly not all) of my Arkansas connections have slipped away. 

With my mother, at the Newton County Museum,
Arkansas
(c) W.R. Pruitt-Herbert 2017 

I moved to California to fulfill what I believe was my professional destiny--becoming a law professor--and one consequence of that was a certain loss of place.