You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily. This talk features author J.D. Vance,

recorded live at TEDNYC, 2016. I remember the very first time I went to a nice restaurant, a really nice restaurant.

It was for a law firm recruitment dinner. And I remember beforehand,

the waitress walked around and asked whether we wanted some wine. So I said, sure, I'll take some

white wine. And she immediately said, would you like Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay? And I remember thinking,

come on, lady, stop with the fancy French words and just give me some white wine.

But I used my powers of deduction and recognize that Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc were two

separate types of white wine, and so I told her that I would take the chardonnay,

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

So I had a lot of experiences like that during my first couple of years

as a law student at Yale. Because, despite all outward appearances, I'm a cultural outsider. I didn't come

from the elites. I didn't come from the Northeast or from San Francisco. I came from a southern

Ohio steel town, and it's a town that's really struggling

in a lot of ways, a ways that are indicative of the broader struggles of America's working class.

Heroin has moved in, killing a lot of people, people I know. Family violence, domestic violence, and

divorce have torn apart families. And there's a very unique sense of pessimism that's moved in.

Think about rising mortality rates in these communities and recognize that for a lot of these folks,

the problems that they're seeing are actually causing rising death rates in their own communities.

So there's a very real sense of struggle. Now, I had a very front row seat to that

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

that doesn't have a whole lot of money. The addiction that plagued my community also plagued my

family and even sadly my own mom.

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