James Vance takes Harvard, Bezos to task on ‘woke capital’

James Vance, the author of best-selling Hillbilly Elegy, has accused Harvard University and Jeff Bezos of sowing ‘racial divisions’.

Hillbilly Elegy author James Vance. Picture: Luke Fontana

James Vance, the author of best-selling Hillbilly Elegy, a 2016 book behind last year’s Netflix film, has accused Harvard University, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and Silicon Valley tech giants of ­sowing “racial divisions all across the country”.

In a fiery speech in Virginia on Tuesday, Vance, expected soon to announce a run for the US Senate as a Republican, also called for tax increases for left-wing charities, amid a wide ranging spray at US corporate elites he accused of working to “destroy America”.

Backed financially by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, Vance, 36, seen to be a supporter of former president Donald Trump, said many charities in the US, such as the $US14bn Ford Foundation, were in effect “social justice hedge funds” that should be stripped of their tax advantages.

“Why do we give tax breaks spending all your money to teach literal racism to our children,” he asked, as the guest speaker at conference on “woke capital”, organised by the Claremont Institute.

Harvard University, he said, “with over $US120bn in assets, funds some of the most destructive ideologies all across our country, training the next generation of priests in the woke seminary that is dominating our professional class”.

“It pays not a dollar of tax, has no obligation to draw down principle, it’s literally ammunition for the left and we, through our public policy, we have given it more power,” he added.

Disquiet about the spread in schools of critical race theory, which encourages division between white and black Americans based on historical grievance, has prompted protests by parents and Republicans.

“No moment illustrated what woke capital means for our country more than the riots last summer,” he said, referring to riots that erupted after George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer last May.

Mr Bezos, who has donated to organisations that support Black Lives Matter campaigns, benefited from the BLM riots that destroyed small businesses across America last year, Vance said.

“Who wants to see their competitors unable to deliver goods and service?” he said.

Congressman Jim Banks, chairman of the 154-member Republican Study Committee, said woke capital was “divisive, immoral and harmed America”.

Outlining his “vision for a conservative movement of the 21st century”, Vance railed against offshoring of manufacturing jobs, urging the largely right-of-centre audience to “fight for the right of every American to raise a family in dignity on the wage of a single middle-class job”.

“Globalisation was a choice to make it cheaper to hire Chinese slaves than American workers … but it’s not cheaper for people suffering from heroin overdoses at record numbers or millions of children growing up without ­fathers,” he said.

His speech comes after a number of US businesses, such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airways, publicly criticised moves to tighten identification requirements in voting laws in Georgia and Texas, which critics say disadvantage black voters.

Vance’s speech also comes amid a growing split in the Republican Party among those who remain loyal to Mr Trump and a smaller group, including Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice-­president, who have repeatedly criticised the former president’s handling of the January 6 riots.

“We have lost nearly every institution in this country that actually maters: academy, media, now the government, and financial institutions (which have) aligned themselves against us,” Vance said.