Current Issues / Actualidad

How Dying of Whiteness Went Viral: Coming to Grips with White Supremacy Today

Psychiatrist/sociologist Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness is a brilliant study about some of the ways white supremacy attitudes about gun laws and the financing of public health and education contribute to higher death rates of white Americans, especially men, in America today.

Metzl published the results in 2019 before the tragic death of George Floyd re-aroused the concern of society to the continuing ravages of racial injustice in America and many months before President Donald Trump’s willful mismanagement of COVID-19 drove our death rate to one of the highest in the world 1 .

Professor Metzl’s analysis actually demonstrates a practical, policy focused approach to understand- i n g how deep seated and selfdestructive our white supremacy, or politics of racial resentment, has become and thus helps illustrate how overcoming this tradition will be crucial for reversing the pattern of increasing inequality and decline that has stricken America for the last half century 2 .

Metzl’s academic yet highly personal book relates case studies undertaken since the 2016 election of gun laws in Missouri, funding for Medicaid and Obamacare in Tennessee, and tax and education policy in Kansas, three regions which he knows intimately and professionally. He calls it an effort to understand what Sarah Pallin labeled “the real America” of Trump supporters by probing “how people balanced anti-government or pro-gun attitudes while at the same time navigating lives impacted by poor health care, widening gunrelated morbidity, and underfunded public infrastructures and institutions.”(p. 2)

He uses personal interviews, focus groups, statistical analyses and other social and medical science methodologies to explain

Dr. Gene Bigler, Stockton, CA

Cómo Dying of Whiteness se volvió viral

Enfrentando la Actual

Supremacía

Blanca

Dying of Whiteness es un brillante estudio del psiquiatra y sociólogo Jonathan Metzl sobre algunas de las formas cómo las actitudes de la supremacía blanca sobre las leyes sobre armas y el financiamiento de la salud pública y la educación contribuyen a tasas de mortalidad más altas de estadouni

why American longevity is declining in contrast to the longer life spans in other wealthy, industrialized democracies. Participants in the research, like a desperately ill patient named Trevor whom he interviewed in Tennessee, are often used to provide key explanations: “Ain’t no way I would ever continued on next page denses blancos, especialmente hombres, en los Estados Unidos hoy en día. Metzl publicó los resultados en 2019 antes de que la trágica muerte de George Floyd reavivara la preocupación de la sociedad por los continuos estragos de la injusticia racial en Estados Unidos y muchos meses antes de que la deliberado mal manejo del COVID-19 por el presidente Donald Trump llevara nuestra tasa de mortalidad a una de las más altas del mundo 1 . El análisis del profesor Metzl en realidad demuestra un enfoque práctico y centrado en las políticas p a r a comprender cuán profundamente arraigada y autodestructiva se ha vuelto nuestra supremacía blanca, o la política del resentimiento racial, y por lo tanto ayuda a ilustrar cómo la superación de esta tradición será crucial para revertir el patrón de creciente desigualdad y el declive que ha afectado a Estados Unidos durante el último medio siglo 2 .

El libro de Metzl, académico, pero muy personal, relata estudios de casos realizados sobre las leyes de armas de fuego en Missouri desde la elección del 2016, la financiación de Medicaid y Obamacare en Tennessee, y la política tributaria y educativa en Kansas, tres regiones que conoce de manera íntima y profesional. Lo llama un esfuerzo por comprender lo que Sarah Pallin denominó “la verdadera América” de los partidarios de Trump investigando “cómo la gente equilibraba las actitudes antigubernamentales o a favor de las armas mientras, al mismo tiempo, navegaba por las vidas afectadas por la mala atención médica, aumentando la morbosidad relacionada con las armas, e infraestructuras e instituciones públicas con fondos insuficientes”.

Utiliza entrevistas personales, grupos de sondeos, análisis estadísticos y otras metodologías de ciencias médicas y sociales para explicar porqué la longevidad estadounidense está disminuyendo en continúa a la vuelta

Coming to grips with White...

from the previous page support Obamacare or sign up for it. I would rather die. We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in my case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or Welfare Queens.” (p. 3) 3

His multifaceted approach enables Metzl to explore the subtlety and complexity of the racial resentment that underlies white supremacy and relate it to the toxic dogma that has increasingly defined the core belief structure of the Republican Party over the last 70 years or so by emphasizing “a racial hierarchy that overtly and implicitly aimed to keep white Americans hovering above Mexicans, welfare queens, and other nonwhite others.”(p. 4) 4 The white, backlash conservatism of the Tea Party, Freedom Caucus and related GOP constituents relies on appeals to emotionally and historically charged notions about keeping white Americans at the top of social hierarchy and reducing the risk to their white status but results in policies that actually harm white Americans. As Metzl points out ironically, whiteness itself has become a negative health indicator. Without entering into much detail, the Missouri case study elaborates on the liberalGene Bigler, PhD Writer & consultant on global affairs, former professor, izing of gun laws (up to allowance of adult open carry in schools and retired diplomat unregulated purchases) in Missouri during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was followed over the last decade by a dramatic increase in gun related injuries and deaths among white Missourians from suicides, partner deaths, and accidental shootings. In Tennessee, the campaign since 2011 by the state’s Republican governor and state legislature against cooperation with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including reduced funding of Medicaid, resulted in a suddenly drastic contrast in health care outcomes there in comparison with improvements in neighboring Kentucky as it embraced the ACA. The refusal to expand Medicaid alone cost every single white resident, almost eight in ten people in the Volunteer State, 14.1 days of life by 2018, and the reduction in availability of insurance and institutional structure will rapidly escalate future losses.

Finally, the massive tax cut won by Governor Sam Brownback in 2012, often cited as the quintessential example of the Reagan doctrine, led to immediate and widespread reductions in funding of education and infrastructure spending throughout Kansas. Although reelected by a hair in 2016, the deterioration of educational and infrastructural quality in Kansas was so great that Brownback was hounded out of the state in 2017. What had been one of the most highly respected school systems in America dropped to 44th place in 2017. Declines in projected high school graduation rates of seven points for white males and six for white females is much less than the more than 20 percent reductions for black boys and girls, but still points to an average of nine years of life lost for each of the thousands of additional dropouts now expected in Kansas 5 . Almost as worrisome as the loss of Republican support for school funding is the finding of a 2017 study by Pew Research showing that a large majority of Republicans nationwide now also believe that colleges have a negative overall effect on America.

The unexpected and self-destructive policy consequences of white supremacy demonstrated by Metzl add an important dimension to the rationale for change that the Black Lives Matter movement has so insistently brought to the attention of the American people over the last year. To the tragedy and immorality of the loss of black lives, Metzl suggests how much maintaining white supremacy costs its supposed beneficoncludes on page 26

Enfrentando la actual Supremacía...

viene de la vuelta contraste con la esperanza de más larga vida en otras democracias industrializadas y ricas. Usó los participantes en la investigación, como un paciente gravemente enfermo llamado Trevor a quien entrevistó en Tennessee, para dar explicaciones clave: “De ninguna manera apoyaría Obamacare o me inscribiría en eso. Preferiría morir. No necesitamos más gobierno en nuestras vidas. Y en mi caso, de ninguna manera quiero que con mis dólares de los impuestos paguen a mexicanos o a abusadoras de la asistencia pública”. (pág. 3) 3

Su enfoque multifacético le permite a Metzl explorar la sutileza y la complejidad del resentimiento racial que subyace a la supremacía blanca y relacionarlo con el dogma tóxico que ha definido cada vez más la estructura central de creencias del Partido Republicano durante los últimos 70 años al enfatizar “una jerarquía que, abierta e implícitamente, tenía como objetivo mantener a los estadounidenses blancos sobre los mexicanos, las welfare queens (abusadoras de la asistencia pública y otros no-blancos”.(p. 4) 4 . El conservadurismo blanco, la reacción derechista del Tea Party, la Freedom Caucus y sus constituyentes republicanos se basa en emociones y nociones históricamente tendenciosas que buscan mantener a los estadounidenses concluye en pág.26

NOTES

1.At the end of July (according to the Johns Hopkins

University Coronavirus Resource Center), the U.S. death rate from CO VID -19 at over 47 per 100,000 was the tenth highest among over 200 countries. With over 156,000 dead, the U.S. has had more than twice as many as any except Brazil. A few of the industrialized countries stricken first by the pandemic, such as Italy, France, Spain, and the UK, have similar high rates, but the U.S. is double or several times higher than the rate in most other large countries, such as Canada (24.3), Germany (11), Russia (9.8), and Argentina (8.2), and many times higher than the dozens of countries with less than one death per 100,000, including Japan, South Korea, Australia,

Singapore, China, Cuba and New Zealand. By comparison, during the 1991 Cholera Pandemic in the Western Hemisphere which the our CDC helped manage throughout the region, the U.S. suffered only 4 out of the tens of thousands of deaths in the Americas and the least of any effected country. On the racial relation of the virus, see

Jorge Martinez, “CO VID Not Racist, U.S. Is,” JOA QUIN , 8/92 (May 2020). 2.The author addressed U.S. decline and the potential for change in “Our National Crisis: Upheaval or a Real

Turning Point?” JOA QUIN , 8/93 (June 2020) and “Crisis and Reinvention: Why the Next Vice President May Define

America’s Turning Point,” JOA QUIN , 8/94 (July 2020). 3.Page numbers given in parentheses refer to Jonathan

M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland, Basic Books, 2019. 4.The author earlier explored the evolution of a racist core in the evolution of the Republican Party and its role in the polarization crisis in American politics: “Managing Our

Latest Constitutional Crisis: Party or Country,” JOA QUIN , 8/88 (January 2020) and “Partisan Paralysis: The Roots of

Our Polarization,” JOA QUIN , 8/90 (March 2020). 5.Space does not allow for analysis of the native consequences for Americans of color that these white supremacy policies entail, but it should be clear that as bad as they may unintentionally result for white Americans, they are far worse in both related and unrelated ways for people of color.

NOTAS

1.A finales de julio (según el Johns Hopkins University

Coronavirus Resource Center), la tasa de morbilidad en

EEUU por CO VID -19 en más de 47 por 100,000 era la décima más alta entre más de 200 países. Con más de 156,000 muertos, los EEUU sobrepasa en más del doble a muchos, menos Brasil. Países industrializados golpeados primero por la pandemia, como Italia, Francia, España y

GB, tienen tasas similares, pero la de EEUU es el doble o varias veces más alta que la mayoría, como es Canadá (24.3), Alemania (11), Rusia (9.8) y Argentina (8.2), y muchas veces más alta que docenas de países con menos de una muerte por 100,000, incluyendo Japón, Sur

Corea, Australia, Singapur, China, Cuba y Nueva Zelanda.

Comparando, durante la Pandemia del Cólera de 1991 en el Hemisferio Occidental, ayudada a controlar por el CDC en la región, los EEUU sufrieron solo 4 de las decenas de miles de muertes que hubo en América; el menos afectado. Para una relación racial del virus, ver Jorge

Martínez, “CO VID No Es Racista, los EEUU Sí,” JOA QUIN , 8/92 (Mayo 2020). 2.El autor comentó el descenso de EEUU y el potencial para cambio en “Nuestra Crisis Nacional: Disturbios o un Real

Punto de Inflexión” JOAQUIN , 8/93 (Junio 2020) y “Crisis y Reinvención: Porqué la Próxima Vicepresidente Puede

Definir el Cambio,” JOAQUIN , 8/94 (Julio 2020). 3.Los números de páginas en paréntesis son de Jonathan

M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland, Basic Books, 2019. 4.El autor ya exploraba la evolución de un núcleo racista en la evolución del Partido Republicano y su rol en la crisis de polarización en la política de EEUU : “Partido o Nación: Enfrentado Nuestra Última Crisis Constitucional,” JOA QUIN , 8/88 (Enero 2020) y “Parálisis Partidista: Las Raíces de la

Polarización,” JOA QUIN , 8/90 (Marzo 2020). 5 El espacio no permite analizar las consecuencias nativas para la gente de color que estas políticas de supremacía blanca conllevan, pero debe quedar claro que así como son malas sin intención para los blancos, son mucho peores en todo sentido para las personas de color.