SCHEDULE NOTE:
Tomorrow, Wed Dec 2 - Asynchronous day
Racism and Whites
With the understanding that racism exists, we will now turn our attention to specific racial groups. Just like people are unique and dynamic, so is each racial group. Racism affects each group differently. Surprisingly, even whites can be affected negatively by racism towards nonwhites. One person studying the effects of racism on whites is Jonathon Metzel, a sociologist, and a medical doctor.
Dr. Jonathon Metzel, Sociologist and Medical Doctor
Jonathan Metzel is a sociologist and a medical doctor who explores the connection between racism and the negative effects on society including and especially whites. In his book, Dying of Whiteness, Dr. Metzel finds that the life expectancy of white Americans has gone DOWN for three years in a row, 2015, 2016 and 2017. (This was even before the Covid-19 pandemic) The last time that life expectancy went down in the US for three years in a row was a hundred years ago because of World War I and the influenza outbreak of 1919. The reasons are surprisingly related to race.Just to clarify, Metzel's book is about politics, but it is not an indictment of one political party. It is about (as the title says) the specific politics of racial resentment, that is, using bias against minorities to achieve specific political outcomes. This does not mean an entire political party. It is a specific set of policies that help to explain why Americans who are white have been dying earlier on average for three years in a row: 2015, 2016, 2017. This has not happened in 100 years. And it is almost unheard of in the developed world. Life expectancy should be going up.
If you read the last 2 pages of the reading (18-19), Metzel explicitly states that,
It is not liberal or conservative politics in general, but a specific type of politics:
"It is best to avoid knee-jerk assumptions that more money or health care are automatically good....There are far too many examples of liberal or Democratic initiatives that result in poor health for minority and low-income populations...When politics demands that people resist available health care, amass arsenals, cut funding for schools, or make other decisions that are perilous, this is literally asking people to die for their whiteness."
I argue that the way forward requires a white America that strives to collaborate rather than dominate, with a mind-set of openness and interconnectedness that we have all-too-frequently neglected.Chris Hayes had Dr. Metzel as a guest on his podcast called Why Is This Happening?
This is not to suggest that everyone become a Democrat - far from it. Rather, our nation urgently needs to recognize how systems of inequality we build and sustain aren't benefitting anyone...."
For today's lesson, please click on Stitcher here and listen to the interview. The transcript is available here in case you want to read along while you listen, or in case you simply prefer to read the interview instead of listening. But you can also listen to the podcast on Apple here and on If you listen to the interview, it runs for about 50 minutes so this will be a two-day lesson. Note that this is just an interview with Metzel. For a full understanding of Metzel's findings, see his book, Dying of Whiteness.
Here is the episode embedded:
Here is a preview of the interview:
Trigger Warning: **This conversation explores death by suicide and gun violence**Life expectancy in America has gone down three years in a row. You might expect to see shorter life expectancies in the aftermath of war or famine — to witness it in an industrialized nation in the middle of an otherwise prosperous era, however, is unprecedented. It is a distress signal that something has gone horribly wrong.
Jonathan Metzl traced that distress signal to its origin and found something remarkable. He writes that the policies promising to Make American Great Again, policies rooted in centering and maintaining the power of whiteness, are shortening the lives of the white Americans who vote for them. From supporting conceal carry to cutting social services, Metzl explores just what policies white voters are willing to risk their lives for.
Here is the Google form to fill out while you read the transcript/listen to the interview. I also embedded the questions into this version of the transcript.
1. What did Metzl find about the difference between Tennessee and Kentucky and how did that affect life expectancy?
2. What did Metzel find that differed between Missouri and Connecticut that contributed to the declining life expectancy of whites in Missouri? What did he find?
Metzel found that many whites did not want to talk about "whiteness". Instead, they talk about "the real America" or "regular people" or identities like that. However, by not seeing the connection to whiteness, they don't see risk factors.
Sociologist Robin DiAngelo speaks about this in her book,What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy.
Here is a Seattle Times article DiAngelo wrote that explains her work.
Below is DiAngelo speaking on NBC News about how whites misunderstand race, including not seeing race.
4. How does "whiteness" factor into the high death rate?
Dying of Whiteness during the Covid-19 Pandemic
And as a follow-up to Metzel's book, just two years later, a global pandemic hits the US. But many Americans see the health measures being suggested by the government as an infringement on their rights. They showed up en masse to protest in Michigan - and almost like they were planted by Metzel, they showed up with confederate flags and guns to protest health measures meant to keep the country safe. See this article in the Michigan Advance that details the racism, guns and anti-health protest.
Combining guns, a Confederate flag and protesting health. Guns, racism and ignoring government health experts all contribute to the lowering of whites' life expectancy.
Proud Boys a self-identified sexist and racist group supports policies that will result in premature death for thousands of white Americans.
The protesters brought AR-15 rifles with scopes and muzzles, along with other weapons and assault gear. Most gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides followed by accidental deaths. These men are advocating for premature death by implicitly supporting guns and explicitly supporting ignoring medical professionals. Both will lower life expectations for white Americans. And the pandemic has driven gun sales to an all-time high.
Dr. Oz was on Fox News with Sean Hannity to say that "opening schools is 'appetizing' because it may only cost us 2-3% in terms of mortality." That is 1.7 million students dying!
It should be noted that during the 2008 primary election, the Clinton campaign engaged in the same politics of racial resentment when they circulated a photo of Mr. Obama visiting Africa and wearing traditional garb as an attempt to paint him as unAmerican.
Threats to white authority.
There are numerous examples that show the use of racism throughout the Obama administration, including this article from NBC news here.
Ian Haney Lopez is a constitutional law professor from University of California Berkley. His book shows how racism has been used subtly since Richard Nixon and the "Southern Strategy". This subtle racism is sometimes called dog whistles - phrases that only register with some people who are tuned in to hear them. For example, a politician can say, "welfare costs too much taxpayer dollars" and a neutral person would hear simply that paying money to the poor is expensive. But to those who believe that the poor are mostly black, this phrase says that Americans who are black are taking advantage of tax payer dollars.
Michael Tesler shows how, in the years that followed the 2008 election—a presidential election more polarized by racial attitudes than any other in modern times—racial considerations have come increasingly to influence many aspects of political decision making. These range from people’s evaluations of prominent politicians and the parties to issues seemingly unrelated to race like assessments of public policy or objective economic conditions. Some people even displayed more positive feelings toward Obama’s dog, Bo, when they were told he belonged to Ted Kennedy. More broadly, Tesler argues that the rapidly intensifying influence of race in American politics is driving the polarizing partisan divide and the vitriolic atmosphere that has come to characterize American politics.
Dr. Carol Anderson is a history professor from Emory University who has research and published about the reaction of whites to black civil rights gains. She calls the backlash by whites reacting to black gains "white rage" as detailed in her history book at the left. Below is a summary of her claim:
"Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America's first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal.
Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage."
Here is a funny take from comedian Hari Kondabolu about the growing threat to white authority:
Below are some other examples of political fringe messages or conspiracy theories that paint Obama as un-American:
Tea Party Patriot ads that were distinctly anti-Asian featuring fictional Chinese executives speaking Mandarin and boasting about how much land they bought in Missouri.
Local nbc affiliate reported on the story here.
Asian community leaders spoke out about the ads here.
Middle and lower-income people experienced negative effects from white backlash policies.
Welfare backlash tied to white fear of declining status published in the Journal of Social Forces from Rachel Wetts, a Ph.D. student in sociology at UC Berkeley. “This research suggests that when whites fear their status is on the decline, they increase opposition to programs intended to benefit poorer members of all racial groups.”
The findings, published in the journal Social Forces, highlight a welfare backlash that swelled around the 2008 Great Recession and election of Barack Obama.
More whites than any other race use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but the Trump administration is proposing cuts. How might this be evidence of Dr. Metzel's claim?
Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton's (Nobel Prize winner) study, Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century, explains the decreasing life expectancy among whites available at the Brookings Institution here.
"Case and Deaton find that while midlife mortality rates continue to fall among all education classes in most of the rich world, middle-aged non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. with a high school diploma or less have experienced increasing midlife mortality since the late 1990s. This is due to both rises in the number of “deaths of despair”—death by drugs, alcohol and suicide—and to a slowdown in progress against mortality from heart disease and cancer, the two largest killers in middle age."
Pg 10 How does white backlash politics influence whites to vote?
Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in their Own Land
At the 2017 National Council for the Social Studies annual conference, I had the privilege of helping to facilitate a three-session symposium on the teaching of high school sociology. Our keynote speaker was Arlie Russell Hochschild. Dr. Hochschild is a professor emeritus of sociology at UC Berkley. She is a renowned ethnographer. At NCSS 2017, she spoke about her most recent work, Strangers In Their Own Land; Anger and Mourning on the American Right.
What I found most intriguing in her book was the concept of the "deep story", or a story that shapes the way people feel. It doesn't matter if the story is real or true or not. What matters is that the story is believed to be true so people shape their feelings and actions as if it were real. Dr. Hochschild's idea is explained on NPR's Hidden Brain,
Pg 11-14 What states does Dr. Metzel focus on? What issues in each state?
4. How does "whiteness" factor into the high death rate?
Dying of Whiteness during the Covid-19 Pandemic
And as a follow-up to Metzel's book, just two years later, a global pandemic hits the US. But many Americans see the health measures being suggested by the government as an infringement on their rights. They showed up en masse to protest in Michigan - and almost like they were planted by Metzel, they showed up with confederate flags and guns to protest health measures meant to keep the country safe. See this article in the Michigan Advance that details the racism, guns and anti-health protest.
Combining guns, a Confederate flag and protesting health. Guns, racism and ignoring government health experts all contribute to the lowering of whites' life expectancy.
Proud Boys a self-identified sexist and racist group supports policies that will result in premature death for thousands of white Americans.
Dr. Oz was on Fox News with Sean Hannity to say that "opening schools is 'appetizing' because it may only cost us 2-3% in terms of mortality." That is 1.7 million students dying!
5. How are the freedom protests during the Covid-19 quarantine an example of Metzel's findings?
The NY Post also reported about the protest.
The NY Post also reported about the protest.
NPR covered the protest as well.
6. Any questions about how racism affects Americans who are white? Anything you want to know more about?
6. Any questions about how racism affects Americans who are white? Anything you want to know more about?
For more about Metzel's book see the link to his introduction and the guide below:
Here is the introduction to Metzel's book.
Pgs 2-3
As a sociological study, what methods does Dr. Metzel use? (pg 2 and 6)
What is the paradox that he finds? What are some examples from the reading?
Is Trevor an example of the paradox? Why? Why not?
Pgs 4-5
What was Trevor explicitly and implicitly dying from?
How was Trevor's situation an example of Du Bois' "wages of whiteness"?
What are "white 'ways of life'"?
Pgs 6-9
How does gender play a role?
What are the five trends (evidence) that influence Dr. Metzel's overall claim?
What are the threats to white authority?
A host of conservative political movements brought fringe agendas into mainstream politics
One example of conspiracy theory politics which attempted to use race to raise doubts and fears about President Obama is that if elected in 2012, he would institute Sharia law in the United States and destroy democracy:
Here is one website detailing the claim and disputing it:
Another example is the following book published during the Obama administration which tried to cast President Obama as a Muslim terrorist. From Wikipedia,
Here is the introduction to Metzel's book.
Pgs 2-3
As a sociological study, what methods does Dr. Metzel use? (pg 2 and 6)
What is the paradox that he finds? What are some examples from the reading?
Is Trevor an example of the paradox? Why? Why not?
Pgs 4-5
What was Trevor explicitly and implicitly dying from?
How was Trevor's situation an example of Du Bois' "wages of whiteness"?
What are "white 'ways of life'"?
Pgs 6-9
How does gender play a role?
What are the five trends (evidence) that influence Dr. Metzel's overall claim?
What are the threats to white authority?
A host of conservative political movements brought fringe agendas into mainstream politics
One example of conspiracy theory politics which attempted to use race to raise doubts and fears about President Obama is that if elected in 2012, he would institute Sharia law in the United States and destroy democracy:
Here is one website detailing the claim and disputing it:
Another example is the following book published during the Obama administration which tried to cast President Obama as a Muslim terrorist. From Wikipedia,
"throughout the Obama administration, McCarthy promoted views about the Obama administration's advancement of a "Sharia Agenda", arguing that radical Islamists were working with liberals within the United States government to subvert democracy in the West.[15][16][17][18][19] "
- 15 results, search (2010-12-07). How Obama Embraces Islam's Sharia Agenda (Bklt ed.). 45 S: Encounter Books. ISBN 9781594035586.
- 16 ^ results, search (2010-05-25). The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America (1st ed.). New York: Encounter Books. ISBN 9781594033773.
- 17 ^ "Andrew McCarthy's Defense of McCarthyism". Mother Jones. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
- 18 ^ Testimony of Andrew C. McCarthy Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts Hearing on: "Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts to Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism" June 28, 2016.
- 19 ^ Foundation, The Bradley. "In Encounter Broadside, Andrew McCarthy tells how Barack Obama embraces Islam's sharia agenda > The Bradley Foundation". www.bradleyfdn.org. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
And this website details the dogged claims that President Obama was a Muslim who was not born in the United States who was anti-American.
It should be noted that during the 2008 primary election, the Clinton campaign engaged in the same politics of racial resentment when they circulated a photo of Mr. Obama visiting Africa and wearing traditional garb as an attempt to paint him as unAmerican.
Threats to white authority.
There are numerous examples that show the use of racism throughout the Obama administration, including this article from NBC news here.
Michael Tesler shows how, in the years that followed the 2008 election—a presidential election more polarized by racial attitudes than any other in modern times—racial considerations have come increasingly to influence many aspects of political decision making. These range from people’s evaluations of prominent politicians and the parties to issues seemingly unrelated to race like assessments of public policy or objective economic conditions. Some people even displayed more positive feelings toward Obama’s dog, Bo, when they were told he belonged to Ted Kennedy. More broadly, Tesler argues that the rapidly intensifying influence of race in American politics is driving the polarizing partisan divide and the vitriolic atmosphere that has come to characterize American politics.
Dr. Carol Anderson is a history professor from Emory University who has research and published about the reaction of whites to black civil rights gains. She calls the backlash by whites reacting to black gains "white rage" as detailed in her history book at the left. Below is a summary of her claim:"Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America's first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal.
Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage."
Here is a funny take from comedian Hari Kondabolu about the growing threat to white authority:
Examples of fringe political campaigns trying to capitalize on racial resentment:
Local nbc affiliate reported on the story here.
Asian community leaders spoke out about the ads here.
Middle and lower-income people experienced negative effects from white backlash policies.
The findings, published in the journal Social Forces, highlight a welfare backlash that swelled around the 2008 Great Recession and election of Barack Obama.
More whites than any other race use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but the Trump administration is proposing cuts. How might this be evidence of Dr. Metzel's claim?
Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton's (Nobel Prize winner) study, Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century, explains the decreasing life expectancy among whites available at the Brookings Institution here.
"Case and Deaton find that while midlife mortality rates continue to fall among all education classes in most of the rich world, middle-aged non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. with a high school diploma or less have experienced increasing midlife mortality since the late 1990s. This is due to both rises in the number of “deaths of despair”—death by drugs, alcohol and suicide—and to a slowdown in progress against mortality from heart disease and cancer, the two largest killers in middle age."
Pg 10 How does white backlash politics influence whites to vote?
Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in their Own Land
In her new book, Strangers in Their Own Land, sociologist Arlie Hochschild tackles this paradox. She says that while people might vote against their economic needs, they're actually voting to serve their emotional needs.Hochschild says that both conservative and liberals have "deep stories" — about who they are, and what their values are. Deep stories don't need to be completely accurate, but they have to feel true. They're the stories we tell ourselves to capture our hopes, pride, disappointments, fears, and anxieties.
Pg 11-14 What states does Dr. Metzel focus on? What issues in each state?
Dr. Harel Shapira's research from University of Texas Austin highlights the way that gun schools teach gun owners to embrace guns. See a brief clip of his explaining his research here.
In Missouri, policy went even further than Dr. Shapira's research by passing a law allowing permitless carrying of guns,
Missouri now joins Idaho, West Virginia and Mississippi as one of four states to adopt “permitless carry” in 2016, bringing the total number of US states to 12. Missouri Democrats strongly opposed the law, calling it a “perfect storm” that would cause fatal shootings—already a more common cause of death in Missouri than car accidents.
Media Matters highlights the many ways that NRA ads try and use fear to influence voters here.
And this story from Quartz about the way NRA ads promote a generalized and vague us vs. them conflict. One ad that drew the most criticism is here.
Pg 15-16 What type of racism is Dr. Metzel most focused on in the reading?
Pgs 16-18 Why is "whiteness" an important consideration in Dr. Metzel's research?
Here is Robin DiAngelo speaking about the importance of acknowledging race.
Missouri now joins Idaho, West Virginia and Mississippi as one of four states to adopt “permitless carry” in 2016, bringing the total number of US states to 12. Missouri Democrats strongly opposed the law, calling it a “perfect storm” that would cause fatal shootings—already a more common cause of death in Missouri than car accidents.
Media Matters highlights the many ways that NRA ads try and use fear to influence voters here.
And this story from Quartz about the way NRA ads promote a generalized and vague us vs. them conflict. One ad that drew the most criticism is here.
Pg 15-16 What type of racism is Dr. Metzel most focused on in the reading?
Pgs 16-18 Why is "whiteness" an important consideration in Dr. Metzel's research?
Here is Robin DiAngelo speaking about the importance of acknowledging race.
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