Race Lesson 10: Racism's Effects on Whites

1. Read the post below which will introduce you to the lesson and to Jonathon Metzel, a sociologist and medical doctor. 

2.  When finished with reading the post below, choose to either:

a) read the introduction to the book

b) listen to the interview of Dr. Metzel with Mr Hayes

c) read the transcript of the interview 

d) (or you can do both b and c)  

3.  Please complete #2 and be ready to discuss it tomorrow.

4.  Answer the Google Form 

Racism Effect on Whites

Just like people are unique and dynamic, so is each racial group.  Therefore, racism affects each group differently.  Surprisingly, however, 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 at Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Jonathon Metzel, Sociologist and Medical Doctor

As both a sociologist and a medical doctor, Metzel explores the connection between racism and the negative effects on society, especially among 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 U.S. for three years in a row was one hundred years ago because of World War I and the influenza outbreak of 1919.  The reasons that it is going down again now are surprisingly related to race.  This has not happened in 100 years and it is almost unheard of in the developed world.! Life expectancy should be going up.

Here is the introduction to Metzel's book.  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. 
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...."

Chris Hayes had Dr. Metzel as a guest on his podcast called Why Is This Happening?

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 Stitcher here.  If you listen to the interview, it runs for about 50 minutes.  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. 

Anne Case and Angus Deaton (mentioned in Metzel's book) detail the rising death rate for whites without a college education.  Here is an explanation from the Brookings Institution.  And here is Deaths of Despair, a 2020 book that Case and Deaton wrote as a follow up to their ground-breaking 2015 study.

Here is a summary of Case and Deaton's work,

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.