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:
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.Trigger Warning: **This conversation explores death by suicide and gun violence**
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.
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.
1. Thoughts on the book? What surprised you? What do you have questions about?
2. What is Metzel's overall thesis?
Dr. Jonathon Metzel, Sociologist and Medical Doctor
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.
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?
Pg 10 How does white backlash politics influence whites to vote?
Pg 11-14 What states does Dr. Metzel focus on? What issues in each state?
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.
Racial resentment = Deaths of Despair + Anti-Gov + Guns = Lower Life Expectancy
I. Racial Resentment Politics
Notre Dame Sociology professor Rory McVeigh and Creighton professor Kevin Estep's The Politics of Losing trace the parallels between the 1920s Klan and today’s right-wing backlash, identifying the conditions that allow white nationalism to emerge from the shadows. White middle-class Protestant Americans in the 1920s found themselves stranded by an economy that was increasingly industrialized and fueled by immigrant labor. Mirroring the Klan’s earlier tactics, Donald Trump delivered a message that mingled economic populism with deep cultural resentments. McVeigh and Estep present a sociological analysis of the Klan’s outbreaks that goes beyond Trump the individual to show how his rise to power was made possible by a convergence of circumstances. White Americans’ experience of declining privilege and perceptions of lost power can trigger a political backlash that overtly asserts white-nationalist goals. The Politics of Losing offers a rigorous and lucid explanation for a recurrent phenomenon in American history, with important lessons about the origins of our alarming political climate.
Obama was portrayed as Kenyan and socialist. |
Obama was accused of being Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Castro all in one! |
Obama was portrayed as both Nazi and Communist (never mind that these two were enemies) |
Obama is Chinese communist. |
Obama is Russian. |
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.
Here is one website detailing the claim and disputing it:
"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.
And this twitter feed documents similar incidents.
This post from buzzfeed documents middle schoolers chanting Trump catch phrases in a way that alarms the parents of the school on the day after his election.
This article from Raleigh documents that the KKK celebrated Trump's win in 2016. "Trump, a Republican, was officially endorsed by the KKK during his campaign."
The FBI has warned repeatedly that white nationalist group are the biggest threat to domestic security in the US.
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 in his book Post-Racial or Most Racial 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.
"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."
At the 2017 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,
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.
Here is a funny take from comedian Hari Kondabolu about the growing threat to white authority:
II. Deaths of Despair
III. Anti-government (Healthcare) Movement
“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.”
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.
Guns and Health, Harvard Medicine;
As physicians, we too care about your protection. Our mission is to treat disease, promote quality of life, and prevent injury and death. We discuss matters of health and safety in a confidential, non-judgmental fashion. We ask about depression, domestic violence, and drugs. We make recommendations about practicing safe sex and wearing seatbelts. But some feel that physicians should not talk about guns. In fact, Florida has passed a law limiting such discussion. But guns do affect health and safety. In the United States, the number of deaths from guns continues to climb (now at roughly 33,000 per year, far more than any other developed country per capita) and is expected to surpass motor vehicle deaths for 2015. It is the second leading cause of death in children....the more households that have guns within a particular state, the more gun deaths there are — even after adjusting for crime, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol, and poverty.
Gun Violence: A Public Health Problem, American Psychological Association
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.
How does this quarantine protest exemplify Metzel's thesis?
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!
And deaths of despair reached an all-time high during the pandemic:
The decline in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020 can primarily be attributed to deaths from the pandemic, as COVID-19 deaths contributed to nearly three-fourths or 74% of the decline. An estimated 11% of the decline in life expectancy can be attributed to increases in deaths from accidents/unintentional injuries. Drug overdose deaths account for over one-third of all unintentional injury deaths, and last week NCHS reported an all-time high of over 93,000 overdose deaths in 2020.
Other contributing causes of death to the decline in life expectancy in 2020 include homicide
(3.1% of the decline), diabetes (2.5%), and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (2.3%).
This follow up analysis from The Conversation (2023 ) shows the trend is not only growing after Covid but it has gotten worse!
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