Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Basic Books (2019), 352 pages
Description
Medical. Politics. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML:A physician reveals how right-wing backlash policies have mortal consequences �?? even for the white voters they promise to help Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Esquire and the Boston Globe In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death. Physician Jonathan M. Metzl's quest to understand the health implications of "backlash governance" leads him across America's heartland.Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, he examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, and cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. And he shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates. White Americans, Metzl argues, must reject the racial hierarchies that promise to aid them but in fact lead our nation to demi… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member froxgirl
This is a study of the roots of toxic white masculinity in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas. Want to know why these despicables usually vote against their own well-being? The author, in meetings with low income white men (why he ignored women is another question), hears again and again how these men
In Missouri, it's a pervasive identification with gun culture that keeps the suicide rate by gun much higher than neighboring Kentucky, where gun laws are stricter. Tennessee starts out with decent healthcare but then refuses to allow Medicaid expansion and the resulting decrease in life span of white men is glaringly obvious. In "The Kansas Experiment", a vast trashing of schools and infrastructure by raising taxes on poor and middle class people while slashing them for corporate overlords like the Kochs finally results in Republicans turning on themselves to fix it, and the results are so drastic that the state's formerly fine education facilities may never recover.
Quotes: "Politicians benefit by convincing different groups of Americans that they have nothing in common with each other."
"Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die, literally, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities. It's a complex dynamic in which poor white populations vote for politicians who enact cuts to government spending out of a combination of anger that the government is wasting money on "people who do not deserve it", alongside guilt that they themselves need help."
"...notions that white Americans should remain atop other racial or ethnic groups in the US social hierarchy, or that white "status" was at risk."
"...ironically harms the aggregate well-being of US whites as a demographic group, thereby making whiteness itself a negative health indicator."
"This logic suggests that men need to be on top because they embody no skills for acting otherwise."
"The intersecting trajectories of guns, whiteness, and privilege...address why people who feel their privilege was bestowed by guns might be so loath to give them up."
"Few people realize that the KKK began as a gun control organization that aimed to confiscate any guns that free blacks might have obtained...and thereby "achieve complete black disarmament."
"Guns became the totems for particular versions of white identity politics that rose with the Tea Party and soon encompassed the entire GOP."
"Not a single high-profile mass shooting in 2018 had been carried out using an illegally obtained weapon."
Show More
in ill health hated the Affordable Care Act because they didn't want to be lumped in with brown and black people, "Mexicans" and "welfare queens". Were there EVER truer words spoken than these by Lyndon Johnson: "If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” It's difficult to gin up any sympathy for these people, or for their so-called leaders Kris Kobach, Matt Bevins, and Sam Brownback. In Missouri, it's a pervasive identification with gun culture that keeps the suicide rate by gun much higher than neighboring Kentucky, where gun laws are stricter. Tennessee starts out with decent healthcare but then refuses to allow Medicaid expansion and the resulting decrease in life span of white men is glaringly obvious. In "The Kansas Experiment", a vast trashing of schools and infrastructure by raising taxes on poor and middle class people while slashing them for corporate overlords like the Kochs finally results in Republicans turning on themselves to fix it, and the results are so drastic that the state's formerly fine education facilities may never recover.
Quotes: "Politicians benefit by convincing different groups of Americans that they have nothing in common with each other."
"Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die, literally, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities. It's a complex dynamic in which poor white populations vote for politicians who enact cuts to government spending out of a combination of anger that the government is wasting money on "people who do not deserve it", alongside guilt that they themselves need help."
"...notions that white Americans should remain atop other racial or ethnic groups in the US social hierarchy, or that white "status" was at risk."
"...ironically harms the aggregate well-being of US whites as a demographic group, thereby making whiteness itself a negative health indicator."
"This logic suggests that men need to be on top because they embody no skills for acting otherwise."
"The intersecting trajectories of guns, whiteness, and privilege...address why people who feel their privilege was bestowed by guns might be so loath to give them up."
"Few people realize that the KKK began as a gun control organization that aimed to confiscate any guns that free blacks might have obtained...and thereby "achieve complete black disarmament."
"Guns became the totems for particular versions of white identity politics that rose with the Tea Party and soon encompassed the entire GOP."
"Not a single high-profile mass shooting in 2018 had been carried out using an illegally obtained weapon."
Show Less
LibraryThing member rivkat
In one sense, you don’t need to read this book; Metzl introduces us to the thesis with one of his interviewees, a man dying of liver failure because of untreated hepatitis and hard living, who would refuse to sign up for Obamacare because he’s damned if Mexicans would take his money. That’s
I also liked the point that, although it’s simple to call white rejection of health care self-defeating/deluded, it has connections to other forms of protest through bodily suffering that liberal readers often treat with more sympathy (although he rarely fails to mention that the suffering chosen by white conservatives is also inflicted on many other people who didn’t choose it). On education, he argues that the long-term damage of major cuts is not just in educational and related health outcomes, but in expectations about what public education can be like, which affects views of what it should be like—which is, of course, part of the point of those who would destroy it. Things we did very recently—like funding higher education—slip from memory and become socialist pipe dreams. And they do so not naturally but because to forget them serves a set of wealthy people’s interests.
Show More
the book, in a nutshell. But if you can stand it, the examination of specific topics (guns and gun suicide in Missouri, health care in Tennessee, and educational funding in Kansas) is, while occasionally bogged down with numbers, penetrating and powerful. Metzl, himself white, has a lot of empathy for the whites he interacts with, while never losing sight of the fact that as a group they have made nonwhites suffer even more, for the sake of an evanescent privilege. He did a particularly good job of this with white male gun suicide, noting that most discussions of homicide seem more willing to break out race as a variable while the special vulnerability of white men to gun suicide went unaddressed. And while the epidemic of white male death by gun suicide can be connected to a “crisis of masculinity,” he points out that masculinity has been in crisis for a while; that the rhetoric of crisis can suggest that white men are so fragile that if they’re not in control they destroy things including themselves, while everyone else is supposed to be strong through adversity; and that most white men were never wealthy masters, making the conservative story of white privilege under threat a lie about the past as well as about the present.I also liked the point that, although it’s simple to call white rejection of health care self-defeating/deluded, it has connections to other forms of protest through bodily suffering that liberal readers often treat with more sympathy (although he rarely fails to mention that the suffering chosen by white conservatives is also inflicted on many other people who didn’t choose it). On education, he argues that the long-term damage of major cuts is not just in educational and related health outcomes, but in expectations about what public education can be like, which affects views of what it should be like—which is, of course, part of the point of those who would destroy it. Things we did very recently—like funding higher education—slip from memory and become socialist pipe dreams. And they do so not naturally but because to forget them serves a set of wealthy people’s interests.
Show Less
LibraryThing member addunn3
Interesting research on why people hold opinions counter to their best interests. Well worth the read. Gun rights, health care, etc.
LibraryThing member arosoff
This was excellent but infuriating. In this book, Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt (and KC native) seeks to answer the eternal question, "why do white Americans endorse policies that hurt them?" And his answer is that the most basic cause is racial resentment and ensuring
He looks at three examples: gun violence in Missouri, healthcare in Tennessee, and education in Kansas. He uses research to learn about why people support policies, and many of them say outright that they don't want money to go to black people/Mexicans/welfare queens. This includes people who are literally dying: a man suffering from liver disease due to Hepatitis C opposes Medicaid expansion because he doesn't want to give money to "welfare queens." The white participants in the healthcare section frame their beliefs about health as a matter of individual responsibility. Black men, on the other hand, talk about healthcare as a communal benefit that makes everyone healthier. It would be easy to dismiss quotes and interviews as cherry picking, except for the fact that large numbers of people continue to vote in politicians who implement these policies.
This is combined with a look at the rhetoric of politicians that promote these policies and how they use the politics of race. Gun rights are promoted as being about white self defense, ignorant of the link to white male suicide. The specter of black male violence is constantly raised, despite its actual decline.
Metzl goes beyond the usual sociological observations, though, and tries to quantify what these policies have actually cost white Americans--and it's a lot of lives lost and a lot of horrifying statistics. Of course, the statistics on gun violence aren't as robust as they could be, since there are legal limits to gun violence research. But even taking the specifics with a grain of salt, the conclusions are grim.
The section on Kansas is, in some ways, particularly revealing. Brownback's Kansas experiment was popular when it was believed to focus on waste. When his education cuts hit affluent Johnson County suburbanites who were proud of Kansas' tradition of strong public schooling, there was a revolt. (It's worth noting that after the book was completed, a Democrat won the race for Kansas governor, and moderate Democrat Sharice Davids won the Congressional seat for the KC suburbs.) This raises questions about the limits of how much white people are willing for themselves to suffer in order to take away from people of color.
Show More
their place at the top of the pyramid. They will support policies that hurt them, as long as they hurt people of color--especially African-Americans, but increasingly Latinos--more. He looks at three examples: gun violence in Missouri, healthcare in Tennessee, and education in Kansas. He uses research to learn about why people support policies, and many of them say outright that they don't want money to go to black people/Mexicans/welfare queens. This includes people who are literally dying: a man suffering from liver disease due to Hepatitis C opposes Medicaid expansion because he doesn't want to give money to "welfare queens." The white participants in the healthcare section frame their beliefs about health as a matter of individual responsibility. Black men, on the other hand, talk about healthcare as a communal benefit that makes everyone healthier. It would be easy to dismiss quotes and interviews as cherry picking, except for the fact that large numbers of people continue to vote in politicians who implement these policies.
This is combined with a look at the rhetoric of politicians that promote these policies and how they use the politics of race. Gun rights are promoted as being about white self defense, ignorant of the link to white male suicide. The specter of black male violence is constantly raised, despite its actual decline.
Metzl goes beyond the usual sociological observations, though, and tries to quantify what these policies have actually cost white Americans--and it's a lot of lives lost and a lot of horrifying statistics. Of course, the statistics on gun violence aren't as robust as they could be, since there are legal limits to gun violence research. But even taking the specifics with a grain of salt, the conclusions are grim.
The section on Kansas is, in some ways, particularly revealing. Brownback's Kansas experiment was popular when it was believed to focus on waste. When his education cuts hit affluent Johnson County suburbanites who were proud of Kansas' tradition of strong public schooling, there was a revolt. (It's worth noting that after the book was completed, a Democrat won the race for Kansas governor, and moderate Democrat Sharice Davids won the Congressional seat for the KC suburbs.) This raises questions about the limits of how much white people are willing for themselves to suffer in order to take away from people of color.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LamontCranston
Overall a good book but it focused more on the philosophy and culture of a set of Americans who have been convinced to oppose their own best interests through racial animus and left out the most important reason: why? Cui Bono, who benefits?
Such views would have as much political cachet as beliefs
Powerful financial interests fund the policy institutes creating the slogans and talking points and fear campaigns and fund the think tanks that generate the studies saying whatever their donors want to hear, they support the candidates that campaign on it, they benefit from what the candidates do once they are in office thanks to the misdirection.
Only in the Kansas section in looking at the tax cuts that cut funding to schools is this even acknowledged, but the who and why and broader goals because it goes far beyond mere tax cuts is left out.
Such views would have as much political cachet as beliefs
Show More
in ancient aliens if no one wished to exploit, exacerbate, and ride them into office.Powerful financial interests fund the policy institutes creating the slogans and talking points and fear campaigns and fund the think tanks that generate the studies saying whatever their donors want to hear, they support the candidates that campaign on it, they benefit from what the candidates do once they are in office thanks to the misdirection.
Only in the Kansas section in looking at the tax cuts that cut funding to schools is this even acknowledged, but the who and why and broader goals because it goes far beyond mere tax cuts is left out.
Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
I mostly skimmed this, not because it is bad or poorly written, but because I already "knew" the book's thesis and the conclusions the book details. Most of the book is the research and supporting data for its conclusions (basically that many of the policies Republicans/Trumpies propound are "bad"
In its opening pages, the book gives us the example of Trevor in Tennessee, who is dying of severe liver disease. Trevor states he would "rather die than sign up for Obamacare," because "no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens." (And in fact Trevor died shortly after the interview). Trevor is an example of how the politics of Trump is actually killing his supports--physically, not just economically.
The book supports its thesis by taking a deep dive in three areas:
1. Missouri and the loosening of gun laws there. Since the gun laws were relaxed more white males have died from guns (often through suicide) than any so-called protection they provide.
2. The Tragedy of Tennessee. Tennessee's rejection of the expansion of Medicaid and Obamacare has had severe consequences on healthcare there.
3. Brownback's massive tax cuts in Kansas. These tax cuts have backfired, and led to substantial deficits (rather than prosperity), with resulting cost-cutting with severe declines in things such as educational quality.
Recommended if you want to know more about this issue.
3 stars
Show More
for their supporters, who fail to recognize this). I didn't feel the need to go into all this (again) that deeply at this point. However, from what I read, as well as what I skimmed, it is well-written and well-researched, with lots of anecdotal evidence and interviews as well.In its opening pages, the book gives us the example of Trevor in Tennessee, who is dying of severe liver disease. Trevor states he would "rather die than sign up for Obamacare," because "no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens." (And in fact Trevor died shortly after the interview). Trevor is an example of how the politics of Trump is actually killing his supports--physically, not just economically.
The book supports its thesis by taking a deep dive in three areas:
1. Missouri and the loosening of gun laws there. Since the gun laws were relaxed more white males have died from guns (often through suicide) than any so-called protection they provide.
2. The Tragedy of Tennessee. Tennessee's rejection of the expansion of Medicaid and Obamacare has had severe consequences on healthcare there.
3. Brownback's massive tax cuts in Kansas. These tax cuts have backfired, and led to substantial deficits (rather than prosperity), with resulting cost-cutting with severe declines in things such as educational quality.
Recommended if you want to know more about this issue.
3 stars
Show Less
Awards
Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (2020)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2019
Physical description
352 p.; 6.4 inches
ISBN
1541644980 / 9781541644984