Dying of Whiteness:

[sheshe2]

Last edited Tue Sep 9, 2025, 11:18 PM - Edit history (1)

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland
– February 6, 2024
by Jonathan M. Metzl (Author)

A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) and "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences — even for the white voters they promise to help
In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, right-wing policies put these voters' very health at risk—and in the end, threaten everyone's well-being. Physician and sociologist Jonathan M. Metzl travels across America's heartland seeking to better understand the politics of racial resentment and its impact on public health. Interviewing a range of Americans, he uncovers how racial anxieties led to the repeal of gun control laws in Missouri, fueled massive cuts to schools and social services in Kansas, and stymied healthcare reform across the country. Although such measures promised to restore greatness to white America, Metzl's systematic analysis of health data reveals they did just the opposite: these policies made life sicker, harder, and shorter in the very populations they purported to aid. Thus, white gun suicides soared, life expectancies fell, and school dropout rates rose.  

Now with a new foreword on the backlash to the American pandemic response, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation, rather than chasing false promises of supremacy. 

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
https://www.amazon.com/Dying-Whiteness-Politics-Resentment-Heartland/dp/1541604482/ref=sr_1_1



.......................................

I am going to get a copy.

[dalton99a]

1. But hey, they're going to All-White Heaven to be with blond blue-eyed Jesus

“Metzl details social changes in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas, where white Americans backed changes that, ironically, dramatically harmed them with gun suicides, school dropouts, worse healthcare, and shorter life spans…A rich, nuanced and complex book…A major contributin to public health, sociology, and American studies.”―LitMed

"Copious data have long shown us the deadly effects of racist health policies on African Americans. But in Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan M. Metzl powerfully shows us this coin's reverse: the deadly effects on white populations of contemporary policies promulgated by vengeful politicians to 'restore' an imaginary white superiority, and embraced by resentful, marginalized whites. Dying of Whiteness illuminates the dual devastation wrought by policies that limit access to care for the poor of every race."―Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid

"In this paradigm-shifting tour de force, Jonathan M. Metzl brilliantly illuminates the shocking ways that white supremacy, through backlash governance, kills white people too. Moving deftly between mountains of data and compelling storytelling, Dying of Whiteness makes a vital contribution to our national conversation about racism and its discontents. Metzl uncovers the contemporary paradox of whiteness: a struggle to preserve white privilege in the midst of the declining value of whiteness. This is a must-read if you want to understand how race and the color line operate in twenty-first-century America."―Dorian Warren, president, Community Change, and co-chair, Economic Security Project

"Policy makers, scholars, and the public at large need to read Jonathan M. Metzl's Dying of Whiteness. He forcefully but with empathy demonstrates how poor and working class whites are literally killing themselves by supporting policies on guns, health care, and taxes framed as defending white authority but which, in truth, benefit the white elite."―Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, James B. Duke Professor of Sociology, Duke University

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R!

[sheshe2]

3. Thanks, Solly!

[Maru Kitteh]

4. Looks good. Have you read anything else by this author?

The name isn’t ringing any bells right now for me but I don’t read as much as I would like to.

[sheshe2]

6. I haven't, Maru.

Though it did get the RFK book award. (Not JR.)

The Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was established in 1980 to honor books that reflect Robert Kennedy's commitment to social justice and the rights of the marginalized. Each year, the award is presented by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights to a book that "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes". In 2024, the winners of the RFK Book and Journalism Awards were announced during a virtual ceremony, celebrating outstanding contributions in literature and journalism.
RFK Human Rights
https://www.bing.com/search?q=RFK+Book+Award&form=ANNTH1&refig=68c0cac248984fc3b822119c7886dbb8&pc=LCTS

[ananda]

5. I really don't have all that much sympathy for them.

OK, none at all really.

They got what they voted for.

[radical noodle]

7. One of my favorite quotes

about the way racists work against themselves to stay just one step ahead of "the other."

“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.” ~ Davis X. Machina, Balloon Juice~

[johnp3907]

8. Oh, that's good!

I'm going to bookmark that one!

[Skittles]

9. shorter link

drop all that shit from the ? on.....

https://www.amazon.com/Dying-Whiteness-Politics-Resentment-Heartland/dp/1541604482/ref=sr_1_1

[sheshe2]

11. Thanks, Skittles.

[live love laugh]

10. The irony: "Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award"

RFK is turning …

[ancianita]

12. LBJ knew it back in 1964...

And now I get the feeling that the book summarizes the decades long data outcome of their racism that's been slowly killing them. Let us know how you like it, she.

[sheshe2]

14. Thank you for that quote from LBJ, ancianita.

Perfect.

[PunkinPi]

20. Yep...

1964-2020



2024

[BaronChocula]

13. What this book describes is

the most insidious form of identity politics today. We've been trained to see "black" or "Latino" or "woman", etc. when we hear "identity politics" because that is how it's been used by conservative media pundits. Meanwhile people fail to identify the dog whistles and culture wars used by republicans to solidify a hostile white identity. Those who ascribe to those politics are happy to hurt others first and foremost while their hospitals are being shut down from being underfunded or bought out. Haven't found sympathy for that yet.

[slightlv]

15. I will never understand why cooperation is always seen as the boogeyman,

while warfare and competition is seen as the epitome of success. In my frustration fueled moments, I blame hormones for overriding success strategies. But even I have to admit women don't get out of this free of charge. We are more likely to emphasize cooperation, fairness, and nurturing, but not always. Otherwise, the "Amazon Women" wouldn't be so popularized in comic books, etc.

What history I did study a long time ago, when I first began spiritual seeking, pointed out the cooperation between matriarchal tribes, until the warrior cult of Marduk and then ongoing into monotheism (of course with a male bias). Yet, when you get down to brass tacks, there is nothing more dangerous than a woman protecting her family, especially her young... and that's across species.

Like I said, I give up. At 70, it's going to be something I'll die never understanding. I'd so much rather be friends and allies and work cooperatively with people to accomplish things, than push the stress hormones in competition and anger.

[Oeditpus Rex]

19. Cooperation means 'the other' gets some of what you're entitled to

by virtue of being white, "Christian" and right-wing.

That's how white supremacists think. If "the other" get something, they get less, instead of all of it

I just thought of an early Peanuts strip (c. 1956) that illustrates this. Linus was about 2, and Lucy came along and took all his toys ("Everything's MINE, MINE, MINE!" ) Then she handed him a rubber band and said, "Here, have fun with that. And he did -- stretching it, playing a kind of Cat's Cradle, just having a blast.

When Lucy saw this, she took back the rubber band and said, "I didn't mean for you to have THAT much fun!"

[slightlv]

22. LOL! How true Lucy was in her earnestness!

[Aristus]

16. I'm interested in reading the book.

But I don’t expect it will generate any sympathy in me for people who consistently behave stupidly instead of making smart decisions about improving their lives.

[sheshe2]

17. I hear you, Aristus .

Glad you are feeling better. ❤️

[Cha]

18. Yeah, Who could have Ever predicted

that?!

Bravo to Jonathan M Metzl for laying it out so Brilliantly and Comprehensively.. Getting it first hand while traveling across the heartland.

The "conservatives" have been brainwashed and Conned. By those working for Vlad Putin.. Russia's Mass Homicidal Dictator.

Mahalo, she.

[betsuni]

21. Thanks, goes on my list for next book order after Kamala's book comes out.

Been reading a lot of books but get very touchy at the slightest lazy both siderism, too common. Anyone still clinging to the economic anxiety motivation ... come on, man. If that were true anti-immigrant right-wing political movements in countries with high equality and strong social safety nets and universal health care wouldn't be popular. Yet they are.

Know nothing only-I-can-save-you populists roaming around the U.S. yelling strongly worded speeches about the many enemies out to get them and expecting revolution because they insist all grievances must be economic and not anti-immigrant/culture war/liberals as demonic existential threats to the country.