I grew up in a conservative household in a conservative village in farm country Illinois. My father and mother were both state employees for most of their lives, and for as long as I could remember, both railed against the Democrats that ruled Illinois government. To say that my environment prepared me to be a conservative is a bit of an understatement. Because my frame of reference was a very small, very white town, it was easy to believe the myth of the rugged individual, that government imposed too much on our lives. Then, I went to college. I met the real demographics of America. The contrast between what I’d been told and what I saw could rival the Grand Canyon. From children of single mothers on assistance to people of color to rich brats, I experienced an awakening that eighteen year old me wasn’t ready for. I remained a conservative, listened to talk radio, debated with conservatives, and tried to convince myself that the ideology that I believed in would help everyone and not just me. Various incidents over the years made me begin to question whether I truly believed in conservatism and its ideology. During George W Bush’s presidency, I knew my answer. Yes, I did believe in conservatism, still do. So why did I feel uneasy? Because the U.S. as a nation moved the overton window farther and farther to the right every year so that I ended up being on the liberal side of the divide without shifting in ideology. I was one of those liberals that I and my family had dreaded all my life. This caused me a lot of internal strife. I tried listening to Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck. I read the National Review. It was all playacting. I had to admit to myself that I was a liberal, and the rest is a story for another day. The point is that I’ve been on the political Right, and as such I understand where those on the Right stand. I understand the people that Jonathan Metzl interviewed for Dying of Whiteness. They are people who are good at heart, generous by nature, and loyal. Like I did, they exist in a political ecosystem that ties directly to their identity. This ecosystem takes all the best of their traits, even praises them for it, and turns those traits into something that applies only to people like them. In Metzl’s book, he does what conservatives want Liberals to do. He got out of his ‘bubble’ and talked to residents of what rich, elite Republican politicians call ‘real America.’ He does the research, not by an internet or YouTube search, but by generating the data. Dr. Metzl traveled to Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas for this book. What he found was a culture dedicated to an identity that is killing them in larger numbers every year.
Disclaimer: I was given an electronic copy of the paperback ARC in exchange for an honest review. But I didn’t read the eARC. I already owned the hardcover version, but it languished on my to be read pile. I requested the eARC as a way to give myself a deadline for reading the book. All quotes come from the hardcover version.
TL;DR
Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness exposes the effects of conservative policies upon conservatives themselves. This thoughtful book is perplexing but worth the read. It opened my eyes to how deeply people will injure themselves to maintain an identity. Highly recommended.
From the Publisher
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 demise.
Review: Dying of Whiteness
Dying of Whitness focuses on three topics at the heart of the conservative-liberal divide: guns, healthcare, and eduction. For each topic, he visits a different state to show the effects of conservative policies upon its populace. He travels to Missouri for guns, Tennessee for healthcare, and Kansas for education. In each state, he shows the effect of policies upon the white population of the state. Throughout he also shows the effects on minority populations and notes that the effects are worse for minorities. But the focus is to try to understand why the white population continues to advocate for beliefs that kill more and more of itself. His underlying argument is that these policies maintain – explicitly or implicitly – a racial hierarchy with white people at the top. He reinforces W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion that whiteness serves as a wage in and of itself, psychologically and as public recognition. As soon as I read this, I knew it was correct.
Haven't We Talked Enough about White Voters?
…tax cuts and the school-funding overhaul allowed Kansas GOP politicians to enact an agenda with significant racial implications without expressly needing to talk about race. (Metzl page 216 Hardcover edition)The above quote shows exactly how structural racism works. Throughout the book, Metzl shows how the policies white people support are both tied to their identity and killing them in ever larger numbers. While some of the measures he uses are a stretch, such as education levels as representation of health outcomes, others – gun suicide rates in Missouri – are apt1. This book looks at the structural and historical forces that influence white ideology. The Tennessee section had a nice little paragraph describing the history of Southern, white opposition to government healthcare initiatives, such as in 1965 when hospitals needing to integrate to receive federal funding. This is a legacy of Reconstruction when the Northerners ‘occupied’ the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. The passing down of this distrust of the federal government comes directly from having their way of life destroyed by the government. The fact that their way of life required the suffering and subjugation of others doesn’t matter. Hopefully, Dying of Whiteness will show how this distrust is used by the elite to keep middle class and poorer whites from pursuing policies that help them.
Missouri
Metzl starts the Missouri section off by attending a grief group for families of suicide victims in Cape Girardeau. The group is dominated by stories of gun suicide deaths. It’s heartbreaking to read these accounts. Metzl treats each person with care and respect that many conservatives wouldn’t expect from a liberal. It’s hard not to care for these people given their stories. Yet, no one in the group asks whether the loosening of the laws might have saved their family members. Guns are a way of life for everyone in that group. For many Missourians, the rationale for having a gun switched from hunting and fun to protection. Who they need to protect themselves from is rather ambiguous, but the statistics aren’t. In the state of Missouri, a white male is seven times more likely to turn the gun on himself than to be killed by homicide (Metzl page 108 Hardcover edition).
…a double standard through which society coded white gun owners as “protectors” and black gun owners as “threats.”2 (Metzl page 27 Hardcover edition)
Metzl combines these stories with history of the state’s gun laws, with a comparison to Connecticut’s gun laws enacted after the Sandy Hook tragedy, and by diving into the death statistics in each state. Mainly he advocates for studying the problem. The information available to researchers is limited because the government forbids the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to fund gun violence studies. The only current method for studying gun violence is to look at deaths caused by a gun. Suicide by gun is a permanent solution to often temporary problems. The author compares death rates for suicide by gun versus other methods, and the lethality of suicide by gun far outstrips all other methods. This section makes a powerful case for studying gun violence. How many lives could be spared if we understood early warning signs? One of the right’s constant and consistent talking points is that anti-depressants are common in all mass shootings. Is that true? If so, shouldn’t researchers look deeper into the link? More study of gun violence needs to be done. After the publication of the hardcover version, the U.S. government included $25 million for gun violence studies for the first time in 20 years. It’s not enough, but it’s a beginning, and I’m grateful for it.
…at present death represents the best available metric to study one potential outcome of gun possession without actually doing a study on guns. (Metzl page 42 Hardcover edition)
Where I’m sure conservatives expect the author to advocate for a ban, instead Metzl wants to go back to the laws on Missouri’s books prior to 2000. No new laws, just back to the old. As Missouri loosened its laws, Connecticut added new laws that resembled Missouri’s pre-2000 laws. This makes a good contrast of where Missouri could be, and without a doubt, it links more guns to more death.
…states with strong gun laws had lower firearm suicide rates. (Metzl page 42 Hardcover edition)
Tennessee
Tennessee steps in for healthcare because it rejected Medicare expansion under the Affordable Care Act. It’s neighbor, Kentucky, opted into the program, and so the two states provide a nice contrast for each other. The conclusion is that Kentucky has better healthcare outcomes statewide as compared to Tennessee. It turns out that when healthcare is available to a wide spectrum of people, the population is healthier.
Behind concerns […] lay anxieties about limited funds, support services, and other essential commodities for which they might have to contest, should equal distribution become the law of the land. (Metzl page 153 Hardcover edition)
In this section, the author and assistants conducted focus groups about healthcare in Tennessee. The author leads groups of white men, and an African American colleague of his conducts groups of black men. The similarities are heartbreaking, but when it comes to the differences, it’s clear that each group has completely different motivations. The white men, as a group, have a scarcity mindset that is paranoid about others. The black men, as a group, tend to think about community and others more than themselves. They have an abundance mindset. Where the white men were suspicious, the black men were generous. The groups of white men were worried about paying for the program to a fault even if they were on government assistance themselves. You really have to read this section to believe it. It’s heartbreaking to think that a person would sacrifice their own health to deny another person healthcare. Yet, Dr. Metzl documents just that.
Whereas white men jumped unthinkingly to assumptions about “them,” black men frequently answered questions about health and health systems through the language of “us.” (Metzl page 159 Hardcover edition)
The above quote isn’t to say that black men are better than white men. It just shows that the groups with the black men tended to be inclusive and the groups of white men tended to be more exclusive. Metzl includes snippets from interviews here to define just this point. But what gain did the white men get by being exclusive?
…white men gained group cohesion by ‘fighting back’ against healthcare reform or retaining their own notions of status and privilege, even as they themselves suffered from conditions that required medical assistance.” (Metzl page 169 Hardcover edition)
The assistance in the above quote was financial assistance provided by either the state or federal government. Yet often these same men – as many conservatives do – lash out against the very assistance that helps them. These men use the very systems they want the government to get rid of. See if you can guess the race of the men discussed in the below quote.
Here were men who depended on assistance for stents, antibiotics, operations, or oxygen tanks decrying the very networks that potentially provided lifesaving help. (Metzl page 152-153 Hardcover edition)
Kansas
Kansas represents education as Metzl looks at the effects of the Brownback experiment. Prior to reading this book, I knew the Brownback experiment was a failure, but I didn’t know quite how much of a failure it truly was. The effects will be long lasting if they’re not permanent. Funny enough, public education affects a lot of people, not just white folk. Cuts to education funding save money now at the expense of the future. This seems obvious, but this is too simple a statement. Cuts to education funding fundamentally changed the state’s education. Programs that made Kansas exceptional in the area of education disappeared and aren’t likely to return. With less importance focused on education, with loss of programs, the states ranking in education dropped. They went from near the top to floundering near the bottom.
Educational disparities became so extreme that the Kansas State Supreme Court intervened. (Metzl page 217 Hardcover edition)
In addition to the tax cuts not providing the promised job growth, it turned out that the tax cuts weren’t universally beneficial. In fact, the tax cuts often resulted in higher tax bills for a wide swath of Kansans. Some small business owners found no real benefit to the lower tax bill because it raised their federal tax bill. Large corporations took advantage of the situation by buying up small businesses to decrease their taxes.
…the poorest 40 percent of Kansans saw an average net tax increase. (Metzl page 207 Hardcover edition)
Meanwhile, in 2015, road repairs fell by 1000 miles from the previous year because it turns out that the wealthy don’t give money to maintain roads. Taxes do that. Kansas ranked near the bottom of states in 2016. While the state fell apart, Kansas politicians benefited from these tax laws. The Brownback experiment is yet another version of right wing economics that pay the rich at the expense of the poor.
…”nearly 70 percent of Kansas lawmakers or their spouses” owned a business or property that allowed them to benefit from paying no state tax on business income. (Metzl page 214 Hardcover edition)
At the time of the hardcover publication, the citizens of Kansas were dealing with the effects of the Brownback experiment. Unlike Missouri or Tennessee, Kansas – even die hard conservatives – talked about the failures of cutting taxes and funding so deep. The interviews in this section indicate buyers remorse that was born out in the 2018 election when Kris Kobach who ran on pushing the Brownback cuts further lost his gubernatorial bid3. The 2020 election will let us know if Kansas considers the change worth keeping.
Dying of Whiteness and the Coronavirus
Reading this book during the coronavirus epidemic had a surreal quality to it. As I read, white people began protesting to show their willingness to get sick, to infect others, and potentially sacrifice the elderly rather than follow government shelter-in-place instructions. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick said, “…there are more important things than living.” To him, the economy is more important than living. There are large groups of white people who agree with him. Preliminary data showed black and Latinx Americans were disproportionately dying from the disease. Protests increased soon after demographic data of Covid 19’s victims were released. As Adam Serwer said in the Atlantic, “That more and more Americans were dying was less important than who was dying.”
I doubt Dr. Metzl would have predicted that protesters would be screaming to open up the country during a pandemic. But if you had told him that during a pandemic people would protest to go back to work, he’d have guessed they were white people. Dying of Whiteness doesn’t explain these protesters, but it does make their existence less shocking.
Conclusion
Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness blew me away. The stories inside it shocked me, frustrated me, and depressed me. The data shows that conservative policies, policies that supposedly favor white people, have deadly effects on the very people championing them. White conservatives vote against their own interests. Since 2016, we’ve seen that at least 30-40% of the population will rationalize any old thing to protect their identity. I have little confidence that anything can convince them to vote for policies that will better their lives. A beautifully researched and written book like this won’t do it. While I’ve moved on from my conservative beginnings, the one philosophy that’s followed is trust but verify. Since the 2016 election, I’ve thought that the modern Republican party acts against the interests of its constituents. Dr. Metzl verified this in Dying of Whiteness.
Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl is available now in hardcover and paperback formats from Basic Books.
8.5 out of 10!
- I would say indisputable, but since Trump’s election, I’ve noticed people will argue and believe anything. We live in an age where if someone wants something to be true, they believe regardless of the facts. I’m sure many Trump supporters would say the same of me. Click here to return.
- In certain areas, African Americans don’t even have to be gun owners to be seen as a threat. In some cases, jogging through a neighborhood is considered a threat. For example, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery shows that just the presence of a black person is considered threatening to some white folk. No arrests were made; no charges filed until two months later when video of the shooting went viral. Click here to return.
- Kobach’s loss will give him time to take the court mandated evidentiary or procedure rules training that he so desperately needs. While personally defending a Kansas voter citizenship law, Kobach was ordered to take continuing education after being found in contempt. Oh, and he lost the lawsuit as well. Click here to return.