Dying of Whiteness - Boston Review a.k.a White racism is killing the white working class.

[Veliladon]

OK. First of all. If I may be so bold I'd like to offer some ground rules:

1) Read. The. Article. In full.
2) No "dumb hick" hottest of takes. In the same vein, no "good" or "they deserved it" hottest of takes.
3) Have a shred of empathy. If you don't think they deserve empathy, this is not the thread for you.
4) We don't need a hot take of how everyone is always worried about the WWC.

Here's a couple of paragraphs pulled from the article itself:

State policies shaped by white supremacy increase mortality rates in much the same way as other manmade health risks, such as pollution.

Even on death's doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. "Ain't no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it," he told me. "I would rather die." When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: "We don't need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens."

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Yet the more I spoke with Trevor, the more I realized how his experience of illness, and indeed his particular form of white identity, resulted not just from his own thoughts and actions but from his politics. Local and national politics that claimed to make America great again—and, tacitly, white again—on the backs and organs of working-class people of all races and ethnicities, including white supporters. Politics that made vague mention of strategies for governance but ultimately shredded safety nets and provided massive tax cuts that benefited only the very wealthiest persons and corporations. Politics that, all too often, gained traction by playing to anxieties about white victimhood in relation to imagined threats posed by "Mexicans and welfare queens."

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I found that Trump supporters were often willing to put their own lives on the line in support of their political beliefs. As a result, when viewed more broadly, actions that may have seemed from the outside to be crazy, uninformed, or self-defeating served larger political aims. Had southerners, including Trevor, embraced the Affordable Care Act and come to depend on its many benefits, it would have been much harder for politicians such as Trump to block or overturn health care reform. By design, vulnerable immigrant and minority populations suffered the consequences in the most dire and urgent ways. Yet the tradeoffs made by people like Trevor frequently and materially benefitted people and corporations far higher up the socioeconomic food chain—whose agendas and capital gains depended on the invisible sacrifices of low-income whites.

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The confluence of these trajectories has led to a perilous state of affairs: a host of complex anxieties has prompted increasing numbers of white Americans such as Trevor to support right-wing politicians and policies, even when these policies actually harm white Americans at growing rates. As these policy agendas spread from southern and midwestern legislatures into the halls of Congress and the White House, ever-more white Americans are then, literally, dying of whiteness. This is because white America's investment in maintaining an imagined place atop a racial hierarchy—that is, an investment in a sense of whiteness—ironically harms the aggregate well-being of U.S. whites as a demographic group, thereby making whiteness itself a negative health indicator.

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Ultimately, when white voters are asked to defend whiteness, whiteness often fails to defend, honor, or restore them.

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So that last quote. Wow. That's pretty much the problem in a nutshell. It brought me back to the line about the Chinese land buyers:

(That same year, the Tea Party Patriots funded Asia-bashing advertisements featuring fictional Chinese executives in suits speaking Mandarin and laughing about how they were able to buy thousands of acres of Missouri farmland.)

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The implicit message being if they care about their race, their race will care about them. There's nothing sinister about a rich white guy buying up thousands of acres of Missouri farmland because there's an implicit message that those white people will work in the interests of other white people. This couldn't be further from the truth, those white people are exclusively in service of Mammon, but still, this racial myth permeates so hard it doesn't even need to be said.

This period of history is probably going to go down as one of the darkest period of America's existence. I don't even know how to being to cure this sickness.

 

[sgtnosboss]

I just wish I knew how to sway people like this, to show them that the things they choose to support are actively working against them. If we could find a way to show them that, we could really change a lot of people. I live in a area where a most white people act this way and I have yet to figure out a way to talk to them about it without it turning into an argument or them digging deeper.

 

[Artificial Housewife]

If the Civil War death toll could not sway them, I feel like nothing ever will. This stuff means more to them than I could ever imagine or understand. I feel like the only possible end to it would be the end of everything else.

 

[WascallyWabbit]

White backlash politics gave certain white populations the sensation of winning, particularly by upending the gains of minorities and liberals; yet the victories came at a steep cost. When white backlash policies became laws, as in cutting away health care programs and infrastructure spending, blocking expansion of health care delivery systems, defunding opiate-addiction centers, spewing toxins into the air, or enabling guns in public spaces, the result was increasing rates of death.

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I don't know what it is with these people all thinking they're going to be heroic martyrs when they suffer from these policies. At the end of the day you're just another statistic, not some hero fighting for your race or w/e.

 

[subpar spatula]

if you make the poorest white man believe they are better than the richest black man they will give you their money or however the quote goes. trevor is just another reason why the united states needs to make it so right wing individuals are barred from elections anywhere

 

[SoH]

No "dumb hick" hottest of takes.

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Slipping into a Southern accent to play a character who is stupid and ignorant is a shitty stereotype and I am making an effort to stop doing it. Like any very large group of people the South has a range of intelligence and political leanings. Using it as the voice of the ignorant poor Republican racist is lazy casual bigotry.

I can say fuck the confederate flag, fuck racism, or dive into any number of topics without the need of squealing in a regional dialect just because I find it funny.

 

[Veliladon]

I don't know what it is with these people all thinking they're going to be heroic martyrs when they suffer from these policies. At the end of the day you're just another statistic, not some hero fighting for your race or w/e.

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Exactly. It's not going to make one iota of difference either way. I guess it's supposed to give republican politicians ground cover to say nobody wants government healthcare.

 

[8byte]

I mean this has been happening since the end of Slavery. When African Americans were freed, rich white land holders in the south convinced poor white working class that the freed slaves were their enemy, and they should resist them at any cost. Rich white people have always sought to pit poor white people against poor minorities, because it keeps the coals off of their feet. This isn't new, sadly, and it isn't going away soon.

 

[Thrill_house]

I work with these people. Article didn't tell me anything I already didn't know. I weep for my demographic. Willfully ignorant, hateful and refuse to change. Will straight up create their own reality and narrative even as you throw facts right in their fucking faces.

I read a study recently that said in a nutshell working class white people will vote for things that hurt them as long as it hurts minorities and lgbtq folk even more...and its true.

It is a horrifying problem that I don't know how to fix. I try to educate these idiots and they just will not hear it.

 

[Lonewulfeus]

I just wish I knew how to sway people like this, to show them that the things they choose to support are actively working against them. If we could find a way to show them that, we could really change a lot of people. I live in a area where a most white people act this way and I have yet to figure out a way to talk to them about it without it turning into an argument or them digging deeper.

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I think the point of the article is that there is no saving them, Trevor said it himself he'd rather die than have his tax dollars help minorities.

 

[Brakke]

How you gunna lay out all those ground rules and then open with that quote of all quotes?

 

[Omegasquash]

"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."

 

[Deleted member 19066]

White supremacy is a tool to prevent class consciousness and solidarity among the entire working class - whites included.

 

[BossAttack]

Dumb hicks. Good, they deserve it. I've got no empathy for folks like Trevor. Why do we even care how these white racists are being harmed by their own stupidity?

 

[Veliladon]

How you gunna lay out all those ground rules and then open with that quote of all quotes?

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Because there's punching down at unfortunate people and punching up at the people who use unfortunate people. I'd rather do the latter.

 

[Ronin]

They don't care about me so why should I give a damn about them?

 

[Lorcain]

Unfortunately the article reinforced the notion in my mind that there's a % of white Americans that are wholly indoctrinated mind, body and whatever else in this way of thinking. They are sadly beyond reaching, I'm afraid. No amount of reason, logic or painful first-hand experiences will change them. It's almost like they need to just consume themselves out of existence, so to speak.

I don't know what % of Trump's unquestioningly loyal 30% are people just like Trevor (most of them?), but they can't be allowed to have such a disproportionately large voice in American politics again.

 

[Mars]

Sounds like they are getting what they deserve? good for them, actually.

 

[House_Of_Lightning]

Slipping into a Southern accent to play a character who is stupid and ignorant is a shitty stereotype and I am making an effort to stop doing it. Like any very large group of people the South has a range of intelligence and political leanings. Using it as the voice of the ignorant poor Republican racist is lazy casual bigotry.

I can say fuck the confederate flag, fuck racism, or dive into any number of topics without the need of squealing in a regional dialect just because I find it funny.

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Good take.

 

[sgtnosboss]

I think the point of the article is that there is no saving them, Trevor said it himself he'd rather die than have his tax dollars help minorities.

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I know, maybe its just harder for me to accept because that is my area and I grew up around people I thought were good people till I was old enough to follow politics, form my own opinions, start noticing things around me. Its hard dropping most family and friends and while searching for new friends realizing there isn't many that share your thought process in your area. That's why I say I wish I could open their eyes somehow.

 

[HStallion]

I know OP was asking for no hot takes but all I have to say is this is just another article that is high lighting the same thing about white America: the cruelty is the point.

 

[Deleted member 36543]

if you make the poorest white man believe they are better than the richest black man they will give you their money or however the quote goes. trevor is just another reason why the united states needs to make it so right wing individuals are barred from elections anywhere

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[TheAndyMan]

"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."

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Just thinking of that LBJ quote when I was reading.

Edit:
The best you can describe this kind of thinking is ignorant, and cruel. Ignorant because they're thinking in stereotyped and generalized terms about supposed "undeserving" who benefit from govt(not actually that many) .
Cruel because they're fine with policies they know will hurt other peoples financial and social situations, even if they're not "moochers".

 

[Antrax]

Slipping into a Southern accent to play a character who is stupid and ignorant is a shitty stereotype and I am making an effort to stop doing it. Like any very large group of people the South has a range of intelligence and political leanings. Using it as the voice of the ignorant poor Republican racist is lazy casual bigotry.

I can say fuck the confederate flag, fuck racism, or dive into any number of topics without the need of squealing in a regional dialect just because I find it funny.

Click to shrink...

I appreciate this.

Because there's punching down at unfortunate people and punching up at the people who use unfortunate people. I'd rather do the latter.

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Eh, Trevor sounds a lot more than "unfortunate." He'd be wearing a hood in another time and place (and might still!)

 

[TheMango55]

People are shaped by their upbringing and environment. You can have sympathy for someone while still being vehemently opposed to them.

This is pretty much the same method as urban poor people who grow up around violence and gangs and don't have the resources to escape their areas can get caught up in that violence.

They are wrong and many of them are probably too far gone to reach, but we need to put resources into limiting the growth of this ideology and deprogramming those we can.

 

[Lumination]

I do wonder how much of a role religion plays in this self-martyrdom for the "greater good" thing going on here. I see this a lot from the trump crazies where they simultaneously step on the working class while bemoaning the elites out to get them. How much of this stems from their own crappy self-worth and self-guilt, common themes in Evangelical Christianity?

 

[airbagged_]

I just got into it with someone because they believe that being called "Whitie" and "YT" is more racist than actual slurs.
Now I'm reading this article and just shaking my head.

 

[Deleted member 6230]

People are shaped by their upbringing and environment. You can have sympathy for someone while still being vehemently opposed to them.

This is pretty much the same method as urban poor people who grow up around violence and gangs and don't have the resources to escape their areas can get caught up in that violence.

They are wrong and many of them are probably too far gone to reach, but we need to put resources into limiting the growth of this ideology and deprogramming those we can.

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I agree with this. It's pretty shitty to doom people rural hellscapes and prisons.

Also, the majority of the working class in America or African American and Latino combined. I really don't get the media's obsession with the rather idealized white working class dude who was hoodwinked by trumpism. I haven't read the article in full yet tho

 

[SoH]

I appreciate this.

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100% of the ignorant right wing nationalist voices I heard growing up on the west coast had no Southern accent. It was a fact I had to reconcile with whenever I would slip into that voice to play that character, which allowed me to ignore the reality of them being my neighbors, friends, and family members. We all have blind spots and the Southern scapegoat was one of mine.

Can always do better.

 

[Teiresias]

Because there's punching down at unfortunate people and punching up at the people who use unfortunate people. I'd rather do the latter.

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These "unfortunate" people you don't want to punch down at are the ones voting for the ones using them and putting them in power. Then they cheer on as those voted in work to make sure they can never be voted out. The voter is responsible here, so yes, I will punch down at them, because they're the electorate doing this to themselves.

 

[The Vathlonian]

How you gunna lay out all those ground rules and then open with that quote of all quotes?

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right wtf. Mandating empathy too? I mean I don't have a problem being empathetic. but that's kind of telling people how to feel.

 

[Strelok]

So they feel like they deserve to be struggling in a way, that their struggle is part of the american experience, you gotta struggle to make it big

 

[Muppet of a Man]

I mean this has been happening since the end of Slavery. When African Americans were freed, rich white land holders in the south convinced poor white working class that the freed slaves were their enemy, and they should resist them at any cost. Rich white people have always sought to pit poor white people against poor minorities, because it keeps the coals off of their feet. This isn't new, sadly, and it isn't going away soon.

Click to shrink...

This right here is sooooo fucking important to understand. It doesn't take away from how horrible racist poor white people are. But it is incredibly important to understand the genesis of the cultural systemic problem.

That genesis is the divide and conquer tactics employed by the rich to take the target off of their back and place it onto that of a scapegoat, all while exploiting the shit out of that same group economically.

While xenophobia (fear of the foreign(er)) is ubiquitous around the world, systemic racism is an invention of Northern European Imperial powers of the last 600 years, compounding natural xenophobic tendencies of the native population with a penchant of the rich to exploit and deny resources to people of an out-group / minority group (i.e., disadvantaged and/or powerless group). Racial and caste based systems of bias originate to systematically deny large swaths of the population resources and to exploit their labor for little to no compensation, all enforced via a convenient, artificial rational based on an easily identifiable phenotypical (or cultural) trait.

 

[samoyed]

Ethnonationalism is a mask to hide the sins of capitalism. The "property investors" seek only to extract profit, but it's only through ethnonationalism that the white "investor" can convince the white lower class they're actually allies.

 

[krazen]

It always fascinates me how in places like Mississippi where black folks are so marginalized it feels like third world in some of those towns, but in poor white towns close by they still think black folka are getting all this 'free' shit from the gov off their tax dollars (while they themselves are on gov assistance).

 

[JustinBailey]

OK. First of all. If I may be so bold I'd like to offer some ground rules:

1) Read. The. Article. In full.
2) No "dumb hick" hottest of takes. In the same vein, no "good" or "they deserved it" hottest of takes.
3) Have a shred of empathy. If you don't think they deserve it, this is not the thread for you.
4) We don't need a hot take of how everyone is always worried about the WWC.

Here's a couple of paragraphs pulled from the article itself:

State policies shaped by white supremacy increase mortality rates in much the same way as other manmade health risks, such as pollution.











So that last quote. Wow. That's pretty much the problem in a nutshell. It brought me back to the line about the Chinese land buyers:



The implicit message being if they care about their race, their race will care about them. There's nothing sinister about a rich white guy buying up thousands of acres of Missouri farmland because there's an implicit message that those white people will work in the interests of other white people. This couldn't be further from the truth, those white people are exclusively in service of Mammon, but still, this racial myth permeates so hard it doesn't even need to be said.

This period of history is probably going to go down as one of the darkest period of America's existence. I don't even know how to being to cure this sickness.

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This is extremely well said. I can tell you in the rural place im from, someone buying a ton of land is viewed with reverence not skepticism, as it should be.

 

[Deleted member 6230]

This right here is sooooo fucking important to understand. It doesn't take away from how horrible racist poor white people are. But it is incredibly important to understand the genesis of the cultural systemic problem.

That genesis is the divide and conquer tactics employed by the rich to take the target off of their back and place it onto that of a scapegoat, all while exploiting the shit out of that same group economically.

While xenophobia (fear of the foreign(er)) is ubiquitous around the world, systemic racism is an invention of Northern European Imperial powers of the last 600 years, compounding natural xenophobic tendencies of the native population with a penchant of the rich to exploit and deny resources to people of an out-group / minority group (i.e., disadvantaged and/or powerless group). Racial and caste based systems of bias originate to systematically deny large swaths of the population resources and to exploit their labor for little to no compensation, all enforced via a convenient, artificial rational based on an easily identifiable phenotypical (or cultural) trait.

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thanks for this post.

 

[mbpm]

So how do we solve this without crazy violence

 

[poptire]

So they feel like they deserve to be struggling in a way, that their struggle is part of the american experience, you gotta struggle to make it big

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That's probably also a coping mechanism. Thinking that their suffering is making them better people means there's dignity to.

 

[TheOMan]

Because there's punching down at unfortunate people and punching up at the people who use unfortunate people. I'd rather do the latter.

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You can do both. The ones that would die for this...utter garbage, don't want to be saved.

 

[Deleted member 835]

How can I feel sorry for people that hate me cus of the colour of my skin?

 

[Blader]

Because there's punching down at unfortunate people and punching up at the people who use unfortunate people. I'd rather do the latter.

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Punch up at who though? Who needs to get taken down for people to realize they're dying for nothing?

I mean, at what point do we consider that people who would literally rather die and end their existence on Earth over having any amount of their tax dollars go to "Mexicans and welfare queens" are just fucking racist to the bone, and think this way of their own volition and not because they're being used by rich conservatives for their votes?

 

[John Rabbit]

White* supremacy.

* = Only if you're rich

 

[Servbot24]

Slipping into a Southern accent to play a character who is stupid and ignorant is a shitty stereotype and I am making an effort to stop doing it. Like any very large group of people the South has a range of intelligence and political leanings. Using it as the voice of the ignorant poor Republican racist is lazy casual bigotry.

I can say fuck the confederate flag, fuck racism, or dive into any number of topics without the need of squealing in a regional dialect just because I find it funny.

Click to shrink...

I do the same thing and agree there is a need to do better.

If we really want to make a change we have to convert people, and no one is going to convert to a side that treats them like cartoon characters.

 

[NoRéN]

This period of history is probably going to go down as one of the darkest period of America's existence. I don't even know how to being to cure this sickness.

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According to the article, the infected animal is dying.

 

[DigitalOp]

Where are these bleeding heart white people doing the work to convert the blind to the side of non-bigotry?

Why is this always a "We" thing as if everyone non-white bears the burden?

 

[nded]

Sucks for them. Really sucks for everyone else, unfortunately.

 

[Artificial Housewife]

According to the article, the infected animal is dying.

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I really feel that the ones coming out of High School now are going to be worse. They are taking pride in their hate in a way that has not been this openly rewarded and encouraged in decades.

 

[Commanderbuck]

Where are these bleeding heart white people doing the work to convert the blind to the side of non-bigotry?

Why is this always a "We" thing as if everyone non-white bears the burden?

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Exactly. This is why I feel no sympathy for them.

 

[KillLaCam]

Can't feel sorry for them but it does suck. I kinda ran out of sympathy for this particular group when I made the mistake of living in the Deep South for 2 years.