Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

by Jonathan M. Metzl

LeEtta Felter, the Olathe school board representative, detailed how becoming involved in politics changed her deepest understandings of race and equity. “I was raised middle-of-the-road evangelistic Christian,” she explained. “We love the Lord and believe he’s in the fiber of our being.” Yet as she toured her district and met people, her understandings of compassion evolved: When you are naive, you don’t understand that there is a chronic disparity in the system, a chronic disparity that, specifically with education, impacts achievement gaps. All of us don’t have the level playing ground that just a middle-of-the-road, middle-class white student has. It’s not just about race, it’s context of any of these indicators that put a child at risk. I have learned so much more about it that, it’s not just one or two kids, in Olathe, that’s 28 percent of our children. Those social inequities make a more complicated student coming to us, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we invest in them at all levels so that their education that is afforded to them gets rooted, they learn how to learn, they are lifelong learners, they’re contributing to society, and the state is not just a pipeline to prison.