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

by Jonathan M. Metzl

“Repeal it, replace it,” Trump shouted, “and get something great!”29 From economic or medical perspectives, these claims were made of little more than hot air. But from the perspective of race in America, they seemed all too familiar. Mirroring and amplifying the tensions of our groups, Trump essentially asked lower-income white people to choose less coverage and more suffering over a system that linked them to Mexicans, welfare queens, and… to healthier, longer lives. And we, as a nation, chose the bottom lines in the charts. In so choosing, voters and politicians who claimed to bolster white privilege again turned whiteness into a statistically perilous category. Donald Trump and other leaders may have successfully appealed to long-held beliefs about white nationalism and supremacy. But the data suggests that the policies these politicians supported, and that their supporters voted for, effectively assured that white people, too, would pay more and suffer more and, ultimately, die more in the service of these larger ideals. In other words, from a public health perspective at least, it seems more than possible that the policies and sentiments that aim to bolster the identity of whiteness also effectively turn whiteness itself into a heightened, perilous, and ever-more-costly category of risk.