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

by Jonathan M. Metzl

THESE RACIAL DISPARITIES between white suicide and black homicide did not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are in many ways reflective of ways that Americans talk about race, violence, and mortality more broadly. I say this because, all too often, when questions of aggression or violence involve blackness, many observers are quick to look for clues based in “biology” or “culture.” Straight-faced scientists ask whether “blacks” express so-called warrior genes, leading “them” to attack “us” more frequently. They shamelessly suggest that the overrepresentation of African Americans in the criminal justice system results from underlying biological differences that cause “blacks” to commit more crimes, or demonstrate more psychopathic personalities, or act more impulsively or with less cultural regard for long-term consequences than do everyone else. Most scientists and scholars would rightly call this kind of research what it is—namely, racist. But the implicit frame whereby “black” minds or bodies or cultures function as causal categories of analysis in violence research remains too often in place.32