Dying of Whiteness Quotes

“Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die for his place in this hierarchy, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities. 4”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“The white body that refuses treatment rather than supporting a system that might benefit everyone then becomes a metaphor for, and parable of, the threatened decline of the larger nation.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“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 US whites as a demographic group, thereby making whiteness itself a negative health indicator.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“As Booker T. Washington once put it, “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Anti-blackness, in a biological sense, then produces its own anti-whiteness. An illness of the mind, weaponized onto the body of the nation.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor wasn’t 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.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“How am I going to bring up the need to raise taxes to pay for better schooling,” one teacher asked, “when parents come to parent-teacher conferences wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ hats?”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Yeah,” added a man who owned a lawn-care service. “A lot of the people that I know that are in poverty are not healthy… the vast majority of them are very overweight, and the children are overweight.” “And how do you know they’re not healthy?” I asked. “Well,” the man continued, “just by their physical appearance, generally speaking, although you can look at their facial expressions, their faces and look at the coloring of their skin, that type of thing.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“It does not have to be this way. We know from American history that our communal, electoral power allows us to build vibrant social networks, safer communities, and better education systems—when we decide to do so. If impoverished structures lead to negative outcomes, then a renewed focus on restoring equitable structures and infrastructures will improve individual and communal health.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“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—and I say this with the support of statistics detailed in the chapters that follow—increasing rates of death.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“It's a narrative about how "whiteness" becomes a formation worth living and dying for, and how, in myriad ways and on multiple levels, white Americans bet their lives on particular sets of meanings associated with whiteness, even in the face of clear threats to mortality or to common sense.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“But black men consistently differed from white men in how they conceived of government intervention and group identity. Whereas white men jumped unthinkingly to assumptions about “them,” black men frequently answered questions about health and health systems through the language of “us.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Native young adults skew toward suffocation/hanging at startling rates; and Asians/Pacific Islanders have shown relatively high rates of suicide attempt–related hospitalization.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“As Adam Winkler aptly describes it in his terrific book Gun Fight, “few people realize it, but the Ku Klux Klan began as a gun control organization” that aimed to confiscate any guns that free blacks may have obtained during and after the Civil War and thereby “achieve complete black disarmament.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Rather than landing a man on the moon, curing polio, inventing the internet, or promoting structures of world peace, a dominant strain of the electorate voted in politicians whose platforms of American greatness were built on embodied forms of demise.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“In summary, people who reflexively shouted “Gun research doesn’t add up!” were often the same people who supported a ban on effective gun research. It was as if they reprimanded plants for not flowering during a drought while at the same time blocking the trucks that delivered water.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Such trends lifted the overall well-being of many Kentuckians and particularly helped people who suffered from what are oddly called preexisting conditions like hepatitis C—oddly, in my opinion, because “preexisting” assumes that a person’s existence begins at the consummation of health insurance coverage.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“racism matters most to health when its underlying resentments and anxieties shape larger politics and policies and then affect public health.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“politics fueled by racial resentment eroded faith in hallmark American democratic institutions more broadly.13”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“At the same time, through the early 1990s, Missouri’s handgun laws were among the strictest in the nation, including a requirement that handgun buyers undergo background checks in person at sheriffs’ offices before obtaining permits.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“In 1996, Congress passed a ban on federally funded gun research. Legislators—lobbied heavily by the National Rifle Association—added a rider to the federal budget. That rider is known as the Dickey Amendment, and it stripped the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of funding for gun violence prevention research and stipulated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“educational spending is a strong predictor of student achievement”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Cuts to infrastructure became increasingly apparent. Kansas fell below national averages on a wide range of public services, including public transit, housing, and police and fire protection. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave Kansas an overall grade of C-minus on its 2013 infrastructure report card. The report further detailed that “bridges were awarded a D-plus, in part due to Kansas’s nearly 3,000 structurally deficient bridges. Only five states have more structurally deficient bridges than Kansas” and that “dams earned the lowest grade of a D-minus.… With 6,087 dams, Kansas has the second most dams in the United States next only to Texas. Of the state’s dams, 230 are classified as high hazard, meaning failure would likely lead to loss of life and significant property damage.” According to the report, these and other low grades resulted primarily from “funding gaps” that delayed upkeep and repair.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“I asked him what guns meant to him, and he immediately responded, “Freedom. Liberty. Patriotism. That’s why we just voted Trump. No way we were going to let ‘Crooked Hillary’ take those things away from us.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“racism remained an issue, not because of their attitudes but because they lived in states whose elected officials passed overly permissive gun policies, rejected health care reform, undercut social safety net programs, and a host of other actions. In these and other instances, racism and racial resentment functioned at structural levels and in ways that had far broader effects than the kinds of racism that functions in people’s minds.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Meanwhile, black men who attempted to demonstrate their own open-carry rights were attacked and jailed rather than lauded as freedom-loving patriots.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“this was at the expense of people like Trevor, who gave his life to keep his dogma on top.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“With help comes hope,” Dawn, a trained social worker, explains while expanding on one of the pamphlets on the table. “It’s important to recognize warning signs and reach out to loved ones in despair when we notice that they’re feeling hopeless or withdrawing from friends and family, or showing mood swings. Drinking alcohol makes it worse. Antidepressant medications can”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

“Did it right then. And why? It’s the same thing, when someone shoots himself in the head; all you can do is cremate them. You’re searching for… memories.” “We’ve had four suicides in our family—no, wait, five if you count my cousin,” adds Kelly, a woman in her late twenties who came late to the meeting after getting off work in a local nail salon. “All done by gun.” “I’ve only just now learned to relax at the holidays,” a man named James says. “My uncle shot himself on Christmas Eve.”
― Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland