White Fragility

That's a phrase I came across a few weeks ago when I was asked to comment on the participant self-evaluation for a workshop. Long story, but I get asked to do stuff like that a lot. Anyway as I understand it the idea is that a lot of people of whiteness get all bent out of shape when someone points out the existence of white privilege.

Let me give you a tip about critical thinking. When somebody says or writes words to the effect that there is a ruling class in this country that consists principally of white male billionaires, said person is merely stating an objective fact. Such a statement is not racist, and does not in any respect, way, form or metaphorical interpretation imply, suggest or hint at hatred of white people. Such a reaction is, in my view, bizarre.

Erik Loomis here reviews "Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland," by Jonathan M. Metzl. Loomis somehow frames it with a discussion of the coronavirus, which seems irrelevant as far as I can tell, but evidently people can't get it out of their minds right now. Anyway, as many people have noted, rural and rust belt America aren't doing so great these days. The people there benefit from programs like SNAP and Medicaid and would benefit greatly from free higher education and they are also busily killing themselves with firearms. Loomis writes:

Metzl, a doctor at Vanderbilt, has received a lot of publicity for his book and for good reason. It’s a straightforward exploration into the heart of Trump’s America, where people know that guns kill, where they know that they have terrible medical care, and where it simply doesn’t matter to them because at least the Mexicans and welfare queens aren’t getting any benefits either. It’s really this straightforward. Metzl goes to hospitals where people simply tell him they would rather die than have Obamacare go to the undeserving. For these people, very much working class whites, race simply means far, far more to them than class. Moreover, it means more to them than their own lives. They are comfortable with their own death. They are not comfortable with Guatemalan migrants receiving health care.   . . .

These people may indeed have some class consciousness, so long as it is white-only. But even if they support unions or higher taxes on the rich or whatever, they aren’t voting that way. They are voting to kill themselves through rejecting decent health care, by freaking out that anyone will take their guns even as those guns kill their parents and spouses and children, and by decimating the social safety net even if it means their own children get a poor education.

And of course this is entirely and precisely the appeal of Orange Julius, who bases his political schtick largely on white racial resentment. If you want to understand the world, you need to get your head out of the propaganda organs that exist to promote this distorted world view, such as Fox News and PJ Media. These are not information sources, they are purveyors of lies. Their purpose is to deceive you.

Yeah, I have a lot of problems with the New York Times. What they choose to cover, and emphasize; the absurd double standard that treats unfounded suspicions about the Clinton Foundation as far more worthy of coverage than the proven fraudulence of the Trump Foundation, and Joe Biden's frequently ludicrous but largely harmless verbal gaffes as more important then Donald Trump's relentless lies and word salad; and the insular Upper West Side worldview; all this and more can be infuriating. But the content of their new columns is factually accurate, and if they make a mistake, they correct it. You need to learn the difference.