White supremacy is literally killing people -- white people

[applegrove]

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/white-supremacy-literally-killing-people-white-people/amp/

Chauncey Devega, Salon


"SNIP....

Donald Trump’s voters inflicted something horrible on America. My level of empathy for these “white working class” voters who made such a horrible decision, largely motivated by racism, is nonexistent. They did this to America and need to be held responsible. Please convince me otherwise.

I argue in “Dying of Whiteness” that we need to look at this first and foremost as a policy issue, as seen with the rising rates of gun deaths, despair from not having health care or health insurance, and tax cuts in states like Kansas that eviscerated funding for roads and bridges and schools. These policies lead to public divisiveness which in turn creates that empathy gap.

I could tell you stories for the next eight hours about how having more guns around makes people less empathetic and probably more racist in certain ways. But I will say that all of these divisions, for me, ended up being the result of specific public policies. The United States has made it way too easy for people to get guns. Blocking the expansion of the Affordable Care Act and other types of programs took place without there being any viable backup plan for how people in need would get health care.

If we can create empathic policies — meaning public policies that people can see themselves in — the empathy question will largely start to fix itself. However, I am not letting people off the hook in terms of racial animosity and racial resentment.

In my research I focus on the white working class in the Midwest and South. Some people were racist and some people were not. Some people were willing to share their views about race with me and others were not. But these people were all suffering negative health effects, not because of their individual attitudes but because of the policies that had failed them or that had been implemented on their behalf to make it so easy to get guns or not to get health care.


.....SNIP"

[Initech]

1. I'm not saying that they're a cult, but yeah they're a cult.

And like all cults, something very horrible is going to happen and it won't end well.

[atreides1]

2. I'm Reading his book, now!

I just completed the first part...and I feel some sympathy for them...they just won't let go of the gun culture myth!!!