I'm working on my racism
Back when I was in grad school, I read a column by Andrew Young in the Raleigh News and Observer in which he said "Never trust anyone who says they aren't a racist. What you should say is 'I'm working on my racism.'
No, it hasn't changed after Obama.
"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. And it’s certainly no better with guns. Metzl visits one of the leading areas of gun suicides in the country–southeast Missouri. Even though people are dying left and right from guns–suicide for sure, but accidental shootings and intentional shooting too–these people just won’t see the guns as the problem. Or even if they secretly do, they know they can’t say so publicly for the stigma that would come of it.
Moreover, Metzl’s not just talking to random people. He’s going to support group meetings of family members who discovered their loved one had blown his head of with a gun. And even with that extremely horrible event, that physical manifestation of the evils of guns right in front of them in a way I cannot personally imagine, the power of whiteness and fears of scary outside people threatening them makes them simply refuse to consider guns a problem. Moreover, they claim they come from “gun” families going back for a long time, even though we know that modern gun culture is less than a half-century ago. Guns are so central to these people’s identity that they cannot imagine being without them, despite the cost.
*snip*
To conclude, all the coronavirus in the world isn’t going to turn Trump’s base away from him. They are already dying of whiteness and will be happy to continue to do so."
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