Scholar Jonathan Metzl: White supremacy is literally killing white people

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Working-class whites are suffering but still willing to defend racism, says author of “Dying of Whiteness”

by Chauncey Devega, Salon.com

In 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois, one of America’s greatest thinkers and historians, wrote about the distinctive situation of poor white people in his landmark book “Black Reconstruction in America”:

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.

As Du Bois and others would observe from in the antebellum period and through to Jim Crow and now the present day, poor whites had less political and economic power than other white people, but they were still able to translate their skin color into material advantages over nonwhites. In total, the wages of whiteness were both psychological and economic.

Some 80 years since Du Bois wrote “Black Reconstruction,” however, the material rewards of whiteness are diminishing: It now pays fewer economic and other material dividends in an era of globalization and neoliberalism.

Yet, as shown by a resurgent white identity politics backlash and the rise of the “alt right” and Donald Trump, Du Bois’ core thesis still holds true in America, Europe and other parts of the world.

Why do poor and working-class white Americans still cling to the psychological wages of whiteness when in may ways it has not benefited them? How are white people in red state America literally dying of whiteness? Why do white working-class and poor people continue to support the Republican Party and Donald Trump when the latter’s policies have caused them great financial and even physical harm?…

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