Many Americans 'shooting themselves in the foot' to maintain racial hierarchy: author

[applegrove]

Many Americans 'shooting themselves in the foot' to maintain racial hierarchy: author Jonathan Metzl wrote Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland

CBC Radio · 

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/many-americans-shooting-themselves-in-the-foot-to-maintain-racial-hierarchy-author-1.5126423

"SNIP......

In the book when you write about "whiteness," what are you talking about?

In the book, I'm not talking about white extremism at all.

My book is really about the rise of a particular kind of politics in Midwestern states in the United States. And I call this the politics of racial resentment, but really what they are are the politics that are anti-government, anti-immigrant, pro-gun politics that came to power in a number of Midwestern and Southern states in the United States. And part of what I show is that there's a dichotomy between what those politics say they're going to do for white working class people and what they actually actually do.

You write in the book that whiteness, to you, is a political and an economic system. What do you mean by that?

Well it's basically that there are systems that are, you know, bent on maintaining racial hierarchies and they do so not because of some deep ideology — although that seems to be what it's about — but it's also about just who's getting tax breaks, who's getting benefits from the government ... So there's a lot of moves that are cloaked under this idea [that] it's about race and ideology, but end up dividing people to maintain power structures really for wealthy people and corporations.

Ultimately, the main beneficiaries from a material level are not these white working class people. What I show is that this is a trick to get people to play along but really the beneficiaries are people who are far higher up the hierarchy.


......SNIP"

[PatrickforO]

1. I'm reading this right now.

It just boggles the mind how some white men would rather die than allow people of color to have any of the benefits they themselves also need.

If you can have enough, why hold someone else back from also having enough?

I just cannot understand that logic, because there IS no logic. Just hate.

We've got to find a way to change.

[brush]

2. Sounds like the age-old story of America: Divide and conquer...

not just the non-whites against each other, but also the non-whites from working class and middle class whites with whom they share many grievances from systemic exploitation.

We're all getting exploited by the wealthy, their corporate interests and systemic government policies that they set up to service their maintenance of the status quo which favors them.

[Cracklin Charlie]

3. It's an old game.

They want you to hate those that have LESS than you have.

Because the alternative means that you turn your anger on those that have MORE...meaning them.

Nothing new.

[Blue_true]

5. I heard an old story once. I am not sure but maybe LBJ said it

in philosophy about racial hatred by those that should avoid that out of self interest.

The story goes:

There were two dirt poor sharecroppers, one Black and one White. Both had nothing, but the Black man managed to save enough to buy his own mule. The White man poisoned the mule because he could not stand to see the Black man have more than him. The wise thing would have been for the White man to help the Black man in return for the Black man helping the White man ploy his fields. Both men would have profited from a live mule and the White man working with the Black man for both their betterment.

[Thekaspervote]

4. Funny thing is .. when all is said and done they will loose anyway. Guess shoot the other foot too?