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Whites have more to fear from other whites than they do from their fellow black and brown Americans
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
MAY 03, 2019 02:40 PM, UPDATED MAY 03, 2019 03:40 PM
This is a column about saving whiteness. It’s precipitated by an incident last Saturday at a bookstore in Washington.
Seems that author Jonathan M. Metzl was giving a presentation when a group of white nationalists barged in. They formed a phalanx between him and the audience, and one of them harangued the crowd with an electric bullhorn, something about the white working class being asked to “trade their homeland for handouts.” The group chanted “This land is our land.” They filed out, to a chorus of boos.
We will pass lightly over the irony of Woody Guthrie’s words of harmony and inclusion (“This land is your land, and this land is my land, from the California to the New York island ...”) being repurposed as a white supremacist manifesto. Let’s deal instead with Metzl’s book, the one this group tried to shut down, thereby giving it greater visibility and increased sales.
One of his more compelling illustrations involves “Trevor,” a 41-year old white former cabbie in Tennessee whom Metzl describes as “yellow with jaundice,” hobbling on a walker, with hepatitis C and an inflamed liver, dying, yet resolutely opposed to the Affordable Care Act, even though it might provide medical treatment he desperately needs and cannot otherwise afford. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told Metzl. “I would rather die. We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article229995244.html#storylink=cpy
MAY 03, 2019 02:40 PM, UPDATED MAY 03, 2019 03:40 PM
This is a column about saving whiteness. It’s precipitated by an incident last Saturday at a bookstore in Washington.
Seems that author Jonathan M. Metzl was giving a presentation when a group of white nationalists barged in. They formed a phalanx between him and the audience, and one of them harangued the crowd with an electric bullhorn, something about the white working class being asked to “trade their homeland for handouts.” The group chanted “This land is our land.” They filed out, to a chorus of boos.
We will pass lightly over the irony of Woody Guthrie’s words of harmony and inclusion (“This land is your land, and this land is my land, from the California to the New York island ...”) being repurposed as a white supremacist manifesto. Let’s deal instead with Metzl’s book, the one this group tried to shut down, thereby giving it greater visibility and increased sales.
One of his more compelling illustrations involves “Trevor,” a 41-year old white former cabbie in Tennessee whom Metzl describes as “yellow with jaundice,” hobbling on a walker, with hepatitis C and an inflamed liver, dying, yet resolutely opposed to the Affordable Care Act, even though it might provide medical treatment he desperately needs and cannot otherwise afford. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told Metzl. “I would rather die. We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article229995244.html#storylink=cpy
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