Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland

A physician's "provocative" (Boston Globe) & "timely" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times Book Review) account of how right-wing backlash policies have deadly consequences — even for the white voters they promise to help.

In election after election, conservative white Americans have embraced politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as physician Jonathan M. Metzl shows in Dying of Whiteness, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness & death. 

Interviewing a range of everyday Americans, Metzl examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee, & cuts to schools and social services in Kansas. He shows these policies' costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, & rising dropout rates.
Now updated with a new afterword, Dying of Whiteness demonstrates how much white America would benefit by emphasizing cooperation rather than chasing false promises of supremacy.

Jonathan M. Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II professor of sociology & psychiatry at Vanderbilt University & director of its Center for Medicine, Health, & Society. He is the author of several books & a prominent expert on gun violence & mental illness. He hails from Kansas City, Missouri, & lives in Nashville, Tennessee.