January 26, 2019

This is a continuation of the blog series Today’s White Niggers.
To start reading from the beginning, go to Part 1.

Suicide is more than a personal problem in white America. It’s a race issue.

The rate of suicide among white Americans is almost three times that of black Americans and two-and-a-half times that of the Hispanic population. Half a century ago, about 13.1 out of 100,000 whites killed themselves. By 2015, the rate had climbed to 15.1.

The standard explanations for the rising white suicide rate include job loss, underemployment, the urban/rural divide, the gender divide (more women are killing themselves), poverty, mental health issues, brain disorders, drug abuse, the breakdown of family life, loneliness, despair.

As noted in a recent New York Times article,

The cultural currents that deepen despair and increase the chances of suicide have long been staples of sociological debate.

The social scientists Christopher Lasch and Robert Putnam identified postwar influences that have corroded the fabric of local everyday life — the block parties, church meetings, family barbecues and civic groups that once bound people against solitude and abandonment.

More recently, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton have argued that the hollowing out of the economy and loss of middle and working class supports, like unions, have contributed to a broad increase in self-reported pain in those groups, both mental and physical.[1]

But what about the race factor? White people are killing themselves at a higher rising rate than members of any other racial group in America today. What’s going on? And for those of us who are not white, why should we give a damn?

White people are killing themselves at a higher rising rate than members of any other racial group in America today.

As an African American minister, this is why I give a damn. As a Washington Post 2016 survey discovered, there is a correlation between places with high white mortality rates (suicide, drugs, and other deaths of despair) and support for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Think about the lives of whites in Grand Junction, Colorado. These white wage-earners suffered an 11% loss of the workforce (between 2009 – 2014) because of the collapse of the local energy industry.  Felony charges increased by 65%, and the city now has the highest homicide rate in the state. An epidemic of drug addiction ensued. The suicide rate is now nearly two and a half times that of the nation. As one of these white Trump voters told New Yorker reporter Peter Hessler, who tracked the statistics in his July 24, 2017, Letter from Colorado, “I think America is lost to us.” Some whites were booted out of their jobs by the business owners’ search for cheaper labor. Others were replaced by robots. And some chose drugs to blunt the drudgery of godawful, gut-wrenching, dangerous, exploitive work.

Another example is Morristown, Tennessee, a town of 30,000 northeast of Knoxville. It is the location of the Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant. The drug abuse problem has decimated the white working-age population, so local employers increasingly hire illegal immigrants who dare not complain about the wages ($11.50 an hour), the conditions (manure, blood, and flesh everywhere), and the labor violations for unpaid overtime work (“The Town Fought Back,” by Muriam Jordan, The New York Times, June 16, 2018). Ninety-seven illegal immigrants were taken into custody in a recent raid and now face deportation.

Carol Jones, a retired nursing home worker, expressed Morristown’s white nigger problem in its starkest terms: “Send [the immigrants] back. There will be jobs for Americans, if they get off their butts.”

The Morristown “butt-sitting” whites have opted out of low-wage, shithole jobs. These white folks are the “deplorables,” namely, the white niggers, the working stiffs who voted for Trump.

Trump gained the support of whites without a college education because he affirmed that their suffering wasn’t imagined but real, and he promised to alleviate it. He revved upwhite disappointment, anger, and rage, and drove whites into the streets as part of a right-wing, political movement.

Trump gained the support of whites without a college education because he affirmed that their suffering wasn’t imagined but real, and he promised to alleviate it.

When Trump became the 45th President of the United States, Confederate flags were raised; anti-black graffiti and Nazi swastikas were spray-painted on school walls; lynching nooses were placed on the desks, doors and walls of black employees and black students; Jewish cemeteries were desecrated; Muslim women’s hijabs were torn from their heads; transgender people were assaulted with increased regularity; hate speech against Latinos became the rallying cry of a political party; and a rising chorus of neo-Nazi and other white supremacy groups shouted “Sieg Heil” and “Sieg Trump.” Hate crimes rose 25%.

The national white mood Trump created in America made whites feel good about being white again by re-affirming their feeling of white privilege.

The national white mood Trump created in America made whites feel good about being white again by re-affirming their feeling of white privilege. The feeling of white privilege had broken down, and whites didn’t like what they felt: they felt like niggers.

Niggers of all colors unite.

Continue to Part 4  >

[1] “How Suicide Quietly Morphed Into a Public Health Crisis,” www.nytimes.com/2018/06/08/health/suicide-spade-bordain-cdc.html

Today’s White Niggers | Part 2: “White-Skin Privilege” Exposed
Thandeka’s Interview with Westar Institute: Paul’s Brain Science of Emotions

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