The reckoning with racial injustice that the United States and others around the globe have been going through has generated important, powerful changes for individuals and institutions, with more, we hope, on the way. But the path to multiracial democracy and an economically equitable society faces many barriers.
To overcome these barriers requires decentering whiteness. But what does it mean to truly decenter whiteness? And what must the movement built to achieve that look like? These questions animated a report and community dialogue guide that we jointly authored this past June, titled Advancing Well-Being by Transcending the Barriers of Whiteness.
Where to begin? One place to look might be the nation’s response to drug abuse and the stark differences between how white and Black Americans have been treated in this discourse. Notice that when white Americans without a college education started to experience an unprecedented decline in life expectancy, dialogue centered on the economic losses and related pessimism behind the trend. The grim, fatalistic tone was signaled by the titles of such articles and books as Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, and The New York Times’ “Who Killed the Knapp Family?”
An extraordinary amount of attention has been given recently to substance abuse, suicide, and other problems faced by a class of white people whose worsening health and discouraged outlook had fueled right-wing populist politics. This attention was accompanied by greater recognition that substance abuse is primarily a health challenge to be prevented or treated, rather than a crime to be punished, as had been the dominant frame when it was perceived as mainly an issue in Black communities. However, a deeper and broader point is sometimes overlooked: Structural racism not only led to policies and practices that repress Black Americans and deny them freedom, health, and opportunity—it also generated “deaths of despair” among whites and has prevented constructive solutions to pressing problems for the whole country.
To read more of Victor Rubin and Michael McAfree's article, please click here.
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