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Title: 'Dying of whiteness': why racism is at the heart of America's gun inaction
Source: The Guardian via Yahoo
URL Source: https://news.yahoo.com/dying-whiten ... hy-racism-heart-050040986.html
Published: Aug 9, 2019
Author: Lois Beckett in San Francisco
Post Date: 2019-08-09 08:13:54 by Dakmar
Keywords: None
Views: 2453
Comments: 29

Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? It’s the question that people around the world keep asking.

According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America’s gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.

White Americans’ attempt to defend their status in the racial hierarchy by opposing issues like gun control, healthcare expansion or public school funding ends up injuring themselves, as well as hurting people of color, Metzl argues.

The majority of America’s gun death victims are white men, and most of them die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In all, gun suicide claims the lives of 25,000 Americans each year.

White Americans are “dying for a cause”, he writes, even if their form of death is often “slow, excruciating, and invisible”.

Metzl spoke to the Guardian about his analysis this March, and again this week, following what appeared to be a white nationalist terror attack on Latino families doing back-to-school shopping at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. The conversations have been condensed and edited.

Related: 'Blood on their hands': the intelligence officer whose warning over white supremacy was ignored

You argue that America’s debate over gun control laws and gun violence makes a lot more sense if you actually understand it as a debate over race and whiteness in America. Why is that?

In my research I look at the history and the social meanings of how guns came to be these particularly charged social symbols. So many aspects of American gun culture are really entwined with whiteness and white privilege.

Carrying a gun in public has been coded as a white privilege. Advertisers have literally used words like “restoring your manly privilege” as a way of selling assault weapons to white men. In colonial America, landowners could carry guns, and they bestowed that right on to poor whites in order to quell uprisings from “Negroes” and Indians. John Brown’s raid was about weapons. Scholars have written about how the Ku Klux Klan was aimed at disarming African Americans. When African Americans started to carry guns in public – think about Malcolm X during the civil rights era – all of a sudden, the second amendment didn’t apply in many white Americans’ minds. When Huey Newton and the Black Panthers tried to arm themselves, everyone suddenly said, “We need gun control.”

When states like Missouri changed their laws to allow open carry of firearms, there were parades of white Americans who would carry big long guns through congested areas of downtown St Louis, who would go into places like Walmart and burrito restaurants carrying their guns, and they were coded as patriots. At the same time, there were all the stories about African American gun owners who would go to Walmart and get tackled and shot.

Who gets to carry a gun in public? Who is coded as a patriot? Who is coded as a threat, or a terrorist or a gangster? What it means to carry a gun or own a gun or buy a gun – those questions are not neutral. We have 200 years of history, or more, defining that in very racial terms.

What moments in the past few years have demonstrated to you most clearly that it’s impossible to understand America’s gun control debate without talking about whiteness?

The period after a mass shooting is often very telling. When the shooter is white, the context is the individual narrative – this individual disordered white mind. When the shooter is black or brown, all of a sudden the disorder is culture. The narrative we tell then is about terrorism or gangs.

Then there’s the quiet everyday level. There’s nothing more painful than sitting in a room with family members who have lost loved ones to suicide. I’d talk to people who had lost husbands, wives, kids, parents to gun suicide, and they would come to the interview, often, bringing their guns. And I would ask them: did it change how you think about the gun? And they’d argue it’s never the gun’s fault and they’d need the gun in case an invader would attack them. This narrative about protection against the radicalized invader was so profound. They were almost nervous not bringing their guns.

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Poster Comment:

The left just got loonier

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 18.

#7. To: Dakmar (#0) (Edited)

When states like Missouri changed their laws to allow open carry of firearms, there were parades of white Americans who would carry big long guns through congested areas of downtown St Louis, who would go into places like Walmart ... carrying their guns, and they were coded as patriots.


Dmitriy Andreychenko sparks chaos at Missouri Walmart | August 9, 2019 | nypost.com [w/1-minute video]

A man carrying a “tactical rifle” and clad in body armor sparked chaos when he walked into a Missouri Walmart on Thursday, police said — less than a week after a gunman [reportedly] stormed a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

The man, who is in his 20s, sent terrified shoppers running from the Springfield store when he showed up around 4 p.m.

He was detained by an armed off-duty firefighter and later placed under arrest, according to police.

No shots were fired and no injuries were reported, Springfield police said in a statement.

Investigators were working to determine the man’s motive, and the investigation was ongoing, cops added.

The incident came less than a week after [reportedly] racist gunman Patrick Crusius allegedly killed 22 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart on Saturday. He [allegedly] posted an anti-Hispanic screed online minutes before the [alleged] slaughter.

Gun-related incidents have surged at Walmarts nationwide, with four others reported since Saturday’s [reported] shooting.

GreyLmist  posted on  2019-08-09   17:16:23 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: GreyLmist (#7)

A man carrying a “tactical rifle” and clad in body armor sparked chaos when he walked into a Missouri Walmart on Thursday...

Just because it's legal, does not make it a smart thing to do.

Lod  posted on  2019-08-09   18:21:44 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: Lod (#8) (Edited)

Dmitriy Andreychenko sparks chaos at Missouri Walmart | August 9, 2019 | nypost.com
[w/1-minute video]

A man carrying a “tactical rifle” and clad in body armor sparked chaos when he walked into a Missouri Walmart on Thursday...

Lod: Just because it's legal, does not make it a smart thing to do.


If nothing else, the Missouri Walmart scenario is an example that contradicts Metzl's claim in the UK Guardian article about visibly armed White men of that Open Carry State being "coded as Patriots" when in public places like Walmart. It's also a stark contrast in comparison with the Florida Walmart scenario where reports of the more privileged Leftist "political statement" speaker downplay his terrifying words to the clerk (as if that was less threatening than his "Social Justice Warrior" claim of seeing an unidentified "white nationalist looking guy" supposedly purchasing a gun cuz he says so and states self-righteously that it angered him into doing what he did).

The frantic Missouri Walmart reports present "the good guys" who "prevented a massacre" as: 1. the Store Manager who pulled an alarm to evacuate the premises and 2. the off-duty civilian firefighter who detained the "suspect" at gunpoint as he went outside along with other customers during the alarm - even though he had not moved to shoot anyone inside the store or outside and is not accused of so much as uttering something frightening. Nevertheless, a felony charge of "making a terrorist threat" was reportedly filed quite quickly on the grounds that his militaristic appearance caused the evacuation of a building. The penalty for a "guilty" conviction is: "up to four years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine." [live5news.com Ref.] Like the Florida Walmart "political statement" speaker, the Missouri Walmart "suspect" also claims to have been conducting something of a social experiment: to see if his Second Amendment rights would be respected. Lieutenant Mike Lucas: "He's lucky he's alive still, to be honest." Everybody who didn't kill him is lucky too. [Deprivation Of Rights Under Color Of Law: punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any. - 4um Ref.]

Discussions at Free Republic and elsewhere have questioned whether Andreychenko is like a Portland, Oregon imported Leftist whose motive is to panic States like Missouri into repealing Open Carry Laws. Maybe so, maybe not. Either way, I've not seen a single press report that cautions against Store Managers panicing people with alarms rather than sending an armed Security Guard to approach the publicly armed person for questioning. In fact, not a single armed Security Guard is mentioned as on-site there at all, afaik. And I've not seen any press reports either that caution against illegally detaining a publicly armed person as the Concealed Carry firefighter did, which might cause injuries or worse that wouldn't have happened otherwise. It's like the press, the police and officials are deliberately promoting wrong lessons from this alleged incident and that's worrisome, imo. Example:

"We applaud the quick actions of our associates to evacuate customers from our store, and we’re thankful no one was injured. This person is no longer welcome in our stores. We are working with the authorities however we can and we appreciate their quick response that prevented this situation from escalating further," the spokesperson's statement reads. [abcnews.go.com Ref.]

GreyLmist  posted on  2019-08-11   0:05:03 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: GreyLmist (#14)

Thanks for all the information and for your thoughts.

Lod  posted on  2019-08-11   1:23:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: Lod (#15) (Edited)

Thank you, Lod, for your thoughtful consideration of the situation. If Walmart stores are in Open Carry States but would rather customers not be armed on their properties, they should at least have prominent signs with words to that requested effect. Of course, that would mean the Concealed Carry firefighter wouldn't have been "admissable" there either.

GreyLmist  posted on  2019-08-11   1:36:51 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: All (#16) (Edited)

Breaking News: Report of armed man leads to evacuation at Walmart in Wilkesboro, person detained - wxii12.com | Updated: 9:53 PM EDT Aug 10, 2019 [North Carolina - another Open Carry State]

Open carry in the United States - Wikipedia

GreyLmist  posted on  2019-08-11   2:12:57 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 18.

#20. To: GreyLmist (#18)

...a call came into 911 dispatch at about 7:55 p.m. on Saturday for a report of a man with a gun being in the area of the Walmart.

What does that begin to mean? There were probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people with guns in "the area of the Walmart."

And if the cops can't say whether it was a sidearm or a toy, that's even more pathetic.

Lod  posted on  2019-08-11 02:47:08 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


End Trace Mode for Comment # 18.

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