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Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/Armed-and-Unmasked-Whiten-by-Laura-Flanders-Armed-Suppression_Corexit_Crisis-Plan_Health-200702-651.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
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July 2, 2020
Armed and Unmasked: Whiteness at the Core of a Public Health Crisis
By Laura Flanders
Defunding public health services and deregulating gun ownership have been catastrophic for public health and yet, the majority of white voters support exactly those policies.
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From Smirking Chimp
White Supremacy and the Covid crisis aren't separate. They're linked.
Defunding public health services and deregulating gun ownership have been catastrophic for public health and yet, the majority of white voters support exactly those policies. The spectacle of hundreds of mostly white, unmasked Trump supporters crammed into indoor rally venues during a pandemic exemplifies this phenomenon.
In this interview, conducted just days before the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd, physician and public health researcher Jonathan Metzl describes how American racism sabotages our public health system and costs millions of lives in a suicidal way. Metzl talks about the deadly role of Donald Trump and the conclusions he's drawn about how any of this can be turned around.
Jonathan Metzl is a professor of sociology and psychiatry, and the director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book is called Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America's Heartland.
For more on the Covid-19 crisis, check out our Forward Thinking on Covid-19 series.
Laura Flanders is the host of "GRIT TV" the new, news and culture discussion program aired daily on Free Speech TV (Dish Network ch. 9415) and online at the popular blog site Firedoglake.com. Flanders also hosts RadioNation, on Air America Radio, the weekly radio program of the Nation Magazine. She is the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics Back from the Politiicans (The Penguin Press, 2007) and the New York Times bestseller BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004), an expose of women in George W. Bush's Cabinet. Flanders was founding director of the Women's Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, Fair's radio program. For more information and to contribute video to GRIT TV go to www.grittv.org.