Being an American is a lot more difficult than it should be. That’s especially perplexing when one realizes that we live in the greatest country in the…
Sorry, I dissolved into a maniacal laughing fit before I could finish that last sentence. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
In any case, I recently wrote about how exhausting it is to be Latino or Black in the USA. To complete my trilogy of terror, I will focus on White people. After all, if White people are having issues, the country is really in a downward spiral.
Perhaps you’ve heard that studies show that White people are more prone to “deaths of despair.” Research has shown that White people are “dying at unprecedented rates—killing themselves, quickly or slowly—from drugs, alcohol and suicide, causes of death shown to be spiking for this demographic.”
This ghoulish trend is most prevalent in rural areas—you know, those wholesome places that constitute the “real America,” and where nothing bad ever happens.
Except in reality, New York City is “a lot safer than small-town America.” But we’ll ignore that inconvenient fact for now.
It’s important to note that “midlife mortality is still significantly lower for White Americans than for Black and Native Americans.” But the fact is that White people are dying off faster and in more gruesome ways than they used to.
Overall, it is statistically, culturally, socially, and politically better to be White than any other ethnicity in America. That will likely remain true for the foreseeable future.
But White people are struggling more, and this is a key reason why racism is on the rise. It is a factor in the weird craving of many White people for the 1950s, when they or their parents were unquestionably in charge and looking forward to a limitless future.
White people who are suffering, and there are many of them, often work for a solution within themselves, their community, or their government. But many others are content to blame ethnic minorities, immigrants, gay people, trans people (the latest boogeyman), urban “elites” or really anyone who is different or who isn’t in their exact predicament.
In that way, their problems become all of our problems.
