Whether poor Caucasians are individually racist or not; racism is literally killing them

Poor white Americans, between the ages of 45 and 54, are dying of despair. And racism is to blame, a recently published social science paper observed. This increase in mortality is unique to the United States. No other rich nation has experienced such a upswing in morbidity statistics.

Here's the link to the paper titled, Rising Morbidity and Mortality in mid-life among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century written by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. Published by Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Economics, Princeton University.

Ryan Cooper, from The Week, asks, "What's behind the increase in poor white deaths? Well, they are dying not of disease, but of suicide, chronic alcohol abuse, and especially drug overdoses. As Paul Krugman writes, it resembles "the collapse in Russian life expectancy after the fall of Communism."

Why? Cooper states that "American poverty is increasingly brutal. Male wages at the bottom fifth of the income ladder, for instance, have fallen by over 30 percent since the late 1960s, and inequality has exploded. These days, those in the top 1 percent capture virtually all economic growth."

While other wealthy nations create programs to assist the poor, disabled and elderly, America has become increasingly stingy about funding or creating programs to support economic structures that would benefit the poor. Paul Krugman asserts in the article above that "this picture goes along with declining labor force participation and other indicators of social unraveling. Something terrible is happening to white American society. And it’s a uniquely American phenomenon; you don’t see anything like it in Europe, which means that it’s not about a demoralizing welfare state or any of the other myths so popular in our political discourse."

Why won't America support the development of programs to assist the poor? Author Ryan Cooper concludes that past studies demonstrate that Americans are less likely to support welfare programs because they are racist. In support of his argument, Cooper refers to a book titled, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of our Time  by Ira Katznelson, who asserted that Roosevelt's New Deal was politically acceptable in so far as it excluded blacks.  

Sadly, through a resurgence of political dysfunction, greed and misguided hate, America has returned to an era of ruthless, cruel and unrelenting brutality, that includes punishing our most vulnerable populations, when there is absolutely no viable economic reason to do so.