White people’s life expectancy in the United States is decreasing. At one time, white people could be expected to have the highest life expectancy by a wide margin, but that lead is getting narrower and narrower.
The contributing factors are drug overdoses, alcoholism, liver disease, suicides, obesity, growing economic uncertainty, job polarization, restricted access to healthcare, refusal to get vaccinated due to their political identity, and loneliness.
White people’s life expectancy rate has peaked even if many of them are still the biggest beneficiaries of wealth, health care services, and many other privileges that come with being born white.
The deaths of despair, is not about real loses in their status and privileges, but on the perceived loss of their status in society.
The perception of loss is enough to create sufficient anxiety to decrease their life expectancy. The perception of loss undermines all the social privileges and economic advantages they enjoy.
The insurrection of January 6 was sobering example of how dangerous, white supremacist can become just on perceiving the loss their status and privilege. They stormed the capital to overthrow a legitimate elected president. They were willing to risk their own lives (and thus decreasing their life expectancy) in order to maintain the status quo, in order to support a tyrannical government which supported white supremacy.
The election of a black president, Barack Obama, and of a mixed raced vice president, Kamala Harris, are the ultimate symbols of status change. Many white people hated Obama, not because of his policies but because of the colour of his skin.
In a multicultural society such as that of of the United States, there will be more changes to come. Demographic changes lead us to believe that the white majority will become a minority in one or two decades. Immigration from countries other that white Europe and a lower fertility rate of white women is the major cause of the demographic changes.
At first, white people will resist and there might be other iterations of racist Donald Trump who will lead the resistance, but just as at one time politicians on the right resisted the legalization of cannabis, and gay marriage, and later accepted it as part of life in the U.S. White supremacist will have no choice but to accept that other races can have equal status.
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