300 years of formal white supremacy hasn’t served whites well, either

September 1, 2023 11:32 AM

Colin Woodard (previously) and the Nationhood Lab have found that "the most impoverished quartile of U.S. counties in Yankeedom (ones where around 30 to 60 percent of children live in poverty) have a higher life expectancy than the least impoverished quartile of U.S. counties (where child poverty ranges from 3 to 15 percent) in the Deep South." They argue that the difference is not explained by race, income, or population density, but by culture and government.
posted by clawsoon (33 comments total)

See "Solidarity Dividend". Which could also be phrased the "Peace Dividend".
posted by eustatic at 12:07 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

A civil rights leader once said that you can't keep a man in the gutter unless you get down there yourself to hold him.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:17 PM on September 1, 2023 [38 favorites]

Where it comes to physical exercise, there's no mention of climate. And that makes a huge difference in how willing people can be to go outside and exert themselves.

My favorite exercise is walking, especially in nature if I can get there. But I refuse to do it if the weather is exceedingly hot and humid (or face-hurty below freezing, or actively raining/snowing). And, well, the South generally is more hot and humid than anywhere else in the US.
posted by Foosnark at 12:25 PM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

I thought the article was excellent. Love this kind of data journalism.
A bit perplexed why AAPI folks were not split out for the racial breakdown, even in Greater Polynesia (!).
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:31 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Where it comes to physical exercise, there's no mention of climate. And that makes a huge difference in how willing people can be to go outside and exert themselves.

I think even this is more cultural than climate related. When I was a kid and would visit my cousins in Karachi, Pakistan (temperature = hot and humid) we would play cricket in the streets, go to the outdoor swimming pool, or play tennis at the courts. And this was in the middle of the day when it was hot. When I was living in Kyoto, Japan, one summer it was above 30C for something like 90 days in a row and it is very humid there too. You'd see people running and playing sports all day long.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:41 PM on September 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

And this effect is imputed to the different levels of racism, if we could further de-bigotize Yankeedom think of how much better life could be.

Foosnark, (attention, sarcasm) I agree racism might not even exist and certainly couldn't be a causal factor, it must be the geographic impossibility of athletics, outdoor hobbies and indoor exercise caused by southern climate. You know, all that snow and ice and wind really lays them up.
posted by AnchoriteOfPalgrave at 12:56 PM on September 1, 2023

Pretty sure climate and humidity don't explain why the Deep South is 5 years behind Hawaii in life expectancy.
posted by ryanrs at 1:00 PM on September 1, 2023 [19 favorites]

I would be interested to see in what ways things like refusing to expand Medicare have ripple effects; fewer hospitals, specialists, GPs? Resulting in even well-off insured white people unable to get enough care because the resources don't exist?
posted by emjaybee at 1:04 PM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

ryanrs, perhaps it's the Spam.

Honestly, for all the years that I have been seeing companies and organizations talk about being "data-driven," actual good analysis is rare. And seeing analysis that questions basic assumptions -- here, the boundaries of the regions, instead of using state lines or U.S. Census areas -- can lead to some really interesting insights.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:06 PM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm surprised they don't mention tobacco usage until the very end, even after they bring up the "Stroke Belt".
posted by credulous at 1:24 PM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I would be interested to see in what ways things like refusing to expand Medicare have ripple effects; fewer hospitals, specialists, GPs?

Yes, yes, and yes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:40 PM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

And from that link, Maine, where poor areas have a pretty good life expectancy has over 80 doctors more per 100k in population than Kentucky. I'm sure medical care in Kentucky's major cities is alright, but in the remote areas? Probably much worse.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:44 PM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

There was a WaPo article on maternal mortality a few days ago and a discussion of what could be done and what has been done in other countries about it. Given the well known statistics about racial disparities there, it was also discussed and I ended up doing some (depressing) research about the effects of socialized healthcare on these outcomes. Turns out, there is still a racial disparity in first world nations where they deign to document it. As a black person, it left me curious about if there are any set of proven conditions where aggregate black health thrives.
posted by Selena777 at 1:59 PM on September 1, 2023 [19 favorites]

Foosnark, (attention, sarcasm) I agree racism might not even exist

I'm trying to find a way to respond to this and it's just making me tired. But let me be absolutely clear:

Racism is absolutely the goddamned problem. The culture of white supremacy where white people are willing to punish themselves as long as it means black people suffer disproportionately more than they do.

I was just saying, it is hotter and more humid in the South than the rest of the US. If people in the South get less exercise than in the rest of the US, there might be a bit of correlation there. Granted, neither I nor the article are claiming that exercise is the biggest factor in the life expectancy gap.

It's not like people in the South never go outdoors because it's too hot, either. I grew up in Florida, and people do things outdoors there. Even me when I was a kid, though it didn't stop me from growing up obese. I'm just saying that for me personally, there is a strong correlation between temperature and willingness to exercise, and if I moved back to the South I would definitely get less exercise.
posted by Foosnark at 2:13 PM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

Racism is one part of a tangle of problems, as reading the article, rather than one point from the article pulled out for the post title, would support. If that comment is making you tired, it’s because it’s a tiresome and uncalled-for jab.
posted by atoxyl at 2:44 PM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's not like people in the South never go outdoors because it's too hot, either.

The south is not uniformly hot or muggy. Where did this idea come from? The only place in the US that is uniformly warm is southern California, but it's not muggy. The south is very comfortable in temperature outside of summer. So that's 8-9 months a year that the weather is fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:45 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised they don't mention tobacco usage until the very end, even after they bring up the "Stroke Belt".

Thé South is also the cancer belt for a variety of reasons including tobacco and good Christian mommas refusing to vaccinate their kids for HPV. But why are people more that kind of Christian down here? (I live in the South.) Part of it is that post-segregation, racist whites put their kids in private religious schools that were exempt from desegregation. And of course tobacco farming has its own racist roots.
posted by joannemerriam at 3:13 PM on September 1, 2023 [13 favorites]

And also environmental racism creating “cancer alley” neighborhoods.
posted by eviemath at 3:34 PM on September 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

This analysis isn’t that great? For an argument about US political development it ignores the basic point that US counties ARE NOT EQUIVALENT UNITS ACROSS THE US! does this analysis hold for census tracts or block groups? I doubt it.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:21 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

You think different county sizes would account for 5+ years of life expectancy? I feel like people do not appreciate how large a gap that is.
posted by ryanrs at 6:51 PM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

"The results show enormous gaps between the regions that don’t go away when you parse by race, income, education, urbanization or access to quality medical care. They amount to a rebuke to generations of elected officials in the Deep South, Greater Appalachia and New France — most of whom have been Republican in recent decades — who have resisted investing tax dollars in public goods and health programs."

As an Australian, I don't know all the nuances here. But this seems the intended outcome of the Republican's Southern Strategy: get poor white people to vote against their own economic interests by appealing to their racism.

It was the same strategy behind the Brexit campaign, and the all the Stop the Boats nonsense from Australia's previous conservative government.
posted by davidwitteveen at 6:53 PM on September 1, 2023 [17 favorites]

I spent a good part of this past spring working on a show (which I'm now informed should be premiering in the next week, I guess?) about "Blue Zones," places where there is a significantly above-average number of centenarians, and what might contribute to that. I don't know how much stock to put into anything that the show is saying, but one thing that stuck in my head from working on the series was how places where people tend to live a long time have their own ways of keeping tight-knit family and friend groups, helping one another not just emotionally but financially as well.

I know that in the Deep South, churches play this role to a large degree, and I don't want to disrespect that role. But looking at this I have to wonder how much a genuine social safety net makes a massive difference in studies like this.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:54 PM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Every time the internet discovers a research paper (or self-promotional book except turned article in this case) demonstrating racism and it's ill effects, a parade of "good" white people patiently explain to everyone in the comments how some elaborate statistical or experimental design factor or other hidden variable totally explains away the effect without racism. So yes, I take jabs at them.

I mean, the southern tip of Florida has 4.8 more years of longevity... what, did someone leave the door open with the air-condititioning on? Maybe a Jane Fonda work out tape is running in a loop and encouraging physical activity in just that one location. Look, geography and climate do influence (but not determine) many societal things, but so does racism, and it's a little tiring to have to constantly swat down "but maybe Southerner's are different because their fast food chains have fewer hyphens and are thus easier to remember and thus more fast food is consumed and that's why they die 5 years earlier, it's totally not racism!" type excuse making.

Ok, i've beaten this dead horse, time to find some other thread to rant into the void.
posted by AnchoriteOfPalgrave at 11:01 PM on September 1, 2023 [18 favorites]

No I’m saying that the composition of counties varies across the US—-think of gerrymandering. The way they are drawn and what they do and do not include varies substantially across the country. They’re almost nonexistent as political entities in New England, and have varying levels of power elsewhere. There’s a thing called “aggregation bias” in spatial statistics which can have huge effects. It would be very easy to do this analysis at lower units of analysis——does the effect hold? Why or why not?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:17 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

If the analysis is so easy, do it yourself. If not, well, perhaps it isn’t so easy? This take is analytical whataboutism.
posted by apathy at 5:01 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Navelgazer: I know that in the Deep South, churches play this role to a large degree, and I don't want to disrespect that role. But looking at this I have to wonder how much a genuine social safety net makes a massive difference in studies like this.

When I think about the culture of slavery and its effect on white people, I think of Kenny Rogers' Coward of the County. A culture where the ability to demean, humiliate and abuse other people is a source of legitimacy and respect - as is the case with slavery - doesn't seem to be very good at producing a genuine social safety net.
posted by clawsoon at 5:09 AM on September 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

If the analysis is so easy, do it yourself. If not, well, perhaps it isn’t so easy? This take is analytical whataboutism

I have a PhD in the social sciences and have published over a dozen research articles myself, most of them on US politics. This is called science and this is part of how we do it—-interrogate the methods people use to study things.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:34 AM on September 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

The CDC makes data on US life expectancy by census tract available. The map is pretty clear that the effect doesn’t go away if you aggregate by something other than county.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:59 PM on September 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

The CDC makes data on US life expectancy by census tract available. The map is pretty clear that the effect doesn’t go away if you aggregate by something other than county.

It'd be interesting to see if the effect still holds, as per the FPP, when the most impoverished "Yankee" tracts are compared to the least impoverished "Deep South" tracts.
posted by clawsoon at 1:27 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s the most impoverished quartile, not individual census tracts, so just based on that map I think it holds - the red yankeedom census tracts don’t look like they make up a quarter of the tracts, and vice versa for blue in the Deep South. But I don’t have the ability to actually add them up on my phone.
posted by joannemerriam at 2:10 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can't find it but this was also done between income levels for the US and the UK. Turns out the poorest section of the UK has life expectancies that hover around the 40-50% mark in the US.

It's really wild how the US wealth is a basically just a Big Top Line Number and everything else that actually matters has rusted away
posted by Slackermagee at 3:59 PM on September 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

Infant and maternal death rates are also super high for a wealthy, developed country. The regional breakdown probably mirrors these life expectancy trends (just guessing).
posted by ryanrs at 4:36 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's really wild how the US wealth is a basically just a Big Top Line Number and everything else that actually matters has rusted away

QFT
posted by allthinky at 4:16 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]