Johnathan Metzl explores it a bit in his book Dying of Whiteness[0]. Here's an example of something he described in an interview[1] about the book and his other work:
>Now I will say that some of the individual stories—I mean, one story that jumps out at me was I was doing interviews about the Affordable Care Act, and I was interviewing very, very medically ill white men who really would have benefited—this is in Tennessee, and in other places in the South where they didn’t expand the Medicaid, they didn’t create the competitive insurance marketplaces—and I said like, “Hey, you guys are dying because you don’t have healthcare. Why don’t you get down with the Affordable Care Act? What’s your reason?”
>And I would say a number of people told me things like, one man told me, “There’s no way I’m supporting a system that would benefit,” as he said, “Mexicans and welfare queens,”—like total racist stereotypes. And so, even though he would have benefited—and his guy, ultimately over the three years of interviews, he passed away because he didn’t have medical care—so he was literally willing to die rather than sign up for a program that he thought was gonna benefit immigrants.
You lost the word “universal” in “universal healthcare” in the comment you’re replying to. There are many ways racism impedes the push for universal healthcare. One is the classic fact that it is a welfare program, and that spurs the comments and thoughts about welfare queens and “young bucks.”
When I hear "welfare queen," I think of a black woman. Because I'm racist (sadly).
From that, the racist idea that free services (e.g. universal healthcare) are unduly exploited by black people (or immigrants).
Reagan pretty much popularized the terms ("welfare queen", "strapping young bucks") with racist intent[1]: those were the images he wished to conjure-up in listener's minds, and not a creation of the media. Just as the word "thug" is currently used by certain personalities/networks today.
I didn’t say it was a creation of the Media. I said they use it that way. It’s good to trace it back to Reagan.
What is not so clear is why the person I was responding to thinks it’s their racism that causes them to think of those images, and not just that they have been exposed to Reagan’s imagery through the media.
You write as if one's passive racism and one's past exposure to racist sentiments are entirely separate. I think the former largely reflects the latter.
I don’t think they are entirely separate. I do think that exposure to racist sentiments has a very different effect depending on who you are.
So indeed I think your personal racism is not a simple function of exposure.
I’m sorry you personally have been a victim of racism exposure, and have become a passive racist as a consequence. It is a shame that society has done this to you.
Not OP, but I assume the argument is something to the tune of: healthcare should be universal to make progress, universal healthcare would disproportionally benefit the poor, the poor are disproportionally of color.
