Jonathan M. Metzl
Antiwhite author Jonathan M. Metzl attempts to pathologize White Americans in conservative states by portraying them as ruining their own health and longevity because racial resentment and Whiteness shape their votes—the core of Dying of Whiteness, advanced as a physician’s diagnosis of society rather than as politics alone. Psychiatrist; professor at Vanderbilt University.
This page summarizes Metzl's public role and the central claims of his best-known book for readers tracking arguments that pathologize White Americans and their political choices.
Early life and family
Jonathan Michel Metzl was born December 12, 1964, in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was raised in a Jewish family. His father, Dr. Kurt Metzl, was a pediatrician in Kansas City; his mother, Marilyn Metzl, worked as a psychoanalyst. He has three brothers; two are physicians.
Kurt Metzl was born in Austria in 1935. During World War II he left Austria with his parents for Switzerland, where the family was interned. After the war they immigrated to the United States; HIAS sent them by train to Chicago, and from there they traveled to Kansas City, where Jewish Family Services housed them with other families. Jonathan Metzl's paternal grandparents operated a kosher butcher shop on Troost Avenue in Kansas City.
Education and career
Metzl earned bachelor's degrees in biology and English literature and his MD from the University of Missouri–Kansas City; he completed psychiatry residency at Stanford University, where he also earned a master's degree in poetry (humanities/poetics). He received his PhD in American studies (American culture) from the University of Michigan in 2001. He teaches and researches at the intersection of medicine, politics, and culture, and his work often interprets health outcomes and policy preferences through race, class, and region—particularly the American South and Midwest.
Dying of Whiteness
The book argues that many White voters in conservative-leaning states support policies—such as opposition to Medicaid expansion, loose gun laws, and cuts to education and social spending—that, on Metzl's account, measurably worsen health and life prospects for White residents of those same states. He attributes that pattern in large part to "racial resentment" and to investments in a racialized political identity he links to Whiteness.
The title uses "Whiteness" not as a biological category but as a sociological framing of identity and loyalty. Critics of the work from a pro-equality or colorblind perspective often argue that this framing treats ordinary conservative or regional politics as symptoms of racial pathology, and White voters as acting against their interests because of racial animus—a narrative they see as dismissive and morally loaded.
Themes relevant to antiwhiteness
- Centers "Whiteness" as an explanatory concept for harmful collective behavior, including voting and policy support.
- Connects White identity and "racial resentment" to negative health outcomes, inviting readers to view those identities and attitudes as socially toxic.
- Received wide media attention, helping normalize academic and popular discourse that treats White political majorities in certain regions as a public-health problem.
Further reading
- Metzl, Jonathan M. Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland. New York: Basic Books, 2019.
- Vanderbilt University faculty profile (current affiliation and publications): as.vanderbilt.edu/sociology/bio/jonathan-metzl
- Biographical overview (birth, family, education): Wikipedia: Jonathan Metzl
- Kansas City Jewish Chronicle on Dr. Kurt Metzl (Austria, Switzerland, immigration route, Kansas City): kcjc.com, 2017.