Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-QAnon/CrossFit) is lying about white folks being denied COVID treatment. The reason is terrifying.
February 11, 2022 by Tim Wise
Stop calling it a culture war. That’s not what this is.
And nothing about it is civil, either.
This is a race war, at least in the minds of MAGA nation.
How else can we understand the recent statement by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Cracker Barrel) that only people with “non-white skin” can receive monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID?
Of course, it’s untrue, yet she has delivered this lie without the slightest bit of shame or misgiving.
Before examining the disinformation about COVID “affirmative action,” though, let’s place the accusation in context because only there can such a blatant falsehood begin to make sense.
Consider it alongside the last several years of right-wing commentary and the leading flashpoints of contemporary conservative discourse.
MAGA conservatism thrives on white grievance
What are the things about which the right has made the most noise as of late?
Black football players taking a knee to protest racial injustice;
Black Lives Matter being a movement of “anti-white terrorists” and America haters;
Immigrants from Mexico and various “shithole” countries coming to the U.S. and “taking our jobs” (as opposed to immigrants from places like Norway, which Donald Trump said we need more of);
China using unfair trade practices or deliberately giving us all COVID as part of some devious scheme for world domination;
Crime going up, especially in cities, with a steady focus on violence in Black-identified places like Chicago;
Evidence-free allegations of voter fraud in large Black areas like Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, or votes by undocumented immigrants flipping states for Joe Biden; and, finally,
School textbooks that tell the truth about racism in American history, or any efforts to promote diversity, equity, or inclusion in schools — now all attacked as “Critical Race Theory” and anti-white bigotry.
Ask yourself: what do all these things have in common?
They all involve perceived threats or slights by persons of color towards America generally or whites in particular.
This is the Alpha and Omega of the MAGA movement — white racial resentment and grievance.
That’s all it’s ever been.
Which is why the only real predictor of who took part in the J6 insurrection wasn’t being a Republican or conservative. Instead, it was whether one lived in a community that had seen its white share of the population decline since 2015. That was the only factor consistently correlated with attendance at the Capitol siege — living in a place where you felt your sense of hegemony slipping.
All the right has done for the last few years is push buttons of white racial resentment and grievance…
But because white grievance wasn’t sufficient to re-elect Trump, those for whom it is their sole currency have ramped it up, as with the claims by Greene (R-Steve Bannon’s Colon), about anti-viral treatment for COVID only being available to Black and brown folks.
The implication is that Biden and the Democrats want white people to die and are buying off people of color with meds to secure their votes.
As with allegations of Latino voter fraud, COVID as an Asian bioweapon, brown-skinned Muslims hoping to impose Sharia law, or BLM coming to burn the suburbs, MTG’s claims about antibody treatment are undiluted horseshit.
And horseshit is something Greene (R-Ivermectin) knows a lot about.
What does the FDA’s COVID treatment guidance say about race?
So what are the facts about the Biden administration’s position on COVID treatment? According to a recent FDA guidance, persons with mild to moderate COVID who are at high risk for progression to more severe symptoms can qualify for emergency use of Sotrovimab — an especially effective antibody treatment for Omicron.
And along with key medical indicators, the FDA stipulates that race or ethnic identity can also be considered a high-risk factor to qualify for priority treatment.
Along these lines, New York, Minnesota and Utah have added race and ethnicity to the risk factors they will consider, suggesting they will target those who are not white for such treatments.
But this doesn’t mean that only persons of color can get such therapies.
Any white person whose health status puts them at high risk — those who are older, obese, have kidney disease, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, among other conditions — would also qualify for the high-risk designation, and thus, emergency use of limited anti-virals.
Persons of color qualify for high-risk status because systemic racism and economic inequity have left their communities with disproportionate co-morbidities, elevating their risk of death from COVID. Indeed, this is why they have died at much higher rates than whites throughout the pandemic.
Because of worse health status, even without adding race to the high-risk medical factors, Black and brown folks would disproportionately benefit from any policy steering treatment to those in high-risk categories.
So, one might ask, why explicitly add race to the mix? Why not just apply the high-risk medical factors across the board in a colorblind way?
It’s a reasonable question, but one with an incredibly simple answer: namely, black and brown folks are disproportionately likely to go undiagnosed and untreated for severe health conditions. Whether because of bias or less access to good preventative care, this means persons of color with such conditions are far less likely than white people to realize they have them.
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So, adding race and ethnic identity to the list of risk factors maximizes the chance of getting treatment to the most vulnerable, which is always a key goal of public health policy.
But contrary to Greene’s claim, white people who fall into high-risk groups will be able to access monoclonal antibodies and anti-virals just as readily as anyone else.
There is no medical affirmative action here — just treatment based on actual risk.
And seriously, what kind of racial preference would this be, anyway? To reap its benefits, you first have to contract a virus that might kill you.
It’s like when Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh both claimed Obamacare was reparations for slavery. What kind of reparations requires you to get sick first to get paid?
None of it makes sense, but that’s what MTG and the rest of the modern right-wing would have everyone believe.
Because it’s a great way to make white people angry at Black and brown folks for “taking” something from them once again — to cast themselves as victims.
Not, mind you, victims of the conspiratorial, science-allergic dumbshittery peddled by people like Greene (R-The Rhinestone Mine), but of Black people and the white Democrats who supposedly pander to them.
Racial scapegoating: the perfect political distraction
It would be nice to think such blatant nonsense from the likes of MTG would fail to land and that voters could see such tactics for what they are.
But sadly, this kind of thing has a long history.
Influential white folks convincing less powerful white folks to think their enemies are Black and brown is the oldest play in the playbook of American politics, going back to the colonial period.
It’s tried and true when you want to distract the masses from the fact that you have no real plan to make their lives better.
Racial resentment is a reliable pivot when you have no solutions for economic insecurity, inadequate health care coverage, and unaffordable higher education.
So you cut taxes on the rich while feeding the rest a pity party, convincing them the reason their wallets are lighter isn’t that the distribution of wealth has been skewed to white people who are richer than they are, but because those people — as in, the non-white — are getting all the goodies.
They’re getting the jobs, the housing subsidies, the college slots, the welfare payments, the “Obama phones,” or whatever.
As I said, it’s on page one of the playbook, but however long it’s been around, modern conservatives of the Trumpian variety have perfected it.
And so we end up with people like Greene (R-That Truck Stop Diner on I–24, You Know the One) dialing it up yet again, knowing that if history is any guide, the rubes will fall for it.
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And they will, unless we call it out for what it is, directly and frontally.
It is the David Duke-ification of the Republican Party.
America has two choices in this race war: white nationalism or multiracial democracy.
There is no door three.
Choose.
—
This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.
February 11, 2022 by Tim Wise
Stop calling it a culture war. That’s not what this is.
And nothing about it is civil, either.
This is a race war, at least in the minds of MAGA nation.
How else can we understand the recent statement by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Cracker Barrel) that only people with “non-white skin” can receive monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID?
Of course, it’s untrue, yet she has delivered this lie without the slightest bit of shame or misgiving.
Before examining the disinformation about COVID “affirmative action,” though, let’s place the accusation in context because only there can such a blatant falsehood begin to make sense.
Consider it alongside the last several years of right-wing commentary and the leading flashpoints of contemporary conservative discourse.
MAGA conservatism thrives on white grievance
What are the things about which the right has made the most noise as of late?
Black football players taking a knee to protest racial injustice;
Black Lives Matter being a movement of “anti-white terrorists” and America haters;
Immigrants from Mexico and various “shithole” countries coming to the U.S. and “taking our jobs” (as opposed to immigrants from places like Norway, which Donald Trump said we need more of);
China using unfair trade practices or deliberately giving us all COVID as part of some devious scheme for world domination;
Crime going up, especially in cities, with a steady focus on violence in Black-identified places like Chicago;
Evidence-free allegations of voter fraud in large Black areas like Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, or votes by undocumented immigrants flipping states for Joe Biden; and, finally,
School textbooks that tell the truth about racism in American history, or any efforts to promote diversity, equity, or inclusion in schools — now all attacked as “Critical Race Theory” and anti-white bigotry.
Ask yourself: what do all these things have in common?
They all involve perceived threats or slights by persons of color towards America generally or whites in particular.
This is the Alpha and Omega of the MAGA movement — white racial resentment and grievance.
That’s all it’s ever been.
Which is why the only real predictor of who took part in the J6 insurrection wasn’t being a Republican or conservative. Instead, it was whether one lived in a community that had seen its white share of the population decline since 2015. That was the only factor consistently correlated with attendance at the Capitol siege — living in a place where you felt your sense of hegemony slipping.
All the right has done for the last few years is push buttons of white racial resentment and grievance…
But because white grievance wasn’t sufficient to re-elect Trump, those for whom it is their sole currency have ramped it up, as with the claims by Greene (R-Steve Bannon’s Colon), about anti-viral treatment for COVID only being available to Black and brown folks.
The implication is that Biden and the Democrats want white people to die and are buying off people of color with meds to secure their votes.
As with allegations of Latino voter fraud, COVID as an Asian bioweapon, brown-skinned Muslims hoping to impose Sharia law, or BLM coming to burn the suburbs, MTG’s claims about antibody treatment are undiluted horseshit.
And horseshit is something Greene (R-Ivermectin) knows a lot about.
What does the FDA’s COVID treatment guidance say about race?
So what are the facts about the Biden administration’s position on COVID treatment? According to a recent FDA guidance, persons with mild to moderate COVID who are at high risk for progression to more severe symptoms can qualify for emergency use of Sotrovimab — an especially effective antibody treatment for Omicron.
And along with key medical indicators, the FDA stipulates that race or ethnic identity can also be considered a high-risk factor to qualify for priority treatment.
Along these lines, New York, Minnesota and Utah have added race and ethnicity to the risk factors they will consider, suggesting they will target those who are not white for such treatments.
But this doesn’t mean that only persons of color can get such therapies.
Any white person whose health status puts them at high risk — those who are older, obese, have kidney disease, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, among other conditions — would also qualify for the high-risk designation, and thus, emergency use of limited anti-virals.
Persons of color qualify for high-risk status because systemic racism and economic inequity have left their communities with disproportionate co-morbidities, elevating their risk of death from COVID. Indeed, this is why they have died at much higher rates than whites throughout the pandemic.
Because of worse health status, even without adding race to the high-risk medical factors, Black and brown folks would disproportionately benefit from any policy steering treatment to those in high-risk categories.
So, one might ask, why explicitly add race to the mix? Why not just apply the high-risk medical factors across the board in a colorblind way?
It’s a reasonable question, but one with an incredibly simple answer: namely, black and brown folks are disproportionately likely to go undiagnosed and untreated for severe health conditions. Whether because of bias or less access to good preventative care, this means persons of color with such conditions are far less likely than white people to realize they have them.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
So, adding race and ethnic identity to the list of risk factors maximizes the chance of getting treatment to the most vulnerable, which is always a key goal of public health policy.
But contrary to Greene’s claim, white people who fall into high-risk groups will be able to access monoclonal antibodies and anti-virals just as readily as anyone else.
There is no medical affirmative action here — just treatment based on actual risk.
And seriously, what kind of racial preference would this be, anyway? To reap its benefits, you first have to contract a virus that might kill you.
It’s like when Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh both claimed Obamacare was reparations for slavery. What kind of reparations requires you to get sick first to get paid?
None of it makes sense, but that’s what MTG and the rest of the modern right-wing would have everyone believe.
Because it’s a great way to make white people angry at Black and brown folks for “taking” something from them once again — to cast themselves as victims.
Not, mind you, victims of the conspiratorial, science-allergic dumbshittery peddled by people like Greene (R-The Rhinestone Mine), but of Black people and the white Democrats who supposedly pander to them.
Racial scapegoating: the perfect political distraction
It would be nice to think such blatant nonsense from the likes of MTG would fail to land and that voters could see such tactics for what they are.
But sadly, this kind of thing has a long history.
Influential white folks convincing less powerful white folks to think their enemies are Black and brown is the oldest play in the playbook of American politics, going back to the colonial period.
It’s tried and true when you want to distract the masses from the fact that you have no real plan to make their lives better.
Racial resentment is a reliable pivot when you have no solutions for economic insecurity, inadequate health care coverage, and unaffordable higher education.
So you cut taxes on the rich while feeding the rest a pity party, convincing them the reason their wallets are lighter isn’t that the distribution of wealth has been skewed to white people who are richer than they are, but because those people — as in, the non-white — are getting all the goodies.
They’re getting the jobs, the housing subsidies, the college slots, the welfare payments, the “Obama phones,” or whatever.
As I said, it’s on page one of the playbook, but however long it’s been around, modern conservatives of the Trumpian variety have perfected it.
And so we end up with people like Greene (R-That Truck Stop Diner on I–24, You Know the One) dialing it up yet again, knowing that if history is any guide, the rubes will fall for it.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
And they will, unless we call it out for what it is, directly and frontally.
It is the David Duke-ification of the Republican Party.
America has two choices in this race war: white nationalism or multiracial democracy.
There is no door three.
Choose.
—
This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.
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