‘Dear Culture’ podcast tackles two Americas, two pandemics
Hosts Shana Pinnock and Gerren Ketih Gaynor are asking this week: 'Dear Culture, is COVID-19's impact on the Black community proof that our nation is living in two Americas?'
This week, the Dear Culture podcast is taking the time to understand our national predicament. From the racial pandemic to the health pandemic, our country appears to be split in two. Now more than ever, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 Stanford University speech rings true throughout this country.
Hosts Shana Pinnock and Gerren Keith Gaynor are asking this week: “Dear Culture, is COVID-19’s impact on the Black community proof that our nation is living in two Americas?”
“[Racism] is exhausting, but look at what we have to deal with,” says Pinnock. “March 11 is going to mark the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization officially declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic. Coincidentally, March 13 marks the one-year anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s murder at the hands of law enforcement.”
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The fact that our communities are mourning and dealing with the double traumas of a health and racial pandemic is unsurprising. The impact of both crises can be a lot handle, both emotionally and mentally.
“The data shows Black people are dying much faster than any other racial group,” adds Gaynor.
It shouldn’t take Black death for the rest of America to realize the disproportionate effects of health and policing in this country, continues Gaynor. Black people have to deal with “general conclusions” of what doctors and police officers think of our communities, and often those “thoughts” are racially biased and can be fatal sometimes.
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Black people advocating for ourselves “has not been enough,” says Gaynor, explaining that we need more allies to speak up on our behalf and share the pattern of inequity.
“God gives you the strength to endure, and do the work to hold these institutions accountable,” says Gaynor.
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