Episode #33

Special 3-Part Series:

Domestic Terrorism: Then and Now
Part 3

On today’s episode, Sara and Misasha close out their 3-part series on Birmingham, hate in this country, and why you need to vote in 2020.

Warning: explicit content, not meant for younger ears.

“What we learned growing up in school was that the US was the champion of the poor and the dispossessed.” Misasha

Show Highlights:

Misasha provides a detailed look at an altercation after a minor accident between a white teacher and a black parent in a racially diverse school parking lot in the Upper Darby School District in Philadelphia. The teacher berates the parent and eventually lobs the n-word.
Sara points out that there’s nothing that a black person could say to a white person that is as effective and as insulting as the n-word.
Entitlement plays a huge role in what comes out of your mouth when something doesn’t go your way. There’s a psychology that runs very deep from the time of this country’s founding.
In the recent El Paso mass shooting in which a gunman killed 22 people, he claimed the shooting was in response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas”.
From the moment Donald Trump was a Presidential candidate and he announced in his campaign some warnings about some Mexican immigrants “bringing drugs into the country” and “being rapists”, Latinos have been worried about how such characterizations would affect them as one of the nation’s fastest-growing populations.
A Pew Research Center study this year says that 58% of Hispanic adults say that they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly because of race or ethnicity.
Across racial and ethnic groups, about 2/3 said that it had become more common for people to express racist views since Trump became President.
Researchers say that victims of racism experience negative health outcomes.
One out of six adults will have depression at some time during their life.
In this country, suicide is the second leading cause of death among those aged 10 - 34.
Worldwide, depression is the leading cause of disability.
The total economic burden for depression is estimated to be two hundred and ten billion dollars per year.
35% of adults with depression receive no treatment at all.
Long term depression means an increased risk of heart attack, heart disease, digestive issues, and a decreased immune response.
US-born Hispanics report higher rates for most psychiatric disorders than Hispanic immigrants.
Over 20% of Hispanics are uninsured, compared with 7 1/2 percent of white, non-Hispanic Americans.
The American Psychiatric Association said insurance coverage for Hispanics is likely to be a function of ethnicity, immigration status, and citizenship status.
64% of Americans said that the United States will become a majority non-white nation by 2045. While 80% of Democrats say that the growth is positive, 61% of Republicans say that’s a negative development.
From Adam Serwer’s article, “The seed of Nazism’s ultimate objective—the preservation of a pure white race, uncontaminated by foreign blood—was in fact sown with striking success in the United States. What is judged extremist today was once the consensus of a powerful cadre of the American elite, well-connected men who eagerly seized on a false doctrine of “race suicide” during the immigration scare of the early 20th century. They included wealthy patricians, intellectuals, lawmakers, even several presidents. Perhaps the most important among them was a blue blood with a very impressive mustache, Madison Grant. He was the author of a 1916 book called The Passing of the Great Race, which spread the doctrine of race purity all over the globe.”
Serwer’s article continues, “Grant’s purportedly scientific argument that the exalted “Nordic” race that had founded America was in peril, and all of modern society’s accomplishments along with it, helped catalyze nativist legislators in Congress to pass comprehensive restrictionist immigration policies in the early 1920s. His book went on to become Adolf Hitler’s “bible,” as the führer wrote to tell him.”
The Nazis didn’t understand how committed Americans were to democracy and did not want to buy in to nazi Germany and live under a fascist government.
We can’t ignore that we planted that seed that led to the extermination of so many millions in Europe due to the nazis.
White extremists, both in the United States and abroad, have embraced Grant’s ideology and this isn’t likely to change with the Presidency.
Through the actions we take and what we tell our kids, every day we have the ability to coexist and thrive together. Think about what you say and how you say it. We must be better than our past.