KFF Well being Information Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony and Emily Kwong, host of NPR’s podcast “Shortwave,” speak about Black households residing within the aftermath of lynchings and police killings of their communities. Anthony shares her southeastern Missouri-based reporting from “Silence in Sikeston,” a documentary movie, podcast, and print reporting undertaking. She discusses the most recent analysis on the well being results of racism and violence, together with the rising, controversial discipline of epigenetics.
Hear the total podcast episodes Anthony and Kwong reference from “Silence in Sikeston” right here. They focus on materials from Episode 1, “Racism Can Make You Sick”; Episode 2, “Hush, Repair Your Face”; and Episode 3, “Trauma Lives within the Physique.”
In 1942, Mable Cook dinner was an adolescent. She was standing on her entrance porch when she witnessed the lynching of Cleo Wright.
Within the aftermath, Cook dinner acquired recommendation from her father that was supposed to maintain her protected.
“He didn’t need us speaking about it,” Cook dinner stated. “He informed us to overlook it.”
Greater than 80 years later, residents of Sikeston, Missouri, nonetheless discover it tough to speak in regards to the lynching.
Conversations with Cook dinner, who was one of many few remaining witnesses of the lynching, launch a dialogue of the well being penalties of racism and violence in the US. Racial fairness scholar Keisha Bentley-Edwards explains the bodily, psychological, and emotional burdens on Sikeston residents and Black Individuals typically.
“Oftentimes, individuals who expertise racial trauma are pressured to not acknowledge it,” Bentley-Edwards stated. “They’re pressured to query whether or not or not it occurred within the first place.”
When Anthony uncovered particulars of a police killing in her circle of relatives whereas reporting this undertaking, she unpacked her household’s story with Aiesha Lee, a licensed skilled counselor and an assistant professor at Penn State.
“This ache has compounded over generations,” Lee stated. “We’re going to should deconstruct it or heal it over generations.”
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