News with Nuance: Oct. 26, 2023
Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..
Dear Readers,
Two weeks ago, I began this newsletter to you from a place of lament and grief, just five days after the deadly Hamas attacks in Israel. I write to you today 14 days later: 14 days of unremitting and ongoing war and violence, from a depth of myopic despair and fear that has subsumed all attempts to make sense of the world since then. Any outcry to somehow atone for so many lost lives, so many of them children and elderly people, seems drowned out by unquenchable rage and violence and fear, amidst a legacy of history shaped by anti-Semitism and racism and sacrifice of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
An ocean away from the Holy Land, in the American Midwest, life has somehow gone on. My youngest child turned 8. We attended flag football games and picked apples in the apple orchard. And other news stories competed for attention with Israel and Gaza. A mass shooter claimed the lives of at least 18 people in Lewiston, Me., at a bowling alley and other locations where families and friends gathered - trying to reclaim this fragile sense of shared community that was so compromised in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our American elected officials argued amongst themselves over who was the purest, or the most loyal, or maybe even the most “Christian” of them all, as the GOP finally came together to elect an inexperienced but resolute Speaker of the House, who went on to claim the mantle of Christian Nationalism in his leadership almost immediately. More on that in the corner on Christian Nationalism below. Climate change continued to threaten life on our planet, and a hurricane ravaged a resort town on the Mexican coast.
Still - I write to you anyway, because I believe sometimes we are called to bear witness - to lament, to fear, to grief, to hope, and to love. I experienced those last two richly on Thursday, as I gathered with church leaders from across Southern Minnesota at Gustavus Adolphus College, to share my research on Christian Nationalism - and also to dive deep into multiple case studies taken from their own communities. I was awed by their willingness to engage, to consider introspection about their own leadership, and to support one another. In the midst of an intimidating and violent world, Thursday was my reminder (and maybe this is yours) that we are not alone, and that you are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12). So, let us run the race that is set before us. Or at least, get to the news … with nuance …
Illustration by Charlotte Gomez, Washington Post
The Headline: STRESS IS WEATHERING OUR BODIES FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Since I first read this article, focusing on the work and research of Arline T. Geronimus, author of the 2023 book “Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society,” I’ve heard other articles and podcasts reference this research and term several times.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m writing this newsletter to you at almost midnight after a full day’s work of writing and research, but I thought it was important to share this work and research with you maybe especially as we’re in the midst of a stressful and anxiety-inducing news cycle (and maybe I’m pushing myself past healthy work habits, too). Geronimus’ work makes clear what many of us have instinctively suspected, yet not had the words or data to back up. Environmental stresses in our lives, especially those involving poverty and prejudice, have a massive impact on our physical health and wellbeing.
I remember thinking of this truism so many times in the past, especially in instances where I myself was fighting for financial security. The idea of mental healthcare or self-care or prescribed rest seemed utterly impossible. There was always more work to be done, always more bills to be paid. And besides, I had swelled the poisonous cultural pill that suggested I didn’t deserve to rest or to take time to care for myself - instead I had to push harder and harder, until maybe some elusive day I would have worked hard enough to deserve to care about myself.
If you aren’t already listening to the Dream podcast, season 3, with host Jane Marie - she has an excellent episode on this same topic this week, where she dives deep into the Black American legend of John Henry, a man who works and struggles so hard that he beats a machine, only to die a day later. Marie talks extensively with both Geronimus and with epidemiologist Sherman James, to examine how American culture over and over again has blamed people for their poverty, insisted they perform superhuman feats to overcome it, and suggested that all those who struggle need to do is just “be more positive.”
A culture that fully understands the societal consequences of its failure to care for one another is a culture that can begin to really heal its wounds, and move toward a more peaceful and loving coexistence. But as long as we insist that cultural sins are merely individual, we’ll remain locked in a cycle of striving, burnout, and death for far too many among us.
Weathering, she said, helps explain the double-edged sword of “high-effort coping.”
Story by Akilah Johnson, Washington Post
The Headline: Forever Friday Night: The haunted true story of my broken football dreams
Dante Stewart is one of my favorite writers and thinkers at the intersection of religion, social issues, culture, and politics in America, and I’ve so appreciated his work, especially as I’ve tried to more clearly articulate the role of racism in white Christian Nationalism.
I probably also so enjoy Dante’s work because he and I share a background that is indelibly shaped by both the pain and glory of sports. I started my journalism career as a sportswriter, and one of the pieces I’m most proud of ever writing came back in 2007, when Sports Illustrated published my article about the neglect of Division I college football players’ academic needs, and the ways that they were too often cast aside after they were no longer seen as physical assets on the field.
Dante’s writing here is that much more visceral and personal than my own, because he personally experienced the glory, loss, pain, and enduring legacy that is high-profile youth, high school, and college football. The role of racism is undeniable in the way that America has long viewed and treated football players, and the enduring legacy of white supremacy when it comes to front office and even coaching roles in the NFL.
It’s clear in this piece that Dante loves football, like so many of us love the purity, the flow, and the camaraderie you can find uniquely in athletics. But Dante also says so much more in the article: about the cost of football, about what we did to football and to the Black men and boys who play it, and - for those of us who are parents to kids who might now want to play football, too - about how we might try and protect our kids without limiting them, or ourselves.
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