Cara Anthony
KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony and Emily Kwong, host of NPR’s podcast “Shortwave,” discuss Black households dwelling 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 venture. She discusses the newest analysis on the well being results of racism and violence, together with the rising, controversial area of epigenetics.
Hear the complete podcast episodes Anthony and Kwong reference from “Silence in Sikeston” here. They talk about materials from Episode 1, “Racism Can Make You Sick”; Episode 2, “Hush, Fix Your Face”; and Episode 3, “Trauma Lives in the Body.”
In 1942, Mable Cook was an adolescent. She was standing on her entrance porch when she witnessed the lynching of Cleo Wright.
In the aftermath, Cook obtained recommendation from her father that was supposed to maintain her protected.
“He didn’t want us talking about it,” Cook mentioned. “He told us to forget it.”
More than 80 years later, residents of Sikeston, Missouri, nonetheless discover it troublesome to speak in regards to the lynching.
Conversations with Cook, who was one of many few remaining witnesses of the lynching, launch a dialogue of the well being penalties of racism and violence within the United States. Racial fairness scholar Keisha Bentley-Edwards explains the bodily, psychological, and emotional burdens on Sikeston residents and Black Americans typically.
“Oftentimes, people who experience racial trauma are forced to not acknowledge it,” Bentley-Edwards mentioned. “They’re forced to question whether or not it happened in the first place.”
When Anthony uncovered particulars of a police killing in her family whereas reporting this venture, she unpacked her household’s story with Aiesha Lee, a licensed skilled counselor and an assistant professor at Penn State.
“This pain has compounded over generations,” Lee mentioned. “We’re going to have to deconstruct it or heal it over generations.”
KFF Health News is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is likely one of the core working packages at KFF—an unbiased supply of well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism. Learn extra about KFF.
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