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A BI-WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
BY SAM WHITE
12 May 2021
Issue 31


What is happening in Israel and Palestine?
I am deeply pained by what I am reading and seeing in Israel and Palestine. I have wanted to cry this week thinking about everything. I wish I could snap my fingers and fix and all the ways in which our political discourse is defunct. As an American Jew, I am disgusted by the antisemitism I have faced my entire life, and I remain proud of my Jewish heritage including but not limited to my being a descendent of Holocaust and pogrom survivors. Simultaneously, I am disgusted by the violence perpetrated by the Israeli government in the supposed name of my safety as a Jew, and I remain frustrated by the harassment I have received at times from within the Jewish community for questioning the status quo. These two feelings are not mutually exclusive. To me, they are, in fact, mutually dependent. I have written about my relationship to Israel as a Jewish person, and I have written about equity and justice for Palestinians. I will continue to stand up for what is right, especially when it is difficult. I do honor to my family and my community by staying steadfast in my values guided not by convenience and tribalism but by the dignity and human rights of all people.

For more information on what is happening in East Jerusalem and Israel/Palestine at large, here's a good IG post, and I will continue to curate reliable news on my social media (primarily Twitter).

Under the Radar

The news is beyond hectic, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by it all. Under The Radar highlights a new story that isn't getting enough attention. This won't be what's trending it'll be what should be trending.

Honest Health Truths I Wish I Knew Earlier

With summer around the corner and kinda sorta coming out of a pandemic, I've started to see more and more discourse about getting summer bodies ready. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with setting, achieving, and being proud of fitness goals, but there is still so much misinformation about healthy living. So much of it contributes to people feeling like there is something wrong with them that must be fixed to be healthy and feel good about themselves.

Joe Holder is a man of many trades — from fitness to nutrition to entrepreneurship — and that is, in part, because he doesn't study the fields in a vacuum. He has put together 8 tips that offer a more productive and honest framework for what it means to be healthy and how to live as such. No matter where you feel you fall in the world of health and wellness, these reminders are necessary.

#SWOsound

For years, I curated playlists every month on SoundCloud, but all good things come to an end. Well, #SWOsound is back. Enjoy the vibes.
For non-Spotify users, here's the archive.

Listen on Spotify

  • Waves of Blue | Majid Jordan
  • COUNT ON ME | BROCKHAMPTON
  • Worth It | Amber Mark
  • Black And White | Nasty C (feat. Ari Lennox)
  • Take Care of You | Charlotte Day Wilson (feat. Syd)
What I've got on repeat: everything Sonder/Brent Faiyaz, soothe playlist on Spotify by Cory Townes, and H.E.R.'s self-titled project from 2017

Random Recommendation

Every newsletter, I'll make a recommendation for something I think is worth your time. It could be a movie, a book, an album, a specific episode of a show, or even a must eat food. Visit the Archive to see them all.

Must Watch Docuseries

What: Hip Hop Uncovered
Who: Some of the greatest & most influential folks in Hip Hop history: from Bimmy, Deb Antney, Big U, Trick Trick, Dr. Dre, Haitian Jack, and more
Where: Hulu
Why: I am very grateful for journalistic deep dives into Hip Hop like this docuseries. Despite being a global force, Hip Hop is still a young art form and continues to face racism in the way it's reported on and studied. As my friend Marc likes to say, "these OG's are finally getting old enough and safe enough to feel like they can tell more of their stories." Marc is right, and I would add they are able (more and more but still not enough) to tell their stories on their terms.

While I was watching, three things stayed on my mind. First, it is impossible to understand what it means to be American without understanding the Black American experience. Second, there is no art form in modern world history that has been as transformative and powerful — and over such a short period of time — as American Hip Hop, driven by Blackness and Black people. Third, I'm really glad these old heads can get their flowers, but I'm sad knowing how many more of them should have made it this far alive.

Bonus: my favorite quote from the whole series comes from Deb Antney when she says "I'm not proud of some of the things I've done, but I am no longer ashamed of them." Amen.


Cost: You know the deal, find a login 😂

More Than a Tweet

Nuance matters. While social media can be a powerful tool to educate, discuss, and otherwise engage with folks, it isn't the only tool. Each newsletter, I'll share my perspective on a topic that could use a bit more than a tweet.

Re: The Fight Against Post-Truthism


In 1992, a playwright named Steve Tesich coined the term “post-truth” in his A Government of Lies essay for The Nation. Tesich wrote about the devolution of truth in American politics, and he traced the phenomenon back to the Watergate scandal of 1972. He singles out Watergate as an origin story of sorts:

The revelations that President Nixon and members of his Cabinet were a bunch of cheap crooks rightly sickened and disgusted the nation. But truth prevailed and a once-again proud nation proudly patted itself on the back; despite the crimes committed in the highest office in our land, our system of government worked. Democracy triumphed.

But in the wake of that triumph something totally unforeseen occurred. Either because the Watergate revelations were so wrenching and followed on the heels of the war in Vietnam, which was replete with crimes and revelations of its own, or because Nixon was so quickly pardoned, we began to shy away from the truth. We came to equate truth with bad news, and we didn’t want bad news anymore, no matter how true or vital to our health as a nation. We looked to our government to protect us from the truth.


He tracks how political scandals after Watergate seemed devoid of consequences and argues Watergate set a precedent from which we have not recovered. It is safe to say he was right in 1992, and he would be right today. After Watergate, there was the Iran Contra Affair in which President Reagan personally directed the highest echelons of the national security apparatus to illegally sell arms to the terrorist government of Iran and use the profits to illegally fund a terroristic war against the government of Nicaragua. There were no consequences. Reagan lied with impunity. Then, there was the First Gulf War, during which the press were radically restricted in what they were allowed to report that it made it even easier for the government to lie, lie, lie.

Tesich closed his essay with this:

We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way, we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world.

Tesich’s words ring true today in so many ways. The focus of his argument was the relationship between the government and the people, but it is time to expand the “post-truth” reality he describes to include the relationship between journalism and the people who consume it. We are living in an era of journalism that is struggling mightily to function. The difficulties journalism faces as an industry and as a profession were not exclusive to the Trump Administration. Yes, Trump introduced a volume of lies that were a sharp increase from what was conventionally accepted in American politics previously. However, the core issue of how to navigate a political landscape predicated on abject and unapologetic lying was there before Trump, and it remains with us after Trump.

In ways small and large, American journalism has adapted to the “post-truth” desires of the people and the “post-truth” lies of those in power by fabricating its own reality. For the government, it is about hiding the truth. For the people, it is about hiding from the truth. And now, for journalists, it is about a neutrality of journalism that does not exist. So often, journalists and those critiquing journalists demand “unbiased” news to serve as a “neutral” voice in the discourse. The problem is such a voice is impossible. It is impossible anytime, but especially now.

A perfect example of this problem is the selective use of the passive voice to report the news. When it is a person or an institution of power doing something bad, it is reported in the passive voice to remove the agency from the person taking action. Just recently, police shot and killed a 3-year-old boy in Mississippi. Here is the headline, though:

 


One could argue that headlines are short and do not offer much room for thorough context and linguistic shortcuts are unavoidable. But that is just not true. First, the headlines do not use the passive voice when the shooter is not the police. Second, even in the body of the article, it is a constant passive voice and stenography of what the police say and how they want to frame it.

A baby boy died from injuries…
Smith was fatally shot…
The child was shot once…
As the suspect exited the vehicle, shots were fired…
Medical attention was given…
The juvenile did receive injuries…


The baby boy should not be the subject of the sentence. He did not take it upon himself to die. He was killed. His father was shot? "Police shot his father" would be more accurate. “Shots were fired.” The guns did not shoot themselves; who did the shooting? Medical attention was given by whom? After how long? The juvenile, aka the baby, did not receive injuries. The police injured him. 

Furthermore, every single paragraph in the article uses the police as the source of information with no secondary sourcing or verification.

… authorities said Tuesday.
… officials said.
… Biloxi police Maj. Christopher De Back said in a statement.
… according to a spokeswoman for Harrison County Coroner Brian Switzer.
The East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office said…
… a sheriff's spokeswoman said.
… according to De Back's statement.
… De Back said.


Literally every single paragraph is simply a regurgitation of the police account of the incident. This is commonplace and only one relatively small example of the fabricated “neutrality” of journalism in the 21st century. There are countless others. Democrats are lambasted for not being bipartisan. Meanwhile, Republicans literally repeat that their only legislative priority is opposing anything and everything the Democratic majority puts forth.

In the name of neutrality, the positions of “both sides” are presented on equal footing. The both-sides-ism is rampant across mainstream news outlets and across issue areas. Both-sides-ism is the failed journalistic response to a post-truth political landscape.

There are more broad manifestations of journalism’s struggle to distinguish truth from fiction. Black and non-Black journalists of color are regularly questioned in their ability to produce “unbiased” journalism on issues even tangentially related to race. All the while, it is exactly their experience as Black and non-Black people of color that enhances their ability to understand issues of race and racism in ways white people are not so suited. Women journalists face similar gender-based critiques in the name of neutrality that are fundamentally steeped in discrimination. It is precisely women’s gendered experience that offers invaluable insight into the experiences of those who do not identify as men.

As always, we must remind ourselves that while there are obvious and plentiful examples of this problem in the age of Trump, it is not a phenomenon created by Trump. Like everything about Trump, he is a symptom of our ills, not the disease itself.

What we are dealing with is gaslighting and hypocrisy, simple and pure. I am going to baselessly accuse others of exactly that which I am guilty of myself. And it goes even further. If you identify my behavior as full of lies and hypocrisy, I will baselessly accuse you of discrimination against me as I continue to discriminate against you. It is, quite literally, the “I am rubber and you are glue” adage of our childhoods – except it is tearing at the fabric of our society.

It would be misguided to see all these instances of post-truth and both-sides-ism and gaslighting and manipulative passive voice as simply mistakes. They are not just errors made by imperfect people. They are ripple effects of a system that was never equitable and has been dramatically eroded even as certain facets of the system have been improved. These two truths exist together, and that is where our opportunity lies.

We do not have to accept the post-truth and both-sides-ism fabrication that those before us did. We are under no obligation to be complacent with the flawed systems that have been passed down to us. On one hand, we can, as consumers of information, take just a little bit more time to process that information. Where is this information coming from? From whose perspective is it? How does their experience shape their perspective? Whose voice is being left out? What assumptions are we being asked to accept?

None of us can perfectly navigate the massive systems of politics and the news that expressly seeks to obfuscate the truth and replace it with something incongruent with reality. However, we can strive to resist it better tomorrow than we did today. Furthermore, we can push back on the ideas that seek to erode our ability to discern truth from fiction. We can reject presentations of reality that offer equal footing to every opinion for the sake of impartiality. We can refuse the premise that perfect neutrality is unto itself a goal, especially when it is used as a shield from critique.

Some folks argue that this leads to a slippery slope wherein we turn into the fabricators ourselves. However, the argument is not to exchange one set of lies for another and switch roles with those behaving above reproach. This is the same strawman created by those who act as if combating police violence against Black people is advocating for police violence against White people. No. I do not want the police to treat white people as they treat Black people. I want the police to stop killing people. Period.

Similarly, I do not want those with whom I agree to have license to fabricate a post-truth reality nor do I want them to evade critique with hypocritical deflection. I want us to engage with the world free of the fear that the truth is too uncomfortable to deal with. Whether the issue is educating ourselves about the vestiges of slavery or dealing with the police killing a baby, we can only live post-truth for so long.



As always, be you be great.

Special Section:
COVID Information

Until further notice, I'll include these always useful (and regularly updated) resources for information and advice about the COVID pandemic:
CDC, WHO, NPRHarvard Medical FAQs

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work.

To add your recommendations for any category, let me know on Instagram or Twitter using @samwhiteout and #BYBG.

For questions, concerns, or other inquiries: 
info@samwhiteout.com

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