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A BI-WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
BY SAM WHITE
2 September 2020
Volume 1 Issue 13

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.

The Trump Administration Is Trying to Sabotage the Census

The census is not an exciting topic. It's not attention-grabbing. It's boring! A short questionnaire about your basic personal information and living situation is hardly gripping. But it is so important. Like holy fucking shit important. Sorry for cussing so much at 10 am, but seriously. The census determines how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided amongst the states, which leads to how districts are drawn up (learn more about gerrymandering here), which leads to what communities are represented in Congress. It also determines how the federal budget -- 4,790,000,000,000 dollars -- is distributed. It's a big fucking deal.

Republicans don't want you to fill out the census. The lower the participation rate, the heavier the data skews wealthy and white, which means the communities most likely to suffer from inaccurate census data are the already financially marginalized folks. So, fill out the census. Make sure that for every household you know, someone has filled it out. It's easy, safe (even for undocumented folks), and MASSIVELY consequential for equitable governance.

#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

  • Sleepless Nights | Terrace Martin (feat. Kamasi Washington, Phoelix, 9th Wonder, & Robert Glasper)
  • Like Sand | Marie Dahlstrom (feat. Beau Diako)
  • Saving All My Love | Brandy
  • Rari | Octavian (feat. Future)
  • Kobe Bryant | Lil Wayne

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 Movie

What: Palm Springs
Who: Starring Andy Samberg
Where: Hulu
Why: Ok so I can't tell you what the movie is about. Trust me, it's better that way. It's not some creepy, weirdo, disturbing storyline, though, so no need to worry. Plus, you trust me. (Right?) All I'll say about the story itself is that it's a modernized version of a movie I practically grew up with and love re-watching to this day. Palm Springs has been added to the list of movies that I can watch basically anytime anywhere and be perfectly content.

While I can't reveal too much else, what I can tell you is that it's clever and funny and poignant and certainly doesn't take itself too seriously. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are a lovely pair. They each have some quirks, and they complement each other nicely. Honestly, just go watch it. Thank me later. Enjoy!

Cost: Your friend's Hulu 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: Why We Desperately Need to Grieve Better


This country is not good at dealing with death. The national culture operates at a pace far too fast and with an emphasis on working hard far too stringent for healthy mourning and grieving. Even a cursory understanding of how humans cope with loss reveals that it is a process, and, like any process, you cannot skip steps. The problem is that Americans, for the most part, aren’t given the time and space to work their way through that process. I am frankly not even sure that, given the time and space to do so, people would know where to begin. It is a foreign concept for most of us. The result is a tragic and failed compartmentalization that complicates and prolongs the inevitable and already difficult enough process of grieving, which none of us are too strong or uncaring to circumvent.

Over the past six months, this truth about our society’s reticence to mourn has been laid bare by the pandemic. Since coronavirus reached us, over 180,000 people have died. That feels like just a regular sentence to write these days. But sit with it for just a moment. One hundred and eighty thousand people… and almost one thousand more every day. That is death at a scale and rate beyond anything this nation has experienced since the Civil War. We have no collective memory of any comparable loss of life.

That is over 60 times more than 9/11.
Over 3 times more than Vietnam War.
Over 4 times more than die every year in car accidents.
Over 9 times more than die every year by homicide.

It is an astonishing and paralyzing figure.

There have also been what feels like a higher than normal number of celebrity deaths, most notably with the loss of Kobe Bryant and Chadwick Boseman, though there have been many other giants lost. It has been utterly overwhelming. Even those of us who have not lost a loved one this year are forced to reckon with the deathly reality of this year, and we are not even in the final quarter. Yet, there has been no real national mourning. There has been no opportunity to sit with and process the loss – both on the national scale and on the individual level – that we cannot escape.

Of course, the Trump Administration’s refusal to do anything of productive substance to reign in the pandemic cannot be overstated. It has not, though, created the problem this country has with death. It has exacerbated it and shown us what we have been doing all along. Our society’s approach to death never goes deeper than simply fearing it for ourselves and for our loved ones. We operate strictly from a place of fear, never moving beyond that fear and never reckoning with what we can do to control that fear. We do not truly honor those we have lost or thoughtfully reflect on what, as a society, we can do to prevent further loss. We do not do it regarding any of the crises we face: cancer, climate change, police violence, addiction, suicide, gun violence…

Mass shootings in the U.S. serve as perhaps the ultimate deeply disturbing proof of our distinctly American refusal to deal with death. In Las Vegas, 58 people were murdered and 412 sustained injuries from gunfire. In Orlando, 49 people were murdered for being LGBTQ. At Virginia Tech University, 32 people were shot and killed. And finally, there’s Sandy Hook. The shooter murdered 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 years old and 6 adults. Remarkably little has changed in this country regarding gun policy. There has been a noticeable shift in the public’s support for gun control – due in large part to high school activists from across the country, including but not limited to the March for Our Lives – but the risk of mass shootings has remained largely unchanged.

This is not normal. In a normal country, the story of 20 small children being gunned down would have absolutely forced a reckoning over gun violence, and the nation’s top mission would have instantly become the prevention of such horrific tragedies from occurring ever again. In fact, many people have wisely pointed out that if 20 white children being shot to death in a white suburb would not bring about a national reckoning in this country, then nothing would. They may well be right. While I acknowledge that there are many factors that play into why the scores of mass shootings in this country have not had the impact that they should have had, I absolutely believe that part of it is a refusal to actually, truly, genuinely mourn the victims. They cannot be fully memorialized and their legacies cannot be honored without first grieving the losses themselves.

To mourn is to accept the reality of death, navigate through the pain and sadness death brings, and emerge on the other side of grief with the ability to honor the legacy of the dead and find joy in their memory. There are sub-cultures in this country – usually non-White and/or non-Christian ones – that understand death as a natural part of human existence and pass down healthy approaches to dealing with it. Jazz funerals in New Orleans are vibrant celebrations of the life lived, and they make literal and metaphorical space for individual and community mourning. In the Jewish tradition, we say “May their memory be a blessing” looking to the other side of grief for when the sadness of loss gives way to the smiles of memories. This is not the national approach nor is it of national interest in our society at large.

I am not here to tell you how to fix the national inhumanity around our refusal to accept death and process what it means to live after others have died. There are resources to help people cope with grief in this pandemic that I recommend. What I am here to tell you is that we cannot avoid this forever without seriously damaging ourselves and those around us. There is no shortcut. Not for the loss of a loved one, not for the loss of 180,000 of our fellow Americans, not for the loss of 20 schoolchildren, and not for the loss of superheroes like Kobe or Chadwick. There is no getting around loss; there is only living and loving through it.

I will be honest that I am not much farther along in the process myself than knowing how far I have to go. I am trying, though. I try to let myself feel the weight of loss rather than submit to my instinct to brush the feeling aside. I do not always succeed. In fact, I fail more often than not. But I am – more and more – learning what it means to feel that weight coming, to let it sit on my spirit, to make my way through the pain it brings, to let it pass, and to embrace the pain and joy of memory of those lost. That is, until next time.

And I have made noticeable progress. I have cried more this year than the past 10 years combined. It is still not very much, but it is something. I fought back and shed tears memorializing Kobe and Chadwick. I have wiped away tears thinking about what I would do if I lost this person or that person. And hell, I have shed tears watching movies and listening to songs. By no means is crying the whole of mourning, but it is certainly part of it. Of that much I am sure.

So, I will keep trying to not fight grief so much, and I hope you take the time by yourself and with those you love to let yourself feel whatever may come. It is important to feel sad, and it makes it a lot more meaningful and purposeful to keep on living.

You deserve to feel the fullness of life, especially in a year like the one we have all had. Whether it is grieving someone you loved or someone you never knew, please do not convince yourself you are alone. We have, if nothing else, each other.




As always, be you be great.

Special Section:
COVID-19 Information

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