Podcast Roundup Week #21

This week I listened to 47 episodes. The theme was that it's hard for African Americans to live in this country.

Reveal had an episode called "The View from Room 205" in which an investigative reporter followed a class of fourth graders at a school in Chicago's West Side. Looking at these individual students, this teacher, and this school, Linda Lutton tries to grapple with the ideology that education in the great equalizer and that education can lift kids out of poverty and out of bad neighborhoods.  And what she finds is that schools can't fix poverty. And poverty matters. It matters if kids are hopeless because they don't see a future for themselves because there are no jobs for them. It matters if kids are hungry because they haven't had food all day because there's no food in the house. It matters if kids are home alone because their moms are working two or three hourly jobs at a time to try and pay rent. It matters that it's almost always moms working because their dads are in jail. It matters that their dads are in jail because their dads probably committed a crime to help get money to support their families.  She looked at one room with just a handful of kids, but came away with a social commentary that will break your heart.

The Moth Radio Hour had two stories that also followed this theme.  In its episode "Domestic Affairs," Gina Sampaio tells the story of the process of creating her family through transracial adoption. At one point her little boy, who is a different race than she and her husband, matter of factly tells Sampaio that he wishes he had been adopted into a black family.  Sampaio's response to this nearly shattered me.  Adoption is full of joy, but sadness, too. If things were 100% okay in the world, we wouldn't need adoption.  Sampaio's understanding and caring came through in spades.

In that same episode, Tony Cyprien talks about his first day out of prison and what a culture shock it was for him. Re-entry of prisoners into day to day life is not something I often hear about at the micro-level.  Sure, I know the stats about recidivism and suicide and unemployment at the macro-level, but personal stories like this are rare.  I thought it was interesting because it was so much more than I expected.

In 1987, NFL players went on strike. Players who had been competitive and got cut late in the process took the field and played instead.  30 for 30 took a look at those players in "The Year of the Scab." The "replacement players," which is the code words that the documentary makers used for "scabs," are still mad to this day, particularly the ones who played for the team that won the Super Bowl that year, that they don't get acknowledgement that they were integral members of the team.  And I guess I have little sympathy for them because they were scabs.  They refused to acknowledge that by playing, they weakened the position of the players. But I digress.

I think a lot of the 30 for 30 podcast episodes delve into how black men's bodies are used for white profit, particularly in sports (see also "Morningside Five") and the toll that this can take on black communities. It's telling that the men interviewed in "The Year of the Scab" honestly couldn't see any other way for them. It was football or bust. How do we teach black youth that there is a career outside of sports and music if the white culture doesn't let them in?  There's so much de facto segregation in housing and careers that it seems like black children may not be incorrect in their assumption that they can't be florists, bakers, and welders.  

And then I listened to The Adventure Zone "Live in Dallas" for a little levity.