Blog 4 Navigating Anti Racism Through a Critical Lens: Podcast 34 – By: Kay Howse

I had the pleasure of navigating my anti-racism through critical lens on the podcast 34 stories of revolution; unveiling the struggle with The hosts Hali Kweli Shakur, Christian Stettler and David Sheldon. Starting from the beginning, I realize this podcast had a lot of hope, and what I’ve dived into in detail pertaining to genocide racism and global power pertaining to the United States and other various parts of the world. I was almost immediately intrigued and tuned in to what was discussed based off of the fact that one of the podcast David Sheldon, who is a black 50 year old man that currently lives in Kotzebue Alaska and have previously spent 4 years in Shungnack Alaska was a part of the podcast, and had great perspective on what he has seen in the indigenous community thus far. Then Hali Kweli Shakur impressed me the most when he went into depth Pertaining to his brother, who died in 1995 and how he dealt with that with not having the right resources to find a social worker to assist him and various tragic moments in his life, I felt like that aspect was extremely imperative to bring to the surface and I’m glad he did that!

My upbringing on history, and biblical aspect and how it affected my cultural upbringing. I grew up thinking that the Bible is everything and to this day I still do believe that, and that’s a part of my core value. But now, as an adult, I am making a conscious effort to understand the facts in reading the Bible i’m taking responsibility of how the information I will receive from reading the scriptures will Affect me based off of who I need to be and ignoring the voices that are on the outside, which are trying sway me into their favor, and looking at the Bible based off of how they feel it needs to be represented in. I believe the Bible is a part of history, but not entailed in various stories of historical artifacts. However, those stories that are in the Bible do tell you briefly of situations that you can avoid or once in how you can come out of it, you can basically be a better person in this world, and find a purpose in life, and a lot of the time finding your purpose in life is by ignoring the outside voices, and listening to your inner self. When doing this, you can sometimes feel crazy because technically you’ll see yourself as a lone wolf. Seeing yourself this way can make you feel as if you’re wrong and the world is right, but one of the reasons why I truly do believe in the biblical history is that to me it’s an instruction manual as to how you can overcome that frame of mind and to keep in mind what God has put you on this earth to be, and by doing so, you’ll be able to understand and silence, or at least turn down the volume of those voices that are trying to make you seem as if you’re crazy, even though there are an audience of people that are in agreements with the oppositions, that doesn’t mean what God is trying to speak to you through the Bible is wrong. Even though in the podcast, it was discussed that the Bible should not be a focal point towards history, and there should be a lot of additives added to it, pretending to research, I agree and disagree, but my disagreement is predominantly because of the way that I view the Bible to this day, and the fact that it has had a great impact on my life but my agreement towards the statement is because the Bible has a lot of historical stories based off of David and Goliath, Adam and Eve, Samson and Delilah, Elijah, Joseph and his many coats of color and the birth, death and crucifixion of Jesus, the list can go on and on, but the Bible can be very vague in certain areas but detailed and other areas so I do believe that understanding the value of what is biblically expected and also historically expected you would need to combine both biblical history and history itself to find that right perspective. You will not only you will gain a different perspective by doing so you, will understand various things that’s currently happening inside of the world that happened before and that this is just a cycle of things that’s continuously happening, such as colonization, genocide, racism discrimination and poverty.

However, I do wanna talk about growing up inside of the church and understanding the difference in the significance of being a part of a church, while being a part of the biblical history in the Bible and understanding your true values and your purpose of being on this earth. I personally do not believe going to church will bring you closer to God. From my experience going to church only guilt me into having a relationship with God. Anytime, I would sin or fall back a bit off of my commitment to what I made in church. I would feel immensely guilty and always want to avoid God as much as possible which is impossible to do, but when I understood the history and the revolution of what the Bible truly mean about God and his love for all of us, I realize that’s not what has been taught to me in church, and if anything church pushed me away from God, but the Bible was all the instructions needed to help me thrive in my relationship with God. Overall, I do believe that it is imperative to read and understand the Bible without allowing your feelings to get in the way of having a clear understanding of the Bible and the history of it.

I want to briefly discuss a section of the podcast where the hosts discussed genocide being something that’s common all of the world currently, but for the most part with the United States, being number one in genocides at the moment, predominately because the United States have the military resources to not just defend themselves, but also be the cause of a lot of problems that are actively happening, and they are using violence as of fighting a war or a situation that could be handled other ways. But they’re being military basis all around the United States. It’s clear to see that the military acts on situations that benefits, the common hold of the military lifestyle and whatever they instructed to fight for rather than thinking of the United States as a whole or the world in general being a better place to live grow and thrive. This also goes in concept with enslavement of indigenous people and African people, and also show that this is one of the many ways that they have been attacked and being victims of genocides due to not having the access that’s needed for them to be protected, and always seeing as a threat based off of, their culture and ethnicities. I believe in my own words that the military of the United States needs to be held accountable to a lot of the genocide that’s being happening all over the world, because of their unlimited resources to weapons and technology that can not only better situations, but I feel like it has not been used in the way that it should be used to be a betterment in the United States or in the world if anything.

There was a part of the topic within the podcast that was brought up from Hockey Shakur retaining to colonizing certain indigenous culture, such as Hawaiian culture going through the wildfires that they were experiencing. Where the United States chose to use their resources and send to Ukraine instead of using the resources within the United States to help another part of the United States, which is Hawaii, in their time of need. This is another form of colonization of indigenous people that has always allowed me to explore different avenues as to understand why the United States would choose to help an outside source rather than helping out one of their fellow states in their time of dire need. But at another hand, there’s a part of me that doesn’t feel surprised because the United States has done this before to such as Puerto Rico and Haiti.

in conclusion Haki Shakur Discussed his version of having a social worker as an upbringing for him as well as David Sheldon. Both of them had very unique stories pertaining to having access to a social worker, which was persons that were immediately around them, They had no licensing or field specialty they Were persons that were considered barbers or aunts, Associates or friends. Shakur Spoke about the death of his brother And friend, and being a witness of it But had no access to getting the healing that was needed for him to get through it. Which would’ve been a great time for a social worker to take on a case to help assist him in healing and coping with this process, so that he would not be a part of a statistic in another death. But due to the fact that social workers We’re seen as a “ White person profession” and this day, we are still trying to break away from it, and make it more personal to connect with the clients and create a trusting relationship with them so that they can better receive the help that’s needed, and not being fair of their children being ripped out of their arms and homes and never be seen again. This is something that I do hope I am able to at least put a little gap in the middle of while I am Part of this profession.