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Ep. 230: A Difficult Conversation

Published: 2020-07-20 09:00:00
Description Show ▼

Steven Rinella talks with Rue Mapp and Janis Putelis.

Topics discussed: A solid two-syllable, navigational name; when your cowboy dad hangs pigs in your garage and you don't want kids on the school bus to see; how parades mean different things to different people; Outdoor Afro re-connecting black Americans to the outdoors; upping your nature swagger; unpacking statistics; how black children drown at five times the rate of white children in the US; Harriet Tubman as a wilderness leader; losing sight of the sociological factors that have lead people to be where they are; the great migration; how the outdoors and nature has not always been regarded as a safe place for black people; Emmet Till; how being on the other side of too much intrigue just isn't welcome; in cases of racism, rarely do you ever get the proof and rarely do you need it; gauging the age of an airplane by whether or not its bathroom has an ashtray; how looking at communities as needing to be saved isn’t the right way to go; picnicing vs. birding and tailgating as day camp; and more.

 

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Referenced Books

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
Rue mentions this book when discussing how different people can have different associations with the same things, like parades. She uses it as an example of how someone from communist Czechoslovakia would view a parade differently than someone from America, relating this to how Black people might have different associations with outdoor spaces like pools due to historical exclusion.
Referenced at 00:00:00
The Warmth of Other Suns
by Isabel Wilkerson
Rue references reading this book when discussing the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to northern cities. She describes how the book talks about Black people being refugees in America, jumping on trains to places like Chicago, New York, Oakland, and Los Angeles, and mentions details like 'hot bedding' where family members would work and sleep in shifts.
Referenced at 00:00:00