Tag: facing

  • Facing Setbacks in Politics? Copy AU’s Rowdy Gaines’ Resolve

    Facing Setbacks in Politics? Copy AU’s Rowdy Gaines’ Resolve

    Facing Setbacks in Politics? Copy AU’s Rowdy Gaines’ Resolve
    Greg Markley


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    In 1998, Republican leaders in Lee County observed a terrific prospect to defeat longtime Democratic condition Sen. Ted Tiny. Rowdy Gaines, age 39, was a hero soon after successful a few gold medals in the 1984 Summertime Olympics. He was properly-spoken, intelligent and solidly conservative. Nevertheless he experienced a trouble — he experienced not lived in the 27th District for at minimum a few a long time (as needed).

    “That’s suitable, I have not lived listed here for at the very least a few years, Greg, so there goes my marketing campaign,” he confirmed to me, then. 

    He continued as a swimming analyst for NBC. He has included swimming at the Olympics given that 1992. It commenced when Gaines obtained a swimming scholarship to Auburn University. He became a 5-time NCAA champion owing to the tutelage of head mentor Richard Quick.

    “The only way to explain this (lack of) prospect top quality,” commented Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan a couple days ahead of Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection around Republican Herschel Walker. New to politics, the 1982 winner of a Heisman Trophy was encouraged to run by previous President Donald Trump.

    Walker decreased the bar for U.S. Senate candidates: Loved ones members stated they ended up abused and neglected, he opposed all abortions unless he paid out for them himself and he lied about acquiring a college degree and serving in the military. He did not even know what pronouns are — simple text like he, she, they and us.

    To reduce anticipations for a discussion, Walker admitted that “I am not clever.” 

    Dependent on his campaign missteps, I was not shocked. Warnock, much too, had a domestic dispute. His wife called him “a good actor (who is) phenomenal at placing on a truly superior exhibit.” Warnock denied allegations that he intentionally ran about her foot in a vehicle. No rates were filed, however.

    For Walker, it was observed out he declared himself a Texas resident. But while with Gaines 24 decades in advance of, it was early more than enough to terminate the entry, Walker’s efforts performed late in the phases. He experienced substantially unfavorable information and the race was near. If Walker experienced gained, would he be disqualified as a non-voter in Ga? Would he have to have to refund the hundreds he received as a “resident of Texas,” for the reason that he is certainly not a Texan? 

    In the meantime, Mehmet Oz, an American–Turkish television host and professor, ran for public workplace for the 1st time. He misplaced the 2022 U.S. election in Pennsylvania to Democrat John Fetterman, lieutenant governor. He was criticized for advertising and marketing pseudoscience. In professional medical journals, his sights on different drugs and the paranormal remaining lots of voters unsettled.

    The Republican’s ties to Pennsylvania were being regarded as weak by most observers. In 1986, Oz acquired a medical degree and master’s in business enterprise from the College of Pennsylvania the medical school is hugely regarded, and Wharton University is really respectable.

    The reality he was contacting himself a Pennsylvanian primarily based on attending U. Penn 36 many years in the past managed Fetterman a resource to ridicule. Dr. Oz was another prospect pushed on to the Republicans so the previous president could have folks in debt to himself. To Oz’s credit score, he did concede in its place of professing that fraud was being dedicated.

    Nicholas Kristof is an American journalist who empathizes with forgotten human legal rights violations and social justice. He gained two Pulitzers Prizes for The New York Periods. He grew up on his parents’ farm and lived there until eventually faculty. Even though he frequented the farm irregularly as a New Yorker, Kristof stated he has lived there at his “primary location of residence” since 2018.

    Upon mastering that the current Oregon governor was phrase-confined, he declared he was a Democratic prospect, in late 2021. Kristof left his longtime “dream job” at The Occasions. Nonetheless, Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan mentioned he did not meet up with the state’s residency necessities. Kristof challenged that, but the state Supreme Court docket upheld Fagan. Why? Kristof voted in New York in 2020 he did not have standing as an Oregon voter for at least three a long time, as expected.

    Kristof at age 63 will have the probability to run for business once again so lengthy as he satisfies Oregon residency and all other prerequisites. As inspiration, I remind him that Gaines, right after the 1980 Olympics boycott by the U.S., was rather upset. Shortly he geared up for 4 more several years, for the Summer months Olympics in Los Angeles. He received three gold medals, bringing notice and honor to Auburn University, to the point out of Alabama and to the United States.

     Greg Markley moved to Lee County in 1996. He has a master’s in education and learning from AUM and a master’s in history from Auburn College. He taught politics as an adjunct in Georgia and Alabama. An award-successful writer in the Army and civilian daily life, he has contributed to The Observer given that 2011. He writes on politics, schooling and publications. [email protected]

  • Black students facing racism lack mental health support

    Black students facing racism lack mental health support


    By Melba Newsome

    Kaiser Health News

    Three years ago, Lauren Bryant was walking across Appalachian State University’s campus with several other Black students when they were verbally assaulted with a racist tirade.

    “This guy in a pickup truck stopped at the light, rolled down his window, and just started calling us a bunch of N-words,” she recalled.

    It wasn’t the only time Bryant has had an experience like this at the overwhelmingly white campus in Boone, a town in one of North Carolina’s most conservative regions. Whether it’s the ubiquity of Confederate flags, Ku Klux Klan members handing out literature, or a parade of pickup trucks flying flags in support of President Donald Trump, she believes they’re all intended to signal that students of color are unwelcome there.

    College campuses are a microcosm of racial strife happening across the nation. From 2018 to 2021, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 1,341 incidents of white supremacist pamphleteering on college campuses. The Anti-Defamation League recorded around 630 incidents of white supremacist propaganda being distributed on campuses in 2019.

    Black students at predominantly white institutions report everything from instances of thinly veiled racism, homophobia, and sexism to outright racial hostility and intimidation.

    Experiencing such incidents has consequences that go well beyond feeling uncomfortable. A growing body of research has documented the detrimental health effects of both interpersonal and structural racism. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that centuries of racism have had a profound and negative impact on the mental and physical health of people of color. The American Public Health Association calls racism a barrier to health equity and a social determinant of health akin to housing, education, and employment.

    Racist incidents can take a toll on students’ overall health and well-being, undermine their self-confidence, and affect academic performance, said Dr. Annelle Primm, senior medical director for the Steve Fund, a nonprofit focused on supporting the mental health of young people of color.

    “These kinds of feelings go hand in hand with students at predominantly white institutions, where they may feel isolated or like they don’t belong,” she said. “The experiences are associated with issues such as depression, anxiety, and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.”

    A UCLA study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2021 shows that the problems aren’t necessarily transitory. Young adults who experience discrimination are at higher risk for both short- and long-term behavioral and mental health problems that are exacerbated with each new incident.

    For a variety of reasons, students of color are not getting the kind and amount of help they need. A recent University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill study of first-year college students found that Black students had the highest increase in rates of depression. However, a study in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that treatment use is lower among students of color relative to white students, even when controlling for other variables. This is consistent with a 2020 report from the Steve Fund that said students of color are less likely than their white peers to seek mental health treatment even though white and Black students experience mental health issues at the same rate.

    College campuses are having trouble recruiting enough therapists to meet the mental health needs of students overall. And few predominantly white colleges employ counselors and mental health professionals who are representative of the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the students.

    This can be problematic for patients of color in any setting who doubt white counselors can provide culturally competent care, which acknowledges a patient’s heritage, beliefs, and values.

    When Daisha Williams spoke to a white counselor outside of campus about being alienated from her mother’s side of the family for being biracial, her pain was trivialized: “She was, like, ‘Sorry that happened. That sucks. They really missed out.’ And that was it.”

    The history of racism in the fields of psychology and psychiatry makes many Black people leery of seeking help. Last year, the American Psychiatric Association apologized for the organization’s “appalling past actions” and pledged to institute “anti-racist practices.” Months later, the American Psychological Association issued its own apology.

    But even a Black counselor may not be enough to overcome reluctance. In a joint survey conducted by the Steve Fund and the United Negro College Fund, 45{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of students at historically Black colleges and universities said they would not speak to a mental health professional if they were in crisis.

    Primm said a student’s background and belief system may be a factor. “They may have been raised to ‘put it in God’s hands’ or may be told that they could overcome these feelings if they prayed hard enough,” Primm said. “Certainly, prayer and religious activity are important and helpful for mental health, but sometimes you may need some additional support.”

    Black students account for nearly 4{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of the more than 18,000 undergraduates at Appalachian State, and Black residents make up fewer than 3{fe463f59fb70c5c01486843be1d66c13e664ed3ae921464fa884afebcc0ffe6c} of Boone’s population. Bryant, the programming chair for the university’s Black Student Association, believes that having a university with so few Black people— in a town where Black residents are even scarcer — emboldens those who commit racist acts.

    Bryant was well aware of the demographics of the school and the region before she arrived. But during a campus tour, university representatives assured prospective students that they valued diversity and would ensure that Black and other students of color felt as if they belonged.

    “We were under the impression that they would make sure we are supported, but the reality of how things really are changed that dynamic,” she said. “We did not expect the amount of fight we’d have to contribute towards things that might affect our education.”

    And sometimes the racism the students face is more subtle than hurled epithets but still deeply unsettling. In 2017, Williams said, she eagerly anticipated discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations” in one of her Appalachian State classes, but the conversation soon became upsetting. A white student asserted that any residual economic or social inequality resulted from Black people’s lack of initiative, not the nation’s failure to atone for historical wrongs.

    “He kept saying extremely offensive things like ‘They should just work harder’ or ‘They should try to better their lives and educate themselves,’” Williams recalled. “At one point, he made some comment about lynching. Once he said that, I just got up and left.”

    Williams was especially disturbed by what she saw as the professor’s encouragement. “Rather than saying, ‘You’re making the students of color feel unsafe and unwelcome,’ she kept saying, ‘Elaborate on that.’”

    Although institutions cannot control or eliminate these occurrences, they bear responsibility for how they respond. When asked about what happened to Williams and Bryant, Appalachian State Associate Vice Chancellor Megan Hayes called the incidents “abhorrent” and said the university “is committed to fostering an inclusive, safe and supportive environment for all students, faculty, and staff.”

    Still, such incidents continue to happen nationwide. A white Georgia Southern University student gave a class presentation on white replacement theory, which has been linked to white supremacist ideology. When Black students complained, the university defended the presentation as free speech.

    At Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, pro-Nazi postings were directed at Black students and a banana was taped to the dorm room door of two Black male students. At Northern Illinois University, the N-word was spray-painted on the Center for Black Studies building. A student at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry posted a video showing two men firing guns at a tree as one yells, “This is what we do to n——.”

    In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Appalachian State student organizations spoke out and led protests against what they deemed as the oppression and trauma that Black and other students of color routinely encountered. Marches through campus, into downtown Boone, and to the Watauga County courthouse drew condemnation and threats of arrests.

    But the backlash and vitriol often directed at students who engage in social justice activism can take its own mental health toll. The work is often all-consuming. “It gets challenging,” Bryant said. “We shouldn’t have to advocate against things that should never have happened in the first place.”

    Ebony McGee, an associate professor of diversity and STEM education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, cautions students to jealously guard their emotional well-being.

    “The best way students can protect their mental health is realize that they can’t change the system,” McGee said. “The best way you can support racial activism is to get your degree, because then you’ll have greater power and a greater voice within your community.”

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