Back in America

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Welcome to Back in America, the podcast.

COVID-19 has created a worldwide public health crisis, and the resulting lockdowns and social distancing measures have sent most of the country's economy into a severe downturn. But we believe these crises are only the tip of the pandemic iceberg, writes Mario Aikobechi and Matthew Laborgue in a recent Deloitte study. There is another crisis looming, a human crisis, they add. Our past research has revealed a potential for increased incidence of mental illness, poor educational outcomes, an increase in substance abuse and crime, and the weakening of the community's fabric.

The researchers call on the government to get ready for the looming crisis. I found particularly striking that they stress the need for employers to address employees' mental health, reviewing the mix of employees' benefits and to see how to better accommodate employees in this stressful period, sometime by introducing flexible benefits options that respond to different needs from employees at different stages in life. In the US, a country of hard work, individualism and personal privacy culture, many corporations are hesitant to tackle employees' wellbeing. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted our lives, as families sheltered

in place and juggled home schooling, work from home, together with keeping their household afloat. According to a poll conducted in mid-July by nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, 53% of adults in the US reported that their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worries and stress over the coronavirus. This is significantly higher than the 32% reported in March. In this episode of Back in America, we are speaking about corporate America, COVID and employees' wellbeing, or lack of.

My guest is Glenda Wren, a psychiatrist, a chief medical officer for Franklin, Tennessee-based health partner, and previously the founding director of the Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. Welcome to Back in America, Glenda. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today. Do you want to add anything to this long introduction?

No, I'm ready to get right into our conversation. Good. So, what's your own experience with the pandemic's impact on US employees so far? I mean, this is a great question. Obviously, the pandemic has impacted everyone. And as a psychiatrist, people are often asking me about, you know, what have I seen in my patients? But the biggest and the most dramatic change that I've seen from a mental health perspective

has been amongst my colleagues, my friends, my social media feed, and also in the news that we consume. The biggest threat that's happened first is loss of employment and the financial instability and uncertainty that the pandemic has created. I'll start with the healthcare sector, which is slightly counterintuitive to think that a global health pandemic would lead to significant reductions in the healthcare workforce. Yet, it has happened. You've seen large health systems that lost millions of dollars due to the shutdown when

ambulatory services, elective surgeries, which are kind of big money for health systems, were terminated the first three months of the pandemic. Health systems furloughed employees, had significant pay reductions, sometimes up to 50% in an ambulatory setting because the outpatient clinics were closed for a period of time. And even today, even in my job, my academic institution, we've had a short-term salary reduction. We see short-term, you know, 5 to 10% salary reductions as well as elimination of positions. These are all the measures that the healthcare system has been doing to adjust for that loss of income.

Interestingly, it's also been reported that the health insurance industry has reported record profits because they're no longer having to pay out some of these ambulatory procedures. So it's a bit of a counterintuitive bag there in terms of what's the financial impact. In healthcare, much like other industries, you've seen significant financial impacts. Some industries have been obliterated completely. The event industry, as an example, you know, weddings, large conferences, those are hundreds of thousands of dollars across the country completely wiped out. And then all the jobs associated with that impacted.

So the financial stress alone is one big thing. And then there's the mental health impact of not just the financial stress, but of the impacts of social isolation that's been required to try to contain the spread. And in the United States, because we have such conflicting information coming from our government systems, conflicting information at the federal level, conflicting information at your state level, your local level, this is passing on the responsibility of management to the individual. And what we see is a lot of stress related to how am I best managing risk for myself

and my family? When is it really safe to engage in activities? As well as decisions about school, now that most of our country is back to school, and then huge politicization of this issue. So then, depending on your ideology, you have extremes of complete denial of the existence of coronavirus altogether. And I don't have to read the news to find this. I mean, this is in my Instagram feed.

People I know love sharing these ideas, as well as conspiracy theories around 5G as a contributing cause, as well as the other extreme of people that have been essentially quarantined since March and have been doing Instacart grocery delivery and not left their residences for several months. So it's really monumental, to be honest, the stress that people face. And then so if you are working, you're lucky enough to have a job and work, you may have increased responsibilities, you may have a lot of stress around how your work is handling the pandemic.

Many organizations have, again, because of the lack of leadership and the variation in recommendations, if I'm working at a job that now says, you know, they were okay with me virtual for the first few months, now they need me to go back into the office, do I trust my job that they're going to keep me safe when I'm in the office? So there's stress related to not working, there's stress related to working, there's financial stress, there's an increased amount of home stress due to this major shift in people that relied on schooling as a form of childcare, essentially. And then if you have a special needs child, then what might be safe for the population

from a containment perspective may be very disruptive to you and your family needing the support that in-person school provided. But then I have to, you know, what if my job is work outside the home, I don't have the luxury of working virtually and being able to also support my special needs child. I mean, I could go on, but those are the high points of what's going on here. When you speak with people, how do they express that stress? You know, what comes out? I think there's actually quite a bit of frustration and anger, you know, if we just can kind of

compare to a year ago, where you might see people speaking out, you know, now and then, really every day, there's a post or a comment or a conversation that I'm a part of, where people are articulating their frustrations with what's happening, whether it's frustrations around how it's being handled, how it's not being handled, frustrations of decisions that are being made that are impacting them. That's probably the strongest theme throughout is a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, and sometimes hopelessness. I mean, we've also seen spikes in suicide, in suicide among young people, teenagers.

And I don't want to paint like a totally negative picture, because there are certainly some bright spots of thriving and some silver linings that have also been created. But I don't want to minimize the fact that this is still very devastating. And I, you know, if you've been personally touched by a death related to coronavirus, I mean, even not related, I've had some family members just die during a pandemic, and it's, you can't even mourn the way that you're used to. You can't worship the way you're used to, you can't mourn the way you used to, you can't cope socially the way you're used to.

So it's really a global trauma in addition to a global pandemic. And what we're seeing are what happens with any type of large scale trauma. You see, you know, deterioration among some people, you see recovery and resilience in other aspects. And that's kind of what I'm hearing from folks. Yeah, I want to come back to the world of enterprises and corporation. As a French person, you know, I was made aware that since 1989 in France, employers must ensure the physical and mental well-being of their employee.

This is in line with the European tradition of social class differences and community solidarity. The American tradition, however, is influenced by the lack of Locke, Jefferson, Smiths and Mills, and favors individual freedom and economic freedom. And I think this is really telling in the way this American culture looks at the responsibility of employers when it comes to their employees. And I wonder how, as a health practitioner, you see the role of companies when it comes to their employees' mental health.

That's a really great point. I think both the cultural distinction that you mentioned around collective identity and collective responsibility, which is not typical of American culture of individual identity and individual responsibility, which can sometimes kind of ignore the fact that we are social beings that are very much connected and dependent on each other. But the American narrative so strongly emphasizes the role of the individual that it spills over into how we decide our policies to the extent of treating corporations as people legally.

And at the same time, we don't have the same kind of principles around employer relationships. Part of that has to do with the shifts in the types of jobs that exist and the ways in which corporations are structured.

You see pockets of the individual family business or maybe a small business that has a different dynamic. But if you're talking large corporation, they're very much driven by their economic incentives around production of products and profits. And workers are there for the purpose of advancing that aim. They may have a very noble global mission, but at the end of the day, it is about the capitalist framework and the function of the worker is to provide value and to generate value for that corporation.

Now, as a mental health practitioner, I can reframe just about anything. So you can reframe the mental well-being of the worker as an economic imperative, but we don't have that moral imperative, that cultural imperative that you articulated that makes this in Europe. So what we've seen before the pandemic is a growing recognition that ignoring mental health leads to absenteeism, presenteeism, lost productivity, lost revenue, like speaking the language of our system to say you all need to better invest in mental health. We saw the opiate epidemic touching all class lines and the pandemic has been complicated.

I think there certainly is attention to the fact that it's caused a lot of stress, but I think as time has worn on, now that we're kind of in a new normal state, I'm starting to see a lot of corporations shift back into like, all right, let's pivot a little, but let's get back on mission and start generating our products. So initially, first three months, everybody's kumbaya, come together, let's support each other. But like now it's like we need to make our widgets, we need to generate our revenue and let's figure out how we can do that. What that means is that some corporations for their mission or whatever their leadership

continues to recognize the importance of investing in mental health, but it's not across the board. And even in those that want to do better in terms of supporting mental health, the question arises, how much can we accommodate the circumstance? I mean, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. If I understand that your school isn't open and that you're virtual, but I need you to come back to the office. And in fact, some are even saying, you can't really work from home and supervise your children

in school. So if you don't have anyone else helping with caretaking, we're not even sure you're doing your job. I mean, these are real conversations that may seem absurd to you in terms of, I mean, I don't know a lot about how you are handling it, but that's our reality here, is that our structure is pretty much aligned with those financial incentives and any efforts to support the mental well-being of a worker is towards that end goal. It's not the goal in and of itself.

That's interesting and definitely a challenge. I know it's a challenge all over the globe. You were talking about your own personal situation. You've got kids at home who need schooling and you've got your work to do. How do you personally manage it? Well, I'm very privileged, right? So I worked from home before the pandemic. So unlike people that were forced into it, I already kind of had a very good handle on

how to work from home when my children were in school. So I think for people that have been forced into it, they're navigating the how do I work from home at the same time of how do I school children. The second privilege I have is that I do have additional caretaker help. So I have another adult that lives with us. She's in school, but she also is now she's in virtual school. So she's able to she's an international student who's able to, you know, like right now she's downstairs.

I have a high schooler. I have a fifth grader and a third grader. And she's there with the fifth grader, just making sure he's not watching YouTube videos, which is something he was doing three days ago instead of doing his work.

So while I'm in meetings all day, she can help supervise. And of course, I'm also, you know, I have to organize. So I have their iPads with a timer for every change in class that they have. They have an alarm that goes off. And I figured this out, you know, the second week of school, like I can't bop out of my meeting and go make sure you've moved to your next class. So putting systems in place is how I cope. Having help is a big thing.

We're also testing out a small little homeschool pod. Just one other student that's in the class with my third grader. So it's a family that lives around the corner that has a similar set of practices and values as us. And so that gives me, you know, two to three days a week that I don't have to worry about her at all because she's over at their house. And then like today, their daughter is at our house. So, I mean, just in my own life, there's that variation of different ways that people can cope a homeschool pod.

Having, you know, external help, whether it's a live out or a live in, nanny that can help you or a family member that can assist you. I also work part time and I made the decision to go to part time before the pandemic. It was already in the cards for me, but probably if I hadn't then I would definitely be strongly considering that now it's another privilege because my husband works full time. So I have that economic privilege as well that I can forgo that additional income to be available. These are all privileges that are so far from reality for most Americans. I mean, like not even close.

So you can take the stress that I'm feeling, which is not zero, and multiply that by orders of magnitude and you might come close to what the average American is facing. Yeah. Yeah. And to follow that trend of thought, you are a specialist in substance abuse. And I would like to hear how you feel about the following two facts. So facts number one, according to the World Health Organization, and statistics from Canada report that 20% of the 15 to 49 year old have had an increase

in their alcohol consumption during the pandemic. Fact number two, anthropologist David Graeber, who died a few days ago, wrote in his book, The Bullshit Jobs, that 40% of jobs in America are meaningless.

I'm going to take the first one first. The second one is that's a robust conversation. So the first issue is the one about alcohol and coping amongst younger populations. I actually think that we see this across all ages. In fact, I've also seen that within my personal sphere of influence. I mean, this was already the case with the mommy needs vodka culture and the normalization of of particularly amongst women and mothers kind of coping with their daily dose of Chardonnay, so to speak.

There was already an issue, a huge, huge issue with the definition of social alcohol drinking being pretty much like more than what we consider clinically as a binge drinking episode amongst regular people, amongst health care providers. And Surgeon General Vivek Murthy had a Surgeon General's report around facing addiction, which I definitely recommend people familiarize themselves with that really spoke to this issue. So this was a problem before. And you add to that environment additional stress, constrained choices. It is a recipe for driving to maladaptive coping patterns such as alcohol.

And actually, before we were meeting today, I was working with one of my clients who has an alcohol use disorder who had managed to stop drinking in order to for us to work in an outpatient setting, but recently relapsed, went home for funeral, had some stressors. And now we're working through how to get him back into a place of recovery. So I think that's probably a small number. It's probably much greater than that report driven mostly by the stress of coping and people turning to the available coping strategies that are there. Let me just figure out how to check out an alcohol is legal, socially acceptable.

It's not like I'm, you know, using opiates or something hardcore. So people can pretty much normalize alcohol use.

Now on this topic of these BS jobs, I've read a little bit about David Graeber and it's a very, very interesting concept. The idea of there's two ways of looking at it. The one is, man, you know, we've done optimization of so much of our lives, which theoretically is designed to free up margin for leisure, but we've just simply replaced that with other ways of working. That's kind of his premise is that, you know, this is just a perverse system that

just is designed to keep us all working, you know, even when we don't really need to work because we have automated ways of living our lives. I guess my one counter reaction to that is that, you know, for certainly for individuals that for whatever reason, I mean, you have to work to have income. So if your governmental system doesn't provide any support, there's no universal basic income, there's no guarantee of universal health care, like all the things in Europe that may create some options as well as, you know, being able to have one year of payback, you know, being able to have one year of paid maternity leave by my like, we don't have

any of that. So it's you we eat what we kill over here, right? So if I have to eat what I kill and I'm working in a low wage job, I've got to figure something out. I mean, if I have children, I've got to care for them, you know, daycare expenses alone can be fifteen thousand dollars a year. I mean, if I if I'm working minimum wage, eight dollars an hour, you can do the math, and figure out that's not that does not work.

So what does that mean? I've got to depend on family. I need to have multi-generational households. Maybe we do need to have two people working outside the home and it's not an option to have one of the parents to be home full time or part time.

So there's an necessity there. Yeah. And I hear you and maybe talking about the meaning and the purpose of a job is a rich people problem. Yet, you know, because of what you do, do you think we can make a parallel between

having sense and purpose and your mental well-being? I mean, I think it's completely related. In fact, it is shown by what we have seen in terms of what do people of privilege do most is they invest in their leisure. And even you don't have to be a multimillionaire. I've seen it amongst myself and my colleagues who have enough economic privilege that, you know, people that went to medical school, people that went to the military academy with me, women in particular that elected to stay home with their children.

When I was growing up, that was not even a goal. It wasn't a goal articulated to me. It wasn't one that I shared. I was raised by a mother who stayed home with us. But the whole idea was like that, go get a career, you know, be a woman and be strong and powerful. And I lived that life for a long time. And now that I'm, you know, 42, I'm actually pregnant again.

I don't know if I told you that I'm having a baby at the beginning of November. It's a very intentional pregnancy because I'm like, you know, I worked, I went back to work the next day after my eight-year-old daughter was born, you know, without even thinking about it. I've never taken maternity leave ever. I have three children. Now I'm on a whole new level of existence now. Now I'm like, oh no, I am taking in every moment of this whole process because I have

the privilege to do that now. I didn't back then. When my first son was born, I had to work two jobs. I was a physician, a resident, but they don't make that much money. So I moonlighted. I had my mom taking care of him. I had to bring him in on call sometimes when I didn't have child care. Still a very privileged life.

Please don't feel sorry for me at all. But my point is that with economic privilege does come the ability to make these decisions. And you can learn that if those are the choices we make when we have the choice, maybe these are choices that would be helpful and beneficial to everyone if it was possible to do that. Somebody smarter than me would have to figure out how to get there. But I do think that from a mental wellbeing perspective, everyone is balancing the choices that they have and many, many people because of the gross inequities, income inequalities

that we have, racially based inequalities that we have in our country, these options aren't available to the majority of Americans by far.

I've got many other questions. One question that is really on top of my mind is when I introduced the topic, I talked about the Deloitte report and Deloitte calls on organizations to play a role there and to get involved in their employees' wellbeing. That's a view that you share.

I certainly think that there should be some more accountability on the part of corporations. We have built a lot of protections in place for corporations out of proportion to the protections that we have for workers.

That's just my opinion on that. I do think that there's a mismatch. The philosophy around why we've set it up that way, I think, has not borne out to be true. It's not true that trickle-down economics, there's no truth to that. We've just seen people that absorb more profits when they're more profitable. We have not seen it reflected in higher wages for employees when companies are more profitable.

This is our world.

We live in a democracy as far as we can tell, so this is our world. I think that's a lot of what's going on in our country. The silver lighting I see about family connection, it may create more of a longing for a different way of living now that we're forced into eating our meals together. Maybe we want something that we didn't even know we could want.

That might drive us to then be more engaged civically, to demand more of our elected officials, to demand more of our government systems, to demand more accountability and more transparency. Move beyond just the rhetoric that we've been bound to and the issues that we kind of hear talked about to say, like, wait a minute, this is our society here and I think it can be better. What can I do besides just ranting and raving on Facebook? What can I actually do to change how we're living our lives? I hope that that's something that the collective trauma can be transformed to a transcendent effort to improve the quality of our lives for all people,

knowing that inequities hurt us all. Even if we're at the top and we are relatively protected, it's trapped, it saps the strength of the whole society to have, you know, large swaths of our population living in poverty with food insecurity. And I do believe, I'm an optimist, I believe that we can do better and I'm hopeful that we will have collective efforts in that regard as a result of what's happening. That's interesting. So you think that the pandemic and the sheltering in place has forced people to just put their life on pause for a minute, enjoy their family,

enjoy the closeness of each other and reflect on the world we live in and on, you know, the injustice. Definitely. I mean, I have never had family dinners regularly. I've always wondered who those people were that could manage to do that in the world. I mean, like I was wanted it, but it was completely infeasible. I'm like, there's six human beings that live in our house. We all have different schedules. There's just no way. And we pretty much have breakfast and dinner together nearly every day in our home now, which means we're having conversations, which means that we're connecting more with each other. And I thought about this that before when I was working full time and traveling three, four times a month,

maybe I'd get 20 or 30 minutes of FaceTime with my children, like a few minutes in the morning, perhaps a few minutes in the evening, perhaps. But I mean, now I have hours, hours of interaction. And I know part of that is because I made the decision to work part time. But I also think that, if I worked from home full time, I had more of that even before the pandemic. And I just, I wonder if that's, I know a lot of people in my sphere of influence have been talking about that too, in terms of silver linings and even just getting outside more because you can't travel to Europe. I mean, we like traveling out of the country when we can, but we're not getting on an airplane. So we're seeing more of our natural environment. And so we're seeing people,

RV sales are going up. People are taking road trips, looking at the world around them, spending time outside, valuing that. And I think, from a wellbeing perspective, there's something to be said for that. It changes you to be in nature more, to be grounded with natural creation versus surrounded by manmade constructions, which is what we spend most of our life inside a building, right? So I hope that that can be some positive results. I want to come back to what you just said about how your life was a life of hard work and at max 20 minutes of face time with your children. Being European, I'm amazed at the fact that in this country, people never seems to be able to take a break. And when they do, even when they do,

they're out of office, state a cell phone number and explain clearly how they can be reached. Who has a psychiatrist? What do you make of it? I think we are addicted to working in our culture and it is promoted by our work environments, which we've talked about the incentives there. What is the incentive to your employer to get you to slow down? I mean, it's there. You're rewarded for working more. And I can, I know this from personal experience as a true, true recovering workaholic, like not in the jokey way, like in the serious way, like I love working. I do. I really love working. And it has been such a process for me to redirect that energy to my home. And my friends are like, cause I post pictures on Instagram of like all the

stuff I cook and they're like, when did you become a Michelin chef? And I'm like, would you expect anything less? I mean, the same excellence that I put into doing mental health policy work. Now I'm just redirecting it at home. So yeah, I'm painting garden boxes and I'm grilling fish and I'm trying new recipes and I'm going to make my own pasta. I mean, like it's the same energy, but instead of giving it all to work, I'm giving it to myself and to my family. And I was, I was honestly incapable of doing that before. It just, it was just, there was nothing in my environment that drove me in that direction. It was a series of personal losses, reflections that kind of slowed me down enough. And the pandemic was like, if this pandemic had happened to me five years ago,

I would probably be in such a terrible state because I mean, it would have been very externally forced slowdown that I think I would have resented. So I'm very fortunate that it came at a time where I had been longing for a different way of life. And I, and I think so I'm sure there's a lot of people out there like me five years ago who were just annoyed that they can't, you know, when they couldn't fly, right? Like, so I don't know, it's, I'm older now too. So I think some of that comes with reflection in age and maturity that even in our American culture, we long for these things. You know, my dad just turned 80 and he was able to fly in from New Jersey to spend time with us. And so many people, you know, go in about the risk and it's like some things in life are worth risks,

you know, like I way more take the risk to spend that time with my father than to, you know, go fly for some meeting that I could just be on video screen for it just because you think it's important that I'm in the room. No, I'm not doing that. So, so Clenda, you clearly state at many occasions that you feel very, very privileged now. However, I know that life has not always been that easy to you that you struggle with substance abused. Can you tell us a bit more about what happened in your past life? Well, I mean, I think I would, I wouldn't consider myself to be a, to have a difficult story at all. I mean, I think a group in a large family where my oldest siblings have had a lifelong history of severe substance use disorder. And then when I was, you know,

17 years old, I signed up to go into the military, went to the military academy and in military culture, again, there's a lot of normalization. In hindsight today, I would go back and say, you know, yeah, I had an excessive way of coping with the challenges of life with alcohol, which is very normalized within that culture. So I didn't really even experience it as a problem. I did have enough foresight to know I had like bad genes. So when I would notice that I was kind of like drinking to cope with emotions, I would, the flag would kind of raise in my mind. And fortunately, I had enough foresight to be able to make the steps to, to change. And throughout all of that was very functional. So it's not, it's, I guess it's probably a story that is true for a lot of

people, but you don't hear about because you hear all the stories about people that, you know, their lives were turned upside down. But stories like mine are probably way more common. I was able to, you know, still function, do great. And then before I graduated from the military, had a severe car accident, was in the hospital for nearly a year, lost my military career, which was really devastating, but was still, you know, able to go to medical school, able to still achieve that goal in my life. And I still have permanent disabilities and limitations with respect to that. But essentially, you know, I guess mine was a story of resilience. I didn't think of it that way until I started to work as a psychiatrist and saw other veterans and saw other individuals impacted by

previous trauma that really couldn't recover. So, you know, so I got really interested in that. That's what drove my interest in research and studying resilience and reflecting on my own experience. And I would say, you know, with respect to substances, I just have a much greater understanding because it's my job now. And I also have a greater compassion for people that struggle with severe substance use disorders, including my siblings, my late sister, my oldest brother. But there's probably more in my family, but it's their story to tell. But I would say as a person who loves someone who has struggled with a severe addiction, it is very devastating to feel so helpless in some ways. And also, I think very inspiring to just have joy for the moments where

your loved one is able to have a life that's free of substances. I don't think there's anyone, certainly in America, that isn't touched in some way by some substance use disorder. Yeah. What were you hoping for? What military career were you hoping for when you entered West Point? Yeah, well, I was very naive going into West Point. I don't come from a military family. So I was just one of those typical patriots that is like, I like running outside in the woods and I love America. Like, let's do this. I didn't even know what the military alphabet was when they were first, you know, yelling at you. And I thought they were speaking in code. It was funny. So I was very naive. But, and I was 17, my parents had to sign me away. I'm

the youngest graduate of my class. But once I got into it, I mean, I was like all in, right? I now you see women in combat arms back then. You know, that wasn't a thing. When was it? So women in like infantry and armor and the combat, that is now something that's we, we have that now. But when I joined, women were not allowed to join those ranks. And of course, I was the one that was like, I feel like I could do that. You know, I want to do everything that the men do. So I wanted to be an Apache helicopter pilot or a flight surgeon. Those were my aims while I was there. I was still planning to go to medical school. So I mean, I would have probably stayed in the military forever and gone as far as I could go. But you know, God had other plans for me. I think it's

worked out okay. But it did take me about 10 years to kind of get over that loss because I do have I did have so much, you know, I was really committed and I still do commit quite a bit to veterans and people that elect a lifetime of selfless service to their nation. I do think there's value there. At the same time, there's obviously a lot of, you know, challenges and caveats and contingencies that as adults, I think a little bit more complexly about these things than I did when I was 17. Yeah. So I heard you say that you were a patriot. What is America to you? Wow, I mean, it's such a challenging time to answer this question. So I'll do my best. I still very much love America. I mean, I was born here. I think that I've had a certain a great

amount of privilege throughout my life. I don't take for granted the freedoms that we have, nor the costs that it that was required for us to enjoy those freedoms. I do believe that America is a place of hope and opportunity and that we have the ability to be great and innovative and wonderful. And at the same time, there is a stain, you know, within our country grounded in its creation that has not been removed, replaced. It's just been reworked and is now a wound that is opening for the whole world to see. So to me, America is both promising but also wounded. Yeah. And what does that stand for? I mean, I'm speaking specifically of, you know, the history of genocide and structural racism

that was based within how our nation was founded, you know, from when Columbus, you know, so-called discovered, you know, India that wasn't India to the initial settlers who, you know, were driven by various goals that they had and, you know, how they engaged our indigenous populations and decimated the population. I mean, these are the facts of our life, yet we have not always recognized them or given them their full weight. More importantly, why I call it a stain is because it's a wound that really has been perpetuated systemically throughout time until today. So today we see this as people upset over police shooting of unarmed black men. It is just a symptom of that underlying problem that has not been fully resolved. I feel that if we're able to overcome

that and really acknowledge the reality of that and take corrective action, we will truly, we will fully live that identity that I described earlier of one of hope and opportunity. You know, the narrative that I believed in when I was taught it, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, the melting pot of the world, you can come here with nothing and be anything. I still believe that's true and I think it will be even more true when we're able to reconcile with our history. We're still a young nation and I think that we still have a lot to learn and I hope that 100, 200, 400 years from now people will look at us at this time and be proud of how we navigated this crucible moment and I hope that we will in the future just be known as a country that

was able to overcome those roots of hatred and inequity and dehumanization and dignity violation and was able to create a more perfect union for all of its inhabitants and a true lighthouse for the world. Wow, thank you. Thank you. Glenda, do you have any books or movies that you think everybody should watch or read? Oh, what? I wasn't prepared for that question. I'm a bibliophile man so I'm always reading like five books at one time.

Oh, I know I'm going to get flak for answering this question honestly but I don't know any other way to be. So right now I'm reading The People's History of the United States by Zen and I'm thinking of joining a book club, making a book club with myself and a bunch of my military colleagues, many of whom probably think he's like not even worth reading because I just find it so fascinating thinking about what we learned about our history in school and Zen writes from the perspective of the conquered. So I'm excited about that book. I just finished reading the book Between the World and Me. I listened to it on Audible which was read by the author Tynahassee Coates but I also bought the hard copy book for my 16 year old son. It was beautifully written. If you haven't read it,

please read it. It was just, it'll give you insights if you're not raising a person of color, if you're like me raising a black boy in America, it's just great to stimulate discussion and also bring things to the surface. Yeah, there's a long list but those are the two that's what's on my bookshelf right now. Oh, I just, one more, I just finished reading John Lewis's book Across That Bridge. Also a great quick read. He just recently passed. He was my congressman. I live in the 5th congressional district of Georgia and I just loved reading his perspective of the civil rights movement. I was so surprised about some of his perspectives. You know, things I just really didn't know how much his faith and spiritual worldview drove his motivation and actions in the civil

rights movement. So those are the ones I will leave to our listeners to consider. Glenda, thank you. Thank you so much. That was a very, very interesting conversation. Well, thanks again for having me and yeah, I hope it was interesting for our listeners and it was a great time.

Thank you for listening to this installment with Glenda Rand. So now just a quick update, I have started recording some of my interviews live and streaming them on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. I already have two interviews that you can watch. One with Derek Cobb who is a singer, a performer, a dancer. Derek has had an amazing life. He started as a homeless in New York and is now recording with major label in Hollywood. The other live interviews is with Brooklyn Dad Defiant. That's his Twitter handle, Brooklyn Dad Defiant. His name is Majid Padilin. He's an anti-Trump internet activist. He's got over 665,000 followers and we spoke about politics, the elections, and the filtered bubble in which we isolate

ourselves on social media. Fascinating interview. So those can be watched now. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, our Facebook page, our Twitter in order to see them and I will release the podcast in the coming weeks. Thank you for listening and see you very soon.