issue

People are eager to return to normal after a year of coronavirus, but is the U.S. there yet? Hardly. The ongoing psychological and spiritual damage caused by the pandemic is rising, too. Guilt and shame are two prevailing emotions surrounding COVID-19. This guilt stems in part from the fact that anyone could be a potential carrier of the virus – so anyone, then, could unwittingly pass it to another person. Guilt can also arise when a person looks at the national and global death tolls and wonders how they were spared. Guilt also happens when family members can’t visit loved ones undergoing treatment at a hospital, or when someone with COVID-19 survives but reads about a infected stranger who died. A particular type of response called survivor’s guilt can occur when people lose loved ones...

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of fewer than half of White Americans. Given that Americans tend to have a narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline. The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The media and scholars have noted that Whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and discrimination. After the first wave of t...

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Guilt A Growing Issue As COVID-19 Survivor’s Reality Of Loss Settles In