Tami Chappell/Reuters/File

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. Experts say the pandemic has created challenges for the CDC's goals of communicating competence while maintaining transparency.

Credibility, transparency, and trust. 

Ask public health experts about their field’s guiding principles for communication, and those three words come up over and over.

“Especially when you are communicating under very difficult circumstances, these are the three essential ingredients,” says Vish Viswanath, a professor of health communication at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

But it’s precisely the toughest of circumstances – such as an unpredictable virus – that can make it most difficult to uphold the ideals of effective communication. And there’s little doubt that recent days and weeks have tested those principles, as a COVID-19-weary nation has gone from a growing sense of optimism and even normality to, once again, rising caseloads, mask mandates, and confusion.

A big jolt came last week, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged fully vaccinated Americans to resume wearing masks indoors in regions with high viral spread. The CDC also toughened its guidance for schools, recommending that all teachers, staff, and students wear masks, regardless of vaccination status – setting off politicized debates across the country. 

But the data supporting the new mask guidelines – based on an outbreak in Massachusetts involving mostly vaccinated people – wasn’t released for three days. 

Experts say that the CDC is, at times, in a no-win situation. By announcing the new mask guidance without simultaneously releasing the data, the agency came across as less than transparent. But if it had waited to issue new mask guidance until it was ready to release the data, it could have been accused of delaying important public health advice.

“Paradox of expertise”

This conundrum demonstrates a “paradox of expertise”: Public health officials need to speak with authority, so people will pay attention and feel reassured. But in an emergency, officials are learning new information in real time and thus can’t claim to have all the answers. 

“Transparency has to be balanced by things that build confidence,” says Marsha Vanderford, a former communications official at the World Health Organization and the CDC. “So if you say, ‘I don’t know,’ people think you’re transparent, but they might also think that you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a two-edged sword.”

In an emergency, changes to public guidance are inevitable. Expert advice one day – such as the early pandemic advice that masks weren’t necessary, as Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had said – can be reversed the next. 

The key, say communication experts, is to qualify statements with phrases such as “to the best of our knowledge” and “as of now.” That signals to the public that the guidance could change, as new information is assessed. 

If caveats and qualifications are left out, “it makes the public health message susceptible to conspiracy theories or to the assumption of incompetence,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Philadelphia. 

“That’s not fair to the scientists or to public health experts. But the messaging failure is that they haven’t clearly marked their messages as provisional, subject to updating, and what we know now, which could change.” 

Mary Altaffer/AP/File

A student at the Post Road Elementary School in White Plains, New York, Oct. 1, 2020. The CDC this week announced that fully vaccinated people should resume wearing masks indoors if they live in areas where the virus is surging, and recommended that teachers and students everywhere wear masks in schools.

As for the safety of the vaccines, experts say it’s accurate to describe them as very safe. But that doesn’t mean health authorities shouldn’t acknowledge and discuss the possibility of rare side effects – and in fact, doing so is helpful in maintaining trust, since those side effects can make headlines and often dominate on social media. Coursing through the conversation, since vaccines became available, is an effort by public officials to avoid sowing fear of the vaccines and to persuade the hesitant to get vaccinated.

The “breakthrough” challenge

Another point of contention now centers on the use of the word “rare” when describing “breakthrough infections” – that is, COVID-19 diagnoses in people who have been fully vaccinated – even as news reports and anecdotal evidence increasingly suggest they may be more common than that.

At a virtual briefing with reporters Thursday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky sought to correct a commonly cited statistic from her agency – that nearly all hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 are among the unvaccinated. The data, she noted, was from January to June, and did not reflect more up-to-date data that includes the rise of the delta variant.

Some are criticizing the CDC for halting the tracking, as of May 1, of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated unless they are hospitalized or die. 

“The question is, is it worth the time and expense of setting up a system to track breakthrough cases when they don’t result in hospitalization?” says Professor Jamieson. “There are those who argue persuasively that it is.”

Ms. Vanderford, the former CDC communications official, expresses sympathy for public health officials in the COVID-19 era. 

“They’ve never dealt with anything that has so defied expectations over such a long period of time,” she says. “All agencies in times of uncertainty draw lessons from the past. But in this case, there aren’t a lot of plays in the playbook to draw from.” 

Then there are the self-inflicted wounds, such as misstatements by top officials – including the person with the biggest megaphone, President Joe Biden – that can knock the government off-message.

In a July 22 CNN town hall, President Biden stated incorrectly that since the vaccines “cover” the delta variant of the virus, “you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” The White House later clarified his statement, noting that “97% of hospitalizations are people who were unvaccinated.”

On July 30, the CDC’s Dr. Walensky stated in a Fox News interview that the federal government was “looking into” a federal vaccine mandate. She soon issued a clarification: “There will be no nationwide mandate.” 

On Tuesday, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, recommended on CNN that parents of unvaccinated children wear masks at home, then quickly backtracked.

Overwhelmed with information

A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that trust in public health authorities – including the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Fauci – remains high. Other polling shows challenges in public trust, in part a reflection of distrust in government in general. 

Professor Viswanath of the Harvard Chan School favorably contrasts the Biden administration with its predecessor, in what he calls the current team’s “significant efforts in letting science make most of the decisions, and not undercutting scientists and public health experts.” 

But he identifies multiple challenges that contribute to the burden on today’s health communicators. First, he says, “the pathogen has surprised us at every turn.” Then there’s the challenge of processing all the pandemic-related information, including empirical, data-based studies too numerous to count.

“That is like drinking from a fire hose; people are just overwhelmed with information,” Professor Viswanath says.

Add to that the rise of social media, which can be a source of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories – as well as a source of accurate information – and the politicization of just about everything.

“Never,” he says, “have our lives been upended the way this has happened in the last 17 months.” 

Hussein Malla/AP

Relatives of victims who were killed in the massive blast last year at the Beirut port attend a Mass held to commemorate the first anniversary of the deadly explosion. International reporters are back in Beirut for the anniversary after a year of neglect.

It is striking how, in recent days, the world’s media have suddenly focused, like the circling beam of some giant lighthouse, on two struggling former democracies on opposite sides of the world: Lebanon on the Mediterranean, and Myanmar nearly 4,000 miles away by the Indian Ocean.

But the two stories are related, and not just because of the suffering being visited on millions of people in both places.

They’re each subject to the fickleness of the lighthouse.

It is the calendar that has dictated the recent spurt of news coverage. The Lebanese capital, Beirut, is marking the first anniversary of a devastating explosion that shattered lives and dealt a potentially crushing blow to hopes of a functioning democracy. In Myanmar, it is six months since the military quashed the results of a national election, deposed the government, jailed its leading figures, and snuffed out democracy.

And as the calendar moves on, so will the lighthouse beam, illuminating new topics of interest but leaving Lebanon and Myanmar largely in the dark again.

Falling down the world’s news agenda will make the citizens of both countries feel frustrated and abandoned, as I know from my own friends in Lebanon, where I first worked as a Monitor correspondent during the civil war in the late 1970s.

Yet for those wielding power it will be a relief, easing whatever political pressure they may have felt from a watching world.

The evidence of the past few months, without the full-on glare of sustained media coverage, is not encouraging.

In Lebanon, the explosion in Beirut’s port on Aug. 4, 2020, was initially seen as a potential catalyst for long-overdue political reforms. The source of the blast – a huge stock of ammonium nitrate sitting for years in a poorly maintained storage facility – summed up what growing numbers of Lebanese saw as the rot at the core of their political system.

A rot of incompetence. Arrogance. Above all, corruption, with leaders of the country’s main religious groupings – Christian, Sunni Muslim, Druze, and the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah movement – divvying up the spoils from the public purse while ordinary Lebanese struggled to survive under the twin pressures of economic collapse and the pandemic.

The tragedy, which killed more than 200 people and left 300,000 homeless, was still front-page news when the international community, spearheaded by French President Emmanuel Macron, rushed in with assurances of billions of dollars in aid. But donors conditioned the money on seeing deep-rooted reforms, transparency in how public funds were spent, and an independent audit of the country’s central bank.

In the 12 months that have elapsed, generally out of the international media spotlight, Lebanon’s power-brokers have not only failed to deliver. They’ve been unable to agree even on the composition of a new government.

And conditions have deteriorated. Electricity and water are intermittent in many areas. The national currency has collapsed. Basic commodities are either hard to find, or beyond ordinary people’s means. Last week, a Beirut friend posted a message on Facebook. “I’ve lived here since 1976,” it read. “Witnessed the civil war and its aftermath. I cannot recall the living conditions ever sinking this low.”

AP

Myanmar journalists Kay Son Nway and Ye Myo Khant stand together after their release from prison. Thousands of protesters have been jailed since a military coup last February, but the international media carried few reports of them.

In Myanmar, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s military takeover on Feb. 1, annulling a landslide election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, at first drew huge international concern, criticism, and media attention.

Even as his troops began rounding up civilian politicians, democracy activists, and journalists, and violently confronting street protesters, the general pledged to allow fresh elections after a year of emergency rule.

But what’s been happening in the intervening six months, while the world was not really watching? Government troops have inexorably beaten down dwindling protests. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed. More than 5,000 are in detention.

This week the general extended the state of emergency until August 2023, pushing back the promised election date by another 18 months.

The people of Myanmar, and Lebanon as well, may take at least some reassurance from this week’s renewed international media focus on their plight.

And even once the lighthouse beam moves on, groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International will be chronicling the rule of terror in Myanmar. President Macron will be pursuing his efforts to get Lebanon’s power establishment to establish a competent and transparent government.

Still, sustained press reporting is always a key factor in ensuring effective, day-to-day accountability.

In one sense, it is inevitable and understandable that international attention will flag – at least until the next calendar catalyst. There is a huge number of competing concerns and crises for editors and reporters to cover: domestic politics, wars, international diplomatic tensions. Climate change. And nowadays, of course, the pandemic.

Still, I’ve been haunted this week by a personally significant precedent from World War II, when Nazi Germany was systematically killing European Jews in what became known as the Holocaust.

My late father-in-law spent the war years in the United States leading a campaign to convince the American government to provide refuge for those who might still be saved. He teamed up with the playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht to place deliberately provocative ads in The New York Times to make that case.

One Hecht “ballad” spoke directly, and ironically, to the millions who at that point still survived. He told them to not be “bothersome,” writing:

“Quiet, Jews. …

The world is busy with other news.”

Anton Vaganov/Reuters/File

Workers are seen at the construction site of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, near the town of Kingisepp in the Leningrad region of Russia, June 5, 2019.

Something important, perhaps even portentous, has shifted in the geopolitical axis between Moscow, Ukraine, and the West.

U.S. President Joe Biden and outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel inked a statement last month that appears to greenlight the long-disputed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will deliver Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing a Soviet-era pipeline through Ukraine. Depending on whom you speak with in Kyiv, this is an unexpected American stab in Ukraine’s back, one that seriously undermines the troubled nation’s national security. Or it just might be a blessing in disguise that will help to liberate Ukraine from its long-term dependence on Russian gas and transit fees.

In Moscow too, the mood is not nearly as triumphant as might be expected. For both countries, this episode saw leaders of the United States and Germany sit down and seal a critical geostrategic deal behind their backs. That delivers a harsh lesson: Germany, an old U.S. ally that was heavily invested in completion of the NS2 pipeline, looms much, much larger in Washington’s calculus than Russia or Ukraine.

“Moscow and Kyiv may tot up their wins and losses from this decision, but the fact is that it had nothing to do with them,” says Sergei Strokan, international affairs columnist with the Moscow daily Kommersant. “Joe Biden was seeking to undo the damage done to the transatlantic alliance by Donald Trump, and he took this lemon – a pipeline that Germany really wanted, which was already 90% complete – and he made lemonade by conceding it to the Germans.

“Some people in Ukraine may be very upset by this clear demonstration that Ukraine and its struggle with Russia isn’t the top priority on Washington’s agenda. Going by some of the noises coming out of Kyiv, that is a bitter pill to swallow, though it was a never realistic idea. By the same token, there is no big cause for satisfaction in Moscow. Yes, the pressure on NS2 is off, but it’s not because the U.S. has recognized Russian interests, or is likely to give in to them in future.”

Money and politics

The U.S. has always opposed the thirst of Germany and other Western European economies for Russian energy supplies. Back in the 1970s, Washington argued strenuously against the construction of the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline across Ukraine and Poland to deliver Soviet energy supplies to Europe. That pipeline, now at the heart of the NS2 dispute, still carries Russian gas to Germany, yielding between $2 billion and $3 billion in annual transit fees for Ukraine – not an inconsiderable amount for an economy whose total gross domestic product was $154 billion in 2020.

But starting almost two decades ago, Russia began planning new routes that would bypass Ukraine, where political developments were taking what Moscow perceived as an anti-Russia turn, especially after the 2004 Orange Revolution. Work on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, designed to carry Russian gas directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea, began in 2005. It was completed in 2011, but not before several “gas wars” erupted between Moscow and Kyiv, threatening shivering downstream consumers with shutdowns, and badly damaging Russia’s reputation as a reliable energy supplier. Major planning for Nord Stream 2, which has enough capacity to allow Russian gas exporters to avoid using Ukraine’s pipeline network, began in earnest in 2015, following Ukraine’s pro-Western Maidan Revolution.

“It was the desire of [the Russian state gas monopoly] Gazprom to reduce transit through Ukraine,” says Mikhail Krutikhin, a partner in the Moscow-based oil and gas consultancy RusEnergy. “They now have more than enough options to supply Germany directly and make the Ukrainian pipeline redundant. ... Politically, Russia gains a lot. It no longer needs to depend on Ukraine, and Europe is divided over the issue. That suits Moscow fine.”

The heated response from Kyiv, experts say, is not so much about the economic losses involved with sidelining the vast Soviet-era pipeline network they inherited – though those losses are substantial – as it is about the feeling that Ukraine and its struggle have been downgraded amid geopolitical horse-trading between U.S. and German leaders.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is due to meet with Mr. Biden later this month for what Ukrainian media predicts will be “heated” talks, has made no effort to conceal his “surprise” and “disappointment” over the U.S.-German pipeline deal.

“The termination of [gas] transit is not so much a blow to the economy, but a blow to [Ukrainian] political elites. That’s why we are witnessing this neurotic response of the authorities instead of a pragmatic search for ways to compensate for the losses,” says Kyiv-based economist Aleksey Kushch. The end of gas transit will inevitably boost prices for customers and industries, many of which are already outdated and inefficient.

“For the economy, it would mean the loss of competitiveness,” he says.

A loss of revenue?

Since 2014 Ukraine has taken the lead in sanctioning Russia for its annexation of Crimea and active involvement in east Ukrainian separatist revolts. Some of Ukraine’s most promising industries, including aviation and heavy engineering, which relied heavily on Russian markets, face bankruptcy after being denied access by Russia. But Ukraine’s leaders have been loath to let go of the vast network of pipelines and underground storage facilities that once carried 80 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe, or about 80% of all Russian gas exports to the EU.

Even today, under the current contract that lasts until 2024, Ukraine should handle 40 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually, and receive at least $1.5 billion in transit fees from Gazprom – which is about 1% of Ukraine’s entire GDP.

The German-U.S. statement pledges aid to help Ukraine transfer to green energy sources and compensate for any losses. But it also promises to support the continuation of fee-generating Russian gas exports via Ukraine’s pipelines.

Yuri Vitrenko, head of Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogas energy company, worries that those promises may be too vague.

“We lack a complete understanding if they [Western powers] are ready to do what it takes to ensure that we still have transit through Ukraine because ... we face an ongoing aggression from the Russian Federation, and we face ongoing use of gas as a geopolitical weapon,” he says.

“We should expect some dramatic decreases in the volumes going through Ukraine. ... And, going forward, from 2025 when the current contract expires, we should expect no flows,” he says.

Shifting Russia-Ukraine relations

Some experts argue that Ukraine needs to get over its dependence on Russian gas and embrace more modern methods of providing power for Ukrainian homes and industries. Ukraine’s top officials “think that gas transit is almost Ukraine’s holy right,” says Kyiv-based analyst Dmitri Marunich. “The saddest part is that these policies are counterproductive for the Ukrainian customers.”

Few experts in Moscow or Kyiv expect the deeply entrenched hostility between the two countries to abate, even if both have had to realize that their concerns do not top the agenda of policymakers in leading Western countries.

Last month Vladimir Putin penned a 5,000 word article about the “historical unity” between Russia and Ukraine that labeled the current Ukrainian government as an “anti-Russia project” controlled from Washington.

“We can disregard the long historical analysis in Putin’s article. He is not a historian,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, a leading Russian foreign policy analyst. “But the message in the final section is pretty clear. If Ukraine continues with this anti-Russia project, Putin suggests, it will be terribly disappointed” by how things will turn out.

In Ukraine, the mood of hostility toward Russia is only likely to grow as a result of the NS2 decision, says Vadim Karasyov, head of the Kyiv-based Institute for Global Strategies.

“Our authorities are publicly shouting that they have been betrayed” over NS2 by the West, he says. “But in fact this plays right into their hands. It gives them more leeway domestically, to ignore U.S. criticisms about the lack of reforms, and to chart their own policies. There is a sense that the West will continue to support Ukraine in any case.”

For Sanda Aldass, the 10-by-10-meter judo mat has always felt like home. She started competing when she was 7 years old, and the sport became one of the most important parts of her life. For years she was a top member of Syria’s national judo team. 

But after 2015, the sport didn’t have a home for her. 

That year Ms. Aldass fled Damascus after her family’s house was destroyed during the Syrian civil war. She couldn’t compete for Syria, and she couldn’t compete for the Netherlands, her adopted country. Ms. Aldass was out of options.

That’s why earning a spot on the Refugee Olympic Team (EOR) this summer meant more than a chance to compete. It let her “represent every judoka who is a refugee in the world,” said Ms. Aldass, “to look at me and say, ‘If she can do it then I can do it.’”

Competing in Nippon Budokan, the sport’s spiritual home, judo experienced a homecoming of sorts in Tokyo. Judo originated in Japan in the 19th century and first entered the Olympics at the 1964 Tokyo Games, taking place in the same building.

For Ms. Aldass and the rest of the EOR, this year’s homecoming is more personal. 

The second team to march during the opening ceremony, after perennial first Greece, the EOR has already become a cemented fixture at the Games. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, a particular fan, met with the team at the Olympic Village this year. The IOC has already pledged the refugee team will return in 2024.

Finding a new home is paramount for people fleeing or displaced by their country. For refugee athletes in Tokyo – and the more than 80 million displaced people around the world – sport can facilitate that journey. The EOR’s individual athletes used a love of sport to lay new roots in their adopted countries. Collectively, they’ve done the same to find a home in the Olympics. 

“Being a refugee – I would say that it’s someone who’s not home,” says Nigara Shaheen, Ms. Aldass’ teammate. “We all are not in our homes. That’s the struggle that we share.” 

“That’s why we really feel like we are a family,” she adds.

Growing team

Since debuting in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, the EOR has almost tripled in size, from 10 to 29 athletes. This year, it more fully represents the diversity of refugees around the world, with athletes who hail from 11 countries of origin – from Iran to Eritrea to Venezuela – and compete in 12 sports, from badminton to boxing.

Phil Noble/Reuters

Dorian Celeste Keletela (center) of the Refugee Olympic Team competes in the men's 100-meter preliminary round at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo July 31, 2021. Mr. Keletela was born in the Republic of Congo.

The IOC selected the team from a pool of 56 refugee athletes receiving scholarships that cover living and training expenses. This Refugee Athlete Support Program allows athletes to continue training after the Games, or supports them as they start a new career and rebuild their lives in a new country.

“Just the ability to interact and meet people and be able to learn and acquire new skills is something that helps these refugee athletes not only assimilate to new environments, but also to find a future,” says Andrea Mucino-Sanchez, a spokesperson for UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, which partners with the IOC to support the refugee team.

In judo the coed mixed team consisted of six members, originally from Syria, Congo, Afghanistan, and Iran. Training together for just one or two months and blending different cultures and languages can be difficult. Becoming a team begins with learning to trust one another. 

“At the beginning [of training with the team] I was a little bit hesitant,” says Ms. Shaheen. “I was thinking, ‘How will my experience be?’ But we all share the same story.”

Compared with national teams, which often have superior facilities and funding, the EOR faces institutional disadvantages. Like Ms. Aldass, many of the team’s members once competed on their former countries’ national teams. But leaving a country behind also means the same for training and, potentially, institutional support. At the July 31 competition, the team lost in the first round to Germany. 

Notwithstanding, many of the athletes were smiling afterward, hugging each other as they returned from the mat – understanding the challenges they’ve faced to get here. More broadly, even if they want to medal, they know their role in Tokyo is to build a competitive foundation as the team continues to grow. 

“Next time we will come back stronger,” says Ms. Shaheen.

Next step, Paris?

Ms. Aldass is returning home to the Netherlands, where her three children and husband – who is also her coach – are waiting. 

It’s often Syrian men who flee the country and seek refugee status, hoping to later reunite with their family. But Ms. Aldass went first in her family.

Escaping to the Netherlands, she lived in a refugee camp for nine months, including six months without her husband and then-3-year-old son. Exercise was a crucial outlet that helped her persevere – and still is. 

“It was so difficult to start everything all over again, since we came here,” Ms. Aldass said in an IOC video during the Games. “But sport gave us [a] big motivation.”

Ms. Aldass says she hopes to return with the EOR at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. The team’s members will likely change, but its goal will remain the same: to be a symbol of hope for refugees, and show them they, too, can find a home. In achievement of that goal, the EOR’s character is as important as its results. 

“Inside the refugee team, all the [members] have a big heart,” says teammate Javad Mahjoub.

It was her sister’s glowing recommendation that first convinced Carol Lamar to watch “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America.” Released May 26, the Netflix series explores the origins of African American cuisine, sparking dialogue in the Black community and across racial lines. And when the owner of The Love Inspired, a holistic health company, tuned in to watch, she was pleased to discover how truthfully the series depicted the nuance of Black history. 

“There’s been a lot of division and disconnect from American culture [recently]. But this show really affirmed how much American culture really is African American culture,” says Ms. Lamar.

“High on the Hog” illuminates how Black ingenuity is intrinsic to many American dishes. The series furthers what many Black culinary historians have been doing for decades: It credits the resourcefulness of enslaved Black people for some of America’s most celebrated foods. By doing so, the series offers a guide for understanding racial history through food. 

“High on the Hog” shows how African Americans not only created eats like macaroni and cheese and American barbecue, but were also instrumental in the popularization of okra, black-eyed peas, hibiscus, yams, peanuts, watermelon, oysters, and many other foods considered American staples, especially in the South. 

“I believe food is a good way to connect to other people. And we need a lot of connection in the world today,” says Adrian Miller, a James Beard Award-winning author and certified barbecue judge, who was a consultant on the show. 

The show does precisely that; it connects stories of people making a variety of food in the West African country of Benin, a stronghold for the transatlantic slave trade, to regions across the United States. Host Stephen Satterfield dissects everything from the food history of Gullah culture and cuisine to the Black families carrying on the traditions of America’s first caterers. 

“When we talk about the African American influence on American cuisine, we’re talking about 400 years of history,” Mr. Miller remarks. “Southern food, soul food, Creole food, Gullah cuisine, low country food, we’re talking about the ingredients and techniques of Western Africa, Western Europe, and also the Americas all coming together several centuries ago. Because of the racial dynamic, enslaved Africans were often the cooks.”

The show leaves no cultural touchstones unturned, and viewers are coming away with lots to research. Mr. Miller says the show has inspired Black Americans to do their own investigations about their heritage. Books from various culinary authors, some nearly a decade old, are getting more attention since the series, he says. People are utilizing what they’re learning, and the show is sparking conversations. 

“High on the Hog” viewer Christin Ivy, an actress at Tre Floyd Productions in Atlanta, watched the show with her partner. She says the series reinforced a lot of things she already knew and felt about Black history.

“A lot of the times the argument is African Americans don’t have a culture,” Ms. Ivy says. “But we do have a culture. It is woven into food. It is woven into every way of life. There are parts of it that have never been lost. I’m hoping we can continue as a people to just learn more about that part of ourselves. We have to remember who we are.” 

Courtesy of Netflix

This photo is from the first episode of “High on the Hog,” which focuses on Black Americans’ culinary roots.

But inevitably, in reckoning with African American history, Black people are faced with their own present-day struggles. 

“For the last couple of decades, Southern food and barbecue have been very popular,” Mr. Miller explains. “But in terms of storytelling about these cuisines ... when people of color did this cooking, it was just viewed as work. But [for] white people, it’s viewed as craft. And ‘craft’ can make a whole lot of money.” 

In having an all-Black creative team, “High on the Hog” can depict Black culture and history with agency, as the makers of the series have the lived experience to tell the stories. This is increasingly important for many Black viewers who look to see African Americans both on and off the screen. Still, experts like Mr. Miller stress that America has a long way to go before generational woes are fully addressed.

For many Black viewers of the series, the more research they do about their history, the more it aligns with the present, Mr. Miller suggests. Some viewers wonder what to do after watching “High on the Hog” and being educated about the disregard that Black cuisine often faces. But the genesis of the series itself can provide insight. 

Culinary historians have grown concerned that African American food will, quite literally, get swallowed up by Americans without the respect or acknowledgment that other cuisines are given. Some experts wonder if clearer definitions of Black cuisine are necessary for it to be respected.

“We need to begin to establish some regulations about what [African American cuisine] is,” says Dr. Jessica Harris, author of the book “High on the Hog,” which inspired the series. “When we talk about mac and cheese, does it have to have elbow pasta? Could it have pappardelle and still be mac and cheese?” she asks. “It’s like [Jamaican] jerk. People can call pretty much anything jerk because we’ve never really defined it. It’s steamed over pimento wood, which is now endangered in Jamaica, so they’re smoking it over logwood. But what does that mean if you’re doing it up here in a kitchen where you were not thinking about logwood or pimento wood? Is it still jerk?”

While defining centuries-old cultures seems like a massive undertaking, some viewers say the need is rooted in African American pride.

“Despite all the things that were thrown at our ancestors, we’re still here,” Mr. Miller says. No matter how much Black people have endured or will endure, “there is always a kernel. A nugget, a nubbin of joy in everything,” Dr. Harris affirms. That’s why it’s called soul food; it reflects something deeper, she says.

To experts and viewers alike, the show demonstrates the enduring resilience of African Americans and their ability to shine through periods of immense challenges. 

“I felt really joyful,” Ms. Lamar says after having watched the series. “It made me feel better as a Black American woman, and not many things make me feel proud to be American. This show reminded me that to be American, you have to include the story of the Black Americans.”

Ramil Nasibulin/BelTA/Handout via REUTERS

Belarusian opposition politician Maria Kolesnikova attends a court hearing in Minsk, Belarus, August 4.

It’s hard to imagine a more joyful and fearless pro-democracy activist in the world than Maria Kalesnikava. On Wednesday, this brave woman entered a closed courtroom in Belarus, a country at the center of Europe and the focus of its struggle against autocracy, and did a short dance with a smile before the start of her trial. From inside a prisoner cage, she also made a heart with her fingers for reporters.

And this happy display came after she had spent 11 months in near-solitary confinement for helping organize mass protests last year against a ruthless dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, in a former Soviet state the size of Kansas.

Her dance helped show to the world where the real fear in Belarus lies.

“The authorities are terrified of an open trial, where everyone will see that, in fact, the authorities themselves are the main danger,” she told Russian outlet TV Rain.

When she speaks to her jailers and other authorities, she said, one of her rules is to laugh a lot. “Freedom is worth fighting for. Do not be afraid to be free,” she wrote in a message to her fellow citizens from jail last year.

Last September, she had an opportunity to be physically free when security officers took her to the border and tried to exile her. Instead, she ripped up her passport and ran back into Belarus, only to be arrested on bogus charges.

Her leadership, along with that of two other women who led the protests in 2020, has altered the thinking of Belarusians in ways that have not only shaken the regime in Minsk but also the autocrat next door, Vladimir Putin. He fears yet another democratic revolution in the states along Russia’s border.

“We have already won now,” Ms. Kalesnikava told the German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag (The World on Sunday). “We have conquered our fear and our indifference. This is most important. It is very difficult to squeeze out the bondage, drop by drop – but it is necessary for us and for our future.”

“Freedom doesn’t just fall into your lap,” she said.

“All those who are prepared to fight for the right of people to determine their own future give us strength and are our allies. Belarus is not the only country that has not yet been able to build a democratic system. This is a global challenge. What does the future of humanity look like? That depends on all of us.”

During her time in jail, Ms. Kalesnikava takes joy in each day. “I know that life is beautiful,” said the trained flutist and music manager.

This theme of conquering fear is common among many Belarusians who have run up against the regime and made the mental leap from quiescence to quiet activism. (The protests have ended as result of some 35,000 people being arrested.)

“Every Belorusian is overcoming their fears right now,” says Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the female presidential candidate who probably beat Mr. Lukashenko in a rigged election last August.

“Democracy has to be inside every person,” she told The New Yorker in December. “Imagine how difficult it is to make the transition from a state of obedience to thinking, ‘I’m responsible for my country.’”

The latest public figure to remind her people of the need for courage is Olympic runner Krystsina Tsimanouskaya. On Wednesday, she arrived in Poland after leaving Tokyo in a hurry to escape her government’s handlers. She had objected to a request by Belarusian sports officials to have her run in a race she had not trained for.

“I want to tell all Belarusians not to be afraid and, if they’re under pressure, speak out,” said the runner at a press conference. She didn’t do a dance. But she captured the spirit of the one by another dissident in a Minsk courtroom.