“Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent.”
– Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Can white Americans even imagine the stress associated with being a member of a minority? Consider the children. Research by the American Psychological Association has shown that black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty, and face police violence if accused of a crime.
Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Feb. 24, 2014.
What do these black children experience as they develop attitudes and practices? After all, they are at higher risk of death and injury at hands of law enforcement. Parents of black children thus live with significant fear for their children’s safety, and the stress felt by the children is often toxic.
Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Feb. 24, 2014.
What do these black children experience as they develop attitudes and practices? After all, they are at higher risk of death and injury at hands of law enforcement. Parents of black children thus live with significant fear for their children’s safety, and the stress felt by the children is often toxic.
The danger black children face can cause ongoing fear and anger, which manifests in a variety of ways that are detrimental to well-being – these children are especially vulnerable to the psychological and physical effects of police brutality and the threat thereof because of their developmental stages.
That threat of death is real and ongoing. In 2017, a study found that police killed 1,147 people, and that black people made up 25% of this number. However, black people only made up 13% of the population at the time, meaning this population is overrepresented.
In addition to this, 30% of black victims were unarmed, compared to 21% of white victims. The report concluded that black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. The 2017 Police Violence Report found that, “black people were more likely to be killed by police, more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed.”
Mapping Police Violence. (2017). Mapping Police Violence. Retrieved May 5, 2019, from https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
Effects of Police Killings
Reactions to police killings are overwhemingly traumatic. Research confirms that police killings in the residential environment can trigger acute stress with negative consequences. Police killings evoke grief, collective anger, and hopelessness linked to perceived interpersonal discrimination in the form of unequal treatment by the police based on race and ethnicity. They are seen as a manifestation of structural racism or a broader system of laws, policies, and practices that maintain hierarchies and oppress racial minorities.
S. Alang, D. McAlpine, E. McCreedy, R. Hardeman, Police brutality and black health: Setting the agenda for public health scholars. Am. J. Public Health 107, 662–665 (2017).
The trauma, anxiety, hopelessness, and fear about future police encounters are all stressors. Accordingly, exposure to police killings in the residential environment or through news reports can trigger acute stress, which are more pronounced for police killings of unarmed victims perceived as unjustified.
P. Braveman, K. Heck, S. Egerter, P. Dominguez, C. Rinki, K. S. Marchi, M. Curtis, Worry about racial discrimination: A missing piece of the puzzle of Black-White disparities in preterm birth? PLOS ONE 12,e0186151 (2017).
Recent research demonstrates some of these negative consequences of police killings and aggressive policing more broadly. Aggressive policing also has been found to affect the health of individuals. Findings revealed that men who reported having more police contact, which was most often intrusive and unfair, also reported more symptoms of trauma and anxiety.
For example, Bor et al. show that police killings negatively affect mental health among black Americans. Related work documents the effect of police killings and aggressive forms of policing on educational outcomes, stress, and other health outcomes of black youth.
J. Bor, A. S. Venkataramani, D. R. Williams, A. C. Tsai, Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: A population-based, quasi-experimental study. Lancet 392, 302–310 (2018)
- Ang, The Effects of Police Violence on Inner-City Students, 75 (2018).
A study conducted by Kathy Sanders-Phillips (2009) investigated the impact that racial discrimination has on the development and functioning of African American children. Sanders-Phillips presented theoretical frameworks, analyzed levels of exposure to racial discrimination among children of color, examined the effects that discrimination has on children’s psychological functioning, and considered the impact that racial discrimination has on parenting behaviors and community support.
An overall model was developed, which shows that children experience racial discrimination at personal and institutional levels. Once racial discrimination is experienced, children develop perceptions of threat, fear, victimization, low self-efficacy, low self-esteem, and hopelessness, which then lead to problems with depression, anxiety, and anger … problems that intensify over lifetimes.
Sanders-Phillips, K. (2009). Racial Discrimination: A Continuum of Violence Exposure for Children of Color. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 12(2), 174-195.
Stress negatively affects childbirth. For black women who are pregnant, this exposure and related stress can shorten the length of gestation, affect birth weight, and increase the risk of other adverse health outcomes.
A. Premkumar, O. Nseyo, A. V. Jackson, Connecting police violence with reproductive health. Obstet. Gynecol. 129, 153–156 (2017).
The likely biological mechanism linking acute, environmental stressors during pregnancy, such as police violence in the residential environment, to birth outcomes is based on increased production of placental corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH).
P. Braveman, K. Heck, S. Egerter, T. P. Dominguez, C. Rinki, K. S. Marchi, M. Curtis, Worry about racial discrimination: A missing piece of the puzzle of Black-White disparities in preterm birth? PLOS ONE 12,e0186151 (2017).
J. W. Collins Jr.., R. J. David, A. Handler, S. Wall, S. Andes , Very low birthweight in African American infants: The role of maternal exposure to interpersonal racial discrimination. Am. J. Public Health 94,2132–2138 (2004).
To Summarize
Beginning in infancy (even before), black, lower social class children are more likely to have strong, frequent, or prolonged exposure to major traumatic events, the frightening or threatening conditions that induce a stress response. This stress continues throughout their lifetime. Such stress can become toxic when “the events or conditions precipitating it are severely frightening or threatening – especially when they are sustained or frequently repeated – and when protective factors are insufficient to mitigate the stress to tolerable levels.”
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently issued a report on the impact of poverty, racial and social class on toxic stress. The report found that black children were 21% more likely to have been exposed to three or more frightening or stressful experiences. These children may also have less access to protective resources that can help reduce the effects of toxic stress, thereby exacerbating the effects.
Leila Morsy and Richard Rothstein, Toxic stress and children’s outcomes, Economic policy institute, May 1, 2019.
Violence is a chronic, recurrent problem. And, racism intensifies the toxic stress of poverty. Clearly trauma plays a powerful role in feeding the cycle of violence for all victims and, especially, for those who disproportionately live in neighborhoods marked by poverty.
Despite the tendency to focus on homicide as the prime indicator of violence, it is only the tip of the iceberg. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that for every homicide there are 94 nonfatal violent injuries. Available data confirms African Americans, and African American males in particular, are disproportionately affected by nonfatal assault. In 2013, black males between the ages of 10 and 25 suffered nearly three times the rate of nonfatal assaults as similarly aged white males.
John Rich, MD, MPH, Moving Toward Healing: Trauma and Violence and Boys and Young Men of Color, Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University, 2016.
Trauma, violence, adversity – what is the reality, especially for boys and young men of color? They believe the police are not there to protect them. Instead, they view the police as victimizers, and they are reluctant to cooperate with these authorities for fear of being seen as “snitches.” In addition, traumatized young black people feel constantly in danger and sometimes turn to weapons or membership in gangs and other groups as a means of self-protection. The circle of fear and anguish perpetuates itself.
Rich, J.A., Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men. 2009: JHU Press.
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