“Trauma went untreated, a lot of sh*t on my mind.”
On Friday, 21 August in Lafayette, Louisiana, 31-year old Trayford Pellerin was stalked, hunted, and assassinated by the police. A Black man with social anxiety disorder, potentially experiencing a mental health crisis, was followed by police for nearly half-a-mile. He was then surrounded by half a dozen police officers outside a CircleK gas station. Instead of treating Pellerin as a human being undergoing a mental emergency, the police reinforced the dehumanization of Black men as beasts and savages, as existential threats to be neutralized, firing 11 shots, hitting Brother Trayford in the back seven times. His body lay on the ground as the police officers stood over him, predators surrounding their fallen prey. The CircleK gas station closed for the night and opened the next day. Business as usual.
On Sunday, 23 August I awoke to this news. While it occurs at an egregiously constant, somewhat consistent, rate, I am heartbroken and traumatized each and every time. It is a feeling deeper than empathy, for I do not merely share feelings of grief, tragedy, and rage. It is a blow to my overall psychological being. Linked fate is a more adequate term to classify the thoughts and feelings I encounter. Linked fate is defined as an acute sense of awareness (or recognition) that what happens to the group will also affect the individual member. Historically grounded, the cognitive factors underlying linked fate reflect a sense of belonging or conscious loyalty to the group in question. In this case, I feel a linked fate to my Brother Trayford. The similarities between him and I are frightening. He was carrying a knife at the time of his murder. For personal protection, I carry a pocket knife. He had social anxiety and most commonly grew anxious when in groups. I experience anxiety when in groups. He was murdered at 31 years old. I write this at 21 years old. I feel it’s but a matter of time and place that it’s my name and picture that’s the next one to be shown on the news. Is his fate also my own? The pathology of Black men and boys says it is.
To be Black and male in amerikan society is to live, or really survive, under the omnipresence of violence and death. Police killings and violence appear to be a consistent and persistent inescapable truth for Black men: such killings and violence are unwarranted; such killings appear to be lawful. To be a Black man is to quite literally have nightmares of death and despair, and this death comes to you because of who you are. In fact, it is not about “who” you are, because “who” is humanizing. It is about what you are in the minds of those who are not you, of those who fear you. This fear, or cultural intuition, expressed toward Black males call upon this society to support the imposition of death on these bodies, and offers consent for the rationalizations the police state present to the public as their justifications for killing the Black beast, the rapist, the criminal, and the thug. The images and perception of Black men as dangerous to society, women, and themselves ultimately create a pattern of thinking that allows the seeming inevitability of death for the young Black male to be justified. As a Black man, I am brutalized and killed for what I am. Because to be a “who”, I must first be human, and I am not afforded that level of thought and care.
A rigorous and comprehensive study of trauma is a necessary component to any legitimate concern of Black male life. Trauma has been identified as a major public health and medical issue, and Black males ages 18 and older are at a noticeably high risk for trauma exposure. Trauma is complex, especially when racialized and gendered. When examining the various national studies and empirical findings, you will find a population (Black men) that is half the size of the majority (white men) but twice as likely to endure at least one traumatic event. Then, this already minoritized population is approximately half as likely as their White counterparts to use professional mental health services, even after adjusting for socioeconomic and clinical factors. Essentially, an entire population is plagued with untreated trauma and, rather than treat this as an emergency and direct vital resources to it, this group is dehumanized, pathologized, and blame is assigned entirely to them for being in the predicament they are in.
Black males age 18 and older have the highest age adjusted all-cause mortality rate and perhaps the worst health status of any ethnic-sex group in the United States (Rich & Marguerite, 2002; Ravenell et al., 2006). Exposure to trauma, whether through witnessing or direct victimization, is often a daily reality for many Black males (Bertram & Dartt, 2008; Rich et al., 2005). Additionally, having prior experiences of trauma exposure puts one at risk for exposure to traumatic events in the future (Breslau et al., 1991; Cottler, Nishith, & Compton, 2001; Yehuda et al., 2006). This cycle of trauma that encompasses the lives of many Black men ages 18 and older poses tremendous social and economic costs to the victims, their families, society, and the healthcare system.
If trauma has been identified as a major public health issue, and it is Black males that experience trauma on a daily basis, would it not then be the case that Black male life is experiencing a public health crisis? Where is the outcry? Where are the resources? Where is the care?
If Brother Trayford had adequate access to mental health resources, one can imagine the night of Friday, 21 August going differently. But because Black males are not treated as potentially having mental illness, there is no care afforded to them, because non-humans do not have mental faculties worth caring about. Studying trauma and its subsequent effects and then directing resources to treatment and healing are critical steps to be taken in the direction of humanizing and healing Black men.
However, it must be asked: does this society intend to humanize Black men? Examining numerous factors such as life expectancy, employment (joblessness), education, child maltreatment, and incarceration would all indicate that the society is, in fact, predicated upon the dehumanization of Black males. Western humanity, the humanity politically asserted upon the death of Black men and boys, is anti-Black. Perhaps it’s Western humanity that should be called into question.
REFERENCES
Al Jazeera. “US: Protesters Demand Justice after Police Shooting of Black Man.” USA News | Al Jazeera. August 23, 2020. Accessed August 23, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/protesters-demand-justice-police-shooting-black-man-200823153217862.html.
Aymer, Samuel R. ““I Can’t Breathe”: A Case Study — Helping Black Men Cope with Race-related Trauma Stemming from Police Killing and Brutality.” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 26, no. 3–4 (2016): 367–76. doi:10.1080/10911359.2015.1132828.
Banks, Andrea, and Robert Motley. “Black Males, Trauma, and Mental Health Service Use- A Systematic Review.” Perspectives in Social Work, December 13, 2018, 4–19. Accessed August 23, 2020.
Capps, Andrew, and Ashley White. “‘He Had a Big Heart’: Family Mourns Trayford Pellerin after Fatal Louisiana Police Shooting.” USA Today. August 23, 2020. Accessed August 23, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/23/louisiana-lafayette-police-shooting-protests-trayford-pellerin/3424085001/.
Curry, Tommy J. “The Eschatological Dilemma- The Problem of Studying the Black Male Only as the Deaths That Result from Anti-Black Racism.” I Am Because We Are, 2016, 479–99.
“Louisiana Shooting: Police Killing of Black Man Sparks Outrage and Protests.” The Guardian. August 23, 2020. Accessed August 23, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/23/louisiana-shooting-police-kill-black-man-trayford-pellerin.
Simien, Evelyn M. “Race, Gender, and Linked Fate.” Journal of Black Studies 35, no. 5 (May 2005): 529–50.
West, Caorlyn M. “Living in a Web of Trauma: An Ecological Examination of Violence Among African Americans.” In The Wiley Handbook on the Psychology of Violence, 649–55. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2016.
