The average Black male
Live a third of his life in a jail cell
Cause the world is controlled by the white male
And the people don’t never get justice
And the women don’t never get respected
And the problems don’t never get solved
And the jobs don’t never pay enough
So the rent always be late; can you relate?
We livin in a police state
— Dead Prez (Police State)

I would like to attest to the fact that the vast majority of young men of color that I work with consistently experience police harassment. This is often a source of a lot of emotional and psychic violence. It contributes to the already significant amounts of daily stressors and trauma that young people of color experience.

ColorLines has produced a short video that addresses itself to this racial profiling by law enforcement. I would like to add a little context to this issue of police harassment and the toll that it takes on black youth. I argue that is a major source of urban trauma that is often overlooked or misunderstood.

MEE Productions Inc. has just published a new community participatory action research study that focuses on the issue of mental wellness among black youth. One of the key findings of their study suggests that:

Dealing with police officers can cause contant stress for young Black men, even if they are “doing what you’re supposed to do.” Interactions with police were cited as stressful because, “you can be chillin’ and you come up as someone’s target.” An Oakland male agreed, “Hell yeah, it’s a stressor. They [the police] just killed my homeboy. They handcuffed him and shot him in the back three times. That’s stressful.” Participants said that police “mess with” the wrong people and that even innocent residents can be targeted by “crooked cops” who take the law into their own hands…They also complain the residents in their community don’t feel protected or served when they are victims of crime and call the police for help.

This quote points to the ambivalent relationship that some young black people have with the police. On the one hand, the police are mistrusted and seen as harassers; and on the other, there is frustration with the fact that the police are not responsive when they are in fact needed. All in all, my experience of working and collaborating with black youth supports this finding. We do not look at the trauma that black youth experience at the hands of oppressive systems like law enforcement. This is often minimized or even normalized. The Prison Industrial Complex is manifest in society but it also greatly impacts our mental and emotional wellness. This must always be underscored.

I think that Colorlines has done those of us who work with youth a great favor by producing the following video which I plan to include in my popular education toolkit.

Read more about this project here.