Black kids face racism before they even start school

Continued from A1 students are often perceived as less innocent and older than their age, leading to disproportionately harsher discipline in schools.

Black adolescents are far less likely than their white peers to seek and find mental health care. In part, that’s because Black families often distrust the medical system after generations of mistreatment — from lack of access to care to being subjected to racist practices and experimentation such as the Tuskegee Study. The country also has a shortage of providers who understand the roles that racial identity and racism play in shaping young Black people’s mental health.

Research and health surveillance data point to a growing mental health crisis among Black youth over decades. Between 1991 and 2019, Black adolescents had the highest increase among any racial or ethnic group in prevalence of suicide attempts — a rise of nearly 80%.

About 53% of Black youths experience moderate to severe symptoms of depression, and about 20% said they were exposed to racial trauma often or very often in their life.

These disparities and lived experiences have systemic roots, including discrimination in housing, education and health care, and they have led to Black people experiencing higher rates of poverty and being underinsured. But financial stability does not shelter Black youth from the toll of racism on their mental health, said Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble, a psychologist and founder of the AAKOMA Project, a mental health nonprofit focused on youth of color.

“Socioeconomic status adds another layer to it, but that’s not the thing that’s driving a lot of the behaviors that our young people are experi-

Need help?

If you or someone you know needs help, call or text the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. (link: https://988lifeline.org/).

You can also reach the Crisis Text Line by texting CRISIS to 741741. (link: https://www. crisistextline.org/)

If you are looking for a Black mental health provider, organizations like Therapy for Black Kids maintain databases: https://www. therapyforblackkids.org/about.html encing,” she said. “It’s the fact that people make assumptions about Black kids, based purely on their stereotypes.”

For LGBTQ youths, if you or someone you know needs help or support, The Trevor Project’s trained crisis counselors are available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386, via chat at TheTrevorProject.org/Get-Help, or by texting START to 678678.

For 17-year-old Lillian, navigating a predominantly white school as a high-achieving Black girl wore heavily on her mental health. The AP is only publishing her first name to protect her privacy in discussing sensitive topics.

At its worst, anxiety isolated Lillian from her close-knit family. She sometimes went days without sleeping, kept awake by her schoolwork and the pressure she put on herself to excel.

All the insensitive comments and racial microaggressions felt relentless, and often came just as she was starting to become closer friends with someone. This school year alone, at least four people have tried without warning to touch her hair, which she loves wearing in puffs, braids and other natural styles.

Others told her she didn’t seem like what they expected, leaving her wondering what exactly they expected of Black girls like her. With few teachers who were people of color at her school, she often felt like she had to work harder to prove herself capable and deserving of the same opportunities and recognition that white students easily received. But in advocating for herself, she worried about coming across as too aggressive.

“I think in predominantly white spaces, we naturally code switch. We’re softer,” Lillian said. “I had to have this large patience for things that I wouldn’t normally have. Because it was my school, it’s like if I’m so aggressive, and it becomes known that I’m the aggressive Black girl, it’s gonna be terrible, and it’s gonna follow me.”

Although many of Lillian’s family members supported her in seeking more intense support for her anxiety — she was ultimately diagnosed with two anxiety disorders — others were less receptive, dismissing her mental health as a need to focus more on her faith.

Outside of school, Lillian volunteers with suicide prevention and mental health workshops.

Another Black girl once told Lillian about a white therapist making a dismissive comment about Black families during a session.

“If you’re going into it with a stigmatized belief about how Black people see mental health, then of course no one is going to want to open up to you,” Lillian said.

As young as 4 to 6 years old, children of color begin to experience race-based traumatic stress, said Dr. Steven Kniffley, a licensed psychologist and senior associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

Racism affects mental health on multiple levels. Besides direct hostility and microaggressions, experts said seeing people of color subjected to racist violence also takes a toll. Called vicarious racism, research has found it can result in greater symptoms of depression and anxiety.

“When we think about our young folks specifically, because of the strong influence of social media on their lived experience, they’re constantly inundated and really overexposed to all the bad things that are going on in our society,” Dr. Kniffley said. “You see a police shooting, and they’re retraumatized over and over again.”

In the Columbus area, where Lillian goes to school, the killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant brought the feeling close to home for Black girls in the city. Ma’Khia was holding a knife during a confrontation with a woman at her foster home when police shot the teen. But Ma’Khia’s family later revealed it was Ma’Khia who had called for police to come to the scene, saying she was being attacked and needed help.

The shooting made Fran Frazier, founder of the Columbus-based Black Girl Rising, want to do something for Black girls in the city, who she said felt denied of their girlhood and “adultified” — viewed as older and less innocent. She bought time on a radio station and asked Black women in the area to read love letters to Black girls on the air.

“Our girls have the assumption that, ‘If we don’t look like you think we’re supposed to look, then you can address us as adults,’” Ms. Frazier said. “‘You’re not thinking about us as actual girls.’”

Ms. Frazier led a 2011 study into the lives of Black girls in Ohio that forms the basis of her work now with young Black women around mental health, leadership and resilience.

Through the Black Girl Think Tank, Ms. Frazier said participants identified six key areas affecting Black girls’ mental health: colorism, bullying, body shaming, lack of conflict resolution skills, depression and LGBTQ+ issues.

While nearly all the girls who responded said they liked being Black, and liked being a girl, they felt they had been treated unfairly for being both.

“When you are walking around every day, being reminded that you are a female, that you are a female of color, and nobody in the world actually likes you, that helps you see what the future could be like,” Ms. Frazier said. “Our girls have a lot of hope, but not necessarily what they need to get there.”

Suicides for all Black youths between the ages of 5 and 17 climbed between 2003 and 2017 — but the increase was sharpest for girls and 15- to 17-year-olds. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that 22% of Black youth had considered suicide in the past year. For Black youths who are also LGBTQ+, that number was 44%, according to the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization.

Individually and systemically, barriers to accessing mental health care disproportionately deter Black teens from getting the support they need.

The cost of care — sometimes hundreds of dollars for a single therapy session if providers don’t take insurance, and many do not — can make services inaccessible, but poverty and insurance rates do not fully explain the disparate outcomes.

The fear of being misunderstood or even mistreated by the medical establishment is not without foundation. Most mental health care providers are white — only 4% of psychologists are Black, according to the American Psychological Association. And 80% of mental health providers are not trained in treating race-based trauma, said Dr. Kniffley, the psychologist.

Racist treatment of Black people in medical care dates to slavery, and psychiatry and psychology are not exceptions. In 1851, physician Samuel Cartwright hypothesized that mental ill- ness was what drove enslaved Black Americans to escape to freedom. Termed “drapetomania,” the belief was rooted in the idea that slavery was such an improvement to Black peoples’ lives that only those who were mentally ill would wish to escape.

And in 1968, psychologists Walter Bromberg and Franck Simon developed the theory of “protest psychosis,” the idea that Black male participation in the Civil Rights Movement caused violent, schizophrenic symptoms.

“That legacy has contributed to a mistrust that Black and brown folks have where their experience has been pathologized,” Dr. Kniffley said. “They’ve been overlabeled with behavioral challenges and learning challenges that have very real-world consequences in terms of what type of schooling you get, what type of jobs are accessible to you, how people treat you.”

Psychologists have taken steps to acknowledge their profession’s history. In 2021, the American Psychological Association issued a public apology and resolution noting psychology’s roots in eugenicist and racist ideas and the negative impact that the field has had on communities of color. The resolution called for prioritizing training and policies meant to address these inequities.

To read more of this article, please visit https://apnews.com/article/mentalhealth-black-children-investigation-31a292733919a935929976e213aef2af

This article is part of the Associated Press series on health disparities impacting Black Americans.

Tuesday’s bloodletting

The chorus of angry and sorrowful cries continue as yet another mass shooting shocks our nation. This time the once unimaginable struck close to home as Huguenot High School students left the Altria Theater ready to celebrate their newly minted diplomas with family and friends.

Shots rang out and amid the chaos people ran for cover. Most of those fearing and fleeing for their lives survived. Screaming ambulances carried seven others to hospital emergency rooms. Death claimed two of the wounded.

Response from elected officials was swift and unending—just like the gunfire and killings that seem to have found a sweet spot in Richmond.

From Rep. Jennifer McClellan from the halls of Congress:

“We shouldn’t have to live like this. What should have been the happiest day of those kid’s lives turned into every parent’s worst nightmare. Those kids’ saw their freshman year cut short by COVID. They should have felt the joy, yesterday and last night, of graduating. Instead, their final memory of high school is marred forever by trauma.

“The active shooter drills they endured throughout their school years did not prepare them for a shooting at their graduation. Or in a public park. In a grocery store. At a theater. At their house of worship. At a concert. At the mall. Walking down the street. On a highway. In their home. Where are they safe?”

From Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle Sears:

“Even if you took all the guns off the street, from the law-abiding citizens, the others who mean harm, who mean to kill and mayhem, they’re going to have the guns,” she said when speaking to the press Tuesday. “So we have to figure out what’s going on in our communities. We have to find the right problem, so that we can come to the right solution.”

From the Democratic Party of Virginia Chairwoman Susan Swecker, who rebuked the lieutenant governor’s comments:

“Our thoughts today continue to be with the victims and families of this evening’s mass shooting in Richmond. These grieving families in Richmond and across the Commonwealth are why we fight for common sense gun safety legislation. It is to prevent tragedies like this that we champion an assault weapons ban, background checks, and red flag laws.

We are disgusted, yet hardly surprised, by Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears’ comments following yesterday’s shooting in Richmond. She campaigned as a hardline pro-gun ‘activist’ and a poster child for the NRA. Simply put, serious times need serious, thoughtful leadership – and Lieutenant Governor Sears is not a serious leader.

I’m calling upon Governor Youngkin to publicly disavow her comments.”

From the Richmond Branch NAACP President James “JJ” Minor:

Gun violence is of a major concern to our nation, and especially to the communities served and represented by the Richmond, Virginia Branch NAACP. Curbing that violence, at every opportunity is a concern and major priority. Our condolences go out to all the families in the past and recent homicides in the RVA region. We are praying for all victims affected by this plague of violence and praying for a speedy recovery of the surviving victims and their families.

From the Richmond Free Press:

Elected officials: Stop talking, stop the madness and do something. Now.

Our young people and our residents deserve better than having to constantly witness the city’s carnage and violence.

During Tuesday’s shooting, Daisy Jane Cooper Johnson, the daughter of Bettie Elizabeth Boyers Cooper, a Black woman whose federal lawsuit more than 60 years ago led to the integration of the City’s schools, was nearly gunned down as she approached the Altria to watch her 17-year-old grandson graduate from Thomas Jefferson High School’s ceremonies, which were to follow Huguenot’s.

One can only imagine what Mrs. Cooper would think of Tuesday’s bloodletting.

During an honorary street renaming ceremony yesterday for Mrs. Cooper, her granddaughter, Kelly Johnson-Crowley, lovingly spoke of her grandmother who died last October at age 94. She also mentioned this week’s tragedy.

“This is a bittersweet moment … it should be a happy occasion but my son got to graduation yesterday and had to turn around because of the shooting, said Mrs. Johnson-Crowley. But I’m just really thankful that we’re able to gather and do this in her honor.”

Striking Hollywood writers are nervous about artificial intelligence — also known as AI — and I’m not feeling so good myself.

When I see all those bright, clever and mostly young talents out on the picket lines, I cannot help but ask myself: Could we columnists be next?

The strike by the Writ ers Guild of America, their first since their 2007-08 walk out that lasted 100 days, has brought a new fascinating and troubling issue to the forefront: AI.

The promise of AI has long boggled our human minds. Like putting humans on the moon, the idea of artificial intelligence has been dreamed about for ages—sometimes nightmarishly in forms as varied as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” or HAL the computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001.”

Now in an age that has seen astounding acceleration in the output of scientific and technological innovations, we suddenly look up and see artificial intelligence is upon us, producing new wonders by the day, as well as new and troubling questions.

We are beginning to bear witness to a new unease at the thought that these innovations might make millions of jobs held by flesh-and-blood humans obsolete.

In other words, could the anti-AI backlash in the WGA indicate a new Luddite phase?

You may recall the original Luddites from your history classes. They were a reaction in the industrial revolution to machines competing with human workers during a period of great social and economic change in England in the early 19th century.

Outraged workers rose up and began to destroy the machines. Fearing the worst, the WGA asked in its latest contract proposal that the entertainment industry agree not to use AI to replace writers. Not surprisingly, the industry declined, agreeing only to “annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology.” That rang alarm bells in writers’ rooms across the industry, Should similar alarms be rung by us in the opinionwriting punditocracy?

We’ve seen such backlash movements rise up with varying degrees of ferocity on the heels of numerous innovations in a variety of industries.

Perhaps now, when not just human muscles but human brains are in a new competition, could it be artists and writers who have their turn as leaders of a backlash?

Since I, too, as a career scribe, have reason to feel competition from the possibility of artificial intelligence competing with whatever intelligence I try to bring to the columnists’ trade, I have delved, however cautiously into the AI world already available on the internet.

Curious, I gave an audition to the pioneer AI called ChatGPT with a typical pundit question:

“Should I trust Donald Trump?”

Without prompting from me, the chatbot instantly responded with an almost-scolding explainer:

“As an AI language model, I don’t have personal opinions or beliefs,” it said. “Trust is a subjective judgment that varies from person to person. The level of trust you have in Donald Trump, or any individual, depends on your own assessment of their character, actions, and track record.

“It’s important to note,” it went on, “that public figures, including politicians, can be viewed differently by different

Celebrating ‘the voice of Black America’

“Show me a person who is full of prejudice, and I will show you a sick, unhappy, fearful individual who is not going anywhere and who is not growing. People don’t shut other people out; they fence themselves in.” – Whitney M. Young Jr.

It was 20 years ago this week that I humbly assumed the responsibilities of leadership of the National Urban League—one of which is the honor to author this very column, To Be Equal, established by the esteemed Whitney M. Young Jr.

The column shares its name and takes its inspiration from Mr. Young’s first full-length book, published on New Year’s Day, 1964, in the wake of what Mr. Young called “the year of the Negro Revolution,” a year that saw thousands of children, marching through Birmingham, Ala., attacked by police dogs and blasted with firehoses; the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in in Jackson, Miss.; Gov. George W. Wallace’s Stand in the Schoolhouse Door at the University of Alabama; the assassination of Medgar Evers; the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice; and the deadly bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church.

The first To Be Equal col- umn to be published in New York’s Amsterdam News was headlined, “How Much Are Negroes Worth?” Mr. Young recounted his conversation with “a middle-aged white housewife” who declared she harbored no prejudice against Black Americans but could not comprehend the push to desegregate schools. “Her arguments against school in-

Marc H. Morial

tegration, it turned out, were directed against sending her children to slum schools,” Mr. Young wrote. “But supposedly there is nothing wrong with sending Negro children to slum schools.”

The last To Be Equal column published under Mr. Young’s byline ran three weeks after his tragic March 11, 1971, drowning in Nigeria and consisted of excerpts of his various speeches. The last column he authored, also published after his death and headlined, “Old Story, New Beginning,” concerned his efforts as part of a special commission tasked with updating the recommendations of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission.

“The Kerner report’s sound recommendations have been ignored, and concerned citizens are going to have to put some muscle into their principles if this nation is to survive,” Mr. Young wrote. “The Kerner

Commission recommended, among other things, greater concern by private citizens, and it’s good to note that at a time when many private groups are simply throwing up their hands and refusing to become involved, at least one national organization has devised an imaginative new program.”

That national organization was the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the imaginative new program was the National Committee for Commitment to Brotherhood, formed to support the work of the National Urban League, NAACP, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The first To Be Equal to be published after Mr. Young’s death was authored by Harold R. Sims, who served as the National Urban League’s acting executive director until the appointment of Vernon E. Jordan. Appropriately, it was a tribute to Mr. Young headlined “Nation Mourns A Great Leader.”

“Whitney Young was a man who transcended the boundaries of race, nationality, and ideology,” Mr. Sims wrote. “He was a man who formed a human bridge between the rich and the poor, the white and the black, the conservative and the liberal. Labels simply don’t apply to such a universal man.”

Each of Mr. Young’s successors has continued to publish To Be Equal, and it has been my honor to uphold the tradition as he intended it to be, “the voice of Black America.”

The Free Press welcomes letters people. Donald Trump, as the former President of the United States, has both supporters and critics. His policies, statements, and behavior during his time in office have been a subject of much debate and controversy.

The Richmond Free Press respects the opinions of its readers. We want to hear from you. We invite you to write the editor. All letters will be considered for publication. Concise, typewritten letters related to public matters are preferred. Also include your telephone number(s). Letters should be addressed to: Letters to the Editor, Richmond Free Press, P.O. Box 27709, 422 East Franklin Street, Richmond, VA 23261, or faxed to: (804) 643-7519 or e-mail: letters@richmondfreepress.com.

“When evaluating someone’s trustworthiness, it’s often helpful to consider multiple perspectives, examine their actions and statements, and review objective information and facts. This allows you to form a more informed opinion based on your own values and priorities.” aprilcoleman@richmondfreepress.com

Well, thanks a lot, chatbot, but your on-the-one-hand, on-theother-hand equivocating would be dismissed as hopelessly wishywashy by most readers. Perhaps we should talk about it in the way journalists traditionally do, over your favorite beverage, whatever octane that might be.

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