Headline after headline, the same story: a black American dead. The costs of these deaths ripple.
Roberto Montenegro, an assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies the biological effects of discrimination, says living in a world where your body is a threat is painful and taxing.
People of color, he said, must engage in extra processing demands to try and assure safety. This leads to states of hyper-vigilance, arousal and avoidance, which can manifest physically as hypertension and insomnia.a term used to explain the psychological stress responses – frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear – experienced by people of color in historically white spaces."I have had nurses, doctors, and other staff tell me that I was intimidating, too assertive, and didn't smile enough, and that this made them – white women – feel unsafe to approach me," he said. "They would not say this to a white doctor."Videos of police brutality fuel outrage and galvanize movements. They also linger, long after the protests quiet. Some mental health experts argue the explosive footage that accompanies many of these violent deaths are vital to raising public consciousness, even if they are disturbing. "It powerfully shapes our discourse, much like the images of African American youth in the South who were being sprayed with powerful water hoses and bitten by police dogs when they protested during the Civil Rights Movement," said Brian Smedley, chief of psychology in the public interest at the American Psychological Association."As disturbing as these images are, as tragic as it is for individuals who've lost their lives, or who have been abused in these circumstances, the reality is that their victimization is not in vain."Williams says she would rather not see videos like Floyd's propagated to such a degree. It can be re-traumatizing for people of color, she argues, and in some ways its viral spread is yet another act of dehumanization. "These are human beings and they deserve dignity, and the fact that you can just go online and ... watch a black person be killed – when is the last time you saw a white person killed online?" she said.People of color are witnessing these brutal deaths amid a global pandemic that is hitting African American and Latino communities especially hard. Many frontline jobs are disproportionately held by people of color. Also, people of color are more likely than white adults to report significant stressors in their life as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, including getting coronavirus , basic needs , and access to health care services , according to the American Psychological Association's
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