By Angela Helm, The Root, January 15, 2020
Much has been finally been made and explored in terms of this notion of trauma—what it is, who experiences it most, what its effects are. But the scary part about trauma is that if it happens too often; too frequently, it can start to feel normal, which can be dangerous. Your body’s fight-or-flight response, triggered one too many times, shuts down or goes into overdrive and one becomes numb to all the wounds until one spills over and poisons the body and mind.
Forty-five percent of young black men in Chicago between the ages of 20-24 don’t have jobs and are not in school, a definitive link to the violence that has taken so many of them on to glory. The chance that a young black man in Chicago will be killed by a firearm is 50 times the national rate. And if he does live past his teens or young adulthood, his life span will be 30 years shorter than a white man in the same area, the largest life expectancy gap in the country.
Chicago police are also 14 times more likely to use force against young black men.
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