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I remember the sound of the glass shattering breaking our grief the day a family member pushed me out of a window. When we were high school students, we were both used to physical violence, fighting hard, which often left me bruised.
The language of the #MeToo movement helped me understand that the sexual trauma I experienced in my childhood was another type of violence. An adult in my life didn’t force me, but he often masturbated in front of me. Given my limited understanding of the motivations of abuse and mental conditions, I concluded that I deserved what was happening to me when I was an 11-year-old child. I imagined that if I was stronger, I could stop everything. I could win the physical fight against my physique, and say “no, it’s wrong” to the sex abuser in my life.
However, in the same way that a child without power cannot win against a strong abuse, black parents in the United States cannot cope with the enormous limitations of having limited access to mental health services in their home life. Lack of access to these services hinders their ability to violently protect their children at home and in society without government intervention.
In March, progressive members of the U.S. Congress introduced a bill to create Medicare for everyone, a comprehensive insurance program made up of the government. Although efforts continue to be passed to pass this legislation, congressional support for universal health care is yet to be institutionalized.
However, failure to implement Medicare for all can lead to untreated mental conditions, which are associated with child abuse.
As a 36-year-old black sociologist, I have spent the last three years learning traumatic experiences in my life, learning to train as an anti-racism trainer and advocate for social justice. For most of my adult life, I was not authorized by a provider who provided me with quality mental health insurance. I grew up believing that my trauma was something that would be healed through church and self-help books. With no examples of trauma victims in my life who had the resources or vision to seek licensed help, I saw people I loved struggling to prevent their traumatic experiences from destroying their relationships and life chances.
When a high-paying job offered me quality mental health, I was able to secure two months of medical leave, life training, psychotherapy, and creative arts therapy on an unusual basis – there were literally a few weeks of talking to my therapist. day. But my experiences diminished in a broader social context and I began to place my lives in the stories of my trauma when I began to understand the limitations of the policies that are so common, but my healing stories are so rare for black childhood trauma survivors.
It is noteworthy that Mental Health America research indicates that black Americans are no more likely to have mental health conditions than whites. According to the researchers, “the historical black and African American experience in America is traumatic and violent and continues to be more common than their white counterparts and affects the emotional and mental health of young people and adults.”
According to the American Psychological Society (APA), data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that “in 2005, African Americans were 7.3 times more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods without access to mental health services.” In 2016, the U.S. Commission released a report on the elimination of child abuse and neglect deaths: “African-American children make up approximately 16% of the country’s child population, but 30% of child abuse and neglect deaths.”
Although scholars of the past “culture of poverty” have said that black communities are pathologically violent and sexually abusive, research published by the National Library of Medicine suggests that greater social and political forces shape Black child neglect and aggression.
Historians have no evidence that black people think they are culturally confronted with the creation of broken homes. There was corporal punishment of children in African colonial societies, but according to an article written by Stacy Patton and published by the APA: “As colonization, slavery and genocidal violence made life harder for these groups, so did parental practices.”
Patton also reflected on her abuse as a black girl in her 2017 New York Times newspaper in her work “Stop Beating Black Children”. He stressed that the physical punishment of black families is based on European Judeo-Christian beliefs: “The European idea is that children are ‘born in sin’ and should be beaten by the devil with a ‘correction rod’. This savagery fell through slavery, colonialism and other religious cultures.” .
Only black families cannot break the cycle created by imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist and patriarchal society, which is too powerful to overcome any group by definition alone. As I learned through responsible therapy, I was never cured of child abuse, I was saying what all black survivors should say to move on with their lives: “This cycle ends with me.”
A new generation of blacks is healing in a society that denies complicity in the formation of intergenerational trauma. But the alarming rates of abuse and neglect caused by political indifference will continue until universal health is established and the U.S. Congress joins the living blacks: “This cycle ends with us.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the attitude of the Al Jazeera editorial.
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