Imperial Valley Press

Experts: Police brutality, racism pushing Black anxiety

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— The events of 2020 already had Eddie Hall on edge.

Then, the troubles of a nation in turmoil landed on Hall’s doorstep in suburban Detroit in September when racist graffiti was scrawled on his pickup truck and shots were fired into his home after his family placed a Black Lives Matter sign in their front window.

“I’m in combat mode. I’m protecting my family,” Hall, a 52-year-old Black man from Warren, told The Associated Press.

Some experts say police brutality, the coronaviru­s pandemic that has taken disproport­ionate physical and financial tolls on Black people, and other issues around race have increased anxiety levels among African Americans, like Hall.

The attacks on Hall’s home were investigat­ed as a hate crime and 24-year-old white neighbor, Michael Frederick Jr., eventually was arrested and charged with ethnic intimidati­on and other crimes.

“We, as Black people, have all of the normal human stressors — work, family, finances — and then we’re inundated with racial pressure at all levels,” said Jessica Graham-Lopresti, assistant professor of psychology at Suffolk University and co-founder of Massachuse­tts-based BARE — Black Advocacy Resilience Empowermen­t.

“This idea that, for Black people, we don’t feel — currently in this country — that we have the ability to control our environmen­t and protect ourselves and our families,” she said. “We could still be gunned down in the street. That creates anxiety. That creates stress.”

In May, mostly white men and women protesting Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s orders that closed many businesses and services to stem the spread of COVID-19 openly carried rifles and handguns into the state Capitol.

As many activists take to the streets to maintain public political pressure for change, concern about personal safety is at an all-time high, said Frederick Gooding Jr., an African American studies professor at Texas Christian University.

“Especially in the aftermath of Kyle Rittenhous­e walking untouched in full view with an assault rifle AFTER shooting another civilian dead,” Gooding added.

Rittenhous­e, a white 17-year-old from northern Illinois, is accused of fatally shooting two white protesters and wounding a third in August in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during demonstrat­ions following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Rittenhous­e was among a number of armed white men who converged on the city, claiming they were protecting property from arson and theft.

After the gunfire, with his AR-15-style rifle over his shoulder and his hands in the air, Rittenhous­e walked toward police vehicles that kept going past him, even as a witness shouted, “He just shot them!” Police Chief Daniel Miskinis has explained the response as officers dealing with a chaotic scene.

Sharon Bethune, 56, of Fredericks­burg, Virginia, said the events in Kenosha angered her and other Black people.

“This is mind-boggling,” said Bethune, a retiree who managed government accounts for the Environmen­tal Protection Agency. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

For Black profession­als and those in the middle class, the anxiety appears to be more pronounced, said Alford Young Jr., a sociology professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

They wonder “how we got to this moment of national leadership after the civil rights movement,” Young said. “There is just extreme anxiety and frustratio­n that people would not have imagined that the kinds of issues surfacing now would have followed an Obama presidency.”

Many working class Black people see the current political landscape with less dread and more “the way it’s always been,” he added.

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