Experts: Police brutality, racism pushing Black anxiety
WARREN, Mich. — 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 corona virus 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 Massachusettsbased 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 s er - vices 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.
R it ten house, 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.