Buffalo market mass shooting causes trauma throughout Black communities in Connecticut
The racially motivated shooting that caused the deaths of 10 people, mostly Black, in Buffalo, New York, is being felt throughout many communities of color in Connecticut, causing feelings of anguish, fear and pain.
“It is a predominantly Black community in a part of the country or part of the world that is not dissimilar from Hartford,” said Hartford Communities That Care, Inc. executive director Andrew Woods. “To have someone come in to that community and commit such a heinous crime against not just one individual, but an entire community, obviously, this has got to be jarring to that community and undermine their sense of safety in ways that, quite frankly, is different from the general urban gun violence.”
Dr. Javeed Sukhera, Chair of Psychi
atry at the Institute of Living and Chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Hartford Hospital, says it is one thing to watch people being murdered for being who they are — being themselves — it is another thing to watch that, experience that, to grieve and feel trauma watching it happen.
“That kind of gaslighting is trauma, too. It makes trauma worse,” he said.
Dayeshell Muhammad, director of operations for My People Clinical Services in Hartford, sees how communities impacted by violence experience anxiety, depression, sadness, and in some cases isolation, as some may have a fear of going back out into the community. She classifies these symptoms as an “emotional contagion” that can spread throughout the community.
“If you have a community of people that are feeling sad or are anxious, stressed, or have post-traumatic stress disorder, that becomes contagious. So, we end up with a community, a larger community, it’s almost like it just spreads almost like a cancer,” she said. “We have many people in our community that are experiencing and feeling the same things because they are witness to the violence, or they know someone who has been impacted by the violence and our organization is able to work with individuals to really acknowledge the feelings that they are having.”
She says far too often people in the Black community don’t have people that look like them to be able to talk to about what they are actually feeling.
“We really have not been taught to express our feelings and our emotions and certainly not to be seen as vulnerable,” she said. “When we have situations like what has happened in Buffalo, and even the local situations, as we have gun violence here pretty often in Hartford, we really just want to be a safe space for individuals to come and just acknowledge how they’re feeling and be reassured from people that look like them, that we understand what you’re feeling and why you feel that way.”
As a community resource center, Hartford Communities That Care works to address the issues of violence in Hartford, which includes helping those directly victimized by shootings and those indirectly but traumatically drawn into these tragedies.
“Identify an individual, a mentor, a friend, or a family member that can actually process this information and help them cope. When you really think about therapy, oftentimes, it is a time sort of deal that when you go for one session, once a week or twice a week, or once a month or twice a month,” Woods said. “The psychological stress that people are experiencing on a daily basis really does require you taking advantage of networks of support, or key people within your family or friends. That’s what I really encourage people to do, clearly to take advantage of professional mental health support, if you can find it, and you have access to it.”
Muhammad says from a professional standpoint, her organization looks to support individuals that might be struggling with the attack or triggered by what has happened.
“We know that in our community, many individuals have been impacted or exposed to violence, especially gun violence.”
The first step to healing from trauma, Dr. Sukhera says, is to name and validate what has happened — speaking up about things, such as racism, in order to truly see and honor one another.
“I think that there are many in communities of color that have watched, how in 2020, it took George Floyd’s murder for some people to see their friends, neighbors, and colleagues’ humanity and that’s trauma, too, at the same time,” he said.
Dr. Sukhera personally experienced the trauma of a racially motivated crime. Before he came to Connecticut, he lived in London, Ontario, Canada, where family friends were murdered in a hate crime.
“They went out for a walk on a Sunday evening and were killed by someone,who targeted them for looking Muslim and ran them over with his black pickup truck,” he said. “That experience, just with someone I know, with children who played with my children, really shattered for me any semblance of separation between how I work with this professionally as someone who’s worked with kids and families who have experienced trauma, war, and violence, and how I have to deal with it personally, for myself, my family, and as a support to other people in my community.”
Dr. Sukhere also said it is important for people to see how much pain communities of color must carry on a daily basis. He also wants people to understand that everyone’s trauma responses, such as the Buffalo shooting, are not the same for every person.
“There is no one size fits all when it comes to people’s trauma reactions. … They would still be just as valid and legitimate,” he said.
“There are a wide range of ways in which people respond. There’s a lot of feeling numb, which is what trauma does, it makes us feel numb and detached as a form of self-protection when we endure it, so we compartmentalize when we go on with our day. There is a lot of pain. People say ‘Well, it’s not just that they could have been us.’ They were us. They were going grocery shopping, which is such a human thing to do that so many people across the country can relate to.”