What impact does a racially-charged police shooting have on the children left behind?
By now, the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile’s deaths in the hands of the police — and the following interviews with their families — have inundated every social media platform. While the victims are the focus of these viral clips, the other subjects featured in these videos include the children who were closest to Sterling and Castile.
I don’t know if people ever recover from this kind of trauma, especially at a young age.
A 4-year-old child, the daughter of Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, was in the backseat of the car when Castile was shot by an officer in driver’s seat. In Reynolds’ live-streamed video of his death, the girl sits quietly until the very end, when you hear a small voice comforting her anguished mother: “It’s OK. I’m right here with you.”
And in a clip of a press conference held the morning after Sterling’s shooting in Baton Rouge, Sterling’s 15-year-old son broke into loud, painful sobs, turning away from the podium as his mother, Quinyetta McMillon, shakily read her statement to the media. “As a mother, I am forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father. That I can’t take away from him,” McMillon said. “I hurt for him and his loss as a parent. One of the greatest fears is to see your child hurt and know there’s nothing you can do.”
These kind of events can change children’s whole view on the world, according to Dr. Monnica Williams, the director of the Center for Mental Health Disparities at the University of Louisville. It could leave children with lifelong Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an condition that many African Americans develop through racist events over the course of their lives.
“They are learning very early that ‘the police are not my friends and they kill people I love.’ That the world is not a safe place,” Williams said.
They are learning very early that ‘the police are not my friends and they kill people I love.’
Dr. Gabriela Bronson-Castain, the director of Emergency Psychological Services at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA, has worked with hundreds of children in the Bay Area affected by violence — some instigated by law enforcement. Many children also aware that the color of their skin makes them targets for future violence, an idea that Bronson-Castain said is impossible to erase.
“They come see us and we tell them it’s not their fault, that the trauma will pass — but does the cycle end? No. They go home, and the color of the skin doesn’t change,” she said. “How do you develop an internal sense of safety when you’re invariably unsafe?”
Violence based on race is unique in its repetition. Unlike the trauma that stems from one distressing event, this kind of trauma — black men being shot by police — keeps repeating itself, giving victims no time to fully heal.
“I don’t know if people ever recover from this kind of trauma, especially at a young age,” said Jules Harrell, a psychology professor at Howard University who’s researched the physiological symptoms of racism for years. http://archive.thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/07/07/3796236/facebook-live-castile-shooting/“When someone sees it happen again, you see the same kind of reactions to the initial trauma. They go into full-stress mode,” he said. “It can create a real problem for growing children.”
This isn’t a new cycle. Martin Luther King Jr.’s children have spoken openly about the lifelong trauma they battled after their father was shot, relating this suffering to the outrage over the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO last year. In fact, many sociologists say this suffering has persisted since African slaves first arrived in the United States — linking these repeated acts of racial oppression to a “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” omnipresent in black communities.
Of course, this ongoing trauma is not just attached to acts of police violence. Harrell said that every time Reynold’s 4-year-old daughter gets into her car seat, where she watched Castile bleed to death, she will likely exhibit the same negative conditioned response. And the bright public spotlight on these two shootings won’t make healing any easier — especially for Sterling’s teenage son, who’s likely active on social media. The video of his father’s shooting — and the endless discussions it sparked — are now permanent fixtures.
They’ll think ‘I’m black. I must be a bad person. I’m not a good part of society.’
“The adolescent brain is going through a period of growth that makes absence trauma [the trauma of a loss] that much harder to get through,” Harrell said. “He really needs to be taken out of the public eye, away from public scrutiny. But that’s not easy to do.”
There’s no quick fix to the trauma associated with witnessing this type of racialized violence. But parents and community members are vital in helping children understand what’s really going on, according to Williams.
If a child witnesses this kind of violence — firsthand or just in the media — without any context, they’ll make up their own story about it. And, Williams said, it won’t be a good one.
“They’ll think ‘I’m black. I must be a bad person. I’m not a good part of society. I’m supposed to be shot, since I’m worthless,’” Williams said. “Kids absorb all the negative information so easily. And if it’s never discussed, then you have these worst case scenarios…like what happened in Dallas.”
It’s up to parents to give their children the socioeconomic background and the history needed to see the bigger picture, she added.
“To tell them that it’s not about them as people. To teach racial pride. And maybe, to contribute to some kind of systemic change.”