From the University of Texas
at Austin, KUT Radio,
this is In Black America.
It's important for us to talk about
this. We lose a lot of people who
are committing these acts
of violence or sometimes are
suspected of committing them.
We lose them to the penal system.
So our exposure
to and participation in
the gun violence that some
participate in also causes loss.
We're losing by literal loss
of life. We're loosing some to the
system.
And we're sort of contributing to,
you know, the lack of
strengthening of our own communities
and so the extent to which we can,
you know, check ourselves
in those respects, but also
understand how, you
know, this system's instructors have
structures have sort of set us
up in a way to be
violent towards each other.
And we need to be re-channeling
that energy and refocusing it
towards.
More positive outcomes for
us all to better build ourselves
as individuals, as families, and
as a community.
Dr. Tamika Gillum, Associate
Professor of Community Health in the
College of Population Health at the
University of New Mexico.
Recently, Gillum co-authored a study
that examined the multi-level
society factors that contribute to
disparities in gun violence among
African-American communities.
The study utilized social ecological
models to understand how
different aspects of society,
individuals, relationships,
community, and societal influence
a person's experience, behavior
and health outcomes.
Their analysis identified several
risk factors across all sectors of
their research model.
Among African Americans, they often
found persistent barriers to support
services such as appropriate medical
care and reliable transportation,
as well as intrusive policing and
chronic exposure to violence in
their communities.
I'm Johnny O'Hansen Jr.
And welcome to another edition of
In Black America.
On this week's program, gun violence
among African American community
Dr. Tomeka Gillum.
In Black America.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a
lot of additional
things, at least, that we
can do. I mean there's, we know
there's lots of problems with law
enforcement, but ways that can
be addressed too.
But, I means, there's point of
investing more resources into
these disenfranchised communities,
things that can be done more on a
policy level and putting in
funds to build up these communities
to, you know, to
create better.
School systems for students,
for our kids to go through,
to create better sort of
environmental spaces for us to
just sort of feel good about where
we live, to have additional
resources and opportunities for
our young people in the context of
these spaces, to put in
place even things like
more youth positive
development type programs that push
back against these narratives of us
as violence.
Dr. Tamika Gillum has over two
decades of experience in studying
intimate partner violence, health
disparities, and gun violence.
In 2021, gun violence was
a major public health issue of
growing concern in this country.
With 48,830
lives lost to gun-related violence,
documented the highest number of
gun- related homicides and suicides
ever recorded.
The African-American community is
disproportionately impacted by gun
violence.
And are almost 14 times more
likely to die by gun homicide
than their white counterparts.
These disparities prompted Gilliam
and her team to further assess
underlying causes of this inequity,
seeking to clarify the factors
contributing to this public health
crisis.
These include factors such as
institutional racism, inadequate
community health support in
disadvantaged neighborhoods, and
structural economic disadvantages
faced by African Americans.
Recently in Black America spoke with
Dr. Tomeka Gillum.
Well, I was born in Michigan,
but family moved to Philadelphia
after, you know, plants closing and
difficulty with the jobs or
whatever. So I mostly grew
up in Philadelphia, although
I did return to Michigan
for my master's and
PhD studies.
So yes, did Michigan State.
I'm a Spartan Go Green.
I heard you almost say University of
Michigan. So that would not have
been okay, but that's
her arrival. But yes, we...
Michigan State.
So yeah, and since then I've sort of
been in a few different places where
I've done research and teaching.
So what led you to
major in, I guess, health education?
Yeah, well, actually, I
am a community psychologist
by training.
And so I did my undergraduate
studies in psychology,
eventually discovered community
psychology, which is sort of a
smaller sort of baby
of the field of psychology,
even though it was founded in the
60s.
But it takes a much more look
at individuals within context,
so it veers away from.
Looking solely at individuals as
the source of their concerns or
problems, especially when we're
talking about major sort of social
issues. And so similar
to what we did in the
paper in terms of looking at
the African-American community at
these different levels, what factors
are influencing violence as opposed
to just looking at, you know,
that there's potential deficits
within this community.
No, it's about not only individual
level factors but also relationship,
community, societal.
So community psychology really looks
at individuals in context and really
also seeks to do prevention
work in addressing
many of these social concerns.
So a lot of us look at sort of major
social issues.
And that really lends itself to
community health as well because
community health is really about
prevention and community-based
research and looking
at sort of larger scale problems and
how do we do community- based
intervention. And so most
of my faculty positions have been
in.
Public health, in community
health, but also some in
community psychology as well.
So I've gone back and forth a little
bit, but it's mostly been in
public health.
But that is because, you know,
my primary work, my
research for over
25 years has been primarily
in looking at intimate
partner violence within
racial ethnic minority and sexual
minority populations.
So here in the states, that's
predominantly been with the
African-American community and
African immigrant communities.
And so because I
view intimate partner violence
and now gun violence as well as
a public health issue or public
health concern that we should be
addressing hence sort of
drew me into going
more into public health and
trying to tackle issues like this
from a public-health perspective.
Now we're going to get into the
study, but why is the
African-American community
particularly associated with
this type of activity?
Yeah and so that's
some of where the overlap between my
intimate partner violence work and
this gun violence piece comes in
as well as community violence
because based on our experience here
in the United States we
experience a lot of risk factors and
we experience a lot disadvantage.
We experience a a lot conditions
or circumstances that
put us at increased risk for
experiencing violence overall.
Totally getting away from this
narrative of the African-American
community as inherently
dysfunctional and that's
why we have these problems, no,
it's more so because we've been
sort of put in conditions and
circumstances that increase
the likelihood that we're going to
be exposed to these
types of things.
And so when we look at things like
intimate partner violence, when we
looked at things like gun violence.
Poverty, for example,
you know, we, as a community,
experience disproportionate rates
of poverty.
Well, we know from
research that poverty is
associated, you know poverty,
living in poverty, is associated
with increased rates
of violence in those contexts,
right? So it's not just that African
Americans themselves are more
violent, but African Americans are
more likely to experience poverty.
One of the.
Other papers ever looked at the
intersection of poverty and violence
in the African-American community
and other African diasporas
because that's one of those things
that we experience. We experience
residential segregation due
to structural inequalities
that disproportionately places
us in communities that
are disenfranchised, that have
less resources,
that subsequently experience more
of these concerns.
We also have the structural
issue of racism, which leads
to portrayals
of negative images of African
Americans, which some of us
internalize and, unfortunately,
manifest in terms of violence
against each other.
But it also then contributes to why
we have increased rates
of violence committed against
us by police officers, for
example.
A lot of them are, you know,
consciously or subconsciously buying
into these negative portrayals.
Of African Americans and viewing
African Americans as more
of a threat and then consequently
more likely to respond
to their actions, even innocuous
ones, to respond them
with violence.
Same thing with our
peers when we live in even
predominantly white neighborhoods
where a lot of our neighbors
are exposed to some of those same
negative images, those same
negatives stereotypes perceive us
as threats. So.
We're at increased risk regardless
of where we go, or
what we're doing, or who we're
exposed to because of these
different biases.
It also places us in a position
where because we're in these spaces
with more violence, there's
more of a police presence in our
communities. And so then that
increases the likelihood even more
that our.
Brothers and sisters and youth are
going to be part of the penal
system, but also just increases
the likelihood that we're going
to be exposed to police and police
officers and the violence that they
have inflicted disproportionately on
our communities.
And so all of these pieces sort of
contribute to why we experience
this increased risk and
have more of these different types
of violence in our communities,
including but not limited to gun
violence.
Was there a team that was part of
the study that you conducted?
Yeah, I mean, I tend to
always sort of work in
teams, but for
this particular one, it was
a number of basically
former students of mine that
are also African American and
have different interests in terms of
addressing African American issues
and concerns.
And so one of them is working
on her.
PhD at the University of Maryland
in Baltimore County, and the other
is soon to be working on her
PhD as well.
She has a master's, and so we
all sort of contributed
as well to producing this
particular piece.
Now, when one thinks about gun
violence, why is it
that those particular events,
you mentioned poverty and
living in segregated neighborhoods,
these particular events are
particularly affecting
African-Americans, but also
is there a systemic problem
that has existed over the years
that caused these type of activities
to occur?
There is the legacy of
slavery in this country for black
folks, which subsequently led into
Jim Crow, which subsequent led
into other forms.
That legacy has contributed
to the disproportionate
poverty that we experience
as the African American community.
It's contributed to things like
lack of homeownership,
the lack of generational wealth
that we were able to accomplish.
That is all sort of, that's
been centuries in the
making, right? So it makes it so
that we, as a community,
experience higher rates of
poverty, right, and so that
definitely is a historical
circumstance.
This narrative that we've
painted over the
centuries here in the US of
black men as brutes, for
example, that goes sort of
all the way back to slavery,
as folks who are animalistic,
as folks are prone to violence.
Those narratives have sort of
continued over
the years just in various
different forms, right?
So, you know, we, on
one hand, we can, you point to.
What's most often now referred
to as implicit bias, which,
yeah, definitely happens, but
sometimes explicit, but they
won't say that.
But those perceptions of
African-Americans as inherently
dysfunctional, as violent,
as brute, as dysfunctional.
Now, that goes back hundreds of
years, and it's just manifesting
itself in different forms in
this space. We have a history of...
The history of redlining, which
prohibited sort of home
ownership in certain spaces for
African Americans and sort
of subjected them to
certain types of neighborhoods and
environments that to this
day research supports most
of those neighborhoods are still
disenfranchised, receive limited
resources that come into those
spaces.
And so a lot of us are living
in communities.
Where we experience a number of
different structural inequalities
where not only, you know,
violence is higher, there's less
educational opportunity, there's
less opportunity for advancement,
our children, you know, I mean, we
do have, obviously, public
education.
But in most of our neighborhoods,
it tends to be subpar education.
And students potentially
don't feel safe in those school
environments. So this
whole space has put us...
Predominantly in these
disenfranchised neighborhoods,
which where the conditions lend
themselves to more
violence being perpetrated in those
spaces. So all
of these conditions have historical
roots and unfortunately we're still
kind of far from properly
addressing those issues which
would help with a lot of different
areas. Now, if we were
able to better address some
of those concerns.
There'd be, you know,
more wealth for
African American communities,
there'd be stronger education, there
would be more advancement and
opportunities, there would be less
violence, but we have yet
to sort of properly address those
historical wrongs that
have sort of happened in those
negative portrayals and experiences
that have followed us for
generations.
That brings you to my next question.
Why is it important for us to
understand these issues of gun
violence?
It's important because on
one hand, we're experiencing
significant loss of
life, right? We're losing our
brothers and sisters as a result of
this violence.
And yes, some of us are, you know,
a lot of it is perpetrated by us
against each other, but again, it's
because of these structural
problems.
And so, you now, we have significant
loss of life we're losing
men, women and children.
You know, when you talk about
research that shows that we're
14 times more likely to
die by gun homicide
when you talk about our children.
Being 20 times more likely,
in some of the recent research, 20
times more likely to die
at the hands of a gun.
We're losing generations,
we're losing fathers, we are losing
mothers, we're loosing children,
and so, I mean, that's one of
the reasons why it's important.
Loss of life is only one piece,
right? We also then, you
know, there are a lot of people who
experience gun violence and survive
gun violence and deal with
the physical and psychological
and economic outcomes
or consequences associated with
that. So we have a lot of people in
community that are experiencing
the detrimental outcomes associated
with...
Their experiences of
victimization by gun violence.
We have a lot of people within our
community, I mean so much research
support that so many in
our community have been exposed to
gun violence, have lost loved
ones to gun-violence,
have lost family members, friends.
Peers.
And so, you know, that significant
loss also impacts us
all. You know, it
impacts us psychologically
when we've experienced gun
violence, a loss to
gun violence.
It impacts families and
communities that, again, lose
fathers, lose mothers,
lose sisters, brothers, kids.
You, know, those psychological
impacts affect us
as well. And, so, when we think
about sort of...
Maintaining and building and
keeping strong community,
it's important for us to talk about
this. We lose a lot of people who
are committing these acts
of violence or sometimes just
suspected of committing them.
We lose them to the penal system,
right? And so our
sort of exposure to and
participation in the
gun violence that some participate
in also causes loss.
We're losing by literal
loss of life. We're losing some to
the system. And we're sort of
contributing to, you know,
the lack of strengthening of our own
communities and so the extent to
which we can, you now,
check ourselves in those respects
but also understand how
the systems instructors have
sort of set us up in
a way to be violent towards
each other and we need to be
rechanneling that energy
and re-focusing it towards...
You know, more positive outcomes for
us all to better build ourselves
as individuals, as families, and
as a community.
You're listening to In Black America
with Johnny L.
Hanson Jr.
We'll be back with more of our
conversation in just a moment.
If you're just joining us, I'm
Johnny L Hanson, Jr.
And you're listening to In black
America from KUT radio
and speaking with Dr. Tameka Gillum,
a social professor, Community Health
Education College of Population
Health at the University of New
Mexico and co-author of a study
that examined multi-level
sociological factors contributing
to gun violence in black
communities.
Dr. Gillum, is there a sense of
numbness to gun violence in African
American communities?
Wow, um,
I don't know that I'd necessarily
say numbness,
but I think a lot of us have
just sort of...
Sort of take this as a
course, as a norm in
the context of our spaces and it
doesn't have to be a norm, it should
not be a normal, but the
fact that it happens so
frequently in our spaces,
the fact it doesn�t
get the type of media
attention and resources
that show that people
care about what's happening
in our communities,
all of those things sort of just
contribute to.
This sort of notion of this is just
sort of happens and this is
just part of our experience but
we definitely don't need to see it
as part of experience.
I mean some of the research, the
other research that we cited in the
paper even spoke to you know
children, we're talking about middle
school children sort of
resigning to the fact
that they live in these
violent spaces and then
unfortunately experiencing this sort
hypervigilance and all the
things associated with that.
And so, unfortunately, I think we
have too much
viewed it as a norm because it
happens so frequently, because many
of us don't understand the many
factors that contribute to it,
and because the larger society
has sort of viewed it as just
a norm for us, right?
And we definitely need to
better push back against that.
I mean, there's things that...
Need to be done on a larger
sort of societal, structural,
policy level, but then there's
things that we also need to do
within the context of our
communities to get it out
there. No, this is not normal.
No this doesn't have to be our
experience to help the better
things in our spaces as well.
Obviously law enforcement
intervention isn't working.
What are some of the suggestions
that you have?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot
of additional things, at least,
that we can do.
I mean there's, we know there's lots
of problems with law enforcement,
but ways that can be addressed, too.
But, I mean, there's a point
of investing more resources
into these disenfranchised
communities, things that can be
done more on the policy level and
putting in funds to build
up these communities to,
you know, to create better
school systems for students,
for our kids to go through,
to create a better sort of
environmental spaces for us to
just sort of feel good about where
we live, to...
Have additional resources and
opportunities for our young people
in the context of these spaces to
put in place even, you know,
things like more youth positive
development type programs that push
back against these narratives of us
as violent, that pushback against
these negative perceptions of
African-American communities.
As we engage, we can
better engage in efforts to
build our communities, to...
To build our spaces to
strengthen and empower our
youth, to strengthen and empower our
families can also,
you know, do better,
the larger society can certainly do
better in terms of the types of
policies we have in place that
make firearms more
accessible in our communities.
There definitely needs to be better
efforts on the federal level.
To do better in terms of sort of
controlling or addressing those
types of things.
We need to engage
in efforts that help to reduce
things like intimate partner
violence, community level
interventions for men and boys
that help us to
reduce the numbers
of intimate partner violent that
happen in our communities that place
our women at increased risk for
intimate partner homicide.
We need better mental
health resources and services for
folks who've been exposed to
intimate partner violence for
those of us who deal with,
you know, some of the consequences
and challenges of living
in a racist society and the
type of psychological toll that that
can take and how we can better
normalize receiving,
seeking and receiving, that type of
assistance from culturally
responsive therapists that
are better able to deal with the
types of traumas that we experience
and facilitate our healing.
Whether we've directly experienced
this type of violence or whether
we've experienced it vicariously
through our living spaces or
our loved ones.
There's lots of different
initiatives, things that can be done
on our sort of individual and
interpersonal and community level,
but then also these larger
federal initiatives that can help to
better invest in and build
up African-American communities
and spaces, reduce
the likelihood of these guns getting
into our spaces.
And other sort of writing,
some of those structural
inequalities that have
limited our ability to
gain wealth to advance
ourselves.
You know, those types of things, as
we chip away at those types
of things they have the potential
to reduce the amount of
violence that we experience within
the context of our spaces.
Now, Dr. Gillum, you articulated
what needs to be done.
Do you see a willingness to do it?
Well,
yes and no,
we do
a little bit better in terms
of, you know, some of our
community leaders helping
to take initiative in terms creating
positive youth programs,
for example, attempting
to work and build up our
communities. I think more of us
definitely need to do that, but
some of us do, you have to do those
things.
The things that need to take, and
there are, when we talk about sort
of creating more
culturally sensitive trauma-informed
mental health services,
there are sort of some efforts
to do that.
We do need to do better at
that, you know,
our faculty wants in a place that
trains future licensed
mental health professionals, right,
and we did some of that, but we
could have done better.
You know, so those types of things
are happening.
Unfortunately, the things that have
to happen on a larger society
level to sort of
right some of these, these sort
of historical wrongs that have
happened to us, I think, are
slower to come
to fruition.
And I think one of the,
when we talk about sort of investing
in our communities,
you know, part of that is going to
be trying to get
more elected officials that
look like us.
And have our interest at heart
into, you know, positions
in the government to be able
to make these types of proposals and
to support these types of proposals
that are going to put
resources into our communities to
help uplift our spaces.
We definitely, you now, there's not,
there doesn't seem to be
enough interest on
sort of the larger federal level in
terms of investing in our spaces and
what can be done to strengthen and
better. Our communities.
We need those initiatives that
try to, you know, address the
legacy of redlining
and how that's impacted
homeownership and generational
welfare in African-American
communities.
There can be better initiatives in
place to address those as well.
We aren't doing enough with that.
We are doing enough with regulation
of firearms and the types of
policies and legislation that we can
be putting in place to sort of
start to curb that
a little bit more and we know that's
a big political
issue, it's a divisive issue, but
consequently there's been very slow
progress on it.
The recent bipartisan act that was
passed a couple years ago was the
first legislation in 30
years to try
to address this issue of violence.
Is the gun violence issue
in America, particularly
indigenous to America, are the other
countries facing similar problems?
Good question. So we're the worst of
developed nations, of what they call
sort of first world or developed
nations. We definitely are
the worst, which is very telling.
Like we experience the highest rates
of gun violence.
Dr. Tamika Gillum, Associate
Professor of Community Health in the
College of Population Health at the
University of New Mexico.
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