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Summer 2010 | Vol 13 No 4

Review

Lew Golding

Young black men talk about looking for safety in a violent world

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men looks beyond the gunplay by offering a new window on urban violence. Author Dr. John A. Rich, a former medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission and director of the Center for Academic Public Health Practice, comes to the subject from the vantage point of someone who has worked on the problem at ground zero. Rich humanizes the cold statistics of Black-on-Black violence by presenting stories in the victims’ own words.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time is not about homicide rates, which Rich rightly calls “the tip of the iceberg.” Left unseen, and scandalously unreported by the news media, are the non-fatal shootings, knifings and beatings that take place nightly. “For every person who gets shot and dies, another four get shot and survive,” he writes. He takes us into the world of the survivor and demonstrates that their traumas began long before shots rang out. Pervasive fear and the instinct for physical and emotional survival, not economic necessity, turned them to violence.

Rich introduces an unusual fact-finding methodology by engaging youth at the critical point of a life crisis – their life-saving trip through the emergency ward. The relationships that he develops with each youth served as the conduit to insights into their attitudes towards violence. They expose root causes of youth violence, experienced by those living in the social conditions where it occurs. Rich’s account is professional and personal, as he reports how spending hours and days with these young men transformed him. As I write this review, I must admit that I feel a kinship with Dr. Rich and his interview subjects – we are all Black, and the “teachings” articulated by the young men in their street vernacular resonate.

We hear from David, Kari, Roy, Jimmy and Mark, the purveyors of the lived experiences at the core of this book. We walk in their shoes on their chaotic and violent streets, and we learn something about the necessity of acting tough in order to get respect. The reader is exposed to what it means to feel physically, psychologically and socially unsafe, and how getting a weapon for self-defense or retaliation is a pressing decision for youth living within the “condition.” Wrong Place, Wrong Time presents the story of the relationships between experiences of loss, dehumanization and other victimizations as a precursor to trauma. One is challenged to appreciate the cultures of trauma in which both victims and perpetrators are trapped. This reality is not restricted to the United States, as similar patterns exist in Canada.

Rich was stung by the ignorance and insensitivity of his colleagues who assumed that when a young Black man was rolled into the emergency room with a gunshot wound, “He didn’t just get shot; he got himself shot.” This book implores the reader to refrain from such judgments. No apologist for violence, Rich asks that we not so much judge the actions of Kari and company, “good or bad, sensible or senseless as … hear from them and understand how and why they arrive in these perilous places.” The stories seem to affirm that Black youth are committing homicide and suicide simultaneously, as articulated by Dr. Kenneth Hardy in his 2006 book Teens Who Hurt: Clinical Interventions to Break the Cycle of Adolescent Violence.

We must understand that these violent young men seem to be looking for safety in a violent world, using violence. Rich suggest it is simply not acceptable to begin the analysis by examining the outcomes for victims and perpetrators; we must challenge the environments that seem to blindly sustain the cycle of victimization in order to prevent it. Wrong Place, Wrong Time makes a compelling case for addressing youth violence from a public health framework, and I intend to make it required reading for my staff.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men. John A. Rich. Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore, Maryland, 232 pp. 2009. $24.95 hardcover.

Lew Golding is manager of the Substance Abuse Program for African Canadian and Caribbean Youth at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.