Strange Fruit and the Furtive Killing of Blacks
One cannot witness the life of George Floyd fade before your eyes without a growing horror and an extreme sense of urgency around the lack of intervention –panicking for someone or something to stall a death, which we know inevitably will come. The 8 minute and 46 second video record of his killing at the hands of police recalls past lynching: we feel the desperation, anguish and hopelessness of a man who is about to die. We imagine blood thirsty killers --acting in a frenzy --stringing him up to a tree and leaving him there to rot. That, at least, is the subtext of Billie Holidays ballad, “Strange Fruit,” where a painfully beautiful melody reminds us of Black killing in its most grotesque form.
Racism is like water flowing through a rocky canyon. Both have the power to sustain people permitted to drink and yet carve their path through the bodies of others regarded as inert objects, devoid of value. In a slow but relentless process, the machinery of structural inequality similarly chisels away at Black, Brown and poor lives in America. Such furtive killing may not rise to the level of obscenity that compels people to march for #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) because it is silent, unhurried and nearly imperceptible -beneath the radar. Yet, it is as treacherous as the lynch mob because it marks Blacks for untimely death with incredible precision. To support #BLM these furtive killings must end. But, you ask: what are furtive killings and how can they be stopped?
“Furtive” describes something done in quiet, secretly and without notice. It is accomplished underhandedly through stealth. Black lives are stolen through furtive means when life-expectancies are diminished by a legacy of trauma exacerbated by continual marginalization, injuring the body and mind. In this essay, I will describe how Black death results through a furtive process whereby physiological predispositions that are shaped by a legacy of trauma interact with long-standing social and environmental hazards, perpetuated by American systems designed to disenfranchise minorities. Furtive killing progresses through complex but visible health, social and environmental phenomena that amount to structural violence against Black bodies and minds.
Furtive killing through increased mortality, morbidity and malnutrition
Black Americans experience increased mortality (death) from a whole host of preventable causes. While there has been some progress in lessening the disparity in life expectancy, Black Americans still don’t live as long as whites. According to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) most recent life-expectancy data, white men live approximately 4.5 years longer than Black men, and the life expectancy for white women is 2.7 years longer than that of Black women. Blacks are still more likely to die of kidney disease, diabetes, hypertension, infection and homicide than whites. In addition, Black women are 2.5 times more likely to die in childbirth, compared to white women.
Black Americans also experience increased morbidity (acute and chronic illness), being more likely than whites to suffer from diseases like cancer, obesity, hypertension, diabetes and asthma. Chronic stress, which particularly afflicts poor minorities, is known to complicate healing and recovery. Consequently, Blacks are especially vulnerable to acute health problems, such as infection by COVID-19, resulting in their higher death-rate compared to whites. In addition, Blacks are less likely to have insurance coverage and/or access to a medical provider. As Nihmotallahi Adebayo argues in this issue, implicit bias by healthcare workers against Black patients further complicates their ability to navigate the healthcare landscape. Research also indicates that, for individuals suffering from mental health disorders, the implicit biases of the medical providers have an adverse effect on the quality of their treatment and treatment outcomes. Minorities with mental health conditions are thus doubly-denied the privileges of having their complaints listened to, their symptoms accurately diagnosed, and the appropriate treatments implemented. Just as the system consistently inflicts metaphorical and literal injury to Black bodies, the system also denies proper and equal health care treatment to them through the implicit biases of the providers.
Disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment is of course marred by the lack of access to health care; but its underlying causes point to the chronic disregard for Black life. For instance, human genetics studies show that people of African ancestry worldwide do not share as high rates of hypertension and diabetes, which are greatly influenced by the adverse American social context. In another illustration of the direct health consequences of America’s structural inequality, Black American women have historically experienced more pre-term and either abnormally high or low infant birth-weights compared to other ethnic groups. In keeping with what has been described as the “immigrant paradox,” where migrant populations fare better than natives, women of African descent who immigrate to the US do not initially show this susceptibility to perinatal problems. However, they are also found to have low-birthweight babies by the 2nd generation in the US -effectively erasing the perceived advantages of not being racially oppressed in one’s homeland. Unfortunately, few possessing dark skin are spared the risk of birthing babies that are either too large or two small for gestational age, which predisposes them to many of the health concerns related to the aforementioned prevalence for chronic disease and premature death in Black Americans.
Regardless of whether they begin life underweight or overweight, Black Americans have a tendency towards obesity and micronutrient malnutrition, which further threatens healthy functioning. According to the latest National Center for Environmental Health report, compared to non-Hispanic whites, Non-Hispanic Blacks are more likely to be deficient in key nutrients like folate, Vitamin D, Vitamins A & E, and Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine), which is important for brain health. For example, Black children have a 51.6% prevalence of “inadequate” (and 31.1% prevalence of more severe “deficient”) levels of vitamin D. Conversely, they have higher levels of blood amino acids like homocysteine, which is associated with early development of heart disease.
A damaged home in the infamous
Lower 9th Ward of
New Orleans, United States
Picture Credits: John Middelkoop on Unsplash.
Furtive killing through social inequality and environmental injustice
Environmental and social injustices ravage Black lives by undermining their ability to overcome a wide array of challenges beginning in early life. Sadly, the above nutritional deficiencies are no surprise, considering that poverty increases the likelihood of food insecurity. Further, a large number of Blacks reside in food deserts, apart from bountiful produce found in famers markets, large grocery stores, supermarkets, or supercenters, and in “low-income census tracts” around rural or densely populated urban areas that go unnoticed. Wherever they call home, Black people are more likely to live in conditions that are exposed and vulnerable to extreme weather, such as the lowland areas flood-ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Thus, Blacks, poor, and other minorities are some of the most vulnerable to the furtive-killing effects of global warming, left un-checked.
According to The Brookings Institution, the net worth of the average white family ($171,000) was 10 times that of the average Black family ($17,150) in 2016. The American Dream is not available even to upwardly mobile Blacks whose economic progress is limited by institutionalized discrimination. For example, equally qualified Black college graduates are compensated less than peers, eventually amassing 1/3 of the wealth of their white counterparts. In addition, Blacks achieving financial success have more difficulty conserving any accumulated wealth across generations due to the persistent poverty in their kin and the wealth depleting nature of racism. Black Americans are less likely to own a home and twice as likely to live below the poverty line, compared to whites. As the result of discriminatory housing practices, such as segregation, red-lining and urban renewal, a great many Black households either lost or have been denied the financial resilience-building asset of home ownership. As historically Black neighborhoods were demolished, many were pushed into public housing that more resembles prison than a home. As a child, I lived in “the projects” for a period of time spanning middle-school. I remember the eeriness of its chain-link fenced courtyards, the concrete tables and benches posted on bald patches of grass. I will never forget the heavy metal doors and cold metal railings giving access to dark, urine-stenched stairwells and musty corridors that I had to navigate to and from home. Everything seemed to be made of brick or concrete -the better to hose down and sterilize. There was nothing warm or welcoming, leaving the sense that the inhabitants were regarded as little more than caged animals. Indeed, when I later conducted neuroscience research with animals that were housed in cages I would observe many parallels with regard to the practicality of their furnishings. Cages were medal and laboratory facilities were encased in concrete for easy management of the animals unnaturally housed there. That was all for a good cause -to better understand human biology through animal models. For what purpose do we keep humans in such conditions -in concrete buildings, in cells – assorted cages that await their arrival from birth? Not surprisingly, it was recently determined that this kind of housing condition, devoid of greenery or access to nature, may be associated with violent crime. By contrast, green space has a positive impact on the body and mind.
Poor and Black children are more likely to end-up in cheaper, crowded and chaotic day-care or home environments, which have been shown to increase the levels of circulating stress hormones. Children of color eventually experience more early adverse experiences, such as parental death, trauma or mental and physical illness. The adultification and demonization of Black boys and girls leads to their differential treatment in schools (including harsher punishment and inadequate educational service provisioning) culminating in earlier push-out of the education system and failure to complete high school, compared to whites. As Jud Laughter writes, structural problems with the American educational system are at least, counter-productive, and at worst significantly contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline driving mass incarceration. As evidenced by the death of Breonna Taylor, after the execution of a no-knock warrant, and Jonathan Harwell’s discussion of extrajudicial and judicial killings, the American justice system enforces dominion over rather than protecting Black bodies. In fact, wherever people are marginalized, it seems that Blacks become regarded as the least among them; because recent evidence shows that Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people are at greater risk of unemployment, poverty, incarceration and more susceptible to death by homicide and suicide than their white counterparts.
Furtive killing through the epigenetic influence of prolonged structural violence
From the time they were forcibly extracted from their homes of origin, through the six week transatlantic journey in ship holds originally built for cargo and not humans, to their generations of forced labor, people of African descent may molecularly encode and transmit ‘biological memories’ or genetic imprints of trauma onto their descendants. It is clear from both historic slave narratives and the slave archeological record that slaves endured relentless emotional maltreatment as well as psychological and physical trauma. Slave remains reveal signs of childhood malnourishment, chronic and extreme physical exertion. They show that many suffered multiple bodily injuries over the course of their life-span and died with extreme physical injuries occurring around the time of death. As discussed by Raquel Fleskes in this issue, this structural violence and dehumanization is not only visible in the kinds and timing of bone patterns; but extends into their unceremonious burial by comparison to the cherished family members of white slave-owners. In chattel slavery can be found the seeds of structural violence that still pervade American society --even culminating in Black-on-Black violence resulting from extreme socioeconomic pressure and toxic stress.
In 1619, African slaves were first brought to this land. It is not far-fetched to hypothesize that 400 years of subsequent trauma from their enslavement, oppression and racial discrimination could leave an indelible mark on the body and mind. Countless studies now demonstrate significant negative effects of chronic and toxic stress, such as that experienced by the poor or Black. When stressed, the body secretes “stress hormones” that are designed to help one mount a quick reaction to the environmental trigger. This is commonly referred to as the fight or flight response. Evolutionarily, this makes perfect sense if you consider the adaptive benefit for quickly reacting to the presence of a large predator, like a lion. However, in situations of chronic stress, the degree of stress hormone secretion is sustained for such prolonged periods that this suppresses healthy immunological, cardiovascular and brain functions. Recent research investigations on such “epigenetic” processes of generational transmission show that even ancestral trauma can impact subsequent generations through modifications of gene systems (the DNA is not altered but its expression is changed, for instance through DNA methylation) that are involved in physiological functions, precipitating in problems like the higher incidence of cardiovascular disease in Blacks. This inheritance of intergenerational trauma unfolds through the biopsychosocial reprogramming of expression patterns in inherited genes followed by the accelerated aging of DNA from prolonged exposure to stress hormones during life. Indeed, descendants of the survivors from the holocaust, prisoners of war and the Dutch famine manifest higher rates of hypertension, diabetes and metabolic disorders associated with obesity and what could be described as trauma-modified stress physiology.
The ultimate success of #BlackLivesMatter depends on ending furtive killing
Black lives matter even when killing is accomplished by less sensational means: through the aggregate effects of structural inequality and racism that amounts to "furtive killing." I have described the furtive killing of Blacks through ancestral trauma, poor housing, preventable diseases, insufficient nutrition, and inadequate schools. Some people might say there's not enough proof for furtive killings. The lack of milk and carrots, a cozy home, or an encouraging teacher isn’t the same as having someone kneel on your neck, compressing the upper airway, the carotid arteries, and the jugular veins. This is equivalent to saying that the only Black death worth preventing is that which splashes across the news and social media. What is the difference if the air you breathe enters a body tormented by racial struggle and the blood that flows into your brain wants for basic nutrients but carries every marker of psychological stress? Waiting for concrete causal effects will be too late. We know enough now, by piecing together the physiological, social, and environmental mediators to act. In my view, reparations are not enough. No amount of money can cure the festering sores left by generation-upon-generation-upon-generation of ill-treatment. Only a complete societal reformation that eradicates deeply rooted systems of inequality and injustice can achieve the recovery of Blacks and poor or guarantee future harmony. This work for #BLM, can be taken-up by young and old, as demonstrated through the mantra “good trouble, necessary trouble” of the late John Lewis and the resistance work described in this issue, by Imani Smith. Everyone can advance these goals by doing three things: 1) Vote, 2) Encourage everyone you know to complete the 2020 census, which can ensure that vulnerable populations get the federal resources they need to overcome structural violence, 3) Become an anti-racist by using your own voice and power to preserve and protect Black lives.
One in ten Black Americans are immigrants, like me. They arrive full of hope; but are met by the same furtive killing through structural violence –eventually succumbing to the equal morbidity, mortality and despair by the second or third generation in residence. So it is the toxicity of America and not something inherent to Blackness in itself that ruins chances. The killing of George Floyd reminds us of the contested presence of Blacks since the founding of America, wherein they've endured countless horrors (250 years of slavery followed by another 150 years of segregation, terrorism by the KKK, lynching, urban renewal, racial discrimination, police/state intimidation and persecution) that leave a mark. Environmental conditions and societal context interact with physiology marked by the legacy of trauma to cause furtive killing. This is not to say that Black people are the only victims of oppression. Indeed, poor and other Brown people -most notably, Native Americans have been made to suffer equally furtive bodily injury and mental harm by what seems like a genocidal American regime. The success of #BLM depends on advocacy for a complex suite social and political reforms that cease furtive killing of vulnerable populations, ultimately increasing longevity and well-being of Black, Brown and poor Americans.
Sally B. Seraphin (Founder of the Thinking Republic) is a Haitian-American primate behavioral neuroscientist specializing in the evolutionary developmental neurobiology of stress. She teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. She is married to Jonathan Harwell, a criminal defense attorney who inspired her to develop a subspecialty in NeuroLaw. They have three children, ages 4, 8 and 10.
(c) 2020 Sally Seraphin