State-Of-Black-Oregon-2015

ESSAY 4REBUILDING STRONG SUPPORTSFOR OUR YOUTHDalton Miller-Jones, PhD, Professor EmeritusDevelopmental Psychology, Portland State UniversityThe disturbing portrait painted by thisreport has not changed significantlyfrom the Urban League’s State ofBlack Oregon 2009 report. 2 Whatconditions and dynamics lead to these persistentpatterns of inequities between Blacks and otherOregonians? For us, the historical roots of thepresent situation continue to influence what weexperience today.For Blacks, the more than 300 years (or over10 generations), of brutal slavery and thesubsequent terrorism of “Jim Crow” segregationand discrimination have been representedin daily culture. The Tuskegee Institutedocumented the lynching of 3,446 Blacksbetween 1882 and 1968. 3Black communities continue to experience overtaggression and threats of violence every day,including from law enforcement. “Young Blackmales in recent years were at a far greater riskof being shot dead by police than their Whitecounterparts—21 times greater, according to aProPublica analysis of federally collected dataon fatal police shootings” (drawn from reportsfiled from 2010 to 2012). 4The Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown incidentshave been widely publicized. In anotheroutrageous incident in New Iberia, Louisiana,Victor White III, a Black man, was shot to deathwhile in a police cruiser. The coroner claimed,and the court found, that he shot himself todeath while being handcuffed with his handsbehind his back.Similar incidents involving deadly use of forcehave happened here in Portland, most notablyKendra James and Aaron Campbell. Thiscontinued criminalization of being Black and themilitarization of law enforcement are deeply feltin the Black community.MICROAGGRESSIONSBlack youth experience daily assaults ontheir integrity by people in positions ofauthority, such as teachers and police.These microagressions become internalizedconsciously and unconsciously. Dr. Joy DeGruyLeary’s book “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome”equates these stresses with those experiencedby former combat soldiers. Black malescan respond to these assaults with fear andantagonism toward the police and school. WhenBlack male students are constantly accused ofmisbehavior, their personal integrity is offended.Although some research suggests that Blackstudents are not actually more disruptive in classthan White students, they are suspended andexpelled at rates double that for Whites. 5It doesn’t start out this way. Most young Black 3-and 4-year-olds arrive at school eager to pleasetheir teachers and may aspire to be police orfiremen. But after many encounters where they34