“I Done Been Through a Lot of Stuff and I Done Seen a Lot of Things”: A Qualitative Analysis of Chronic Stress and Violence Among Justice-Involved Black Men

• Published date: 01 April 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241227541
• Author: Cherrell Green
• Date: 01 April 2024

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2024, Vol. 51, No. 4, April 2024, 620 –638.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241227541

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© 2024 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

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“I DONE BEEN THROUGH A LOT OF STUFF AND

I DONE SEEN A LOT OF THINGS”

A Qualitative Analysis of Chronic Stress and Violence

Among Justice-Involved Black Men

CHERRELL GREEN

University of Missouri—St. Louis

Everytown for Gun Safety

In the United States, low-income Black men endure substantial stressors shaped by their social ecology (e.g., impoverished

neighborhoods) and societal systems (e.g., criminal legal system) that produce racialized harm over the course of their lives.

Although the stress literature has demonstrated a strong relationship between stressors and adverse health consequences,

much remains unknown as to how low-income Black men experience trauma and adversity. This study draws on semistruc-

tured interviews with 20 men to understand how they experience and cope with trauma. Findings reveal that Black men

experience multiple and enduring stressors—childhood trauma, interpersonal violence, loss of loved ones to violence, and

police violence, throughout their lives. Participants’ chronic exposure to trauma resulted in adverse psychological outcomes

including desensitization, hypervigilance, and fatalism. Finally, how low-income Black men responded to trauma, sometimes

resulted in additional adversity and further involvement in the criminal legal system.

Keywords: qualitative analysis; stress; trauma; violence; race

STRESS OVER THE LIFE COURSE AMONG LOW-INCOME BLACK MEN

Marginalized at the nexus of race and socioeconomic status, low-income Black men

disproportionately experience poverty, intergenerational trauma, interpersonal community

violence, and state-sanctioned violence by agents of the criminal legal system (Brunson &

Wade, 2019; Buka et al., 2001; Smith Lee & Patton, 2015). Despite the prevalence of these

traumatic experiences in the lives of low-income Black men, their response to trauma is

often treated as pathology, with fewer resources devoted to addressing the adverse conse-

quences associated with these experiences (Jones, 2018). This simultaneous pathologizing

of trauma while underinvesting in responses to it is a result of structural racialization—an

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The author also have no conflict of interests regarding this research. This research was

supported in part by the Charles G Huber, Jr. Endowed Dissertation Fellowship at the University of Missouri

– St. Louis. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Cherrell Green, Everytown for Gun

Safety, NY, NY; e-mail: cgreen@everytown.org.

1227541CJBXXX10.1177/00938548241227541Criminal Justice and BehaviorGreen / Exposure to Chronic Stress and Violence Among Black Men

research-article2024

Green / EXPOSURE TO CHRONIC STRESS AND VIOLENCE AMONG BLACK MEN 621

institutionalized system that produces and reproduces ideologies, policies, and practices

that perpetuate racial inequities and criminalize Black people (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). Low-

income Black men are systematically excluded from services by way of underpolicing in

disinvested neighborhoods, historical and cultural trauma embedded within health care sys-

tems, and stringent eligibility requirements to receive victim services. Consequently, these

experiences have lifelong negative implications for their psychological outcomes and can

lead to involvement in the criminal legal system. While the extent literature has demon-

strated a robust relationship between stressors and adverse psychological outcomes (Pearlin

et al., 2005), existing research has not linked the stress process and structural racism in the

lives of low-income Black men.

The current study engages with Pearlin and colleagues’ (2005) work on stress over the

life course and BlackCrit (Dumas & Ross, 2016), to describe how exposure to traumatic

experiences resulting from systemic violence adversely contributes to cumulative adversity

in the lives of Black men from low-income communities. Pearlin et al’s (2005) work on

stress over the life course is informed by three guiding principles. First, Pearlin and col-

leagues (1981) identify two types of stressors that influence the stress process: discrete

negative life events, such as the loss of a loved one, and chronic strains (e.g., poverty). Both

the experience and the timing associated with negative life events and chronic strains can

contribute to adverse consequences over the life course. Second, Pearlin and colleagues

(2005) view the socioecological context as structuring exposure to stressors. For example,

due to structural patterns of concentrated disadvantage, low-income Black men experience

disparate exposure to chronic stressors, such as poverty, which are hard to escape. Adversity

can also operate through more dynamic processes in which one’s response to trauma can

create additional challenges. Finally, integral to the stress process framework is the concept

of stress proliferation, which focuses on two types of stressors: Primary stressors refer to

initial stressors that occur within a given domain, and secondary stressors that develop as a

consequence of primary stressors but fall outside of the confines of the relationship and

negatively impact other life domains (Pearlin et al., 2005). As such, stress can proliferate

both within and across life domains.

An extension of critical race theory (CRT; see Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), which

examines how race and racism play a role in the maintenance of racial hierarchies in the

United States, BlackCrit provides a narrower and more explicit focus to a theory of

Blackness and anti-Blackness (Coles & Powell, 2020; Dumas & Ross, 2016). BlackCrit is

guided by a framing idea that anti-Blackness is endemic to U.S. society. Anti-Blackness is

characterized as the “disgust and disdain for Black bodies, a refusal to acknowledge Black

peoples as human, and worthy of regard, recognition, and resources” (Dumas, 2016, p. 8).

BlackCrit interrogates how anti-Blackness operates in a society where institutions, laws,

and policies, reproduce Black suffering and the subjugation of Black people (Dumas &

Ross, 2016). Situating Pearlin and colleagues’ (2005) work in the context of BlackCrit, the

current study unpacks the “structural embeddedness of anti-Blackness” (Coles, 2023), by

examining how disparate exposure to traumas (e.g., poverty, community violence, homi-

cide loss, policing, and incarceration), particularly in the absence of supportive resources,

works to further marginalize low-income Black men by way of increased legal system

involvement and adverse mental health outcomes.

Drawing on interviews with 20 “street-oriented” low-income Black men, this study

explores the following research questions. First, how do Black men describe