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"
Wrong Place
, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of
Young Black Men
" by
John A. Rich
;
Johns Hopkins University Press
(212 pages,
$24.95
)
———
In 1990,
Boston
was in the midst of a wave of bloody violence. The
victims were mostly young black and Latino men of the
inner city. They were being shot and stabbed at an
alarming rate, not unlike those in
Philadelphia
,
Baltimore
,
Detroit
, and other big urban centers.
For
John A. Rich
, a young physician who had helped launch a health
clinic for young men, it was a problem that directly
affected his work and his life. Among those who came to
his clinic for routine exams were young men who bore the
scars of shootings, stabbings, and the subsequent
emotional damage.
To find
answers to why they were disproportionately suffering
such trauma, Rich set out to interview victims of
violence, looking for survivors to recount their
experiences. He closely read the
Boston Globe
and other local newspapers for reports of wounded young
blacks and Latinos and collected their names.
Out of
theses interviews came "
Wrong Place
, Wrong Time," a concise yet powerful examination
of urban violence from the perspectives of those on the
receiving end.
Like
Yale
sociologist
Elijah Anderson
, who has spent many years studying black street life in
Philadelphia
, Rich lets the young men speak in their own voices.
What we
hear in the interviews is not just street-tough bravado,
but the voices of fear, withdrawal, shame, depression,
and even resilience. These men also voice the recurring
theme of respect — or perhaps more aptly, perceived
"disrespect" — as a reason to kill or maim.
The
author, currently a professor and chairman of the
department of health management and policy at the
Drexel University School of Public Health
, writes that the majority of stories the men told about
being wounded centered on "the idea of respect and
the need to look and act tough to ward off those who
might take advantage of you." He adds: "That
such insults could lead to violent acts of retaliation
made it seem absurd to assign blame to the victim."
The title
comes from the cliche about the victims of violence
being somewhere they shouldn't at an inopportune time,
even if that place is often where they live.
Through
his experience in recording the interviews, Rich also
presents a story of self-discovery in which a doctor
learns much about a group he knew little about
previously and about himself as a black man.
"While
Wrong Place
, Wrong Time" is strong in its analyses of the
interviews, the number of interviews — about a half
dozen — leaves the reader wanting to know more. It
also raises the question of whether the numbers are
adequate to make generalizations about such a broad
segment of society.
Still,
for those who study violence and want to know more about
its toll on urban America, the book is a good addition
to the literature. It offers a clearheaded perspective
from a physician who went beyond good office doctoring
and bedside manners to try to get at a serious
social-health problem.
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