By Sandra Smith
PROGRESS, which stands for Prevent Gun Violence: Research, Empowerment, Strategies and Solutions, hosted a distinguished speaker series event on Wednesday, featuring professors Rabiatu Barrie and Brooklynn Hitchens.
“The PROGRESS distinguished speaker series will help educate students and faculty in our community to learn about cutting-edge research that can be translated into life-saving actions,” said Gregory Ball, vice president of research at the University of Maryland.
Barrie, an assistant professor at UMD and prevention scientist, focuses her research on reducing negative mental health outcomes among Black males. Her presentation touched on the idea of intersections between gender and race.
“Maleness is generally considered a privileged identity that’s associated with advantages and being at the top of the social hierarchy. But, when Black is added to it, it’s reenvisioned, repackaged and assigned a new set of rules,” Barrie said.
According to Barrie, the privilege of being male no longer matters.
“Black men have the highest incarceration rates, highest unemployment rates and the highest rates of school suspensions,” Barrie said. “This reinforces negative narratives from history and it becomes a cycle.”
To combat these issues, Barrie is working on promoting resilience and identity development through empowerment, or PRIDE.
“The goal is to help African American boys develop the scripts and narratives about Black men that they want to be and to dispel this notion that they must earn their masculinity,” Barrie said.
Barrie is currently implementing PRIDE at a local high school in Greenbelt. She also plays a role in UMD’s acute family treatment emergency reparation intervention.
Hitchens, a sociologist and assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at UMD, shared her mixed-method work on how Black women and girls navigate urban inequality and uncertainty while involved in the criminal justice system.
“Data consistently indicates that firearm homicide is the second leading cause of death for Black women and girls ages 15 to 24,” Hitchens said. “These rates exceed all other women, along with White, Hispanic, and Asian men.”
Black women are the pillars of the Black community, she said, because they literally and figuratively are cleaning up the blood from these violent acts.
“They walk a tightrope of risk and resilience. Their cultural grief and mourning practices as Black American women operate in tandem with a form of tenacious strength that cannot be understated,” Hitchens said.
She has collected data in cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Chicago to validate her research. These communities have little to no resources for crime victims, Hitchens said.
“Until we address the complex social determinants of health that shape assault and violence, we will struggle to reduce the prevalence of Black homicide survivorship,” Hitchens said. “This includes investing in quality economic opportunities, grief support and hospital-based violence interventions.”
Featured Image: The distinguished speaker series event took place on Zoom on March 6, 2024. Screenshot by Sandra Smith.