Plight of the "wrong" neighborhood

Recently I stumbled upon a video journalism series put on by the Chicago Tribune called Chicago Under the Gun. Its gut-wrenching portrayal of the ever-present violent chaos on Chicago’s South and West sides has been stuck with me ever since.

 

Gun 2 (via stock.xchng)

Between sobbing cries of mothers who have had their children gunned down at the playground, to the angry rage of brothers of young men slain for walking down the street, this video series is about more than just crime statistics. It’s more than an emotionally disconnected report on the problem areas of the city. It shows the reality of the pain, anger, and frustration that entire communities of people face all too often, just for living where they do.

And if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can find the full series here: http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/under-the-gun/

Warning, there are graphic images and explicit language.

For those of you who, like me, have to be careful to screen what you watch because of the effects it can have on you (nightmares, ruminating, feeling depressed, etc), I’ll lay out it all out here, in words.

Chicago has a long history of gun violence. Some of the highest numbers of homicides come from the early 1970’s (970 homicides in 1974), and it has persistently been an issue. Last year, Chicago witnessed another spike in homicides, 506 reported, the highest rate in the country last year. 

Many analysts are suggesting that 2012 was a fluke year, that 2013 will not match that rate. As of August 12^th murders are down 26% from last year, and shootings are down 22% from last year. In fact, the murder rate has not been this low since 1965. Indeed, according to redeyechicago.com, only 250 homicides have occurred so far this year as of August 11^th, 2013.

But here’s the thing. Last weekend alone (August 9-11^th) from Friday night through Sunday night, 4 people were killed and 37 were wounded in Chicago, most of them shot. Chicago had logged 15 homicides in the month of August as of August 11th.

To put that in perspective, only 21people had been killed in Minneapolis this year as of mid July. That’s only 6 more than were killed in Chicago in 11 days.

Now, I realize that none of this takes into account the size of the cities, number of people, etc. In fact, if you’re measuring per capita, Chicago doesn’t even make the top 25 most dangerous cities. Statistically speaking, the odds of being murdered in Chicago are about a 1 in 6,250.

But, what happens if you narrow that down to Chicago’s West and South sides as opposed to including the entire 227.3 square miles of the entire Chicago area? Well, the odds of being shot while walking down the street are closer to 3in 1,000 on the West Side of Chicago. And if you happen to be somehow connected to a gang, be it by family or friend, or even friend of a friend, your risk in some neighborhoods, like the West Side of Chicago, skyrockets to an estimated 30 in 1,000 (read more here about using Social Networks to map crime).

 

Police Line (via stock.xchng)

Now clearly, violent homicide is a pervasive problem across the U.S. and the world, not just in Chicago. And yes, there are many MANY factors contributing to it. Poverty, disrupted family structure, poor education, lacking community supports, insufficient health care, and lack of gun control to name a few.

Yet somehow, despite knowing all of this, we often treat these cases with a dangerous ambivalence. Somehow, there’s this idea that loss of life of people from the “wrong neighborhood” means less than life lost in other places – in places where “that kind of thing just doesn’t happen here.”

Somehow, we’ve gotten to a place of complacence. Where the death of a 6-month-old child who was shot and killed while her dad changed her diaper in the back of a car can be minimized to an explanation of living on the rough side of town and having a criminal for a father.

But her dad’s grief is real, and in no way less traumatic than the grief of any of the parents who suffered from the slayings of their innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut.

So why do they sometimes feel so different? Why does it so quickly come down to “being from the rough part of town,” rather than an understanding that grief over lost innocence is as immeasurable there as the grief of the families in Newtown? Is it the media? Is it about race? Poverty? Social standing? Perception?

My sense is, it’s probably a little of all of the above.

I understand that making sense out of tragedy is part of the process of grief. As humans we seek to compartmentalize and rationalize horrendous crimes – to figure out “why” this happened. And the “wrong neighborhood” explanation is a quick and easy rationalization of brutal murder.

But when you live in a place where grief becomes the norm, you start believing that you don’t deserve more – that this constant grief and fear of certain, impending loss weaves its way into your psych.

How do you fight back when the things you’re fighting have become the hard facts of life?

What do you tell your children, who are growing up taking their own lives in their hands everyday just by hopping on the playground swing set?

What about the teenagers, who are trying desperately to get out of this place to a new life, who have to face the death of their best friend, whose only sin was running to find shelter in a rainstorm after school?

This is the reality that many children are facing everyday, here, in America. It’s not a reality that many of us are aware of, or comfortable talking about. But if we don’t talk about it, if we’re not aware of it, that reality will be the same for the next generation, and the next, and the next.

Clearly, there is no one right, or easy, answer to the pervasive issue of violence. Despite increased efforts to curb violence in Chicago, and many other communities across the country, it’s still a present threat in children’s lives.

One of the experts featured in the Chicago Under the Gun film, Marlita White, the Director of the Office of Violence Prevention in Chicago, argues that this kind of pervasive violence inserts itself into the psych of an entire community, and is a public health issue. Violence affects and is affected by poverty, lack of education, disrupted family structure, and absent community supports. Violence dehumanizes people and entire communities. White reflects: “If we respond to violence as we respond to other kinds of health concerns [then] we can turn the tide on violence.”

The only way out of this is coordinated, extensive, systems-wide, extremely costly reforms to many of our biggest, most unwieldy systems. Education. Welfare. Physical and mental healthcare. Law enforcement.

The chances of this happening successfully? The pessimist in me says not good. The optimist says we’ve got to start somewhere.

I applaud the strength and courage of so many in this country who already take on those challenges every day; the people who serve, who protect, who mentor, who lead, who guide, and who tirelessly advocate for others. You are the ones who make the difference.

In academic jargon, it comes down to implementing systems and structures than can, and should, promote positive change in the lives of kids and families, no matter what neighborhood they’re from.

In plain English, it comes down to taking better care of each other.

In the meantime, I cling to the hope that there are ways to make this better. There have to be.

Seeing the forest for the trees

So on the bus last week I finally got the time to read an interesting article that’s been staring at me from the ever growing “articles I should read” pile that sits on my desk, judging me for not actually reading any of them.

Office (via stock.xchng)

Yeah, you know, that pile.

This article by Greg Duncan from University of California Irvine hit on something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: interdisciplinary work.

This relates some to the topic I wrote about a few weeks ago here where I discussed the need for a variety of perspectives and ways of knowing in order to successfully get the job done.

Duncan takes the position that the field of child development could really benefit from broadening its scope to begin enhancing the collaboration with experts in other disciplines to more fully understand the human condition. He notes that child development research, partly due to its relative infancy in terms of scientific progress, has not yet begun the necessary branching out to encompass other disciplines’ conceptualizations of the world to better advance existing developmental theories.

He uses some great examples of cases in which combining child development research with data from economic studies has enhanced our understanding of complex social problems in a way that provides useful information for decision makers.

Really, in this article, Duncan relays something I think we all need to hear occasionally:

There are things others can tell us that are valuable, worthwhile.

The thing is, despite child development research being in relative nascent stages compared to things like physics or astronomy, it is constantly in the public limelight. Nary a legislative session goes by without bills being debated that are pertinent to the welfare of kids and families. I don’t often hear of bills that require physicists to weigh in on important social or economic matters, unless it’s in support of more research funding. Matters of physics are usually considerably less controversial than things like funding for education or health.

Education and health are so prominent in our lives because we all are, or have all been, kids and families.

There is need for research understanding in child development to weigh in on matters of policy – to help bridge the gap between what we know is good for kids and what we do for the good of kids. But the ability of child development research to coherently address the breadth of what’s required for major policy decisions is limited. Unfortunately, tackling issues of ensuring positive outcomes for children while also providing assurances of return on an economic investment, is something that basic child development research can seldom do effectively.

And it's because we lack the breadth of scope Duncan is talking about.

So why doesn’t this breadth of interdisciplinary knowledge exist, especially when there is clearly a need for it?

Well there are a few reasons for this that I see:

Six silos (via stock.xchng)

1.   Scientific process: Fields like child development are constantly pressured to follow a strict scientific method, complete with randomized control trials and complex statistical modeling. Applied research, which is considerably more messy because it operates in the real world, often lacks that intensive rigor. Applied research is then often viewed as a less worthwhile form of research, despite the fact that it might be more pertinent to the big questions at hand.

2.   Academic silos: Researchers traditionally live a very isolated existence. They know “their people” very well, and become incredible experts in their very specific field, but often do not branch out to learn about experts in other fields. (If I had a dollar for every time people within MY OWN UNIVERSITY asked what my group, the Extension Children, Youth and Family Consortium, does—even though we’ve been around for over 20 years—I’d be a very rich woman.) 

3.   Career pressures: To survive in academia you have to publish, A LOT. And the only way to ensure you publish is by carving out your niche and keep chipping away at that niche until it gives you a career. Unfortunately, that chipping away also prevents you from focusing much outside of your little corner of the world. You’re driven to focus on the minutia, rather than the bigger picture, because the minutia is where the career, and funding pressures, come from. Until that changes (don’t hold your breath), little else will.

I don’t mean for it to sound so bleak, because truthfully it’s not. There have been sizable advancements made in application of child development theory and practice over the last 10-15 years.

But we could always do more.

Duncan’s point is that only through deepening AND broadening the scope of the field can we truly make the progress that is encouraged, even required of us. The cross-disciplinary process requires creative thinkers and innovators to make connections across fields of study we’d never imagine could help inform questions about the biggest social and economic issues of our day.

And who are scientists but creative thinkers?

We just need an ever so slight shift in that creative energy. We need a call to look up from the lab bench to see the world around us.

To see the forest for the trees, and do something about it.

Forest sunrise (via stock.xchng)

Reference: Duncan(2012). Give us this day our daily breadth. ChildDevelopment, 83(1), 6-15.