Ralph’s work Renegade Dreams was one of the most interesting books I’ve read for this class so far. I shopped his course on race and health, so I had a very loose idea of some of the concepts he brought forth regarding the physical health disparities and unequal access and allelopathic stress. But reading Renegade Dreams made me take a step back and really comprehend that health in these communities is more layered than just physical wellbeing. The “13 shot, 4 dead overnight across the city, what about the 9 who are injured” idea was literally eye opening for me. It had never been something that crossed my mind, and this was one of the many illuminating features of the book.
On that note, I think the video Khytie posted about the Black Guerrilla Family of the Bloods and Crips uniting ties in because of the constant media misrepresentation of gang activity. Ralph really brings to light how strategic and truly organized gangs are, and how they can even be an asset to a community that’s gone underserved by the actual government that should be fulfilling those needs. There’s a mental toll that comes from having an entire body of dehumanizing and brutalizing media propagated perceptions of you and your community, and I think it’s something to keep in mind.
Great post Monica!
I definitely think that one of the key points Ralph wants us to take away from the book is a more capacious understanding of concepts like: injury. health and violence. While all three necessarily act upon bodies and affect bodies, violence, injury and health encompass other non-physical markers of well-being and flourishing.
In particular with gangs and discussions of things like “black on black violence” is a very narrow view of what violence is and what counts as violence, which ignores and leaves unchecked systemic structures of violence, which you bring up, that are insidious, sometimes invisible and hard to pin down, but nevertheless injures communities everyday and whose effects are often felt for generations.