How about we dive into some empirical evidence on Black male mental health. A little 🧵 if you will: Joe, S., Scott, M. L., & Banks, A. (2018). What Works for Adolescent Black Males at Risk of Suicide: A Review. Research on Social Work Practice, 28(3), 340–345. doi.org/10.1177/104973…

Young Black male suicide rates; Lack of research dedicated to Black male suicide

🧵Dr. Joseph L. Graves (@gravesjl55): Social Construction of Race & Racism

"However, humans did not always feel this way; race theory is a consequence of relatively modern historical developments." "Clearly the ancients recognized that human beings were physically different from one another and that they formed different cultures."

🧵🗣Hey to all of my new followers! I'm glad y'all really like the thread on race & medicine. Didn't expect it to blow up the way it did. Just to introduce myself i'm a scholar-activist from 🗣Long Beach, CA and currently a 2nd year PhD student at UT Austin. My research and activism focuses on: 1) The social vulnerabilities of Black men and boys, 2) The social construction and criminalization of Black children, and 3) Antiblackness in schools, with an emphasis on school discipline.

In 2020 I took a Race & Medicine course. We had two brilliant professors. One was a Black historian. The other a Black medical doctor. Each week we explored primary and secondary literature that documented historic and contemporary antiblack racism within the medical field. We explored a range of literature from scientists who blamed health disparities on the alleged biological, genetic, and cultural deficiencies of enslaved Africans and Black people.

If you are publishing on Black masculinity, please do the following: 1. Include empirical citations to evidence EVERY claim you make. Words like: some, most, usually, generally, since (insert time period), typically, for the most part, generally - should come with a citation. 2. If seeking to humanize Black men and boys, please also read those works you are citing in their *entirety* to be SURE they are actually in alignment with your claims.

I was going back through #MedicalApartheid by Harriet Washington and found a particular experiment done on Black boys. Between 1992 and 1997, medical establishments in NY targeted darker skinned poor Black boys 👦🏾👦🏿 between the ages of 6-10 for medical experimentation👨🏼‍⚕️.

Highly recommend! Social construction of "childhood" + exclusion of Black *children*

Imagine that, a mental health "professional" presenting to an entire audience on Black male mental health and suggesting that the root cause of Black male suffering is their toxic beliefs... No structural analysis of the condition of Black men and boys, sexual violation, under/unemployment, incarceration, exposure to violence, lack of access to quality healthcare, criminalization of the range of ways Black males respond to depression, anxiety, etc...