Examining Racism-Based Police Violence and Mental Health among Black African Emerging Adults in the United States: The Moderating Roles of Grit and Family Cohesion

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In the United States, Black Americans are disproportionately likely to experience racism-based police violence (RPV), which has led scholars and practitioners alike to call this a public health crisis. Although this is not a recent phenomenon, the existing literature has limited its examination of RPV exposure and mental health trauma to the Black American experience, ignoring that racial identity alone is not the only identity that is factored into racism-based violence against Black African individuals. This cross-sectional study, therefore, adds to the existing literature on RPV and trauma literature by examining three forms of RPV exposure-direct victimization, in-person witnessing, and media-based exposure-and their relationship with depression, police contact anxiety, and suicidality, while exploring the buffer relationship of grit and family cohesion among first and second-generation Black African emerging adults (aged 18-29). Findings from this study highlight that exposure to all three forms of RPV is directly associated with police contact anxiety, with RPV-media-based exposure being significantly related to suicidal ideation. Importantly, this study demonstrated the existence of generational differences. Moderation analyses examining whether family cohesion and grit moderate the effects of RPV showed that, among first-generation emerging adults, neither family cohesion nor grit had a significant moderating effect on any form of RPV; among second-generation emerging adults, family cohesion had a significant association between RPV-media and police contact anxiety. The findings support the need for future research to perform longitudinal studies on RPV and mental trauma in Black African emerging adults.