Gun violence is the leading cause of death and disability among Black men, yet academic research on the experiences of Black men disabled by gun violence remains limited. That must change, according to a trio of public health scholars: Nazsa Baker, William Wical, and Tiffany Ricks.
Their new article, “Disability and Racial Justice Go Hand in Hand,” published in the American Journal of Men’s Health, argues that a lack of academic research about Black men with firearm-acquired disabilities has meant that this group often fails to have their needs met post-injury. The AmNews’ recent series about the financial costs of gun violence highlighted some of these needs, including securing temporary and permanent disability benefits and accessing adequate physical and mental health care.
To better support Black male gun violence survivors, the authors argue for researchers to adopt a disability justice perspective that centers on the experiences of survivors and recognizes how structural racism presents them with unique challenges as they recover from their injuries.
We recently spoke to Dr. Nazsa Baker, one of the co-authors, to learn more about the state of research in this area, and what future research should explore.
Baker is the research director and program manager of the Wraparound Project, a hospital-based violence intervention program at the University of California San Francisco. Before that, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did this article about Black men disabled by gun violence come about?
This work came about very serendipitously. I was going through my dissertation post-graduation — I [was] in a post-doctoral fellowship at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, and was going through my interviews, and I thought, Wow, a lot of these guys are suffering with a disability. I didn’t think about this when I was doing my interviews. They all talked about this concept of what it means to be a man — not necessarily to be a Black man, but what it means to be a man, and I started noticing that there were some similarities in their stories, in terms of them being disabled Black men, but disabled via firearms due to community violence. That’s how my original article [about Black male gun violence survivors], “Protect and Provide,” came about.
After I wrote that article, I was sitting and thinking and trying to do more research: What do we know about people in general with firearm-acquired disabilities, and [specifically], what do we know about Black men and disabilities, especially around firearm-acquired disabilities? And we know nothing. There’s a severe gap in the research when it comes to this topic.
What are some reasons that this topic has been under-researched?
I think this particular population hasn’t been studied because they are simply overlooked. Back before this big boom in funding for firearm research, researchers were looking at mortality rates. We were focused on the people who were dying, and not doing our due diligence and looking at those who are succumbing to their injuries and those who aren’t.
Now we have [researchers] who are focusing on people who are surviving their injuries, but there’s this big push in looking at the mental health aspect. But where we’re not doing our due diligence is looking at the physical health impact, which also affects someone’s mental health.
What are some specific areas that public health or disability researchers should explore to better understand the experiences and challenges that Black male gun violence survivors face?
I think first and foremost, what we need to do is center their voices — find these individuals, and they’re not hard to find, and uplift and center their voices. Black men who suffer firearm injuries and survive them were already starting to do the work in this field, but when we take this a step further, talking about them having temporary or permanent disabilities, we just lack the knowledge of what is needed for them. What is needed for them, in terms of a rehabilitative state, a recovery state, but even just for themselves, is to be able to not just survive, but thrive.
The article argues that expanding eligibility for public health insurance is a step that can be taken to address the structural barriers Black men with disabilities face. Are there any other policies that you’d highlight that would result in better support for Black male gun violence survivors?
We know that Black men typically are under-insured or uninsured, even with the Affordable Care Act, so again, we need to make sure that men — Black men in general — have access to insurance, and not underinsured. We want them to be insured, if it’s through Medicaid or if it’s through their employer if they have one.
I also think what this boils down to is access to Social Security disability. We need them to have some sort of income. We know that the wait times are long for SSI and SSDI, but there are certain things that we need to get pushed through, because we are talking about people having loss of income, which means that they cannot provide for themselves, let alone a household. [We need to expand] these services, again, to be inclusive, not having to go back and forth, saying, This doesn’t make someone qualify, this makes someone qualify … We really need policies to be inclusive of this population, especially when the numbers are out there in general that firearm violence is the number one cause of death and disability for Black men.
The article discusses how acquiring a disability affects Black mens’ masculinity. Could you provide some examples of what that looks like in their day-to-day lives, and the implications of this on their sense of self?
When I did this research, I never asked what it meant to be a Black man, nor did I ask what it meant to be a Black man with a disability. I only asked men, What does it mean to be a man? And overwhelmingly, the response was, if you’re a man, you take care of responsibility. You protect, you provide, by any means necessary. By “provide,” they’re meaning by being a financial provider: physically being able to protect themselves and their family, not being a burden on other people. You are the leader; everyone follows you. You are the burden-lifter. That is the job of a man. It’s very patriarchal. It goes along with hegemonic masculinity, which is created for white men. But because society places rules on Black boys once women give birth to them, they are put in these boxes.
But what happens to those boxes, and what happens to that [path] that you’re supposed to go down, in terms of what it means to grow into a man, or practice whatever your masculinity is? [Your sense of masculinity] decreases potentially if you’re injured and acquire a disability.
What’s interesting about this research is I’m a Black woman, right? I can’t tell them what it’s like to be a Black man. I can only base it on the stories that they tell me … but it seems to me that there has to be some sort of a shift in what protecting and providing looks like, especially if you acquire a firearm disability.
You write about the importance of approaching this topic through a disability justice lens. Could you explain what disability justice means, and how it applies to research about Black men disabled by gun violence?
Disability justice, for me, is just the beginning. It’s saying that we’re starting off with that we need to acknowledge this population. This population exists. They’re here. The number is growing. And they need services, they have needs post-recovery to thrive.
This is all about equal access — equal access to health insurance so they’re not under-insured, they’re insured. Equal access to rehabilitation services, from occupational therapy to physical therapy. Some of the interviews I did were during Covid, and some of the guys said, ‘We didn’t have PT. We were told that we had to leave the hospital soon.’ Some of them said, ‘Fine, my room is on the third floor; I’ll figure out how to get upstairs.’
But who checks in with them to make sure that they made it to the third floor? Who checks in to make sure that they’re not falling down the stairs, and making sure they know different exercises to do to be able to increase their mobility? … Who makes sure that these men are obtaining employment [like] other individuals who may have acquired disabilities via being born with them, or a motor vehicle accident, a fall, or whatever the case may be?
A lot of this is around equity. It is rooted in a commitment to acknowledging and addressing the historical roots of injustice. We’re doing this population an injustice, by one, not acknowledging them, and two, not uplifting and centering their voices, to know that they are here, and that this is, again, a growing population. Again, it’s all about being intentional about the advances in achieving health, safety, and well-being for this particular population.
Shannon Chaffers is a Report for America corps member who writes about gun violence for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.