Public Health: Is Violence A Public Health Issue?
Angel Briones
DCM: Let’s Talk about Health
Professor Alford
1/22/2015
Is violence a public health issue?
Violence should be a public health issue. It affects millions if not billions of people around the world. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, “violence has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a public health priority worldwide”. The reason violence should be recognized as a public health issue is not only because of its immediate effect on health, but the repercussions and long term effects of it.
The World Health Organization defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either …show more content…
Yes, there is violence involved, but this is categorized into racial bias based police brutality. If we look at racism and the millions of deaths it has cause, I think we should be able to call racism a public health issue as well. We live in a world where whites commit crimes but black people are criminals. The white race can never be tainted as a whole by their horrific acts of violence. The stereotype of blacks being criminals runs so deep in America that the majority of whites and African Americans agreed with the statement “blacks are aggressive or violent” in a survey taken by the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. The case of Mark Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin is a perfect example of racial bias. Mark Zimmerman saw a black boy wearing a hoodie appearing to be “up to no good”. His thought process was; black people are criminals, he is black, he is a criminal. Nobody every thinks something like: Barack Obama is black, he is the president, the kid walking down the street is black, he’s probably a future president. Where did this racial bias come from? It goes back all the way to the nineteenth century, where African American slaves were viewed as savage and ignorant animals in need of domestication from the white man. They weren’t even considered completely human. When it came down to their rights, they were considered three-fifths of a person and sold like …show more content…
Kennedy were white. The assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were also white. Rampage killers are often in the news. Nearly everyone who has murdered a large number of people in one horrific event has been white, the only exception is Korean student Seung-Hui Cho, who was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting. Yet even though many of these shocking events have gained massive media coverage for months if not years, no one concludes that white people are killers. They are untouchable as a race. Statistics don’t matter, our perceptions do. This is why Oscar Grant was murdered in Fruitvale Station. This is why Trayvon Martin, Eric Gardner, and Mike Brown were murdered while justice was not served to their
DCM: Let’s Talk about Health
Professor Alford
1/22/2015
Is violence a public health issue?
Violence should be a public health issue. It affects millions if not billions of people around the world. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, “violence has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a public health priority worldwide”. The reason violence should be recognized as a public health issue is not only because of its immediate effect on health, but the repercussions and long term effects of it.
The World Health Organization defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either …show more content…
Yes, there is violence involved, but this is categorized into racial bias based police brutality. If we look at racism and the millions of deaths it has cause, I think we should be able to call racism a public health issue as well. We live in a world where whites commit crimes but black people are criminals. The white race can never be tainted as a whole by their horrific acts of violence. The stereotype of blacks being criminals runs so deep in America that the majority of whites and African Americans agreed with the statement “blacks are aggressive or violent” in a survey taken by the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. The case of Mark Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin is a perfect example of racial bias. Mark Zimmerman saw a black boy wearing a hoodie appearing to be “up to no good”. His thought process was; black people are criminals, he is black, he is a criminal. Nobody every thinks something like: Barack Obama is black, he is the president, the kid walking down the street is black, he’s probably a future president. Where did this racial bias come from? It goes back all the way to the nineteenth century, where African American slaves were viewed as savage and ignorant animals in need of domestication from the white man. They weren’t even considered completely human. When it came down to their rights, they were considered three-fifths of a person and sold like …show more content…
Kennedy were white. The assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were also white. Rampage killers are often in the news. Nearly everyone who has murdered a large number of people in one horrific event has been white, the only exception is Korean student Seung-Hui Cho, who was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting. Yet even though many of these shocking events have gained massive media coverage for months if not years, no one concludes that white people are killers. They are untouchable as a race. Statistics don’t matter, our perceptions do. This is why Oscar Grant was murdered in Fruitvale Station. This is why Trayvon Martin, Eric Gardner, and Mike Brown were murdered while justice was not served to their