The Strange Fruit Cultivated by Structural Racism: Impact of Racial Violence on Cognitive Health

Abstract

This research examines the relationship between racial disparities within the criminal justice system and law enforcement practices, with cognitive impairment among Black adults. Prior investigations have revealed that the violent police encounters experienced by Black individuals in the United States, coupled with the disproportionate rates of mass incarceration correlate with adverse cognitive effects in Black adults aged over 51. This study intends to analyze not only institutionalized, State-perpetuated racist practices but also the racialized terror perpetrated by civilians as an explanatory factor. It is suggested that even indirect exposure to violent situations of this nature, such as being born or having lived in a county where lynchings occurred, can have a detrimental impact on the cognitive health of Black individuals. Disproportionate incarceration rates (estimated as the ratio between incarcerated Black individuals / total Jail population from 1985-1994 per county), disproportionate violent police encounters (ratio between Non-Hispanic Black deaths / Non-Hispanic White deaths due to police violence from 1985-1994 per county), and racial terror through lynchings (sum of the total lynchings per county from 1877-1950) are incorporated as predictor variables. While the latter aims to focus on lifelong lynching effects endured by the Black population, the first two cover the period from 1985 to 1994, preceding the passage of the Crime Bill of 1994. This historical delineation intends to capture the trend toward mass incarceration and the increasing police violence, which had already been gaining momentum prior to the financing of correctional facilities and law enforcement agencies by the aforementioned Act. The dependent variable, cognitive health, is measured by a 27-item global cognitive score from the modified Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status, from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). A county-level matching is conducted to align the extent of structural racism in each county with the geographic data of HRS participants between 2006 and 2020. Through binomial logistic regressions, the historically-transferred effect of the factors on cognitive impairment among Black adults is examined. Higher levels of overall cognitive impairment among Black adults living in regions with higher levels of structural racism are evidenced, in contrast to the White individuals participating in the study.