The Boys Under My Deck: Racialized Violence and Moral Repair

AbstractData on youth violence show that youth homicide rates have increased in many parts of the world. Vigorously embracing social determinants and promoting health equity as the most effective approach to achieving health policy goals, the global public health community has nevertheless been ineffectual in saving thousands of young lives cut short violence. In the United States, the American Public Health Association has long considered violence to be a public health issue, but only recently acknowledged racism as a factor in violence. Despite a half-century of explicitly legal racial equality, the white majority in the United States have yet to create a normative critical mass of inclusive, equitable social practices to dismantle the legacy of structural racism created by their forebears. This narrative draws from Margaret Urban Walker as a response to the dilemma of white inaction by focusing on moral repair as an intentional social engagement practice to redress the legacy and practice of structural racism and racialized violence. Moral repair is especially applicable to structural racism because it acknowledges the underpinnings of wrongdoing in healing fractured societal relationships.