Black men’s mental health concerns are going unnoticed and unaddressed

By Warren Clarke, University of Manitoba

Protesters in Winnipeg recently took to the streets to demand accountability after police shot and killed a 19-year-old Black university student on New Year’s Eve. Afolabi Opaso was an undergraduate student from Nigeria studying economics at the University of Manitoba.

Police officers responding to a well-being call say the young man was holding two knives. Opaso was shot and later died of his injuries. A lawyer for his family said that he was dealing with a mental health crisis and was not a threat to anyone. Manitoba’s police watchdog has transferred the investigation to Alberta.

This tragic death highlights once more the potentially fatal dangers Black men face from police. Research has shown how police-involved deaths are on the rise in Canada, and that Black and Indigenous people are more likely than others to be killed by police.

The incident also shines a light on the mental health concerns among Black men, which too often go unnoticed and unaddressed. There seems to be a lack of urgency to address the mental health concerns of Black men in Canada, which can result in horrifying and deadly encounters with police.

https://youtu.be/VVBvXbkE3Pg

Anti-Blackness as a mental health concern

Discussing mental health concerns is important, but we should avoid seeing them as a monolith. Specific mental health concerns can impact a person’s physical and emotional well-being differently, but also their ability to recover and rehabilitate.

Although challenges with mental health can impact anyone, we must recognize that dealing with specific mental health issues can be uniquely different, and recovery and treatment can vary between people.

Black men in predominantly white spaces continue to be viewed as threatening. As Black Studies scholar Tommy Curry has said, Black men and boys are generally perceived by the police as threats because stereotypical narratives characterize them as criminals.

Post-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon famously argued in Black Skin, White Masks that Black men are seen as the symbol of sin and are firmly fixed in the image of the savage in the white colonial imagination.

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