![]() Later that rather large gap shrank to a 42% difference, still with more white youth choosing to end their lives. In the 1980s, suicide rates among white teens were considerably (157%) greater than Blacks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Historically, statistics have not reported the complete truth. Black parents, for example, welcome the day when the morning news doesn’t open with an account of another Black teen being gunned down. Blacks are often at the epicenter of breaches in health, wealth, and safety. I understand the rationale for not wanting to be associated with staggering suicidal statistics. They suffer emotional and physical traumas that can’t be easily cast off…like everyone else. At the end of the day, Black youth bleed like everyone else. Truthfully, suicide and the unrelenting emotional stress, trauma, and pain it causes has no color. Even in 2016, a social media “tell all” era, the age of instant information, the common belief that suicide is a “white thing” is still prevalent. Those words saddened me, partly because they followed the death of a wonderful young woman, Marcie Gerald, a 15-year-old teen who committed suicide last summer and whose story was also featured on JET last fall. ![]() Last November, after reading “Preventing Suicides in the Black Community” by Gaynor Hall and Pam Grimes, a quote that echoed in my head was, “Black kids don’t kill themselves.” ![]()
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