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Social Medicine Grand Rounds is proud to present: "Mental Illness, Mass Shootings,...
The Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU invites you to join us for a panel discussion with leading legislators, activists, journalists, and academics to debate gun policy and it’s everyday effects under the most overtly pro-gun administration in modern memory.
“What Makes Black Girls, Blue?” Creating Mental Wellness Climates for Black Women...
Dr. Jonathan Metzl is conference co-organizer
Of late, we’ve heard much about the rise of “alt-white supremacy” in the United States—with the assumption that supremacy is a system that places white people atop persons of color, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. The core ideology of supremacy, and the politics and policies that support it, depends on a hierarchy that seemingly privileges and benefits white people at the expense of everyone else. (See, e.g., walls, bans, and other structures and policies.)
Four assumptions frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the US: (1) that mental illness causes gun violence, (2) that psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime, (3) that shootings represent the deranged acts of mentally ill loners, and (4) that effective gun control laws will not prevent such incidents. Professor Metzl will discuss how these assumptions about gun violence are incorrectly linked to stereotypes of mental illness and race in the United States. These issues become obscured when mass shootings are framed as representative of all gun crime, and when “mentally ill” ceases to be a medical designation and becomes encoded as violent threat.
