Violence is a Social Problem, Not a Biological Condition

By Karyn Pomerantz, Himmelfarb Library and School of Public Health & Health Services, kpomeran@gwu.edu

• How is violence defined? Who are the perpetrators and how are their actions explained?
  When government officials or researchers refer to the violence problem, they generally focus on street crimes and urban youth, and now on school violence. They don't point their fingers at government sponsored mass murder, such as the US bombings of Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. No one wonders about Clinton's genetic predisposition to aggression. As cops continue to profile, beat, and kill people of color, no one suggests better parenting skills or psychiatric drugs to control their racism and rage. Yet when strikers or students justifiably use violence to protest political or economic abuses, they are often attacked as "terrorists" and jailed. Violence is deemed legitimate when it serves the interests of the group in power and illegitimate when it opposes the dominant political power. Therefore, the definition of violence depends on its social context.

• What is the role of racism in violence?
  Racism permeates the issue of violence in the ways people construct the problem and create solutions. Rather than viewing violence as a social problem that requires a social solution, such as the elimination of poverty and racism, many violence prevention programs and researchers focus on the pathology of the child, who is frequently an African American or Latino youth. Responses to violence also differ according to the color of the perpetrator. Media mutate children of color into "super predators" while they more benignly characterize violent white youth as "alienated" (1). In fact, much of today's youth violence reflects the ideology of capitalism (2): protect and expand your markets or drug turf from the competition, flaunt your success with the latest consumer product or sneaker, and adopt Nazi ideology that creates superior "races."
  1. Colbert King, Washington Post, May 1999
  2. Spigner C. Race, class, and violence: research and policy implications. International Journal of Health Services. 28(2):349-72, 1998

• What causal predictors are promoted?
  Biological explanations of complex social behaviors are not new. During slavery, "drapetomania" was a popular mental illness, coined by a Southern doctor to explain why slaves ran away. During the first half of this century, thousands of mentally retarded patients were sterilized to prevent the transmission of their "disease" to their offspring. Sweet, Ervin, and Mark popularized psychosurgery during the 1960s, to control violence among urban rebels (1). Only a few years ago, Murray and Herrnstein were hocking their theories of intelligence as a function of race, and the Canadian "scientist," Philip Rushton presented his study of the correlations of black intelligence and head size at the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. In the early 1990s, the Department of Health and Human Services tried to launch a "violence initiative" to investigate and treat the "biological correlates" and "genetic factors" in violence and crime, stating that "minority populations are disproportionately affected." (2). While many activists protested and limited this line of research, much of it continues today. Researchers in Chicago neighborhoods and the New York State Psychiatric Institute study black and Latino youth to identify biological and behavioral correlates of violence. In New York, children were given fenfluramine challenge tests to measure their prolactin levels, an hypothesized marker of violent tendencies (3)
  1. Role of Brain Disease in Riots and Urban Violence (letter). JAMA, 1967
  2. Breggin P. Campaigns against racist federal programs. J of African American Men; 1995/96;1(3):3-22
  3. Pine D et al. Neuroendocrine response to fenfluramine challenge in boys. Associations with aggressive behavior and adverse rearing. Archives of General Psychiatry. 1997;54(9):839-46).

• Why oppose biological research on violence?
  This line of research is damaging and misleading. First, it stigmatizes and labels young people as deviant for behavior that is actually consistent with the environment. The exposure to overcrowding and deteriorating conditions, poverty (1), racist ideas and discrimination, and decreasing opportunities (2) understandably increases anger and depression in many young people. Yet focusing on these downstream behaviors and characteristics does not change the ultimate source of the problem. As Breggin explains, public health activists traditionally operate at the macro or upstream level. We control smog rather than worry about individual differences in the development of asthma. Secondly, a biodeterminist approach to violence avoids dealing with these root causes of violence and social unrest. It doesn't lead us to change the key problems in society: racism, and the inequities in power and resources that affect our health and social relationships on a daily basis. To reduce the prevalence of violence in today's life, it is urgent that we develop anti-racist strategies among our youth and others in order to build the unity and trust it takes to change the social system.
  1. Wallace D. Wallace R. Scales of geography, time, and population: the study of violence as a public health problem. American Journal of Public Health. 88(12):1853-8, 1998
  2. Sampson RJ; Wilson WJ. Toward a theory of race, crime, and urban inequality IN Hagan J and Peterson RD, eds., Crime and Inequality. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1995

• Why now?
  The increasing competition among world capitalists for the past thirty years has caused the U.S. to suffer a fall in the domestic rate of profit, which has meant a steady requirement that wages and benefits for workers be reduced. The globalization of markets and the current worldwide crisis of overproduction is making it imperative to cut the standard of living of workers in the U.S. (1). Thus, we see welfare "reform," more and more people without any health insurance, and police violence to control workers. Racist theories of biological causation, blaming people of color and immigrants for these problems, is the time-tested method of removing scrutiny from the socioeconomic system and deflecting it onto the victims, who are said to be defective in morals, biology, or intellect.
  1. Greider, W. One World: Ready or Not, Simon & Shuster, 1997

To hear more about these ideas, attend the APHA session [Ed. note: Link no longer active, 3/17/04] on "violence research, racism, and biology" with Ruth Hubbard, Michael Blakey, Bonnie Blustein and others to debate the social vs. biological basis of violence, tentatively scheduled for the Tuesday, 8:30 AM session. And advocate the proposed resolution, Support for Research on the Socioeconomic Causes of Violence [Ed note: Updated link 3/17/04], to your fellow APHA members and friends.