Glimpses of urban violence, through the eyes of victims

Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men

By John A. Rich

Johns Hopkins University Press. 212 pp $24.95

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Reviewed by Vernon Clark

In 1990, Boston was in the midst of a wave of bloody violence. The victims were mostly young black and Latino men of the inner city. They were being shot and stabbed at an alarming rate, not unlike those in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, and other big urban centers.

For John A. Rich, a young physician who had helped launch a health clinic for young men, it was a problem that directly affected his work and his life. Among those who came to his clinic for routine exams were young men who bore the scars of shootings, stabbings, and the subsequent emotional damage.

To find answers to why they were disproportionately suffering such trauma, Rich set out to interview victims of violence, looking for survivors to recount their experiences. He closely read the Boston Globe and other local newspapers for reports of wounded young blacks and Latinos and collected their names.

Out of theses interviews came Wrong Place, Wrong Time, a concise yet powerful examination of urban violence from the perspectives of those on the receiving end.

Like Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson, who has spent many years studying black street life in Philadelphia, Rich lets the young men speak in their own voices.

What we hear in the interviews is not just street-tough bravado, but the voices of fear, withdrawal, shame, depression, and even resilience. These men also voice the recurring theme of respect - or perhaps more aptly, perceived "disrespect" - as a reason to kill or maim.

The author, currently a professor and chairman of the department of health management and policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health, writes that the majority of stories the men told about being wounded centered on "the idea of respect and the need to look and act tough to ward off those who might take advantage of you." He adds: "That such insults could lead to violent acts of retaliation made it seem absurd to assign blame to the victim."

The title comes from the cliché about the victims of violence being somewhere they shouldn't at an inopportune time, even if that place is often where they live.

Through his experience in recording the interviews, Rich also presents a story of self-discovery in which a doctor learns much about a group he knew little about previously and about himself as a black man.

While Wrong Place, Wrong Time is strong in its analyses of the interviews, the number of interviews - about a half dozen - leaves the reader wanting to know more. It also raises the question of whether the numbers are adequate to make generalizations about such a broad segment of society.

Still, for those who study violence and want to know more about its toll on urban America, the book is a good addition to the literature. It offers a clearheaded perspective from a physician who went beyond good office doctoring and bedside manners to try to get at a serious social-health problem.