Black and Blue: An Exploratory Investigation Of Black College Students’ Experiences of Exposure to Police Killings

Despite repeated incidents of police violence against unarmed Black people in the United States (US) (e.g., Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Atatiana Jefferson, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd), and the increasing visibility and awareness of these incidents with the evolution of technology, there remains a dearth of evidence on the mental health effects on Black people and their communities exposed to these traumatic incidents. Thus, there remains little conceptual understanding of the mechanisms by which exposure to police killings of unarmed Blacks—repeatedly and over time—affect the mental health of Black people and their communities. In addition, there is a paucity of research examining the coping efforts of Black people exposed to police killings. This dissertation study aims to: (1) propose a new integrated conceptual framework for understanding and explaining the psychosocial processes by which exposure to police killings of unarmed Blacks affects the mental health of Black people and their communities, (2) identify empirically the perceptions of Black college students exposed to police killings of other unarmed Black people, both individually and interpersonally, and (3) identify empirically the perceptions of coping efforts of Black college students exposed to police killings of other unarmed Black people, both individually and interpersonally