Peacock
Josh Johnson stars in ‘Up Here Killing Myself.’
In Up Here Killing Myself, a Peacock original comedy special performed by Josh Johnson, the producer and writer explores the connection between poverty and trauma. While Johnson reflects on his experience and skillfully expresses the psychological consequences of dealing with chronic poverty, he also approaches a conversation about negative mental health outcomes for Black people.
Trauma, almost by definition, is not an easy thing to talk about. There is shame and insecurity associated with the topic, a vulnerability that most would agree should be kept private. But the space Johnson dissects is one that so many Black people exist in or have existed in—one that continues to generationally cycle through communities.
The special begins with Johnson waiting nervously. Johnson notably exhibits multiple anxious symptoms as he sits—leg shaking, hand twisting, rapid eye movement. He’s called into a therapist’s office, where he then lets the audience into one of the most intimate parts of a person’s life. In 50 minutes, with the talk therapy session spliced into the special, Johnson explores his upbringing in Louisiana, a place that feels “extra poor,” and his modest yet admirable ascent into his current career.
The session recurs as Johnson clarifies the vulnerability he is sharing with the audience. He is not just telling funny stories, he is letting the world know that these things affected him, even if it doesn’t seem like it. With one line, Johnson paints a stark picture of poverty in America—discount cereal, a pharmacy that may as well be a “drug house,” bartering teeth for money from the tooth fairy for a Lego set—and with the other, he pulls an involuntary laugh from deep within a person. “These are terrible circumstances we’re living in,” he says with a smile.
As I have previously written, racism and the trauma associated with it continues to reflect itself in the physical and mental health outcomes of Black people. From hypertension to PTSD-like symptoms, Black people manifest the physical consequences of structural racism every day. Black people are also more likely to be impoverished, or live in disadvantaged communities associated with poverty. The link between poverty, race, and trauma, then, should be a relatively uncontroversial one to make.
Yet while it may be an obvious connection to many, this science is still inconclusive, mostly because there is a deep discontent associated with the discussion. Look no further than recent legal challenges to affirmative action, a flawed yet important concept. There is a desire from the ruling power elite to erase the structural inequities that Black people face without addressing them, and to rewrite the conversation to seem as if disadvantage is not associated with race, but individuals.
It’s true that individuals respond to different stimuli uniquely, so poverty itself is not a one-to-one predictor for trauma, and neither is race. Therefore, the study of the association between trauma and poverty is still developing, in part because of this pushback. The research that has been completed does support the idea that the marginalization of a group of people and the income disparities associated with them can have adverse effects on long-term mental health outcomes.
Peacock
Johnson paints a stark picture of poverty in America.
A study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry in February on the subject of “Racial Disparities in Adversity During Childhood” investigated this question by looking at the brains of Black and white children using MRI data. The authors anticipated that there would be differences between Black and white children in areas of the brain involving emotional regulation, and that the differences would be “partially explained by racial differences in exposure to adversity.”
Indeed, the authors found significant differences in brain structures like the amygdala and hippocampus, as well as gray matter, all of which are associated with trauma and stress-related disorders. Black kids were more likely to have faced adversity, and white kids were more likely to have greater development in these neurological regions.
“[I]ncome was the most common predictor of gray matter volume disparities,” the authors write. “Taken together, early-life adversity may act as a toxic stressor that disproportionately impacts Black children as a result of their significantly greater exposure to adversity and contributes to differential neural development of key threat-processing regions.”
But, as Nathaniel Harnett, lead author on the study and a researcher at Harvard Medical School, explained, those differences went away when adversity was accounted for.
“If we got rid of the inequity between the groups, we would see a smaller difference between them in brain volume,” Harnett said. In other words, when race is taken on its own, it’s not solely responsible for differences in the brain. What can be identified as responsible, however, is the exposure to the systemic inequality that keeps Black people in a low socioeconomic class.
Johnson says as much in his special: “When you don’t have money—especially when you don’t have money in America—it takes a toll.”
Harnett’s work doesn’t prove a correlation. Much more research is needed for that. The study also does not say that every poor Black kid in America will have these issues. But “if we leave things as they are, we’re worried that the gaps might get larger,” Harnett said. “If we address the systemic inequities, we might be able to shrink that gap.”
Plenty of people do not have Johnson’s ability to laugh it off. While these inequalities go unaddressed, the mental health outcomes may just get worse for Black people. At some point, it is funny—but when is it serious?
