The Deindividuation of Inner-City Youth

Deindividuation is defined as the loss of a person’s sense of individuality and the reduction of normal constraints against  deviant behavior. I talk about these issues from my personal experience growing up as a child of trauma in the inner-city. Social Psychologist Philip Zimbardo (1969) observed that arousal, anonymity, and reduced feelings of individual responsibility contributes to deindividuation. Other psychologists add additional cues which make deviant behavior more possible. But none of this has been measured in the context of traumatized individuals growing up in the inner-cities. If we use Philip Zimbardo’s observation, the arousal in this instance would be, the drug-infested, high-crime, prevalent violence of the inner-city. Then we can add to that the trauma, the poverty, and the feeling of oppression born of the confrontational presence of law enforcement.The list of potential arousals for deviant behavior, in the inner-city, are endless.

The second aspect of the observation is anonymity. The examples which social psychologists used involved individuals wearing masks, with the exception of situations where thousands of people had gathered, thus creating relative anonymity. But  in the inner-city, the anonymity is established the moment we assume one of three archetypes. The three archetypes of the inner city are the victor, the victim, and the victimizer. In addition to this new standing, within the inner-city, you  take on a new name. This name may be an abbreviation of your actual name. If your name began with an ‘S’, or ‘B’, or an ‘H’, you would now be known as “S”, “B”, or “H”. Sometimes your actual name is altered in a way that sounds cool and urban as was the situation in my case where my name became “Shiz”. And  other times, you may be given or take on a name that sounds  intimidating like, Killer, Beast, Blood, and so on. The anonymity occurs when we take on a name other than our given name, in which case we feel obscured beneath this virtual mask.

For many young boys in the inner-city this is where the self discrepancy kicks in, and where the cognitive dissonance picks up. Self-discrepancy is a theory put forth by E. Tori Higgins (1989) in which he states that there occurs a conflict between one’s actual self and one’s ought self. Basically, it means that the person one is and the person one wants to be are at odds. There are fundamental values that we possess and there are standards that we would like to uphold. When those two things are in conflict, that is called self-discrepancy.

According to another Social Psychologist, Leon Festinger (1957), this discrepancy can give rise to what he calls cognitive dissonance theory. This theory states that a powerful motive to maintain cognitive consistency can give rise to irrational, sometimes maladaptive behavior. He states that discrepancy doesn’t always produce dissonance. What really causes dissonance is the knowledge that you committed yourself to an attitude discrepant behavior freely, and with some knowledge of the consequences. When that occurs the dissonance manifests itself, and you become motivated to reduce it. The inner-city youth increase their drug use and abhorrent behavior because of the conflict which exists within their selves. Allow me to explain further with an account of my personal experience. One very nice summer day, I was out on the block, selling crack-cocaine. (The conflicting imagery is purposeful.) A young, beautiful woman walks up to me. She was in the advance stages of pregnancy. She asked, “Are you holding?” (A term used to refer to  the action of selling drugs.) I became so enraged, so beside myself in response to this lady. At the time I believed it was because of  this woman’s blatant disregard for the life of her unborn child. I  was eating a hamburger at that moment, and I hurled it into her  face with as much force as humanly possible. I went on to verbally assault her with expletives and threats, along the lines of, “If I find  out that you are using drugs while you are still pregnant, I am  going to do such and such to you!”

The incident lasted no more than five minutes. I remember feeling gallant, proud, and virtuous afterwards, as if I had slayed a dragon. Later that night, I used more drugs than I had ever before. In retrospect, my rage wasn’t towards her. It was towards me. There I was engaging in an act which was in complete opposition to my values, who I was at my core. The young, pregnant addict  approaching me for drugs was just a reminder of how far I had strayed and how at odds my life was. She was a mirror of my own discrepancy and deviant behavior. My outburst towards her was a  veiled attempt to reconcile, reduce that conflict.

That’s the reality of cognitive dissonance. At the end of the day, my behavior did little to dissuade my feelings of discord and  internal friction. The behavior continued, the conflict continued, and I ended up where I found myself. Thirty-something years later I still remember that incident, which lasted no more than five minutes, with a clarity of presence as though it were happening in the now.

The third observation of Philip Zimbardo in the occurrence of deindividuation is the reduced feeling of individual responsibility. It is a result of the previous two (arousal and anonymity). In the context of the inner-city, personal responsibility is mute. It is like the Yeti or Aliens: People talk about it, but there’s no real proof of its existence.

Let’s take the environmental landscape of the inner-city. There are dilapidated buildings, pavements cracked in bits and shards, streets with so many holes and irregularities that driving through them is like riding through an obstacle course. Someone is supposed to be responsible for this, right?

The inner-city child learns, through the grievances of the parents and adults around them, that the all-mighty government is not responsible. Especially when it comes to the needs of the inner city. Then there are the parents and the adults around them. They speak to the child about responsibility, yet they are the greatest example of irresponsibility a child has. You bring a child into the world when you do not have adequate financial means to support  yourself and them! You then further, make no efforts to improve said conditions! You enter into relations with partners who abuse you, your children, and leave you emotionally wrecked. All in the purview of your child! You expose them to the truth of your fears, hopelessness, and trauma, thereby robbing them of their virtuous innocence!

And then there is the community at large. The fatherless homes. The uneducated and uncared-for children that crowd  the playgrounds and sidewalks! The drug addicts, dealers, and opportunists who seem to own the streets! Someone is supposed to be responsible for this, right?

Yet to the inner-city child, all that he has are examples of irresponsibility. We inner-city children learn irresponsibility early  in life. And that sad education predisposes us to being able to carry out acts of malice and violence.

Another point about this lack of responsibility in the inner-city that are based on my experiences: To be responsible, you must first  be in a position to fulfill certain rights to yourself and others. The first and second generations of freed slaves were not in a position to fulfill those rights. Their concept of responsibility was tied more to their religious faith than to any societal norms or duties. The passed along (in words and deed), the institution of responsibility as it relates to religious practice to their children. And their children passed it one to theirs, and so on, until it became the way people of  the Ghetto understood responsibility.

As later generations began to pull away from religion, so too was there a diminishment of responsibility. The institution of responsibility (which was rooted in the church) that our ancestors  put forth was replaced by the convenience of relative responsibility. You are only responsible if it suits your immediate needs. It is easy for an inner-city child of trauma to reduce feelings of individual responsibility, since there has always historically existed a  diminished capacity for personal responsibility in those places. The crisis of young Black men in the inner-city is a crisis of identity and this identity has nothing to do with the father, or his absence, but has everything to do with their identity being rooted in humanity. When young African American children of the inner-city assume one of the three archetypes therein, they lose any sense of  self and become desensitized to deviant behavior. The illness is a lack of an identity rooted in humanity, and deindividuation is one of its symptoms.