OUR WHY          

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Today, a shift has occurred where intraracial homicide is reported to make up almost 93% of Black homicide victims (Powers & Socia, 2019). The literature points to drug use, gun ownership, or exposure to violence and crime as the culprit in intraracial homicidal affairs (Khubchandani & Price, 2018), indicating that community members’ ecosystems may play a role in responses and attitudes about hope and the resilience to strive to heal following their loss.  Given that social scientists asserted racial segregation in Black, urban communities is associated with more Black deaths in those impoverished neighborhoods (Berezin et al., 2017; Smith & Patton, 2016; Zeoli et al., 2015), scholars have informed policymakers that exposure to weapons in young Black hands is directly correlated with the opportunity for foul play (Beardslee et al, 2018; Emmert et al., 2018). Moreover, incarceration, poverty, and low education have correlations with homicide (Hawes, 2017; Light & Ulmer, 2016; Quimby et al., 2018; Trotter et al., 2017), yet they also increase the negative assessment of Black men by law enforcement (Chaney & Robertson, 2015).  To confirm the woes of intraracial violence, the United States Department of Justice (as cited by Chilton & Chambliss, 2015) offers alarming statistics that reveal how disproportionate the drug-related homicide trends have been over the last three decades.