Parents in Prison, Positive Trauma Responses, and the Implicit Racism of "Resilience" with Dr. Whitney Hollins

We’re back with the next Critical Conversation! In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Whitney Hollins, educator, advocate, researcher, and justice-impacted individual. Dr. Hollins’s father was in prison for 25 years of her life. According to the common narratives about children of incarcerated parents, Dr. Hollins was *at-risk* for being incarcerated herself. However, she went on to receive her Ph.D. and has dedicated her life to shifting these narratives and calling out the systems that stigmatize, adultify, and criminalize children who have experienced parental incarceration. This is a very critical conversation that highlights the importance of language and encourages listeners to challenge and expand their worldviews.

For more information on Dr. Hollins, please visit https://www.docwhitneyq.com/

If you have any questions or comments that you would like addressed in the YouTube series Office Hours with Abbie and Juwan please email ccofficehours@gmail.com

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Transcript

Abbie Henson: [00:00:00] Welcome to Critical Conversations. My name is Abbie Henson and I'll be the one conversing with our guests. And I also serve as an assistant professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. After the killing of George Floyd, my social media blew up. I kept seeing posts and reposts and stories all about criminal and social justice issues.

However, much of what I was seeing were just. Flat words that lacked voice and depth and nuance. And so I wanted to create a space where those words could come alive. I wanted to engage in dialogues with people who had actually been impacted by the criminal justice system, whether through their own experience research or both, I felt this was the moment to think critically to examine the complexities of our system in place today. And to figure out how to move forward in a way that allows for equity and true justice. 

So I started hosting live webinars, both in an attempt to have the audience be active participants, either by raising their hand and joining the conversation or by contributing a question to the chat box and to also build a sense of community and togetherness in a time when we were so isolated through quarantine. 

So all of the episodes that you're about to hear on this podcast are converted from those live streams. And while it can be really overwhelming to think about how to change a massive system, that seems so ingrained in the fabric of our society by participating in these conversations.

And yes, You just listening to this podcast is participating with. That is where we see true change beginning. 

Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining me in this Critical Conversation with Dr. Whitney Q Hollins. Advocate, researcher, educator, and justice impacted individuals. I hope that you enjoy this episode, feel engaged and please as always continue the conversation.

Once the episode is up. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:02:17] Hi everyone. I am Whitney. And I'll just tell you a little bit about myself to give some context to the conversation. I am the child of a formerly incarcerated parent now. My father served somewhere. I know if you heard me speak more than once, I probably changed the number of times in time.

Somewhere, I'm going to say 25 at minimum. and then no more than 30 years, the last bit is the one that I remember, the most. And that was definitely a 20 year stretch in federal prison. Yeah. So grew up, became an educator, started to realize that a lot of the kids that I was working with also had incarcerated parents started to deal with some of the stigma in school, even as an adult, you know, people telling me like, Oh, don't share with the kids that your father is incarcerated, or don't share with people that this is, you don't want people to look at you a certain type of way, decided to go and do my doctorate, and focused on children of incarcerated parents and really noticed you know, as Abbie was saying that we'll speak to some of the research and the literature that a lot of it was very, very negative. I didn't see myself represented in the literature. And I also was just thinking to myself because it was personal for me reading it, how vulnerable we appear and how weak, the path that it was saying that we were on was just.

Almost wholly negative all the time. So I really wanted to focus on doing a strength-based approach to research and really using lived experience as expertise and making sure that I was inclusive of children's voices, because a lot of the studies were writing about the children. They weren't including them.

And that's where I am with it kind of. Right now and you know, happy to be here and speaking to you guys and speaking to Abbie whose work I follow as well about the topic. 

Abbie Henson: [00:04:01] So, just a little about me and how I'm connected to this at all. Six years ago, I started working maybe seven. Now I started working with a prison based fatherhood program called fathers and children together.

And the way that it worked, it was created by a group of men who had life sentences and. Created the curriculum themselves. It has six weeks of classes about the impact of a fatherless household, the importance of education, self-love and self-worth, attachment and bonding. And then there is a consecutive six weeks of visits, where the children come up to the prison and they have an enhanced visit. So it's not in the typical visiting room. They have a classroom setting where they can actually engage with their father and touch them and hug them and interact with them for about four hours every week.

And while the children are up there. The mothers or caregivers of those children go off on their own groups. So it's this very holistic approach. So that was my first time really interacting or with the conversations around children of incarcerated parents. And the more I was reading about it, The more stigma I was seeing.

And, you know, there's this very well known statistic that children of incarcerated parents are six times more likely to end up in prison than children without incarcerated parents. This number isn't necessarily founded in a breadth of research. It's not founded in. What we know. So often we talk about these youth as at risk.

There's this very common term of at-risk. And so that term, the at-risk term is coming from a very progressive liberal place, right. These are the people who are engaging with these kinds of conversations are social workers and practitioners and people who are trying to support these children. And yet they're engaging in stereotypes that are actively criminalizing and stigmatizing these children.

When you were saying that you were reading the research and not seeing yourself in what people were saying, what, what were you seeing and what did you feel didn't connect with your experience? 

Whitney Hollins: [00:06:15] Yeah. So just to kind of talk about what you were saying with that statistic, you know, that is one of my least favorite statistics.

And I, one time I really went down this rabbit hole of trying to find out, like, where did this come from? The Osborne association actually has a really good report, about that statistic on their website that you can view. But in 2009, the national state legislature came out and said that, you know, this statistic is unfounded.

Stop using it. Where did it come from? And then even though, you know, that was over 10 years ago, people still are using this statistic. And so this is one thing I talked about in my dissertation. Not everybody has malice when they're trying to use that statistic. Often people are trying to use it as a way to like call attention to the issue and say like, look guys, this is serious. This is what's happening. but we have to be careful when we do that, that we don't reinforce stereotypes. You know, that children of incarcerated parents, well, we know that people who are incarcerated are overwhelmingly poor people of color. Especially black males are disproportionately incarcerated in this country.

So that makes children of incarcerated parents overwhelmingly children of color as well. And so when we perpetuate these stereotypes of future criminality, predicting that these children will be criminals, we therefore reinforce notions of black and Brown criminality. and I think that as researchers and people using this statistic, even.

With the best intentions of, Hey, look at this, this is a, this is an issue. We really have to be careful about what we're saying to people and what we're asking people to do. Especially if we're saying like, Hey, you have to help these groups or else they're going to grow up and rob you, you know, that's different.

Then what we should really be saying and how we should really be looking at the system, but in terms of the literature. Yeah. I saw some really troubling studies. You know, there was one that I read for me. It was really interesting because it was like I said, it was personal. I was doing it for, you know, my degree, but it was very personal.

I remember like one specific study said that children with incarcerated mothers have lower IQs. 

So for me being a special education teacher for 13 years, I already have a, A problem with IQ tests and what they're supposed to measure, what they actually measure. Are they biased? Yes. They're biased.

And you know, that they tend to measure someone's potential, like in the sense that they want to do well more so than any type of actual intelligence and really how they've been used in these really to perpetuate systemic racism and all these things. So that's its own topic, but the idea that.

Somehow children who have mothers who are in prison. And again, the study is more complex than this, but I'm giving you what they found this correlation, somehow have lower IQ. It's like, okay, so now we're going to be future criminals and we're dumb. And it's just like all of these different things. And then there would be this meta analysis that would say, well, when you control for other factors, such as poverty, that parental incarceration doesn't really have any effect. And for me, you know, once I started doing this work, I was introduced to such a vast community. And you're amazed when you do this work, how people will come up to you and say like, Hey, I had this happen to me too, blah, blah, blah.

Like people I worked with for 10 years that I didn't know this about. And then they found out that I was doing this work, who said, Hey, am I, you know, so there's so many of us that are hidden and that's the thing too. It's like, I think people just go back to your point about research and I don't know if you find this, I feel like there's a hierarchy or research.

Like first of all, people think that. Quantitative research is greater than qualitative research, right? Like that qualitative research is, is soft research. And quantitative has these numbers and numbers don't lie. You know, despite what anyone thinks and, you know, Jay Z has come out and said, you know, men lie, women lie numbers, don't lie, but numbers do what men and women want them to do.

Right. And we can pick into the numbers that we want to use and we can present them how we want to present them. So the numbers may not lie, but they may not be completely accurate of an overall picture. As you were saying, Number one, if you are waiting until someone has already incarcerated to ask them if your parent was ever incarcerated, then you know, you're shooting fish in a pond, essentially.

You're not coming to ask me that, you know, I'm just flying under the radar somewhere. You're not concerned with me because I don't fit the narrative of what you're trying to show. I, you know, like I was saying, have this conversation about exceptionalism, I think is dangerous. And I think it's a way that we separate people from their community where like, Oh, you're not like me.

Like, you know what I mean? Like I can't be with you guys cause you guys are six times more likely to go to jail and I'm going to go to college. And I'm the exception, you know, to these, to this rule, it kind of separates you from your community and it makes you, it reinforces these stereotypes.

It makes us look at the person rather than looking at the system. And I think time and time again, we see that as a problem, when we can put the onus on a person and say, Hey, you're not doing this, or this is what you chose instead of really looking at the systems that put people in these positions in the first place.

Abbie Henson: [00:11:05] Yeah. there was this quote by a community member in New Orleans after Katrina. And it was, as you know, all of these news pastors and pundits were saying, you know, The people of New Orleans are so resilient, they're so strong. And her whole thing was like, you don't want to have to be resilient. Can we stop looking at us and praising us for going against these barriers and rather focus on the systems that are creating the barriers? Like why do we continually put the spotlight on individuals rather than thinking about the system? 

When thinking about children of incarcerated parents and their supposed likelihood of criminality, think about why we even have a system that removes so many parents from their children. When we know... like for instance, children are the prison, boom, by Wakefield and Wildman, they have this whole chapter stating that for most children unless there was a lot of violence in the home or abuse.

Most children would have been better off and families would have been better off with the father staying. It was looking predominantly at fathers by staying in the home rather than being sent to prison for whatever they were being sent for. So there's this kind of, and this is something that I really want to work towards.

Like. Prisons aren't inherent or organic to our society, right. It created the idea of prison, what it looks like today. It was created by a group of Quakers in Philly who thought that penitence was the way. And so they constructed Eastern State Penitentiary with a panopticon where there was the lookout tower and all of the sleeping cells were in a line so they could have full view range. And so that's what we see today. And for some reason, even 200 years later, we can't fathom anything else. 

We have prison as a proxy for safety that similarly to the research on children of incarcerated parents, isn't founded in any valid research that prison. Increases safety that it deters crime. If prisons deter crime, we have over two.

Well, now it's a little less, but at one point we had over 2 million people in prisons. If prisons deterred crime, we would have no crime, right? Like that's a lot of people to be an example. And yet we continually have crime because we know if you look at other studies of why people commit crime, it's lack of resources, lack of education. It's these social structures that create a need to engage in crime. It's a lack of health resources, mental health, resources, stigma, and systemic racism. It's these bigger institutional issues that create the circumstances that then lead to criminality. It's not just having a parent in prison. It's exactly what you were saying, where it's correlated with poverty. It's correlated with race, but not race. It's correlated with racism. 

So I think when we are. Considering why these children or any narrative around social justice issues? I think we have to stop putting our critical gaze on these singular incidents and individuals, and talk more broadly and turn our critical gaze onto the systems that are creating the circumstances.

Whitney Hollins: [00:14:51] Yeah, New York is an interesting case because I believe there's five neighborhoods or five zip codes in New York that feed 80% of New York state prisons. So if you're looking at a situation like that, and we're assuming that children are likely to grow up in the same place that their parents grew up and everybody from this neighborhood is going to jail, then that makes sense. In those spaces, that's not a criminal gene, that's policing and incarceration by zip code or by geography. That's all that is. 

And just also in terms of, I don't think people really realize how exponentially the prison population has grown over the past, you know, five, six decades where it just went from like, okay, Hundreds of that. And then in the millions, it just jumped. And a lot of that has to do with drugs. A lot of that has to do with policing for drugs. And so, you know, we've had people, Nixon advisers come out and say, listen, the war on drugs was actually just a term that we use to target black people and counterculture. We knew we couldn't come out on TV anymore.

Like the good old days and say, we're going to get black people. We're going to get hippies. We're going to get this. We said the war on drugs. And we started targeting these groups. They came out and said it. That's what happened. And so per people's eyes now turn this blind eye today and act like, Oh, well, it's, it amazes me.

Sometimes. I feel like being poor is a crime. Like if you don't have a place to live and you get caught sleeping outside, that can literally get you arrested. And it's just like, it's insane that being poor so poor that you don't have a place to live is something that's considered a crime.

Abbie Henson: [00:16:26] I just think that when we think about violent versus non-violent offenders too. And like the impact of that on children. Like, so when I was working with FACT, the children that would come up to the prison. Some of their fathers were in there for murder, second-degree murder. And there was really no difference in the relationship dependent on crime.

There weren't any sex offenders in the program. There were many individuals who had crimes against children in the program. So there was a distinction there, but other than that, I think that we so often have this very stark line that we draw between violent and nonviolent offenders. And I think that it can be incredibly problematic and stigmatizing too, because something I speak to a lot of people about is that if you look at certain people's arrest records, the words don't explain the story, right? They are so one-sided, they give no context. And so if you just see attempted murder, you're gonna ha you're going to construct an entire story. Opt-in based on movies or police shows. Or like SVU and you're not going to be given the context, especially, let's say a second degree murder where someone was just the getaway driver or the person who was standing next to them at a bar fight when their friend ended up shooting and killing someone.

So I think that it's important to also when we're talking about just differences and narratives and stereotypes that I think that some people think of children of violent offenders differently than children of non-violent offenders. Did you, do you find that in your work too?

Whitney Hollins: [00:18:32] With violence versus non-violent and it's really something that is a distinction that we don't, we want to avoid making, unless the child was put in physical harm, unless the parent.

Did something that was harmful to the child and safety as a first priority to the child, then we really don't want to make that distinction. because it just allows people to parse up so much and say, this person is worthy and this person isn't, and it's not really the idea of, you know, who gets to determine that this person is worthy of being a parent.

Ultimately we're looking out for the child's wellbeing and overwhelmingly, we have seen that the children want to have a relationship with their parents. They're really uninterested in whatever their parents were convicted of. Some of them don't know some of them, no, for most of them, it doesn't matter.

They just know that they want to have a relationship with their parents. So I think that we have to avoid judging and saying, you know, this person is worthy of being a parent and this person isn't because this is the circumstance. This is the, this is the case they caught. And not even withstanding the fact that we have to acknowledge that not everyone incarceration is guilty of a crime.

Abbie Henson: [00:19:34] Right in thinking about our legal system, doing its job. I think the other thing to recognize too is while we have certain people in prison who haven't committed crime, we also have people on the streets who have committed crime. Like we think about the officers who murder Breonna Taylor, and the fact that they're not in prison, but they're children...

When we think about their children, we don't have the same concept of them being criminal as we would someone who maybe committed a similar kind of crime without that power dynamic, but who is in prison. And so I think that that's an important distinction too, as I feel like people really put faith in our system to have created a line between those who deserve to be there. And those who don't, because you don't think necessarily that you're the exception and that you've worked with people who are in positions similar to you who have experienced parental incarceration. I think a lot of people would be curious and if I were to not have such a critical stance, and if I was going off the research, a lot of people would say, okay, well, what was it about your experience?

That allowed you to get to this place where you have your doctorate, what kind of supports were in place? Because I don't think it's necessarily that you had a parent in prison, but maybe more so about just what was available to you. And I think I would ask this of anyone because only 2% of the population has their Ph.D.

And I think it's an interesting conversation to have to just understand how someone got there and what led someone to go that path. So for you, what do you think it was about your experience, your family, your community, that kind of pushed you along this journey? 

Whitney Hollins: [00:21:31] I'm going to touch on that, but just to go back to what you were saying about this faith in the justice system, I was reading a book.

I just finished a book, The Burning, about the Tulsa massacre. It's just describing basically what you were just saying. Like what makes murder an offense that you go to jail for and people forever stigmatize you basically, and what makes legal murder and just. It was discussing how, like, when this massacre started, like, you know, people were just deputizing, they were giving them badges and they were going around and shooting like, you know, and people were never tried for it.

Right. So our definition of murder, what is murder is very subjective, depending on who's doing the murdering and under what. Circumstances. And I think we need to realize that too, because if you ask people, are you okay with murder? Everyone's going to say no, right? Like I'm not okay with murder. Murder is horrible.

But then when they hear a police officer, did it like, Oh, well, you know, maybe they felt for their safety. Maybe they didn't know this and this well, they won't lend the same type of consideration to anyone else on the street or whatever the case may be. And I think that has to do with a lot of the ways that we tend to look at certain groups and certain people that we have to be honest about.

And in those situations, I'm really against this idea of exceptionalism in terms of what helped me. I just think school was something that I was good at. Right. So I was good at school. And then I realized that other people thought I was good at school. When you know, you get that positive reinforcement and that can be good and bad.

Right. I remember distinctly where. you know, in sixth grade I got a, B, and I had like a whole meltdown and I'm crying and it was just like, my whole identity was ruined because I was like, B what, sir, what is, what is this? You know, so it's good and bad because then you put a lot of stress on yourself and it's, it's who you are.

And so for me, school was something I was good at and because I was good at it and people encouraged, encouraged me to do it, then I wanted to continue it. And in one way or another, I have been in school my whole life. She was like, I graduated. And then I went to work in a school and then I went back to school again.

And I'm still, you know, I've never left. I never left. So you could take that as what it was.

 I think sometimes we have these conversations and people. Celebrate positive trauma responses or what people think are positive trauma responses. I really think my attachment to school had a lot to do with, not that I didn't have a natural inclination to it.

I did, but it was a, it was a trauma response that people were accepting of. Right? Like I'm going to really focus on this. I'm going to do great at it. I'm going to get validation from outside. It's a trauma response. And sometimes when you have these trauma responses that people think are good, such as doing well in school or over achieving or people-pleasing, then it's like, Oh, yay.

Versus if you're having these externalizing behaviors and being a pain in someone's ass, it's different. So I think that's important too, because no  adult, when I was growing up in school ever asks me about my father. I don't think it was an issue for them because I wasn't bothering them.

You know, I was in school, I was doing what I was supposed to do. I was, you know, a quote unquote, good kid. I was getting good grades. No one had any clue what was going on inside of me. And they didn't care to know because I was making their life easier. It was my trauma response. Was one that other people could accept.

Whereas other ones people don't want to deal with. And then they start looking. and it's difficult for children of incarcerated parents, because like I said, if you're like me and your trauma response is one that people enjoy or they like, then no one's really interested in digging deeper and seeing, well, like what's really going on with you.

Right. You know, underneath all of this, do you have anxiety? Do you need, you know, all these types of stuff. and if, and if you are having these externalizing behaviors or you're acting out, then people want to go and they want to search for the reason why. And if they find out that your parent and karst is incarcerated, Automatically the reason why, or every single thing from then or out.

So there's really kind of a lose, lose situation. Where it's like, are you going to get no attention and no one cares what's going? Or is this going to be the focus of your whole thing? And now people are going to start telling you like, well, do you want to end up like your father? Do you want to end up like your mother, all these sorts of things.

So it's difficult. For me. Yeah, I don't that's I like to, I don't like to subscribe to like, Oh, this made me resilient or this, you know, did that. I had my mom, I had my brothers, but I'll be honest. You know, two of my, I have two brothers, both of them were incarcerated at some point, you know? So there's three of us.

Two of us ended up incarcerated at some point, you know, they're home and they're doing well now, but that happened as well. 

So it's. I don't think that I was exceptional. I think that my responses to the trauma were just different than someone else's response. And I, it exhibited itself in a different way that allowed me to function in society and be successful in ways that people were willing to validate me for versus showing it in different types of ways.

And then one thing I found in my research is that. When I was doing literature reviews and people were talking about these externalizing behaviors of children, of incarcerated parents, they made them seem like a very permanent state. When I was doing my research and I was speaking to the children, some of them didn't admit it like, you know what, my dad first got locked up.

I was, you know, not doing well in school, but then whether it be a teacher or they just decided that they wanted to do this, or I knew I wanted to go play basketball. So I had to get it together. It was temporary for them. Right. It was like, I had this, I got over it. And now I'm back on track with the studies that really make it seem like it's like, this is who you are now.

Is this data permanent for a lot of the kids I interviewed? It was temporary. And many of them came out of it. Not if, not by themselves than by the support of adults, to help them get through that. But I do think it's kids falling through the cracks. If you know, they don't have that supportive adult there to help them or to talk them through it.

If they have so many other compounding factors besides the incarceration. So for example, this is why I don't like quantitative research necessarily when it comes to children of incarcerated parents, the circumstances are extremely, very, you know, when my father was incarcerated me, he already wasn't living in the house.

He was already outside of the house. So him being incarcerated while it affected me, it didn't change. My day-to-day living situation. I was still at home with my mom and my brothers, and he was not there. I wasn't used to him being in there every day anyway. 

Now for a child who's used to live in, at home with their parents every day. And now that parent is gone and they have to go to foster care and they're in a system that's a much more traumatic event. Not solely the incarceration, but the events that happened because of this situation that can change the outcome as well. So I really don't think that a lot of times the quantitative research really does justice to the circumstances.

You know, I interviewed, a girl who she really just had a horrific chain of events due to the incarceration. She. Both of her parents were sub substance abusers, which means they have been in and out of jail multiple times because they keep on getting locked up. And you know, when you go to jail, they don't provide you with rehab or anything to help you with your substance abuse issues.

She got put in foster care, she was abused in foster care. Her and her sister, her sister sexually her physically, started acting out of school. Of course, of course started acting out in school. I don't think that that should be a surprise to anyone. If you are now separated from both of your parents and you're being, you know, abused at home, was unable to do her work in school because no one was at home to help her.

She said the teachers yelled at her. She didn't want to tell them about the situation. Eventually got an IEP. So this all goes into my whole special education background too, eventually she was given an IEP, was classified as intellectually disabled. And when I need to tell you, I had a conversation with this girl and the way that her thoughts were moving and shaking, I'm just sitting there like.

How did that happen? Classified as intellectually disabled put on medication. She said the medication made her gain weight. It made her tired. She started getting bullied. She was fighting with other kids, then got sent to a residential school. when she got sent to a residential school, I think she ended up getting her arm broken by one of the staff.

It's some people tell it they'll be like, Oh, parental incarceration, releasing this kid down a bad path. And you're like, no, like, look at every turn. The system failed. Not only this child, but her parents, but just failed her, failed her, failed her time. It's every time there was a time to stop the bleeding, put the finger in the dam, it just didn't happen.

And we can not blame parental incarceration for that. Right. I'm not here to tell anyone that parental incarceration is great. And it was something that I wish, or that that's not the case, but this idea that we're going to sit here and say that parental incarceration caused this, it's really letting us off the hook for a lot of things that are just wrong, that kids are facing every single day.

And it's unfortunate. And I really just want to push back against this idea. Oh, prison, incarceration causes this, or it causes that like no, these messed up systems cause these things to happen. Yeah. 

Abbie Henson: [00:30:13] That is such a good point. I think the idea of the positive response is such a good point. The idea of these blanket statements of who children of incarcerated parents are, is a great point.

And I think, the idea of it being a temporary acting out potentially is also really important. I think that's the idea of the master status, right? Like these kids can have so many different things about them. But as you were saying, as soon as the teacher finds out that it's children of incarcerated parents, that's their blanket master status that defines them now.

And I think that so often anything involving the criminal justice system, it's like that becomes your master status. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:30:55] We, we love to see a person who was able to turn their life around, but we're not going to let them forget it. You know, I know that most people, well, I don't know if most people know, but parental incarceration was really, was recently recognized by the CDC as an ACE, an adverse childhood experience.

I'm fine with, you know, supportive that's just because I do think it is a situation that requires additional support and things like that. 

But they, you know, always say, well, predictive factors, like what could happen, aren't necessarily going to be the case because of predicted protective factors. Like what supports do we have in place? And I really think that we should be looking at language as a protective factor, and how we're using them around children and to the people that were, you know, speaking to because, you know, Inmate X conduct fell in. A lot of these terms are really dehumanizing.

And there have been some movements where people are changing that, even within, you know, the system here. but I think, you know, as adults, whether we're caregivers, teachers, researchers, whatever, we have to be careful with the language that we're using, we're using and reinforcing as well. So I really think that we should look at that language piece as a protective factor.

Abbie Henson: [00:32:04] Yeah, a hundred percent. 

I'm curious to know your stance on the language, language around resilience, because I think that that can be equally dehumanizing. And I don't know, I struggle with it because I want to use it as it has strengths-based connotations. If you focus on the fact that an individual can be resilient, rather than I don't know, looking at their, the negatives in their lives, but I feel like there's also a lot of underlying racism around the term resilience.

And yeah, I'm just curious where you, where you fall on that. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:32:51] It's interesting. It's difficult to navigate sometimes. Right? So I was having a conversation about why sometimes people are opposed to using humanizing language opposed to changing the words. And sometimes I think it's because they're not confident because the language shifts so much and you don't want to say the wrong thing.

And one day this term is the right term. The next day, this term is the right term. And that happens, you know, so all of us I've been on panels speaking and you know, I'm pretty involved with the work. Like I keep pretty up to date, whatever. I'm speaking or I'm saying something to someone like, well, I prefer, I prefer justice involved, you know, and that was their preference.

And so I wanted to respect their preference. When I write, I use certain terms that I write with and things like that. So I used to think resiliency is like this great thing, right? Like, Oh, we're gonna, we're super resilient when this third. And then when a lot of the things happen recently with the George Floyd murder and Breonna Taylor murder, and just speaking out like about protecting black women in this idea, what you were saying earlier about like, Oh, we're so strong or so this, and then someone was like, We shouldn't have to be so strong, right?

You shouldn't have to, you know, have this almost dehumanizing effect of nothing can touch us or we can endure anything and keep going on and on. And so I think that happens with children of incarcerated parents too, where it's like, Oh yeah, they're resilient. they're able to endure and keep going on and on and you know, wow, gee, gosh, look at them.

But really the question is like, should they have to do that? And the answer is absolutely not. 

They should be allowed to be children. They should be allowed to have their feelings and have their emotions. They should be able to be happy and sad. They should be able to say that this was messed up. I don't like this and am able to cry. I think again, the issue is the systems that aren't in place. You know, where we have schools who have more police officers and they do guidance counselors, which can be a very triggering event for a child of incarcerated parents, but also means that there's no one there to support the children as they're working through and trying to navigate this.

So yeah, that, that issue with resiliency. And the language of resiliency is something that I'm kind of grappling with right now. And I like to be transparent. It was something that I was like really gung ho about not too long ago. And then just rethinking what that actually does and means. And I think that's part of the process, right?

That we're continually. Critiquing the language, analyzing the language, listening to people who have experiences, people with lived expertise and examining where terms come from and why we're using them and what the message it is, what message we're trying to send when we use them. Because, you know, someone's so resilient, they're so strong.

Like what do they need our help for? It's unfortunate that you have to think about that. But I think that is something that we do have to consider, and we also have to consider that resiliency or the way it presents itself or what we think of resiliency could also be a trauma response. Right. You know, that could also be a trauma response that I just have to kind of like shake things off. I can't let this get to me and I have to keep going, keep going, keep going. I'm not really dealing with everything that's happening. Cause I'm just going to keep going. I'm going to keep plowing through. I'm going to keep people like, wow, look at you, go, you don't stop to think about all the things in your life.

You're just gonna keep going, keep doing that. So we don't have to think about it either.

 So I think, you know, that's important as well and it's, it is something that I'm, I'm kind of working through and trying to decide. How I actually feel about it. I'm not 100% sure. I don't know what the better term would be.

I don't know what the better way to describe it would be. I'm sure that someone is quite brilliant. that's probably not a researcher or a PhD. We'll come up with something soon that we really like. And then, you know, it might be in a few years that we're like, that doesn't work as well as we thought it did either.

So it's continually changing and evolving and I just always want to be in a space where I'm reflective enough to want to engage with that and change as well. But yeah, I'm not 100% sure how I feel about the resiliency. Dang it, I mean, if you read my dissertation, it's going to pop up. I think in a lot of strength-based approaches that are coming out now, you're going to see it a lot, but I also think it's fair to look at resiliency critically.

Yeah. And think about what that actually means and what did that look like and what message does it send to other people when they hear it? 

Abbie Henson: [00:37:05] Yeah. 

I think I really agree. And it's something that I struggle with too. And in my dissertation, I drew, so I was telling you yes or Payne was on my committee and he has this whole theoretical framework called sights of resilience.

And I think that actually you should look into it because I think you would be into it. It's basically. A critique of resilience and the fact that it has it's underpinned by so many middle upper class white narratives of what strength is and what is acceptable behavior and how that exhibits resilience.

And so what he often talks about is how resilience can also be a point of resistance. And so learning how to navigate police or... In my dissertation, I speak about how the men that I interviewed, who had criminal records, who had mainstream values, they wanted a legit job, but because of their record, because of their race, because of their gender, all the intersections, they couldn't get jobs.

And so rather than just sit back. They went out and they hustled so that they could protect and allow their families to survive. And that was an act of resistance, right. They were resisting employer discrimination. And I think that that's a really interesting way to think about resilience in these different, more culturally and contextually competent ways, rather than in these ways that are just grounded in yeah. White middle, upper class definitions of success. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:38:41] Yeah. And I, Oh, no, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I think too is a lot of times when we look at slavery and we look how black people were described, I mean, one of the ways that we could term it is resilient, right? Like they thought that they weren't feeling the same pain as other people.

Like we could use them in experiments that we could put them out to them because they just have this like. Supernatural ability to resist pain or to work like that's what they wanted them for. Right. And one way that we could turn that is older, resilient, and that's not the greatest thing either it's, it's dehumanizing.

And that, that respect. Right. And so now we've been using it as a positive way about like, Oh, you could endure this and keep moving. But I think we really need to move away from focusing on, you can enjoy this and keep moving to like, why do we need to endure this? And why. Are we letting people and do this and who are we deciding has to endure this because it's not everyone.

I mean, I had a conversation the other day and we were talking about children of incarcerated parents and someone was like, Oh yeah, Jared Kushner is the children of incarcerated parents. And I was like, yes, but I don't think that he's had to endure. I'm sure there are some similarities there, but. It's not the same layer in Durant of oppression that many children of incarcerated parents had to face for numerous reasons, not just race, but also social class and money and what that affords you and things like that.

And so it is, even within this group of children of incarcerated parents, We really have to look at, you know, who has to be resilient, right? Who has to endure these things. Not everybody is enduring the same thing because not everybody is taking eight hour bus rides. Up to, you know, and being searched and looked at like they're criminals themselves and having to go through this, not everybody is doing that.

It means you look at who we're making, do these things and why those are the people that we're choosing have to go through that 

Abbie Henson: [00:40:37] A hundred percent, I think. Yeah, that's such a good point. I'll just, who are we calling resilient? Who are we engaging? That resilience conversation. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:40:45] Who does it benefit to make certain groups resilient? Right. 

Because then we don't have to worry about what we did to them or what's going on, or like systemic racism, oppression, misogyny, like, don't worry about it. Like there's super resilient. They're going to bounce back up. We keep trying to knock them down and every time it is crazy, kids just keep getting back up.

They're resilient. Don't worry about it. It's insanity. It's just like no accountability, no responsibility, no acknowledgement of the system. The way it's set up. 

Abbie Henson: [00:41:13] If we're going to tie this up in a bow, something that's important too, is when we're talking about resilience, there's also, I think a tendency to victimize and just focus on the victimization and not the strength.

Like you want to talk about the string acknowledged the underlying racism of the term resilience, but also not just focus on the victimization. I think something that a lot of the authors that I was reading who are black feminists authors and researchers and theorists, they were often saying, you know, a lot of the black men that we continually say, there are so many barriers against them. They have. So like they're enduring all of these issues. They're also a genic, meaning makers. Like they are, they have power in their lives as well. And I think so often we want to put down certain groups to be like, There has to be a way to acknowledge both the barriers and the issues that they're up against.

And also in the same conversation, speak about the ways that individuals navigate these barriers and are hurtling through the barriers, right? Not just speaking about the hurdles that they're up against, but also the act of hurdling so that we can disintegrate and dismantle the stereotypes that there's no power in these communities, right? Like we see grassroots activism. We see communities that we deem a high risk that are hotspots, but also have some amazing grassroots programs and really awesome block captains. So I think that when you're, when we're talking, especially people who are new to this conversation who are getting into issues of social justice, I think it's important to understand the systemic racism, understand the institutional barriers, understand the structural violence that communities endure, but also in the same breath, try and look up in the communities that you're critiquing and talking about. What are the strengths of those communities and highlight that because I think we have enough research talking about how all of these issues come to play in criminal engagement.

In high rates of murder, but I think it's also important to talk about strengths because that's where we're going to see a shift in perceptions. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:43:41] Yeah. And I think that one of the ways that you could do that, if you're not sure how to do that is just to talk to people who live in the neighborhood. People are overwhelmingly proud of where they live and who they are.

And they'll tell you great things, even if they acknowledged things that could be better. They'll tell you great things about themselves and their family and their friends. I mean, I found that with the children I was working with when I was doing my study, They loved their parents. They had great things to say about their parents.

You know, they, their parents were great to them. So it's like, you don't need to sit at home and rack your brain about like, Oh, what could I say? That's positive. If you ask the people who are involved, they'll tell you what's positive. 

Abbie Henson: [00:44:13] A hundred percent. 

And I think the other thing too, that. I have found, like I had someone get at me because I was trying to get into the weeds about things and show the complexities of these issues.

And they just were kind of like this, this needs to be an all or nothing. Like no police, like dah, dah, dah. And I was like, go to these communities. Like they, all the dudes that I spoke to were like, we need, I think it's not necessarily that they want the police as they are today, but they were like, we need something, you know?

Or else our neighborhood's going to go on fire. Like we need to feel safe. Also, I know not all police are bad. Like they characterize their neighborhood as both safe and dangerous. Like there are all these complexities and nuance in perceptions and people think it just is one way or the other, especially people who are disconnected from the actual communities that are impacted by hyper surveillance by police that are impacted by structural racism. I think that again, as you're saying, like actually speaking to the kids, sitting in that room and looking at how these children interacted with their fathers, it was like, I cried multiple times because there was just so much love in the room and they were so vulnerable with each other.

And these men who just like turn into mush when their kids walk in, you know, like these dudes who people perceive as just like, Oh, they're in prison. They're hard, like dudes with tattoos all over their face. Just like literally rolling on the ground with their kids, you know? Like, and I think that the fact that there is such a disconnect between people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system and people who haven't is demonstrative of segregation in America and the differences in privilege.

 I think that when we think about how to, you know, there's, it's great to read. It's great to listen. It's great to watch, but if you can just actually genuinely speak to someone who has been a part of the system and not in a way where it's kind of like, I don't know.

You always hear of the jungle tropes of wanting to go in and see how bad it is and doing like a Safari, you know, like to actually want to hear what it's like. Exactly what you're saying. I mean, people in this conversation might not have ever heard a child of an incarcerated parent speak. And so I think it's important to create these spaces where people who have been impacted can present to people who haven't.

And not that it's on you to educate, but I, I do think that there is something about hearing first hand experience. That's really important. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:47:05] Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I don't think just because you're incarcerated, it makes you a bad parent and just because you have a nice house and there's two parents in the household doesn't mean that those kids they're having the best parenting that they could have either.

I mean, we have to really avoid these surface level assumptions and stereotypical views of people. That's just not the case. We know. We know that kids in wealthy neighborhoods are doing drugs as well. We know that their nuclear families that are set up the way that they're supposed to look have extreme issues going on the inside. There's emotional abuse happening in the homes. There's physical abuse happening in the homes. 

I think the difference is the amount of support that people have and the amount people are criminalized or police, is quite different. I think that's where the difference lies. I also think when it comes in terms of people want what they're used to, right.

So for a lot of people, it's hard for them to envision what life would look like without the police, because for generations and generations, for generations, for most of us now, the police, you know, we grew up reading books and we have even now, you know, my son is four and we get coloring books with different jobs.

And it's like a police officer, you know, typically a white male, if it's a real progressive, it's a white lady, who's sitting there and he's like, this person is going to help you. And there's a real, real issue with that because part of me is like, you know, I want to tell my son, like this is a police officer.

If you ever need help. And the other part of me is like, listen, if a police ever stop officer ever stops you, you don't say anything to them. Like this is what you do, you know? So there's this, there's this real love, hate relationship. This really interesting balance that I think communities, especially communities of color, poor communities have with the police.

Because as you said, poverty and other issues can cause an increase in crime and then people who are like, we want this, we want this. even though, you know, a lot of times it does, destroy families and things within the community. I kind of think of it as, you know, a balance where we put so much money into police departments and, you know, almost like our police departments are like armies, going to war with communities and all this, you know, I need riot gear and tactical gear to walk through it, you know, but we can't ignore the fact that number one increase in policing and incarceration has done nothing to deter crime.

Abbie Henson: [00:49:19] Right, right. 

Whitney Hollins: [00:49:21] And also that at the same time that that's increasing the investment in social welfare programs, in education, in these things that we are know that are proven to alleviate poverty and that if we alleviate poverty, that crime decreases, we're not interested in doing those things. And we have to ask ourselves, why are we so interested in this solution and not the other one?

And I think that there's a lot to that. That has to deal with the way this country is set up and how we like to do things that make that a really complicated question. I think when people are begging and like, Oh, we still want the police here. That's all they know. Of course that's what they know. most of us don't know what it looks like to have.

A fully funded school program and afterschool care and childcare, isn't a million dollars. I'm still salty about that. I'm a parent, I'm a million dollars, you know, so I'll carry isn't this exuberant, ridiculous exorbitant amount of money. And, you know, we have people whose kids are going to good schools and they're learning and they have activities that they could be involved in.

And, you know, people aren't, you know, struggling for a rent and groceries and. All these types of things. And so I think a lot of that is like, it's like a mind game or a trick like, Oh, well you need more police cause you have more crime, but we have more crimes, but you keep taking away all the programs.

We need not to have it. and I think we need to look at it, whose interest does it serve to militarize the police to have an increased police presence. And it's not that I think that all police are bad or things like that, but like who is this serving when we're defunding one thing. Too, we're not focused on a proactive measure.

And when we're putting all our emphasis on reacting, reacting, reacting, and re we're reacting to a problem that we call. So it's just, it's a really interesting dynamic. And I don't think a lot of people are having the conversations about it, that they should, to be honest, where we're having this conversation, like, well, what's going to happen.

Who are you going to call and all this type of stuff like, but also at the same time, That's going to take time. So for example, I could give a presentation at my school and I could sit there and say, black men are disproportionately incarcerated. Half the group might hear that and be like, Oh my goodness, racism is horrible.

And the other half might hear that. And been like black people are always committing crimes. You know, it could be the same piece of information. And it's how people are not only comprehending it, but how it fits into their worldview. And some people just don't want to change their worldview. They don't want to confront what's going on.

And that's a very real thing that, I mean, I'm talking now that I work in a school that's 90% black students. And when the George Floyd murder happened, and we were having conversations as adults, as teachers about this con about the, what happened, you know, things came out such as, Oh, well, you don't think as a white woman, I've ever experienced racism working in a black school.

And I'm like, I don't think, you know what the definition of racism is. I think you might've experienced, I'm not negating your experience, but I don't think that you're understanding what's happening here. And then, you know, so there's, there's all of these things that happen as well, where it's like, is the person ready to confront their worldview, their experience, what they've been through. And be able to see it from a different perspective and some people simply are and aren't and some people are comfortable in that system. There are some teachers, and it's not just white teachers. There are some teachers who are comfortable working in a school where the black students or the students of color are the students who speak a different language are continually failing because it supports their worldview that these students don't work as hard as other students that they're not as smart as other students. So they're not going to confront that because that's what they already believe. And that's what her, and now this is affirming what they already believe. The real work comes in when something opposes what you think.

And you have to figure that out. And some people just aren't doing that work.

Abbie Henson: [00:53:17] Thank you so much for tuning into my Critical Conversation with dr. Whitney Q Hollins. Next episode, I'll be speaking with what's just co-creator Juwan Bennett. Juwan is a criminal justice PhD candidate at Temple University and the co-founder of the Urban Youth Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. 

An advocate of prevention through education and a prison abolitionist. Juwan's critiques of the criminal justice system are complex. As he grew up in the heart of South Philadelphia with a correctional officer, father, and a police officer brother in our conversation we discussed the intersection of race and criminal justice in America and challenged the ways we construct and define public safety.

I hope you'll tune in, expect new episodes every other Monday. And don't forget to subscribe. I am Abbie Henson and this was Critical Conversations.