Dr. Jameca CooperForensic Psychology Consultant, Emergence Psychological Services · Board Certified Counseling Psychologist and Forensic Psychology Consultant

What I know about being Black is this #blacktrauma #criminalpsychology #mentalhealth #storytime

19 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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In this personal narrative, Dr. Jameca Cooper, a Black criminal psychologist, reflects on the pervasive trauma experienced by many Black individuals, attributing it to socioeconomic disadvantage, high‑crime environments, and the broader burden of racism. She recounts her own youthful encounters with the criminal justice system—assault charges, gun possession, school suspensions—while noting that she maintained good grades. Transitioning from a juvenile offender to a professional psychologist, she now works within the criminal justice system to help Black defendants avoid life‑sentence convictions, seeking to uncover the underlying factors that lead people to such legal predicaments.

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What I know about Black people is a lot of us have experienced trauma. Sometimes it's trauma from, um, socioeconomic status. Sometimes it's trauma from growing up in a high-crime environment. It's a lot of that. Sometimes it's just trauma from being Black. Tell the truth, that's what it is. Being Black comes with a lot of stuff, downsides. So I see people in, in my role as a criminal psychologist, and I'm trying to figure out what the angle is. What is it that the other people are not going to try to find out? How did they land in this, in this position? That's what I do now. So what's funny is I started off in juvenile court. Remember I had assault charges, I had gun possessions, I got kicked out of the debutantes, I was suspended from school. I still had good grades, but I was damn sure kicked out from school. So fast forward, look at what I do now. I go in and try to help people not get life in prison.