Racial Trauma Research Articles

Social Nexus of Reformation : Racial Trauma & Healing of Complex Social Constructs

Social Nexus of Reformation : Racial Trauma & Healing of Complex Social Constructs

Race-based trauma and post-traumatic growth through identity transformation.

Race-based trauma has been linked to multiple adverse health and mental health outcomes, including hypertension, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression. While the possibility of post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been investigated following other types of trauma, relatively less work has been done on PTG following race-based trauma. In this article, we present a theoretical framework integrating three areas of research: race-based trauma, PTG, and racial identity narratives. Based on the work on Black and Asian American identity and integrating theory and research on historical trauma and PTG, this framework posits that the transformation of externally imposed narratives into more authentic, internally generated ones can serve as an important influence that sparks PTG after racial trauma. Based on this framework, strategies and tools that enact the cognitive processes of PTG, including writing and storytelling, are suggested as ways to promote post-trauma growth in response to racial trauma.

The Whole Story: A Black Principal’s Experience With Race, Racism, and Racial Trauma

Principal Harris, a new Black male principal at Merion High School, has found himself under fire for allegedly promoting critical race theory (CRT). He has received several forms of pushback as he navigates district and state mandates, racial trauma, invisible taxes, and microaggressions. Unfortunately, his best intentions are not good enough. This case is designed to display the various factors Black principals face in schools and districts amid ongoing public health crises (e.g., COVID-19 and racism). I describe the layered role of race, racism, and racial trauma on Principal Harris through his reflections and responses to stakeholders.

Taking the next step in Miranda evaluations: Considering racial trauma and the impact of prior police contact.

By law, before interrrogating a suspect who is in custody, the police should inform them of their Miranda rights-the rights against self-incrimination and to an attorney. When a suspect or defendant waives their Miranda rights, a judge ultimately determines whether the waiver was legal. In making this determination, the judge employs the totality of the circumstances (TOC) analysis, which includes factors related to the individual defendant as well as the environment in which they waived their rights. Frequently, forensic psychologists evaluate a defendant to offer courts a clinical opinion about the defendant's ability to understand and appreciate their Miranda rights and to provide other TOC information. These evaluations are referred to as Miranda evaluations. Using Miranda evaluations as an illustration, this article describes how the critical, yet often overlooked, concepts of racial trauma and vicarious and direct prior police contacts should routinely be considered as part of forensic evaluations. After providing a succinct overview of the relevant legal issues related to Miranda rights and of the existing guidelines for conducting Miranda evaluations, we discuss the psychological impact of racial trauma and prior vicarious and direct police contacts. We provide case examples to illustrate how evaluators can consider the impact of racial trauma and prior police contact when conducting Miranda evaluations. This article serves as a practical guide for understanding how and why-in the context of their lived experiences-suspects may waive their Miranda rights. Finally, we recommend how to improve policy and research to better capture issues related to racial trauma and prior police contacts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Hawaiian psychology: Ka lama kukui: Kūkākūkā (talking story) and Hawaiian historical and racial trauma.

Hawaiian psychology: Ka lama kukui: Kūkākūkā (talking story) and Hawaiian historical and racial trauma.

Healing the Collective: Community-Healing Models and the Complex Relationship Between Individual Trauma and Historical Trauma in First Nations Survivors

Community-healing models (CHMs) are effective approaches in addressing intergenerational, historical, and racial traumas within American Indian–Alaska Native (AI/AN) individuals, families, and communities. While medical models of healing and White evangelical scholarship have favored individual approaches to change, growing evidence in support of CHMs in outcome research and evangelical theology is presented. CHMs understand the importance of the context in which problems develop and are sustained and consequently are uniquely suited to address the systemic nature of historical trauma and how intergenerational and racial trauma impacts People of Color and Indigenous individuals (POCI). The application of sovereignty, spirituality, and communal grief for AI/AN trauma survivors is explored. The role of community in individual identity and healing is explored as a biblical theme by both prominent White evangelical theologians and POCI Christians. The efficacy of CHMs in treating trauma within AI/AN communities provides hope for restoration within other cultural groups.

“Life was brought back into my body”: a critical race feminista analysis of racial microaffirmations

ABSTRACT This qualitative study utilized a Critical Race Feminista approach to explore the experiences of graduate Students of Color with racial microaffirmations. Racial microaffirmations are the subtle verbal and nonverbal strategies People of Color engage that affirm each other’s dignity, integrity, and shared humanity. These moments of shared cultural intimacy allow People of Color to feel acknowledged, respected, and valued in a society that constantly and perpetually seeks to dehumanize them. A Critical Race Feminista approach is grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Chicana feminist theoretical foundations. These theories guide the overall research design, and specifically, the methodological process. Four group pláticas were conducted with 30 students who also participated in the co-construction of knowledge during data analysis. This analysis revealed how racial microaffirmations can be embodied experiences, as sensory forms of knowledge that connect us to shared cultural intimacies and can serve as strategies for healing from racial traumas.

Anxiety-Related Disorders in the Context of Racism.

The literature on racism and anxiety-related disorders, especially social anxiety, specific phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder, is notably lacking. This report aims to review recent evidence demonstrating the link between racial discrimination and various anxiety-related disorders. Anxiety-related disorders were the most significant mediator for daily discrimination and suicidal thoughts, above both depression and substance use. Further, studies showed that racial discrimination promotes posttraumatic stress and racial trauma among people of color. Systemic racism puts people of color at a higher risk for anxiety disorders than White people. Clinical case examples provide lived evidence of diverse racial and ethnic individuals suffering from anxiety-related disorders, with the development and worsening of symptoms due to racism and microaggressions. There is a prominent need for recent research on anxiety-related disorders and racism. Recommendations for clinicians and future research directions are provided. These actions are required to address bias and mental health inequities and empower people of color.

An Antiracism Community-Based Participatory Research With Organizations Serving Immigrant and Marginalized Communities, Including Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders in the United States Pacific Northwest: Qualitative Description Study With Key Informants.

Asian American (AA) community leaders, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NH/PI) community leaders, and allies in the United States Pacific Northwest expressed concern that there are families and children from AA communities and NH/PI communities who experience and witness acts of xenophobia and racism. This can cause racial trauma. The long-time practice of aggregating AA and NH/PI data contributes to erasure and makes it challenging to advance health equity, such as allocating resources. According to AAPI Data's long-awaited report in June 2022, there are over 24 million AAs and 1.6 million NHs/PIs in the United States, growing by 40% and 30%, respectively, between 2010 and 2020. Philanthropic investments have not kept up with this substantive increase. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine emphasized the need for effective partnerships to advance the health and well-being of individuals and communities in antiracism and system-level research. The aim of this community-based participatory research qualitative description study was to identify perceptions and experiences regarding racial discrimination, race-based stress, and racial trauma; intergenerational healing and resiliency; and sharing the body with science from key informants of an academic and community partnership to inform antiracism coalition work. This partnership includes academic researchers and community leaders from community-based organizations and a health care organization serving immigrant and marginalized communities, including AAs and NHs/PIs in the United States Pacific Northwest. In total, 10 key informants joined 1 of 2 participatory group discussions via videoconference for 2 hours in 2022. We used a semistructured and open-ended group interview guide. A qualitative participatory group-level assessment was conducted with the key informants and transcribed. Interpretations and meanings of the main points and the main themes were reflected upon, clarified, and verified with the key informants in real time. The field note-based data transcripts were manually coded using conventional content analysis. Reflexivity was used. There were 6 main themes: prejudice plus power in racism definition and working in solidarity to counter lateral oppression/false sense of security, microaggression as multilayers, "not assimilationist by nature" and responding differently to white superiority, intergenerational- and identity-related trauma, what is healing among People of Color and through a lens of resiliency and intergenerational connection and knowledge, and mistrust and fear in the research and health care systems surrounding intentions of the body. The themes highlight the importance of internal and intergenerational healing from racial trauma and the need for solidarity among communities of color to combat white supremacy and colonization. This work was foundational in an ongoing effort to dismantle racism and uplift the community voice through a cross-sector academic and community partnership to inform antiracism coalition work.

Intergenerational Prophecies

I analyze my grandmother’s racial trauma which expressed itself as a racist-colorist way of seeing. The questions that guide my reflection are the following: Through what gaze did my grandmother look at herself? Did my mother and I inherit her way of seeing, that is,​​ a gaze that hates the body it sees? I put special emphasis on the repetitions and continuity that I find among the three family generations. In this sense, I wonder if my grandmother's visual experience functions as a kind of prophecy from which my mother, her sisters and I could not escape, a kind of inexorable destiny like the one faced by Oedipus. Given the nature of my inquiry, I adopt an intergenerational perspective at a historical and family level. In other words, I assume there is a link between individual perception and historical context given that they mutually complement each other. I argue that my grandmother’s self-perception was filtered through a colonial way of seeing. Furthermore, her internalized colorism has been inherited from the times when Mexico was a Spanish colony. For the latter, I provide a brief historical framework that explains the Mestizaje Ideology and how it sets the tone to talk about race in Mexico, as well as Joaquín Barriendo’s definition of coloniality of seeing. Later on, I present an analysis on the (self-)perception of my grandmother, my mother and her sisters, and me parting from exchanges and memories that I consider here as signs and symbols that the ‘oracle’ tried to communicate to me.

Awakening to Racial Trauma Faced by Asian Americans

ABSTRACT Dr. Kris Yi’s article elucidates Asian Americans’ experiences of racial trauma. Dr. Yi’s insights are both critical and compelling as she brings the racial pain of Asian Americans to the foreground of psychoanalytic inquiry. She illustrates how the model minority stereotype and gendered racism shape the disillusionment that many Asian Americans face, while calling for a more active engagement of psychoanalysis with Asian American experiences. This commentary is an effort to expand on several areas related to racial trauma faced by Asian Americans: The effects of racism on mental health; Racism in past and present U.S. contexts; Internalization of and ambivalence concerning white norms; and Gendered racism and sexual violence. My intention is to join Dr. Yi in bringing greater visibility to racial trauma among Asian American communities, and to urge practitioners, scholars, and educators to explore Asian Americans’ racial positioning with more depth, complexity, and honesty.

Asian American Experience: The Illusion of Inclusion and the Model Minority Stereotype

ABSTRACT The stereotype of Model Minority is often applied to Asian Americans, whose educational and economic achievements are held up as a sign of successful inclusion into American society. Yet the deadly anti-Asian attacks following the Coronavirus pandemic have shattered this illusion of inclusion. Using trauma theories, I explore Asian Americans’ belief in the American Dream, alignment with whiteness, and the illusion of inclusion afforded by the Model Minority stereotype. In particular, I examine how the illusion of inclusion has obscured recognition of an Asian fetish, the sexualized objectification of Asian women and feminization of Asian men. Clinical examples illustrate the workings of racialized stereotypes and mutual dissociation of racial traumas in Asian therapist and Asian patient dyads. Finally, I add a plea for Asian American psychoanalysts and therapists to write and speak about their experiences from their own frame of reference for fuller recognition of Asian American subjectivity.

Sister Night, Hooded Justice, and Racial Reckoning in Watchmen

ABSTRACT: The television series Watchmen (HBO, 2019) is a reflection on the trauma of racism and the means by which Black people have survived and subverted that trauma. I read the protagonist Angela Abar/Sister Night and her grandfather Will Reeves/Hooded Justice as revisionist Black superheroes who facilitate the remembrance of Black histories. As police officers and costumed crimefighters, these characters balance the identities of Blackness and the law and complicate symbols such as the police badge. I argue that Will’s critical function is that of chronotope, a symbolic embodiment of time and space, and Angela’s most important role is to learn from and transcend her grandfather’s legacy. As such, this article offers an Afrofuturist and feminist interpretation of this acclaimed series.

A qualitative exploration of black psychotherapists’ personal experience of racism and the challenges that exist for black therapists who work with clients in therapy who have also experienced racism. A pilot study using interpretive phenomenological analysis

Abstract The impact of racism to the individual is arguably immeasurable; however, the impact on psychotherapists who themselves have personally had either one or multiple experiences of racism and work with clients in therapy who have also experienced racism is an area with very little research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with black cognitive behavioural therapists who have personally experienced racism and have also worked with clients who have experienced racism; data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. As this was a pilot study, only two participants were recruited to the study. Superordinate and subordinate themes were identified from the data and explored. The study highlighted that the impact of racism, racist experiences and microaggressions can lead to mental health problems, and there is need for further support for therapists, especially within the contexts of clinical supervision and from their organisation leadership. In addition, the need for further research was also identified, as well as improved training in working with disclosures of racism, and racial trauma within a therapeutic context was considered as important to the therapists of this pilot study. Key learning aims (1) To explore and understand the personal experiences of black therapists who have personally experienced racism. (2) To identify some of the challenges that exist for black therapists who work with clients who have experienced racism and to explore possible solutions to overcome such challenges.

Understanding the Psychological Impact of Oppression Using the Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale

Oppression refers to systemic discrimination where the injustice targets or disproportionately impacts specific groups of people. The Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale (TSDS) is a self-report measure designed to assess the traumatizing impact of discrimination broadly by measuring anxiety-related symptoms of trauma due to discriminatory experiences. This may include symptoms arising from racism, homophobia, sexism, poverty, or other forms of marginalization. Almost all studies of the TSDS have examined its use in marginalized ethnoracial groups, primarily African Americans. This paper will extend prior work to help us better understand racial trauma across groups by reporting and comparing TSDS mean scores across ethnoracial identities in a diverse national sample (n = 923). It also explores trauma with other marginalized identities and demographic dimensions, including gender, sexual minority/LGBQ status, education, and income. The relationship of TSDS scores to clinical psychopathologies are examined, including stress, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. We also examine the unique risks associated with intersectionality, and how having multiple marginalized identities may increase traumatization. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.

Posttraumatic growth and flourishing in the face of racial trauma.

Examining well-being in the face of racial trauma is timely, clinically significant, and severely understudied, especially in Black populations. To address this gap, we investigated the relationship between flourishing and posttraumatic growth among Black undergraduates who reported a history of racial trauma. Participants were 96 Black college students recruited from a predominantly White Midwestern university, all of whom reported experience of racial trauma. Participants completed the Flourishing Scale and Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) in an online survey. Most were women/cisgender female/female (66.67%) and identified as religious (66%); 47% were first-generation college students. The average age of the sample was 21.14 (SD = 5.46). We analyzed Flourishing and PTGI scores for students who were able to identify/recall a racially traumatic event/experience using linear regression. Results indicated that after controlling for sociodemographic factors, scores on the PTGI significantly predicted Flourishing scores and accounted for 29.4% of the variance. These findings suggest that those who are able to deepen connections with others, tap into their inner strengths, gain new perspectives and a new appreciation for life, and connect to spirituality not only grow but are more likely to report flourishing. Contributing empirical evidence to the reliability (α =.91) and validity of the Flourishing Scale for Black college students, our findings also have implications for educators and clinicians interested in helping Black students grow and flourish in the aftermath of racially traumatic events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

My Body Is Not an Apology: Black Critical Agency as Sense of Belonging

:In the wake of highly visible institutionalized anti-Black violence, this study examined how sense of belonging manifests among Black students at historically white colleges. The findings speak to the need to expand upon the conceptualization of sense of belonging for Black students, particularly considering the history of racial trauma in the United States. The analysis draws from a lineage of critical race and afro-pessimist discourse to make connections between the participants' experiences and the people who preceded them. Implications for practice are introduced that consider how institutions can support the critical agency of Black students.

@BlackAtAuburn: A Preliminary Content Analysis of Social Media Counterspaces

Following the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice movement spurred by the police-involved murders of unarmed Black individuals in the summer of 2020, Black students and alumni of predominantly white institutions (PWIs) began to share personal narratives of their experiences with racial trauma on their campuses. In this preliminary analysis, I examine the posts of the @BlackAtAuburn Instagram account to explore themes that may illuminate why these students organized an online counterspace to navigate racial trauma at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. I explore preliminary findings pointing to student distrust in using university resources during heightened racial tensions.

"Minding My Business": Understanding Black HBCU Undergraduate Women’s Responses to Online Harassment Scenarios

While research exists exploring college students' witnessing and reporting online harassment experiences, this work has primarily been situated at predominantly white institutions among majority-white college students, thus limiting our understanding of the role of race. Particularly, little is known about the experiences of Black college women. This mixed methods study integrated survey and focus group data of 29 Black undergraduate women enrolled at a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). This paper answers the question, How do Black HBCU undergraduate women respond to instances of witnessing online harassment? Findings reveal that these women would contact friends and family, but expressed concern about engaging with authorities (e.g., law enforcement/university administration), police/authority violence, or re-traumatization. We conceptualize this study using a racial trauma framework. Findings can inform higher education professionals to consider how Black Women view online harassment, intervene, and prefer support.

RACIAL TRAUMA IN EMERGING ADULTS RAISED BY GRANDPARENTS: PROTECTING AGAINST DISCRIMINATION

Abstract Experiences of racial trauma are linked with psychopathology, but a strong ethnic identity may serve as a protective factor. Grandparents primarily influence the development of ethnic identity, and BIPOC children are increasingly being raised by grandparents. Secure attachments influence stronger ethnic identities, yet custodial grandchildren are at higher risk of disrupted attachments. The current study investigated whether ethnic identity would mediate the relation between attachment and racial trauma symptoms in emerging adults previously raised by their grandparents and their peers (N = 370; 33% raised by grandparents; 25.6% non-white), with race as a moderator. Across all races, there were group differences in symptoms of racial trauma, with those not raised by grandparents experiencing a direct effect of race on ethnic identity. Attachment was a significant predictor of trauma symptoms of discrimination, moderated by race. Implications may provide support for clinical interventions addressing attachment and ethnic identity to decrease trauma symptoms.