In Improving Mental Health Outcomes for Vulnerable Black Children and Youth: A Toolkit for Practitioners, published by the African American Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, the authors provide the following to help readers understand historical and racial trauma.
Historical Trauma
Historical trauma is not a preoccupation with the past or a failure to “forgive and forget” the oppression of slavery, Jim Crow, and the host of other past and present abuses of African Americans. It is a form of intergenerational trauma rooted in all those atrocities, and it includes elements of fear, grief, shame, anger, and moral injury inflicted during centuries’ worth of betrayal.
Historical trauma is less likely to be identified through any specific memory or preoccupation, and more likely to be reflected—often subtly—in many patterns of speech, behavior, and affect. For mental health practitioners who are not used to taking a historical perspective, it can be hard to know how to use the concept of historical trauma to deepen clinical insight, identify potential areas of risk and need, and identify resources that will address the full range of family, community, and cultural vulnerabilities that many Black children and youth carry. A few places to start include:
- recognizing these layers of vulnerability and taking care not to activate them,
- respecting the strengths that have allowed children and youth to carry these burdens,
- teaching children and families to modulate their stress reactions,
- developing and practicing the skills of cultural humility in all your interactions, and
- exploring the growing number of resources available on this topic.
How Racial Trauma Affects African American Families
For centuries, African American parents have struggled to manage the many effects of trauma that historical, systemic, and interpersonal trauma have placed on them. At the same time, they have somehow had to create safety for the children they love—children who are clearly at risk of trauma, failure, significant loss, and even death because of the color of their skin.
Racial trauma has been defined as “…mental and emotional injury caused by encounters with racial bias and ethnic discrimination, racism, and hate crimes” and as “a mental injury that can occur as the result of living within a racist system or experiencing events of racism.”
- Racial trauma and the incidents that inflict it leave adults and children at greater risk of chronic physical and mental health conditions, regardless of socioeconomic status.
- Many families and children are also deeply affected by a number of health and economic disparities, including high rates of low birthweight and infant mortality, mass incarceration of African Americans, and disproportionate removal of children by Child Protective Services.
Mental health practitioners who work with African American children and youth may have many opportunities to provide information, skill training, referrals, and ongoing peer and professional support to families whose lives, relationships, and ability to cope have been worn thin by racial trauma. Their contributions might resonate for generations to come.
Supporting Black Children and Youth in a Challenging World
For African American children and adolescents coping with the risk or reality of serious emotional disturbances, the world we live in can be a particularly painful and dangerous place. Along with the normal developmental struggles and social/emotional turmoil of childhood and adolescence, many of these children and youth are also experiencing:
- painful and frightening neurochemical symptoms associated with their emotional disturbances;
- the impact of historical trauma on children, families, and communities;
- the cumulative effects of years’ worth of overt, passive, and systemic racism;
- stigma, shame, and discrimination from their own family, community, and/or peer groups because of their behavioral health conditions or their sexual or gender identity or orientation;
- the feeling—and for some the reality—of being a target for violence because of their race, their gender, their identification as LGTQIA+, and/or the neighborhood where they live;
- inequity and deprivation along the social determinants of health;
- an awareness that they are considered “high risk” because of their identity or circumstances;
- communities still struggling to return to normal after a pandemic that claimed lives, jobs, and livelihoods and deprived children of school, play, and connection with their peers;
- immersion in peer and social media cultures that are increasingly divisive, bullying, drug-obsessed, and violent; and
- news of a surrounding world that is more and more frequently disrupted by violence, polarization around issues of race and culture, natural disasters, and ecological instability.
Many Black children and adolescents really do carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and their developing minds and bodies are not prepared to handle it all. Along with the many responsibilities associated with clinical, case management, and support services for young African Americans with serious emotional disturbances, here are some things for practitioners to remember:
- Children and youth really do need to be heard and comforted, and their experiences validated.
- Many are longing for someone to hear them, see them, and value them just as they are.
- Young people are meaning-makers, and empathic adults can respect and support that process.
- Most of us—even adults—need training, coaching, and reminders to breathe slowly and deeply, “get our heads back in the present,” and practice being in the here-and-now.
Compassionate adults cannot take away these burdens, but we can be respectful witnesses.
Skills of Cultural Humility
Many adults get a little bit lost in the cultures of childhood and youth. With additional cultural differences in the mix, and uneven levels of power between cultures, the terrain can be even harder to navigate. One essential resource is an approach called “cultural humility,” based on an understanding that:
- no culture is superior, and no culture should be held up as the standard that others have to live up to;
- we are all very limited in our awareness of how our own cultures have affected our unconscious beliefs, our perceptions of people, and our attitudes toward other cultures;
- we are all biased, sometimes speaking or acting out of bias without even being aware of it;
- there is no formula or body of information about a culture that will make us experts on its members—much less tell us what is important in the life or identity of any individual; and
- each of us is responsible for learning how to show respect and courtesy across cultures—but we should never hold members of disempowered cultures responsible for being our cultural teachers or guides, or ask them to represent or “speak for” their cultures.
In a world where differences can lead to challenge and conflict, cultural humility is an important tool for keeping our hearts and minds open to learning new things. Humility is often described as being “teachable,” seeing ourselves as no greater than, or less than, others.