Definition/Description
Butts (2002) was the first to draw attention to what we now call racial trauma, or race-based trauma, in the mental health literature. Racial trauma can be defined as the cumulative traumatizing impact of racism on a racialized individual, which can include individual acts of racial discrimination combined with systemic racism, and typically includes historical, cultural, and community trauma as well. Helms et al., (2012) argue that acts of racial and ethnic hostility can trigger trauma reactions due to a person’s own past experiences or historical events, even when there is no recent or direct evidence of threat to one’s life. Carter (2007) compiled a comprehensive overview of the psychological impact of racism and events that can result in race-based stress and trauma. Racial trauma appears to be relatively common among treatment-seeking people of color. Hemmings and Evans (2018) conducted a survey of counselors and found that the majority of professionals had encountered race-based trauma in their clinical work (71%), but few had received training in the assessment or treatment of those afflicted.
Liu et al., (2019) detail the process of acculturation that many people of color experience when navigating dominant culture. White supremacist ideology, the belief in White biological or cultural superiority that serves to maintain the status quo of racial inequality, is deeply integrated in dominant culture values (Liu et al., 2019). Through chronic exposure to racism, people of color learn their positionality and how to become racially innocuous
as part of acculturating to White culture. As a result, some people of color may change their presentation and behavior and accommodate the cultural preferences of White people to avoid triggering responses that might further their own racial trauma. As part of acculturating to White culture, some people of color actively maintain their intersecting identities, whereas others may internalize racism by embracing stereotypes about their racial group. Given how inextricably linked White supremacist ideology is within dominant cultural values, Liu et al., (2019) encourage researchers and clinicians to consider how they may have internalized standards of practice consistent with White supremacist ideology.
Evidence of Harms
Racism has been linked to a host of negative mental health conditions, but the connection between racial discrimination and PTSD symptoms appears to be the most robust. Racial and ethnic discrimination was postulated to have a causal role in PTSD symptoms and alcohol problems in a longitudinal study of Hispanic college students (Cheng & Mallinckrodt, 2015). Sibrava et al. (2019) found the same in a longitudinal study of Latino and African American adults, where frequency of experiences with discrimination significantly predicted PTSD diagnosis but did not predict any other anxiety or mood disorder, indicating a potentially unique relationship between discrimination and PTSD. Examining data from a large health maintenance organization in Northern California, mediational analyses indicated that adolescents….
