Racial Trauma: The African American Experience _ _______________________________________________
Cultural factors are the cornerstone of understanding resiliency. Cultural socialization and social support networks are facets of African American culture that are protective against psychosomatic stress. Similarly, ideas that foster cultural pride, heritage, and history promote resilience and have generally been correlated with enhanced academic achievement, racial identity development, and positive intellectual and socioemotional results. Studies show that firsthand knowledge or experiences of trauma increase the likelihood of a resilient reaction [1]. This provides a reasonable rationale for African Americans and other minorities exhibiting more resilience than White Americans. WHITE PRIVILEGE Rebecca C. Hong, author of Black Dignity/White Fragility: An Extended Review, emphasizes DiAngelo’s analysis of the social construction of race in United States, with its earliest roots emerging with the historical and inhumane acts of colonization, slavery, imprisonment, and systemic injustice [5]. These events, originating from racial prejudice and a belief in white superiority and embraced and preserved by institutions and creeds, have reaped benefits at the expense of manipulating and persecuting minorities. Hong argues that racism is profoundly embedded in the structure of our society and has permitted White Americans to have collective and institutional power and privilege over minorities. Labeling and accepting this power and white privilege allows for a genuine acknowledgement of whiteness as a position and status that has justified beliefs in white supremacy. Recognition of white privilege and self-awareness elevates racial dialogue past complicity with the overall political, economic, and social system that persists as a structure [5]. The mainstream political, economic, and social systems, originally created to support Caucasian Americans, are represented in the American entertainment industry, professional sports, government, and education. Systems and structures have historically focused on whiteness as the standard or norm. Hong asserts that [5]: When talking to white people about race, DiAngelo exposes common “color-blind” statements, such as “I was taught to treat everyone the same” and “So-and-so just happens to be black, but that has nothing to do with what I’m about to tell you,” or “color-celebrate” claims that show they are free of racism, such as “I have people of color in my family” and “I was on a mission in Africa.” These types of statements come from a place of denial— denial of structural advantages offered to White persons and denial of the different experiences and realities of various races and ethnicities [5]. These expressions display a limited understanding of how profoundly socialized whiteness is and the deep-rooted racism that persists in society. This impedes
the possibility of having vital inter-racial conversations about race and the personal, interpersonal, cultural, historical, and structural analysis required to challenge the larger system [5]. In challenging the current racial paradigm, Caucasian Americans are encouraged to respond to feedback regarding uninformed racist attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs with humility, interest, gratitude, and a position to listen, reflect, apologize, believe, process, and seek more clarity and understanding. Hong states that acknowledging white privilege [5]: ...is centered on openness and humility and holds the ability to transform individuals and systems that have benefited from systemic racism. It places the onus on white people to educate themselves, be uncomfortable, discuss their own internalized racial superiority, and invest effort in interrupting their own white fragility. DiAngelo recognizes that in order to break from perpetuating racial inequality, white people need to have courage to break from white solidarity, a system that has afforded them unearned privileges, and be accountable for their own racial growth. This is not the responsibility or burden of people of color. IMPACT OF STRUCTURAL RACISM As discussed, racism has been identified as a system of advantage instituted by race [6]. Institutional racism permits those in power and who are empowered to regulate the social, economic, and legal outcomes of African Americans and other minorities. By focusing on structural racism, one can recognize the outside forces that require African Americans to develop resilience while highlighting the significance of sustained social justice efforts in eliminating conditions that negatively affect minority populations. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The modern civil rights movement was spurred largely by Jim Crow laws in the South and reactions to legal challenges to segregation and institutional racism. In 1954, the Supreme Court, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, banned segregated public education facilities at the state level. Many Caucasian Americans had difficulty assimilating this new reality and endorsed institutional practices that restricted the upward mobility of African Americans, such as housing restrictions, educational barriers, and open violence. In 1956, more than 100 congressmen signed a manifesto committing to doing anything they could to prevent desegregation of public schools [7; 8]. Civil rights activists, including most prominently Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reacted to this increasing social discontent by promoting and inspiring Americans to live peacefully and amicably with each other. Activists passionately advocated for a society that would develop advantageous conditions for African Americans and all oppressed people.
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