Part 3 Series of Blog on My Grandmothers Hands. Racism is Trauma.
As I continue the discussion on My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, I want to talk about another key point that came out his book which is racism is a form of trauma. This is one that not many in the social work field acknowledge. Many books written on trauma fail to identify or even mention the impact that racism has on people of color, white bodies and police bodies. I have seen little written or discussed on the impact that many forms of oppression such as misogyny, discrimination involving sexual orientation, sexual preference, disability status, religious discrimination, and other forms of oppression and bigotry have on a person. It seems some of us know this in an antidotal way but without the research to back it up. The lack of acknowledgement of racism as a form of trauma seems to be a form of racism itself.
Racialized trauma is like complex trauma
It is the water we swim in and the air we breathe which makes it so hard to uncouple it from all our other experiences. Like childhood trauma, it is encompassing experience that radically shapes how we see our primary relationships, how we interact with others and how safe we feel in the world. Even as I type this paragraph, the word “racialized” is underlined in red due to the dictionary not recognizing it as a word.
Resmaa Menakem provides a number of terms that can be used throughout our clinical work when we are working on trauma with our clients. This approach of exploring racial trauma needs to be a part of our assessment process within our client intakes and within client sessions. He also discusses terms like trauma ghosting (recurrent and pervasive feeling that something dangerous is around the corner or something bad will happen) and trauma retention(internalized trauma passed down over generations that starts to look like culture) provide a strong foundation on the impact of trauma within the lens of racism.
These terms are coupled with generational trauma creates what he calls a soul wound. The way these pervasive and system actions show up generation after generation have an impact on us today. In his word, “no matter what we look like if we were born and raised in America” we have a deep and complex soul wound. We cannot help but be wounded in various ways by racism either on the receiving end, or the one inflicting/benefiting from it. For these reasons, as social workers, we need to start to acknowledge this and address it within our own work and work with our clients. This is especially if we are working with clients of color and definitely with white clients.
