This brief explores how racial trauma intersects and exacerbates trauma caused by family violence. In order to do so effectively, the brief will review issues of structurally embedded inequalities, individual actions that cause racial trauma, the effects of racial trauma on communities of color, and strategies for individuals, communities, professionals and organizations to prevent and mitigate race-based traumatic stress.
Download the brief here.
Additional Resources
The following resources accompany the Racial Trauma Issue Brief.
Trauma, Toxic Stress, and Race-based Traumatic Stress
- Harvard University: Center on the Developing Child, A Guide to Toxic Stress
- Community Resilience Cookbook
- National Child Traumatic Stress Network: Addressing Race and Trauma in the Classroom: A Resource for Educators
- NPR: Scientists Start to Tease Out the Subtler Ways Racism Hurts Health
Historical Trauma
- A Peoples History of the United States, Howard Zinn (Amazon book link)
- Richmond’s Unhealed History, Ben Campbell (Amazon book link)
- Historical trauma as public narrative: A conceptual review of how history impacts present-day health
- Giving Voice to Historical Trauma Through Storytelling: The Impact of Boarding School Experience on American Indians
- Remembering the Cultural Trauma Legacies of Slavery: African American Young Adult Perceptions on Racism, Ethnic Identity, and Racial Socialization
- PBS: Jim Crow Laws, Freedom Riders
- The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Urban North
Institutional Racism
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander (Amazon book link)
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America , Richard Rothstein (Amazon book link)
- Washington Post: Redlining was banned 50 years ago. It’s still hurting minorities today
- The New York Times: How Redlining’s Racist Effects Lasted for Decades
- Fast Company: Mass Incarceration is the Enemy of Economic Opportunity
- Xenophobia: Understanding the Roots and Consequences of Negative Attitudes toward Immigrants (journal article)
Microaggressions
Family Violence
- Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Child Welfare
- Domestic Violence Communities of Color: Facts & Stats