Racial Trauma

An urgent, wide-ranging account of racial trauma and its psychological impact.

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Racial trauma is an inescapable byproduct of persistent exposure to repressive circumstances that emotionally, psychologically and physically devastates one’s sense of self while simultaneously depleting one’s strategies for coping. It is a life-altering and debilitating experience that affects countless numbers of people of colour over multiple generations. Unfortunately, the failure to consider the interrelationship between racial oppression and trauma limits clinicians’ ability to work effectively with many people of colour who live amid sociocultural conditions that are injurious to their psyches and souls. Even when therapy is trauma-informed, it rarely devotes adequate attention to racial oppression and the pervasive trauma associated with it.

This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive overview of the anatomy of racial trauma and the debilitating hidden wounds associated with it. Racially sensitive trauma-informed interventions and strategies that centralise race and racial oppression in every facet of the therapeutic process and relationship are meticulously highlighted, making this a must-read resource for all practising and aspiring clinicians.