OTHER TERMS USED TO UNDERSTAND RACIAL TRAUMA

Structural Racism The American Medical Association defines structural racism as the multiple ways systems, policies, procedures, and laws perpetuate racial discrimination by mutually reinforcing racial bias in systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, healthcare, and criminal justice. These patterns and practices reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources.

Intergenerational Trauma The APA defines intergenerational trauma as the phenomenon of descendants of a person who experienced a distressing event presenting with adverse behavioral, psychological, and emotional reactions to the event similar to those of the person who initially experienced the traumatic encounter. Black Americans who are descendants of former slaves may experience intergenerational trauma because of the injustice of the United States’ history of slavery. And descendants of other groups who have experienced a trauma, such as descendants of individuals who suffered during the Holocaust, other genocides, or the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, may experience intergenerational trauma, too, according to APA.

Historical Trauma Like intergenerational trauma, historical trauma is the distress descendants of a particular community, racial or ethnic group, or other group experience because of major oppression that group previously faced, according to the U.S. Administration for Children and Families. The Holocaust, other genocides, and the intentional maltreatment of Black Americans who were part of the Tuskegee experiments, are all examples of events that could cause historical trauma for people in subsequent generations of the affected communities.

Microaggressions In his seminal work on the topic, a journal article published in 2007 in the American Psychologist, psychologist Dewald Wing Sue, PhD, defined “microaggressions” as the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults — whether intentional or unintentional — which communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages based solely upon a person’s marginalized cultural status (which can include race, gender identity, or class).

Intersectionality Race scholar and professor at the University of California Los Angeles’ School of Law and Columbia University’s Law School, Kimberlé Crenshaw, PhD, coined the term “intersectionality” in a 1989 paper to describe the unique experience of marginalization that Black women face because of being part of two marginalized groups. The already established feminism theory and antiracist policy discourse did not accurately describe the experience of Black women, she wrote in the paper: “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”

Today, the term “intersectionality” is widely used to describe how our various cultural identities, such as biological sex, gender identification, sexuality, class, ability, and race interact with one another to perpetuate various systems injustice and inequality. Addressing these intersections simultaneously is needed to prevent one form of inequality from reinforcing others, according to the Center For Intersectional Justice.