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Dr. Shawn O. Utsey: My work examines the psychological and physiological effects of race-related stress, and that typically includes racism. But there can be race-related stress without racism. There are some things that you might hear people commonly refer to as the "Black tax." It's the cost of being black that may not be the consequence of racism. For example, you move to a community and you have difficulties finding a place to do your hair. That's not necessarily racism, but it could be stressful.
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Yes. In fact, I did a study that examines not only the effects of racial trauma but the intergenerational transmission of that trauma. I went to Oklahoma and I interviewed the survivors of the race riots of 1921, and interviewed their descendants. I wanted to see the degree to which people who've encountered racial trauma, not only carry that trauma, but how they pass that trauma on to their descendants across generations. Now there's a lot of empirical work with the descendants of Holocaust survivors and there is some foundation for that thinking. But I think that the argument has been that the trauma has to stop. For black folks, you can't really argue that the trauma has stopped. It's more about the chronic exposure to racism than it is traumatic experiences.
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Typically, you'd think that a sense of helplessness in response to state violence would be more egregious because the actors are immune from prosecution. But in the case of white Americans, who have committed egregious acts of violence against black Americans, we have seen similar outcomes, i.e. no prosecution, or a prosecution that results in no contest, as in the case of George Zimmerman. It's not much of a leap from the helplessness that many black Americans feel about the acts of violence by citizens versus the acts of violence by the police.It's not simply when the police are violent or the legal system doesn't protect blacks. It's also heavy-handed when black folks are seen as the transgressors. The relationship between the law enforcement and the black community goes back to slavery and the slave patrols. The slave patrols were in place to protect the white community from enslaved black people. In South Africa, during the apartheid, the police and the army were there simply to protect the white community from the black masses of Africans. That's the role of the police in many societies, to protect whites from blacks. This is why the violence is part of our police culture. Slave patrols were one of the first forms of law enforcement in this country.What kind of psychological symptoms do black people experience as a result of that inherited history and the experience of living in a racist society?
There's this concept of "post-traumatic growth," and that suggests that the response of many people to trauma is growth, not necessarily pathology. Now, in the early history of psychology, the argument was that black people would go insane under the burden of freedom. This is not some racist skinhead—these are the most prominent psychologists of the day, like Carl Jung, saying that black people would go crazy under the burden of freedom. You have people like William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs who wrote about "black rage." In fact, Cobbs and Grier, who were two black psychologists, talked about this rage that was right below the surface of all black people, ready to explode, as a consequence of the chronic exposure to racism.Now, those people who do experience some psychological pathology as a conduit for racism are probably already at risk for other kinds of stresses. So racism becomes a form of stress. But if you experience stress based on your racial group membership, even when that stressor is over, it's not done for you, because the possibility of future stressors remains. Your skin is still black. I think that you might be at increased risk as a black person, but it doesn't mean that you experience official pathology as a consequence of being black.There was a study that was released recently from the University of Bradford that talked about how people who are following news events on social media, the study suggested that they were exhibiting symptoms of PTSD. Is it possible that there could be a similar phenomenon within the black community, who are following news about the killings of unarmed black men?
That makes sense, but it's not PTSD. PTSD means something happened, a month ago, a week ago, and you are still exhibiting symptoms. Here's my political opinion: This is the nature of the black experience. There is some degree of healthy behavior that I see exhibited when these events happen. Obviously, you hate to see them happen so frequently. But I'm much happier seeing black folks up in arms about something, trying to get change. Just a few years ago, we were talking about how young people didn't see race, that they thought race was a thing of the past. But now I'm seeing young people becoming activists, leading movements. This is healthy behavior.Would you say that activism or organizing can be a form of healing for the black community?
Absolutely. For everyone.Follow Tasbeeh on Twitter.