What is Race-Based Trauma?
- Race-based Trauma is the cumulative negative impact of racism on the lives of people of color.
- It includes the wide-ranging effects of multigenerational and historical trauma.
- Experiences rooted in racism can create severe distress that can overwhelm a person’s and a community’s abilities to cope.
What are Historical and Cultural Trauma?
Historical and cultural traumas are collective traumas affecting generations and groups with shared identity.
Historical and cultural trauma can have a cumulative effect on an individual and generations in a family or group. For example:
- The legacy of slavery among African Americans.
- The impact on American Indians and Alaskan Natives removed from their homelands.
- The impact of the AIDS epidemic on the LGBTQ community.
Historical, cultural, and race-based trauma are related. When present, they increase the impact of additional traumatic experiences. For example, events like removing children from home may trigger reminders of trauma in an individual’s family or community history.
