Black Rage: The Psychic Adaptation to the Trauma of Oppression

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-290
Author(s):  
Beverly J. Stoute
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Equilibrium ◽  
Functional Adaptation ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Adaptive Function ◽  
Racial Trauma ◽  
The Face ◽  
Mental Construct ◽  
Black Rage ◽  
Developmental Line ◽  
Conceptual Formulation

Integrating the story of a young Freud’s racial trauma with a novel application of the concept of moral injury has led to a realization and conceptual formulation during the pandemic uprisings of the mental construct of Black Rage as an adaptation to oppression trauma. As formulated here, Black Rage exists in a specific dynamic equilibrium as a compromise formation that is a functional adaptation for oppressed people of color who suffer racial trauma and racial degradation, an adaptation that can be mobilized for the purpose of defense or psychic growth. Black Rage operates as a mental construct in a way analogous to the topographical model, in which mental agencies carry psychic functions. The concept of Black Rage is crucial to constructing a theoretical framework for a psychology of oppression and transgenerational transmission of trauma. Additionally, in the psychoanalytic theory on oppression suggested here, a developmental line is formulated for the adaptive function of Black Rage in promoting resilience in the face of oppression trauma for marginalized people.

scholarly journals Positioning and Rebranding as a State Security Tools in Global Space

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
Ihor Ishchenko ◽  
Olena Bashkeieva
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political System ◽  
State Security ◽  
Political Risks ◽  
Global Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Unstable Environment ◽  
Mental Construct ◽  
Benefits And Costs

The purpose of this article is to explore positioning and rebranding as tools for state security in global space, using the methodology of constructivism in international relations. The author hypothesizes that positioning the country as safe will be attractive only if there is a unifying factor based on the principles of consocial democracy. To achieve this purpose, the authors used several scientific approaches and methods: constructivism as a scientific paradigm; dialectical method; content analysis, and comparison. The article covers the following issues: Positioning and rebranding in modern conditions; Level of branding effectiveness in Ukraine; National identity as the basis for rebranding and state security; Rebranding states in the face of new challenges and threats. The essence of the conclusions is as follows: States will choose a partner for economic cooperation under difficult conditions in terms of political risks, benefits, and costs. This trend is about renewed positioning and rebranding to facilitate decisions on cooperation. The effectiveness of the existing state brand depends not only on creating an attractive external picture of the country’s positioning. Without a genuine alignment of the declared brand with the internal situation of the state, the political system as a whole, the congruent of the mental construct of the main political structures and the social environment, the brand will not be attractive to investors and the country will remain in an unstable environment.

Theorizing White Racial Trauma and its Remedies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Becky Thompson ◽  
Veronica T. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Racial Trauma ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
White Consciousness ◽  
Martin Luther King

In this paper we will be drawing upon historical work on race consciousness, contemporary work on trauma, and scholarship on activism and social change to offer a vision of what a critical white double consciousness might look like. We juxtapose this critical white consciousness with what Veronica Watson has termed a “white schizophrenic subjectivity” which has been explored by intellectuals like Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. Each of these writers called attention to a whiteness that works to maintain disconnection from people of color and disassociation from their own moral selves, a white schizophrenic subjectivity that prevented white folks from acknowledging or challenging racism while still continuing to think of themselves as moral and upstanding citizens of their communities and nation.

The Intersectionality of Race and Trauma in Children and Teens Who Are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)

2022 ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Nena Hisle
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Competency ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Trauma ◽  
Trauma Informed

Children in America are suffering from an abundance of trauma that many bring to school with them daily. Children, teens, and their families, who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), may have experienced historical racial trauma which is unique to students of color. Professionals working with students of color (SOC) must develop cultural competency around racial trauma in their understanding of trauma informed pedagogy to meet the needs of student populations that are becoming increasingly diverse. The overall purpose of this chapter is to provide professionals working with BIPOC children and teens the necessary skills to meet their needs.

Playing with power: Kink, race, and desire

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072096406
Author(s):  
Michelle Liang
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Real Life ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Sexual Expression ◽  
Queer Women ◽  
The Face ◽  
Queer Women Of Color

Although the separation between “real life” and “play” appears to reinscribe liberal notions of autonomy, BDSM practitioners actually mobilize this boundary to trouble liberal understandings of the liberal autonomous rational agent. Through understandings desires as inextricable from power, and fetishes as displacements of anxieties, BDSM practices recognize “irrational” desires and multiple, fractured selves. In examining kink practices of queer women of color in the Netherlands, this paper explores the transformative potentials of BDSM for queer people of color, especially in resisting colonial discourses that privilege liberal discourses of agency and conceptualize bodies of color as nonmodern, inferior, exotic, and irrational. In the face of discourses that pit Dutch freedom and sexual expression against ethnic minorities and sexual constraint, marginalized kinksters are forming communities that radically centralize marginalized kink experiences and reject pathologizing discourses, as they critically alter the implications of and possibilities for slippages between daily life and kink.

Identity and Institutions: The Social Construction of Trade Unions in Nineteenth-Century Germany and the United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Herrigel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Functional Adaptation ◽  
Character Structure ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Face

The aim of this research note is to begin to develop the idea that trade unions are historically constructed as much through considerations of social identity as they are through calculations of economic self-interest, market power, or functional adaptation in the face of changes in the division of labor. By social identity, I mean the desire for group distinction, dignity, and place within historically specific discourses (or frames of understanding) about the character, structure, and boundaries of the polity and the economy. Institutions such as trade unions, in other words, are constituted through and by particular understandings of the structure of the social and political worlds of which they are part. In making this argument, it should be immediately said that I in no way intend to claim that trade unions are only to be understood through the lens of identity or that they do not engage in strategic calculation either in labor markets or in the broader political economy. The point is that action along the latter lines presupposes some kind of commitment on, and even resolution of, issues concerning the former. The discussion below focuses on the emergence of trade union movements in the United States and Germany during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It Attempts first to develope the two cases as constituting a paradox and then, second, explains the paradox with an argument about identity.

Race, Place, and Context: The Persistence of Race Effects in Traffic Stop Outcomes in the Face of Situational, Demographic, and Political Controls

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-508
Author(s):  
Kelsey Shoub ◽  
Derek A. Epp ◽  
Frank R. Baumgartner ◽  
Leah Christiani ◽  
Kevin Roach
Keyword(s):  
Police Department ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Police Chief ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Traffic Stops ◽  
Race Effects ◽  
The Face ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Municipal Police Departments ◽  
Unique Dataset

AbstractEvidence that racial minorities are targeted for searches during police traffic stops is widespread, but observed differences in outcomes following a traffic stop between white drivers and people of color could potentially be due to factors correlated with driver race. Using a unique dataset recording over 5 million traffic stops from 90 municipal police departments, we control for and evaluate alternative explanations for why a driver may be searched. These include: (1) the context of the stop itself, (2) the characteristics of the police department including the race of the police chief, and (3) demographic and racial composition of the municipality within which the stop occurs. We find that the driver's race remains a robust predictor: black male drivers are consistently subjected to more intensive police scrutiny than white drivers. Additionally, we find that all drivers are less likely to be subject to highly discretionary searches if the police chief is black. Together, these findings indicate that race matters in multiple and varied ways for policing outcomes.

scholarly journals Challenging Definitions of Psychological Trauma: Connecting Racial Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-16
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Nadal ◽  
Tanya Erazo ◽  
Rukiya King
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
Racial Microaggressions ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Trauma Symptoms ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Racial Trauma ◽  
Stress Symptoms ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Cross Sectional Design

While previous studies have found significant relationships between racial microagressions, depression, and anxiety, few studies have examined the effects of racial microaggressions on traumatic stress. Furthermore, although trauma has been traditionally conceptualized as psychophysiological reactions to life-threatening events, the notion of racial trauma has been excluded, despite resulting in similar symptomatology. The current study utilized a correlational, cross-sectional design with a racially diverse sample of people of color (N=254) to investigate the relationships between racial microaggressions, racially- or culturally-related trauma, and trauma symptoms. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, results indicated that a greater frequency of racial microaggressions was significantly associated with greater traumatic stress symptoms, and that school or workplace microaggressions were the type of microaggression that was most associated with traumatic symptoms. Implications are discussed, including the need for counselors, psychologists, and helping professionals to consider racial microaggressions as traumatic events while using culturally-informed trauma-focused methods to normalize and empower people of color.

Towards a Poetics of Racial Trauma: Lyric Hybridity in Claudia Rankine'sCitizen

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARY-JEAN CHAN
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
The Body ◽  
Racial Trauma ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
The Face

The longevity of the lyric belies persisting difficulties in terms of its definition and categorization, particularly given the form's evolution in the face of philosophical, sociopolitical and cultural transformations. In Claudia Rankine'sCitizen, the lyric is powerfully refashioned in response to the historical and contemporary tribulations of being a black citizen in America. Rankine's keen awareness of how linguistic injury caused by microaggressions registers in the body leads her to an adoption andadaptationof the lyric form, withCitizenaptly subtitled “An American Lyric.”Citizenis an urgent and timely book that sustains America's conversation on race and racial injustice on a level of national grief, even as Rankine brings it to the level of personal intimacy by asking, “How do you make a body accountable for its language, its positioning?” I contend thatCitizenis a work that extends the lyric's possibilities through creating a hybrid text containing lyric essays, photography, public art and video scripts, which are juxtaposed for intertextual and polyphonic effects. I argue that Rankine uses lyric hybridity to create a poetics of racial trauma that meditates on the effects of racial injustice as it manifests in the bodies of traumatized individuals. Lyric hybridity appears crucial to Rankine's project, since it allows for complex subjectivity and intimate address amidst a clarity of language that enables the reader to perceive how we easily we fail one another in our daily pursuit of relationality, community and citizenship.

Disaffected

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xine Yao
Keyword(s):  
Herman Melville ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps ◽  
Sui Sin Far ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper ◽  
Award Recipient ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Face ◽  
Duke University

In Disaffected Xine Yao explores the racial and sexual politics of unfeeling—affects that are not recognized as feeling—as a means of survival and refusal in nineteenth-century America. She positions unfeeling beyond sentimentalism's paradigm of universal feeling. Yao traces how works by Herman Melville, Martin R. Delany, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Sui Sin Far engaged major sociopolitical issues in ways that resisted the weaponization of white sentimentalism against the lives of people of color. Exploring variously pathologized, racialized, queer, and gendered affective modes like unsympathetic Blackness, queer female frigidity, and Oriental inscrutability, these authors departed from the values that undergird the politics of recognition and the liberal project of inclusion. By theorizing feeling otherwise as an antisocial affect, form of dissent, and mode of care, Yao suggests that unfeeling can serve as a contemporary political strategy for people of color to survive in the face of continuing racism and white fragility. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

scholarly journals Increases in Psychological Flexibility Mediate Relationship Between Acute Psychedelic Effects and Decreases in Racial Trauma Symptoms Among People of Color

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 247054702110356
Author(s):  
Alan K. Davis ◽  
Yitong Xin ◽  
Nathan D. Sepeda ◽  
Albert Garcia-Romeu ◽  
Monnica T. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Linear Regression Analysis ◽  
Psychological Flexibility ◽  
Multiple Linear Regression Analysis ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Trauma Symptoms ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Racial Trauma

Background Previous research showed acute psychedelic effects were associated with decreases in racial trauma (RT) symptoms among black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among samples comprised primarily of white participants, positive outcomes of psychedelic experiences have been mediated by increases in psychological flexibility. Therefore, we examined whether changes in psychological flexibility from before to after a psychedelic experience mediated the relationship between acute psychedelic effects and changes in RT symptoms among BIPOC. Methods This cross-sectional online survey study included 313 BIPOC (mean age = 33.1; SD = 11.2; female = 57%). A multiple linear regression analysis was used to examine the association between acute psychedelic effects and decreases in RT symptoms in a nonclinical setting; a path analysis was used to explore whether changes in psychological flexibility mediated this relationship. Results Acute insight and challenging effects were significantly ( p < .001) associated with decreases in RT symptoms following a psychedelic experience. Increases in psychological flexibility partially mediated relationships between greater intensity of psychological insight and less intensity of challenging experiences and decreases in RT symptoms ( ps<.001). Conclusion This research suggests psychedelics confer potential benefits in decreasing RT symptoms among BIPOC and psychological flexibility may be an important mediator of these effects. Future research should test this hypothesis in a longitudinal clinical trial among BIPOC.

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