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 color 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 color 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 centralize race and racial oppression in every facet of the therapeutic process and relationship are meticulously highlighted, making this a must-read resource for all practicing and aspiring clinicians.
Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, is President of the Eikenberg Academy for Social Justice and Clinical and Organizational Consultant for the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in NYC. Dr. Hardy provides workshops, training, and consultations to a host of organizations and institutions throughout the United States and abroad. He is a former Professor of Family Therapy at both Syracuse University, NY, and Drexel University, PA. He is the author of Racial Trauma: Clinical Strategies and Techniques for Healing Invisible Wounds, and The Enduring, Invisible, and Ubiquitous Centrality of Whiteness, both from W. W. Norton. He is also co-author of Culturally Sensitive Supervision; Promoting Culturally Sensitive Supervision; and Revisioning Family Therapy.