TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 1

36 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 1 historical trauma has been used to describe the traumatization of Native American peoples at the hands of European colonizers, resulting in mass genocide and geographic displacement (BraveHeart & DeBruyn, 1998; Whitbeck, Adams, Hoyt, & Chen, 2004). Distinctly, but similarly, the construct of cultural trauma has been identified in reference to the enslavement of peoples of African descent in the United States and the subsequent oppression through “Jim Crow” practices that occurred post-emancipation (Eyerman, 2004). Cultural trauma is linked to the psychosocial outcomes that have resulted from the cultural wounds left by the experience of chattel slavery, which refers to the usually permanent holding of another human being as personal property with no rights (Eyerman, 2004; Stamm, Stamm, Hudnall, & Higson-Smith, 2004). DeGruy (2005) has referred to this phenomenon as post-traumatic slave syndrome . Vontress, Woodland, and Epp (2007) have described the psychological after-effects of enslavement and subsequent oppression and discrimination of African Americans as cultural dysthymia , suggesting that African Americans often experience a low-grade depression, or dysthymia, as a result of systemic oppression, which can affect academic, occupational, and social functioning, but do not meet other criteria for more severe depression diagnoses. Smith (2004) coined the term racial battle fatigue to depict the psychological and physiological stressors and subsequent behavioral responses some African Americans experience in reaction to repeated, cumulative racial discrimination. Historical and cultural trauma has been recognized to be a part of the experiences of various marginalized, indigenous groups throughout the world who have undergone mass atrocities at the hands of colonizers, such as Japanese American survivors of internment camps (Nagata & Cheng, 2003), Palestinian youth (Giacaman, Abu-Rmeileh, Husseini, Saab, & Boyce, 2007), victims of the Rwandan genocide (Schaal & Elbert, 2006), and Mexican and Mexican American immigrants (Phipps & Degges- White, 2014). In the immediate and long-term aftermath of traumatic experiences, individuals have exhibited similar internalized and externalized behaviors that are characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder and that are seen as responses to the collectively experienced trauma. Although some of the aforementioned groups underwent traumatic experiences that spanned a period of a few months or years and occurred within the last century, the history of the enslavement of African peoples in the Americas and their subsequent oppression and discrimination originated centuries ago and has endured since the first Africans were brought to the Americas. Given such prolonged exposure, the symptoms of historical and cultural trauma are highly pronounced in those African Americans who lack the protective factors needed to counter the disempowering effects of enslavement and oppression (Vontress et al., 2007). A Brief Overview of Cultural Trauma DeGruy (2005) and Reid, Mims, and Higginbottom (2004) proposed that African Americans have sustained traumatic psychological and emotional injury because of enslavement, exacerbated by social and institutional inequality, racism, and oppression. The effects are thought to be linked even to physical health disparities, which place African Americans at higher risk for certain medical conditions (Sotero, 2006). Wilkins, Whiting, Watson, Russon, and Moncrief (2013) and DeGruy (2005) asserted that the restrictions of slavery prompted enslaved African American parents to stress to their children the necessity of not confronting Whites, resulting in frustration with life in an oppressive system in which individuals were not permitted to question injustice. In the generations since the emancipation of slaves and the enactment of Civil Rights legislation passed to eliminate racial discrimination and unequal treatment, African Americans in large numbers continue to experience political disenfranchisement (Barnes, 2016), economic struggle (Croll, 2018), social marginalization (Benner &Wang, 2014), workplace discrimination (Hagelskamp & Hughes, 2014), housing segregation (Roscigno, Karafin, & Tester, 2009), and academic disparities (Morris & Perry, 2016). Sztompka (2000) characterized the aforementioned