TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 1

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 1 37 historical phenomena as limited collective agency , which refers to a sociocultural tendency of a group to be inhibited in positively transforming its own oppressed condition both because of external barriers and because of internalized hopelessness. Internalized responses to this limited collective agency influence self-esteem, relationships, occupational functioning, and overall psychological well-being. Linked to this are higher rates of depression and anxiety than seen in other ethnic groups, higher rates of exposure to individual and community violence, and higher rates of psychosis and other psychiatric challenges (Vontress et al., 2007). Just as all individuals who are exposed to traumatic experience do not display symptoms of PTSD, not all African Americans display overt symptoms of cultural trauma or display them to the same degree. Rasmussen, Rosenfeld, Reeves, and Keller (2007) argued that the subjective interpretation by individuals of traumatic experience largely dictates whether their response will be pathological or whether adaptation and resiliency mechanisms will enable them to self-stabilize. Varying degrees of perceptions of limited agency, because of a plethora of factors, such as socioeconomics, educational achievement levels, family attachment and protective dynamics, and even skin tone dynamics, lead to a wide range of responses to the residual social milieu left behind by enslavement, “Jim Crow” practices, and current-day racially motivated injustice. In a now dated publication, Pouissant and Atkinson (1972) linked exhibited feelings of rage and passivity among some African Americans to intrapsychic functioning learned during slavery as a survival mechanism. They further explained that this dynamic of rage and passivity was adopted in response to witnessing the brutality faced by enslaved peers who did challenge slave owners. Tatum (2002) postulated that this reaction to historical oppression has morphed into a number of responses to social injustice today, namely assimilation, crime, delinquency, or protest. This cultural trauma affecting African Americans has particularly and directly impacted the well-being of African American children and adolescents. Assimilation, along with internalized racism, is no more evident than in the original and duplicate “doll studies” first launched by Clark and Clark in 1939. African American children showed preference for White dolls over Black dolls when asked to identify which were beautiful and good. Subsequent critique of the research methodology used by the Clarks and replicated and expanded studies have highlighted inattention to such details as how the skin tone of Black dolls shown to participants or developmental stage would influence their racial self-identification (Jordan & Hernandez-Reif, 2009). However, the study still demonstrates that one of the effects of cultural trauma is a preference for majority culture and characteristics over one’s own. In terms of crime and delinquency, a long-standing trend of disproportionate numbers of African American men in the U.S. criminal justice system is paralleled by disproportionate numbers of African American males receiving disciplinary measures in schools (Monroe, 2006; Noguera, 2003). It can be argued that these statistical trends are connected to stereotyping and targeting of African American males as offenders. Alternatively, Conger et al. (2002) asserted that higher levels of externalizing symptoms and problematic behaviors in African American children and adolescents are correlated with systemic oppression and economic distress. These attitudes and behaviors, though not prevalent in the experience of all African Americans, indicate a pervasive stress that does not seem to mitigate over time and across generations. This pervasive stress has had a significant effect on the academic performance and school behavior of African American students. Thompson and Massat (2005) found in a sample of African American sixth graders attending inner-city Chicago public schools that academic achievement was significantly related to post-traumatic stress, family violence, and witnessing violence.