Healing from Intergenerational Trauma and Racism

Racial justice is dependent on healing.* Otherwise, the pain caused by injustice can be overwhelming. The harms of injustice can block progress to both individual and collective liberation. Organizers in the South, including social justice organizations like Kindred, SONG, and many more, have laid the foundation for racial healing and liberation work.

Healing through Culturally-Specific Practices

Individually, people can heal from intergenerational trauma**, racism, and/or hatred through mental health care, holistic care, and culturally-specific practices. This can look like art, dance, drumming, herbal medicine, or talk therapy. Racial healing can also be collective. This can look like storytelling circles, engaging in culturally-specific practices of your community, and even participating in advocacy.

Turning Attention to Societal Structures that Cause Harm

Society can engage in racial healing by making laws more equitable, or having schools teach truths about the history of racial injustices. Advocating for these processes can benefit generations to come.

*Racial healing is to restore to wholeness, to repair damage, and to set right at an individual and societal level.
* Healing is an ongoing process of mending as well as building power, resilience, and resistance to transform systems of oppression.
**Intergenerational trauma = trauma that gets passed down from those who directly experience an incident to future generations. It can also include the ways in which our parents and their parents were harmed and traumatized by racist policies and practices, such as being denied the right to vote, being forced to attend assimilation schools, or being denied citizenship.