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Remain objective, be aware of implicit biases, poverty is not failure.

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To transform child welfare, take race out of the equation | Jessica Pryce

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Helpful Reading Regarding Racism in America

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Helpful Reading Regarding Racism in America

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-White Rage-Carol Anderson
-White Fragility-Robin Deangelo
-Raising White Kids-Jennifer Harvey
-So You Want to Talk About Race- Ijeoma Oluo

“How do I take it upon myself to go and read, go learn and go study, rather than expect those experiences to come from the mouths of black people?” -Derrick Young

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Generational Trauma: Understanding for peers, clients and everyday interactions

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Generational Trauma: Understanding for peers, clients and everyday interactions

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“Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path, until one person in one generation, has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and spares the children that follow.”

– Terry Real

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Key points

Transgenerational trauma can have significant affects on individual and family systems.

Open and honest communication can open up channels of healing and foster resilience amidst family adversity.

Children of trauma survivors must be willing to work through their family's trauma in order to help break the cycle.

We know now that newborns don't enter into the world with a clean slate. Their emotional history begins even before they are conceived.

All the eggs a woman will carry form in her ovaries while she is a fetus in her mother's womb. In other words, when your mother was in your grandmother's womb, she carried, at that time, the egg that eventually became you. This means that a part of you, your mother, and your grandmother all shared the same biological environment. In a sense, you were exposed to the emotions and experiences of your grandmother even before you were conceived.

We don't just inherit our skin tone, the color of our eyes, or the broadness of our shoulders from our parents. We can also inherit our family's story, narrative, and views about life. Within our family tree, we may represent the green, budding leaves, but the very branches that pulsate life into us are grounded in our ancestors' deeply embedded roots. There's a part of them that continues to live on within us, whether we are aware of this or not. While it is a noble thing to carry on our family's legacy, there can also be unresolved conflict and baggage to sort through and clean up.

Transgenerational Trauma

Transgenerational trauma refers to a type of trauma that does not end with the individual. Instead, it lingers and gnaws through one generation to the next. Families with a history of unresolved trauma, depression, anxiety, and addiction may continue to pass maladaptive coping strategies and distrustful views of life onto future generations. In this way, one can repeat the same patterns and attitudes of former generations, regardless of whether they are healthy or not.

Transgenerational trauma isn't something that can be easily pinpointed. It is often covert, undefined, and subtle, surfacing through family patterns and forms of hypervigilance, mistrust, anxiety, depression, issues with self-esteem, and other negative coping strategies. We also know that trauma can have a significant affect on the immune system and may contribute to the generational curse of autoimmune diseases and other chronic illnesses.

While generational trauma can affect us all, those at the highest risk are in families that have experienced significant forms of abuse, neglect, torture, oppression, and racial disparities. Studies have explored the effects of transgenerational trauma on Holocaust survivors, the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide, the displacement of American Indians, and slavery of African Americans, among others (1). While some results are mixed on how trauma is manifested, many studies uncovered higher rates of anxiety, depression and PTSD in trauma survivors and their children.

What's less clear is how this trauma is actually transmitted from one generation to the next. Trauma itself can contribute to poverty, compromised parenting, diminished attachment, chronic stress, and unstable living environments, which can directly impact children and their development.

Elena Cherepanov, a trauma psychologist, examines how survivors' initial reactions to an event can affect future generations. When parents live under oppressive circumstances, for example, they can develop "survival messages" (e.g. "don't ask for help, it's dangerous") that may be taught and passed on from one generation to the next (1). While these messages may have helped protect earlier generations, they can cause later generations to have a fearful and distrustful outlook on life and towards helping professionals, further alienating the support that is needed to overcome the aftermath of the trauma itself. In addition, researchers are also exploring how the body itself may serve as a vehicle through epigenetics (2).

The Transmission of Resilience

Fortunately, trauma survivors and their descendants can help to reduce the impact of generational trauma on future generations. Just as traumatic experiences can be passed down from one generation to the next, so can the capacity for overcoming the trauma and building resilience.

For example, Braga et al. (2012) explored how open and loving communications styles between generations helped foster resilience and connectivity (3). When survivors of trauma openly tell their story and when descendants are able to deal with their parents' traumatic past, new lines of healing communication open between them.

Mark Wolynn, author of It Didn't Start With You, also encourages open dialogue between parents and children regarding the history of family trauma. He encourages parents to "Tell [your children] the terrible things that happened to you and whatever you know about what happened to your parents and your grandparents. They could be the unwitting recipients of painful feelings from the past. When you tell them what tragedies smolder in the family history, it can come as a great relief to them-especially if they make the connection that they've been carrying what belongs to you or to your parents or grandparents."

On the other hand, transgenerational trauma snowballs in families that do not speak of their traumatic experiences. Instead, these families keep the traumas a secret or continue to convey them in indirect or maladaptive ways.

Working Through the Trauma

If you are a parent, in addition to opening up communication with your children (and even grandchildren) about your lived experiences, it's also important to work through the generational traumas themselves. Trauma survivors can either repeat the cycle or generate a solution by creating a new narrative. This happens when family members speak up and work through any hurt, pain, or abuse from the past.

Children need to believe that they are safe and cared for by trusted adults. When core beliefs are muddled by their parents' mistrust, doubt, resentment and insecurity, children will learn to view the world from this perspective. This can hinder their ability to form secure and trusting relationships and develop a healthy sense of self-worth.

Here are some additional tips on how to break the cycle:

Open up a conversation with your parents about their lived experiences and how they coped .

Notice any embedded patterns, attitudes, or narratives from your family that you continue to portray.

Talk through these areas with a trusted friend, family member, or therapist and consider an alternative way of coping or communicating.

Cultivate a sense of empathy and compassion for your family and the struggles they endured. Despite their flaws, many our ancestors worked hard so that we could have a better life. This, too, should be celebrated and embraced.

Recreate a new narrative that you want your children to embody and believe about their family, themselves, and the world.

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Breaking the Chains of Generational Trauma

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We don't have to pass down everything we inherit

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Why "I don't see color" is a form of racism.

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Why "I don't see color" is a form of racism.

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Saying you don't see color stops us from having discussions that really matter. It stops us from being able to talk to one another about how difficult it can be to live in this country. When you tell me you don't see my color, you are basically telling me that you don't see a huge part of who I am and that doesn't help me. What I want you to say is, "I see your color. And it's beautiful." -Roni Faida, author

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Kawania Wooten's voice tightens when she describes the struggle she's having at the school her son attends. When his class created a timeline of civilization, Wooten saw the Greeks, the Romans and the Incas. But nothing was said about Africa, even though the class has several African American students.

Wooten, who is black, spoke to the school's director, a white woman - who insisted that the omission wasn't racially biased.

"Her first comment was, 'you know, we've just been following the curriculum. We're not talking about whether people are white or black,'" recalls Wooten, who lives in Bowie, Md. "I said that the children have eyes and they can see. And I'd like them to see that our culture was a strong, viable culture."

That kind of story brings a groan from Mark Benn, a psychologist and adjunct professor at Colorado State University. He hears similar tales whenever he delivers lectures about race relations.

Such incidents are examples of racial "colorblindness" - the idea that ignoring or overlooking racial and ethnic differences promotes racial harmony.

Trainers and facilitators say colorblindness does just the opposite: folks who enjoy racial privilege are closing their eyes to the experiences of others.

"It benefits me not to pay attention," says Benn, who is white. "I never have to question whether or not my race is being held in question when I apply for a job. It benefits me not to question that (because) it makes it look like I got here on my own."

Paying attention to the cultural experience of students is becoming increasingly important, given the differences between the demographics of American students and their teachers.

According to reports from the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly 80 percent of American teachers are white, while children of color make up more than 40 percent of the student body.

As the nation's demographics shift, the sight of a white teacher leaning over the desk of a brown or black student is likely become more and more common. In order to be effective, teachers will have to learn about the cultural experiences of their students, while using these experiences as a foundation for teaching. The approach is called culturally relevant pedagogy.

But that is hard to do if a teacher doesn't see differences as valuable. That means the blinders have to come off, says Randy Ross, a senior equity specialist at the New England Equity Assistance Center, a program of Brown University's Education Alliance. Ross facilitates workshops on racism and culturally responsive teaching. And in her experience, white people have the hardest time opening their eyes.

"I have never heard a teacher of color say 'I don't see color," Ross says. "There may be issues of cultural competence [among teachers of color], but colorblindness is not one of them. The core of 'I don't see color,' is 'I don't see my own color, I don't see difference because my race and culture is the center of the universe.'"

Such tunnel vision is the reason a teacher can omit Africa from a timeline of world civilizations, Ross says. Still, she cautions, the flaws of the colorblind approach run deeper than curriculum.

Failure to see and acknowledge racial differences makes it difficult to recognize the unconscious biases everyone has. Those biases can taint a teacher's expectations of a student's ability and negatively influence a student's performance. Study after study has shown that low teacher expectations are harmful to students from socially stigmatized groups.

In her article "Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for the Nineties and Beyond", Ana Maria Villegas pointed out that ignorance of cultural differences could lead teachers to "underestimate the true academic potential" of minority students.

"Teachers' judgments on students' potential have profound and long-lasting effects on students' lives," Villegas wrote. "For minority children in particular, such judgments or misjudgments may prove costly...

"The evidence is overwhelming. When compared to their 'high-ability' peers, 'low-ability' students are called on less often in class, given less time to respond, praised less frequently...and prompted less often in the case of incorrect responses."

Ross says a teacher who professes to be "colorblind" is not going to understand how unconscious biases can influence expectations, actions, and even the way a teacher addresses students of color.

After talking to her son's teacher, Kawania Wooten wondered whether her son was being harmed in just that way.

She'd asked for advice on helping the youngster complete a difficult project. Instead, the teacher immediately offered to give him easier work. Just as quickly, Wooten refused. Then she explained the racial subtext of the exchange: the white teacher doubted the intelligence of an African American child.

"I heard that expectations of my son were low," Wooten says.

Such misunderstandings could be avoided, she believes, if the teacher learned some things about African American culture.

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Kawania Wooten's voice tightens when she describes the struggle she's having at the school her son attends. When his class created a timeline of civilization, Wooten saw the Greeks, the Romans and the Incas. But nothing was said about Africa, even though the class has several African American students.

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Identify Your Own Implicit/Explicit Bias

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Identify Your Own Implicit/Explicit Bias

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“Recognizing that you have a bias and blind spots is essential to personal growth.” ― Mikaela Kiner, Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace

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We all have implicit biases. So what can we do about it? | Dushaw Hockett | TEDxMidAtlanticSalon

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OOPS AND OUCH - A POSSIBLE TOOL FOR COMBATING RACIAL TENSION

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OOPS AND OUCH - A POSSIBLE TOOL FOR COMBATING RACIAL TENSION

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Using ouch and oops • You can use this as a ground rule in spaces you have authority within. • Say ouch if someone says something that hurts — provide the space to own your feelings. • Say oops and genuinely apologize for the ways your intention did not match your impact. • Follow up your apology with some research! The person you hurt might not feel like explaining why in that moment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t find a better way to phrase things

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The 5 R's of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - by LaTonya Jackson

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The 5 R's of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - by LaTonya Jackson

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R#1: Real Conversations
R#2: Representation
R#3: Respectful Relationships
R#4: Research
R#5: Results