Community Healing and Resistance Through Storytelling: A Framework to Address Racial Trauma in Africana Communities

Abstract

<jats:p> Racial trauma, an ongoing consequence of historical trauma, has deleterious effects on the well-being of Africana communities. The psychological literature primarily reflects individual processes in the relationship between racial trauma and healing. Going beyond individualistic approaches, we present a community healing framework informed by multidisciplinary scholarship: Community Healing and Resistance Through Storytelling ( C-HeARTS). Three major components of the framework are delineated: (a) justice as both a condition of and an outcome of community healing; (b) culturally syntonic processes (i.e., storytelling and resistance) that direct the renarrating of trauma and act as conduits for transformation; and (c) psychological dimensions (i.e., connectedness, collective memory, and critical consciousness) that promote justice-informed outcomes. In the C-HeARTS framework, community is advanced as an agent of change while centering justice and the important role of cultural practices to facilitate community healing. </jats:p>

Future Directions for Vaccinating Children against the American Endemic: Treating Racism as a Virus

“…Furthermore, it is important to understand that there is an interplay between the group-based knowledge of racism's health impacts as well as the idiosyncratic impact of racism on a child's life. Following a child's endorsement of racial stress via assessment tools, interventions must avoid oversimplifying the narrative of racism's impact and draw upon existing theoretical frameworks for understanding the effects of racial stress DeLapp & Williams, 2019) and trauma (Chioneso et al, 2020;Metzger et al, 2021;Saleem et al, 2020) on child mental health. For example, Chioneso et al (2020) propose the Community Healing and Resistance Through Storytelling (C-HeARTS) framework in which "community is advanced as an agent of change while centering justice and the important role of culture to facilitate community healing" (p. 96).…”

“…Following a child's endorsement of racial stress via assessment tools, interventions must avoid oversimplifying the narrative of racism's impact and draw upon existing theoretical frameworks for understanding the effects of racial stress DeLapp & Williams, 2019) and trauma (Chioneso et al, 2020;Metzger et al, 2021;Saleem et al, 2020) on child mental health. For example, Chioneso et al (2020) propose the Community Healing and Resistance Through Storytelling (C-HeARTS) framework in which "community is advanced as an agent of change while centering justice and the important role of culture to facilitate community healing" (p. 96). Within the C-HeARTS framework, individual and communitywide storytelling is utilized as a means of validating emotional reactions to one's narrative, connecting one's narrative to a historically accurate community narrative, and empowering individuals and their communities to intervene at the systems-level by advocating for their needs.…”

Pandemic precarity and everyday disparity: gendered housing needs in North America

“…The role of informal networks in the lives of women and their families need to be much better understood, and engaged research must be conducted in collaboration with tenants living in public housing in Canada and with women of color and Indigenous communities in the United States; too often those with lived experience, especially black mothers, are distant objects of research rather than important collaborators and contributors (Mendenhall et al, 2017). Additional and innovative, holistic research is also needed on the health and well-being of lower-income women, and models that look at health and healing from a community perspective are particularly important (Chioneso et al, 2020;Mendenhall et al, 2017). Finally, housing initiatives designed for diverse women and their families should continue to be evaluated in order to better understand and fine-tune service provision, governance mechanisms and housing design.…”

“…In addition, concepts of healing and well-being are often siloed and medicalized. As Chioneso et al (2020) point out, "community healing" is rarely explored as an agent for improved health and wellbeing.…”

Shards from the glass ceiling: Deconstructing marginalizing systems in relation to critical consciousness development

“…Situated in over 300 years of state‐sanctioned violence, mounting national pressure to address anti‐Black racism, and the publicized deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Dominique Fells, Rayshard Brooks, and many others, universities are rushing to engage in a range of efforts to address racism including new courses, reviewing university police funding, and developing new committees focused on “diversity and inclusion.” Yet, as this case study illustrates, reactions within higher education surrounding diversity need to be critically interrogated prior to rushing towards action. Institutional responses to racial injustices must be informed, heeding suggestions from prior work in CC (Godfrey et al, 2019), liberation psychology (Chioneso et al, 2020), critical community psychology (Kagan et al, 2019), sociology (Williams, 2012), and critical race theory (Jones & Reddick, 2017).…”