Cultural Black Trauma
Recently, the deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Gardener, and Mike Brown, all at the hands of police officers, have sparked national protests and conversations around state sanctioned violence and police brutality, particularly in Black communities. An underlying component in these discussions and protests has been that of mourning, with discussions and protests often acting as physical spaces of cultural Black trauma and collective memory. Cultural Black trauma relies on the historical violence that has affected Black people in the United States, and how it impacts Black people when this violence is continuously acted upon. Cultural Black trauma acts as a site of mourning and healing for Black individuals. Though there are not many anthropological
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Neil Smelser defines cultural trauma as “a memory accepted and publicly given credence by a relevant membership group and evoking an event or situation which is (a) laden with negative affect, (b) represented as indelible, and (c) regarded as threatening a society’s existence or violating one or more of its fundamental cultural presuppositions.”(Eyerman 2001: 2) Much of the work done related to cultural trauma and the Black American experience has been rooted in the days of slavery, which serves as a public memory for many Black Americans. While this public memory has rooted many Black American experiences, cultural trauma of Black Americans can be rooted in more current contexts. The three articles mentioned above find a way to root themselves in structures similar to that of slavery—state violence—while basing themselves in more recent forms it. In Black Queer Life, Shaka McGlotten focuses on how the different interpretations Black queerness, including violence, help define it. The Sojourner Syndrome looks at the lives of Black women in the Bluff, a poor black neighborhood in Atlanta, to try to understand how structural systems, not only individual choices, affect their HIV rates. We All Are Oscar Grant explores the ways that public mourning occurs within a system that supports state-sanctioned violence. These articles, though focusing on different things, incorporate the use of cultural
Neil Smelser defines cultural trauma as “a memory accepted and publicly given credence by a relevant membership group and evoking an event or situation which is (a) laden with negative affect, (b) represented as indelible, and (c) regarded as threatening a society’s existence or violating one or more of its fundamental cultural presuppositions.”(Eyerman 2001: 2) Much of the work done related to cultural trauma and the Black American experience has been rooted in the days of slavery, which serves as a public memory for many Black Americans. While this public memory has rooted many Black American experiences, cultural trauma of Black Americans can be rooted in more current contexts. The three articles mentioned above find a way to root themselves in structures similar to that of slavery—state violence—while basing themselves in more recent forms it. In Black Queer Life, Shaka McGlotten focuses on how the different interpretations Black queerness, including violence, help define it. The Sojourner Syndrome looks at the lives of Black women in the Bluff, a poor black neighborhood in Atlanta, to try to understand how structural systems, not only individual choices, affect their HIV rates. We All Are Oscar Grant explores the ways that public mourning occurs within a system that supports state-sanctioned violence. These articles, though focusing on different things, incorporate the use of cultural