Black Men and Racial Trauma

by Yamonte Cooper

This volume comprehensively addresses racial trauma from a clinical lens, equipping mental health professionals across all disciplines to be culturally responsive when serving Black men. Written using a transdisciplinary approach, Yamonte Cooper presents a Unified Theory of Racism (UTR), Integrated Model of Racial Trauma (IMRT), Transgenerational Trauma Points (TTP), Plantation Politics, Black Male Negation (BMN), and Race-Based Shame (RBS) to fill a critical and urgent void in the mental health field and emerging scholarship on racial trauma. Chapters begin with specific definitions of racism before exploring specific challenges that Black men face, such as racial discrimination and health, trauma, criminalization, economic deprivation, anti-Black misandry, and culturally-specific stressors, emotions, such as shame and anger, and coping mechanisms that these men utilize. After articulating the racial trauma of Black men in a comprehensive manner, the book provides insight into what responsive care looks like as well as clinical interventions that can inform treatment approaches. This book is invaluable reading for all established and training mental health clinicians that work with Black men, such as psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, counselors, and psychiatrists.

314 pages, Paperback

Published February 23, 2024

About the author

Dr. Yamonte Cooper is a nationally recognized trauma and relationship expert with extensive experience in couples therapy, trauma, and sexual health. He serves as the Clinical Director of the West Coast Sex Therapy Center, is a Professor of Counseling and adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, and is a Certified Sex Therapist Supervisor (CST-S).

Dr. Cooper is the author of Black Men and Racial Trauma: Impacts, Disparities, and Interventions, co-editor of Black Couples Therapy: Clinical Theory and Practice, and editor of the forthcoming book Black Male Sexuality: Race, Genre, and Class (Cambridge University Press). As a Fulbright scholar, he has worked internationally to exchange best practices in career development.

Reviews

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book to everyone, especially those early in their antiracist and allyship journeys. Cooper goes over so much and so succinctly too, which can be hard with texts that lean more towards the academic side.

Cooper goes over:

definitions of: race, prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, oppression, white, whiteness, white privilege, white supremacy, racism, individual racism, vicarious racism, scientific racism, cultural racism, traditional racism, color-blind racism/ideology, anti-Black racism, anti-Black misandry, symbolic racism, aversive racism, commodity racism (cultural appropriation) and digital blackface, racial microaggressions, implicit/unconscious bias, institutional racism, structural racism, patriarchy
social dominance theory (SDT) and the subordinate male target hypothesis (SMTH)
racial battle fatigue framework
The Tuskegee Experiment (if you didn't already know about this)
Black men and acute stress disorder (ASD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex trauma, complex PTSD
distinctions between racial discrimination (avoidant racism), racial harassment (hostile racism), and discriminatory harassment (aversive-hostile racism)
neo-slavery (a continuation of the enslavement of Black Americans and racial caste under the illusion that slavery has been abolished)
the history of policing in America & carceral state violence: racial surveillance (profiling), police brutality and the war on crime
employment, income/wages, wealth/lineage gap of America, redlining, urban renewal, racial-residential segregation, gentrification
Black masculinity, intersectionality and feminism with regards to Black men; how Black men navigate double-consciousness & are unable to exhibit rage or anger, and must always "mask"
mortality rates, suicide, dehumanization, sexual victimization, phallicism, intimate partner violence (IPV)
coping mechanisms and interventions (macro-interventions, like reparations & transitional justice; micro-interventions like racial realism, coping strategies/groups)


Cooper always ends the chapter with a section on clinical implications, which speaks to mental health practitioners, but can be helpful for anyone to consider. Cooper reminds clinicians to consider the following when providing responsive care and clinical interventions: unified theory of racism (UTR), integrated model of racial trauma (IMRT), transgenerational trauma points (TTP), plantation politics, Black male negation (BMN), and race-based shame (RBS).

I appreciated that Cooper recognized that even alongside our own work of being allies in showing up for and making space for Black men, it also requires "long term robust and transformative public policy that examines the structural and intentional processes generating racial hierarchy and caste. A move toward interventions (reparations, redistribution of wealth, etc.) on a national level is imperative." (233)