ABSTRACT
The unresolved generational trauma among African Americans, and Black boys in particular, is a function of an unmourned, original, collective, historical trauma, as well as the episodic, persistent, terroristic, and oppressive social assault that targeted the Black community at later periods in American history. In addition to their actual threat to life and limb, later contemporary experiences, as discussed here, constitute an unconscious agitation or reawakening of unmetabolized earlier trauma, generating a sense of dis-ease and a breeding ground for a number of dissociated responses toward off an impending sense of doom, loss, humiliation, failure, and a disconnect from society. It is essential that we begin to formulate, integrate, and make use of the development and trauma of Black boyhood in its theory and in its clinical practice. Until we do this, our attempts to bring more African American men into the field, our attempts to help the thousands of young men who suffer in our communities and jails, and our attempts to fulfill our social responsibility to help heal racism in American society will be doomed.
