ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the impact of racism and the reemerging ways in which racism exists. Encounters or experiences of racial harassment involve thoughts, behaviors, actions, feelings, or policies and procedures that have strong hostile elements intended to create distance among racial group members after a person of color has gained entry into an environment from which he or she was once excluded. The chapter explains racial hate symbols and explores the historical significance of these symbols. Racial harassment is a lingering form of historical racism. One way that racial harassment is practiced is through the use of racial hate symbols. These symbols reflect hostile, violent, degrading, intimidating, or offensive racist acts against African Americans, some of which trigger images of death. Encounters with racial harassment can produce nonpathological, race-based traumatic stress injury, a condition that involves emotional or physical pain or the threat of physical and emotional pain.
