Commentaries by Lance Hill

April 2008
By Lance Hill
 

Lately, I have been studying clinical approaches to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), particularly Trauma-Focus and Present-Centered Group theories, along with the newer neurobiological theories of trauma stress.  I think it can be useful to view trauma-focus theories, which are the most effective approaches, as a metaphor for community-based racial healing and reconciliation.
  
The popular theory that we heal and reconcile by forgetting the past and working together on common needs finds little support in the literature on healing trauma.  Similar to trauma victims, people in general find it painful and anxiety-provoking to discuss current and past racial injustices.  These dialogues in the past have been rife with uncomfortable emotions of guilt, fear, and anger.  Like trauma victims, we engage in avoidance behaviors to minimize the emotional discomfort of dialogue on past injustices and disparities and our avoidance is rewarded by relief from distress.
 
So there are short-term benefits to avoidance when we organize elite-based interracial dialogues that are narrowly defined to eliminate conflict.  But avoidance means increasingly avoiding any cues or situations that evoke the pain and anxiety associated with the past.  The cues, in the context of community dialogues, may be racially divisive issues or simply people who need to articulate their victimization.  Avoiding these interactions leads to increasing isolation from those who have real grievances.  In the end, we come to believe that open and honest community dialogues are inherently unsafe and we doubt our own competence to engage in conflict and negotiate it successfully.
 

But the conditions that created emotional discomfort in interracial dialogues (i.e. conflicts over real inequalities and injustices) constantly re-assert themselves.  Our avoidance response deprives us the opportunity to learn the emotional and social competencies to negotiate our differencesto accept that change requires some pain and anxiety; to learn how to acknowledge injustices practice forgiveness.  Avoidance means that underlying problems of distrust and fear are never solved and increasingly we isolate ourselves and develop maladaptive behaviors.
 
We cannot heal as a community if we ignore what research tells us is necessary to heal as individuals.  We will fall into a pseudo-mutualism in which we pretend we all have suffered in the same way so that we can deny the special claims or special needs of others.  Real healing means that we will become more uncomfortable as we confront the past; that things will get worse before they get better.  But learning to cope with a measure of the emotional pain and anxiety gives us confidence that we can live together in the future and successfully negotiate our differences.  The rewards of successful communicational trusting and productive communitywill reinforce our new behavior.  With each success, we learn that our cognitionsour fears and self-doubtsare baseless. 
 

Community healing is based on defining a shared truth about the past and present; and truth is a product of dialogue.  “It takes two to speak the truth,” said Henry David Thoreau, “one to speak, the other to hear.”

Lance Hill is Executive Director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University and Author of The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement.   Permission is granted to reprint and reproduce this commentary.  To subscribe to future commentaries, just google for “Commentaries by Lance Hill.” He can be reached at Lhill@tulane.edu