This essay draws upon race theory, psychoanalysis, and pastoral care to address the remnants of past and current racial trauma in the African American psyche. The metaphor of "traces on the blackboard" is the chief means by which I attempt to delineate how African Americans, although experiencing new echelons of social progress, are still struggling to eliminate the distorted models of self-identification which were promulgated by the dominant culture. I also discuss the failure of psychodynamic psychotherapies to address the traces of racism, make proposals for how they may go about identifying these traces, and explore the role that pastoral care and, in particular, pastoral counseling may play in enervating these traces.During my early twenties, I earned a living teaching at a private school located in East Orange, New Jersey. As an educational institution located in the middle of a deteriorating urban setting, the school ministered to a unique student body, comprised of toddlers, children, and young teens. The parents of these students believed that this quasi-sequestered environment would protect their young sons and daughters from the harmful environment beyond the school's walls. Needless to say, the task of teaching students the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic, although a challenge in and of itself, was secondary to the task of addressing the emotional distresses that many students faced on a daily basis. There were countless stories students who, as children, had been physically abused by their parents (or other trusted loved ones); who could not concentrate on their schoolwork because they hadn't eaten a meal since the prior day; and, above all, the prevalence of low

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This article examines the role of sonship in the psychological and spiritual development of men. In using the methodology of psychobiography, I explore the life history of Martin Luther King, Jr. to analyze his search for and recovery of sonship. I propose that sonship helps men rebel against and, in the end, overcome the feelings of inadequacy that are experienced in their struggles to achieve manhood, particularly within the father-son dyad. The scholarship of pastoral theologian Donald Capps is instructive in this regard, in that he suggests that sons should be allowed to search for a male figure, a father-substitute, who can affirm, not disdain or reject, this state of sonship. In the end, what is often viewed as a negative act of regression-i.e., the recovery of and return to sonship-is recognized instead as a positive one that assists a man in his journey toward wholeness.

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