The main objective of this article is to introduce and examine whiteness as a source of trauma for Black people. We explore Black psychology scholarship to conceptually ground whiteness as the impetus for racism, while identifying it as an interpersonal, psychosocial, and contextual phenomenon that informs the race-based traumatic experiences of Black people. The primary factors constituting whiteness are ethnocentric monoculturalism, White standardization, ontological expansiveness, White emotions, attitudes, reactions to race, and White privilege. While racism operates through oppression and exclusion to produce trauma among Black people, we argue that whiteness operates similarly to produce race-based traumatic stress. With this premise, we offer and explain a conceptual model to promote empirical research that identifies and operationalizes whiteness and its components as observable contributors to the traumatic experiences of Black persons.

Disruptive classroom behaviors are a major schooling dilemma in urban schools. While several contextual and motivational factors have been statistically associated with disruptive classroom behaviors, one overlooked factor has been home-school dissonance. The current study examined the relationship between 260 middle school students’ reports of perceived home-school dissonance, several motivational antecedents of academic performance, and disruptive classroom behaviors. Six hundred sixty middle school students completed six subscales of the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS), including the Home-School Dissonance subscale, Mastery Goal, Performance Approach, and Performance Avoidance Goal Orientations, and the Disruptive Classroom Behavior subscales. Home-school dissonance scores were significantly associated with lower mastery goal orientation and lower academic efficacy scores. Home-school dissonance scores were also significantly associated with higher disruptive classroom behavior scores and higher performance approach and performance avoidance goal orientation scores. In addition, structural equation modeling with multiple mediators showed that mastery goal orientation and performance approach goal orientation mediated the relationship between home-school dissonance and disruptive classroom behavior.

Trends of racial disparities continue to persist across a variety of rehabilitation domains (e.g., acceptance rates, types of services offered, rehabilitation outcomes). African Americans consistently have poorer rehabilitation outcomes when compared to their White counterparts. Scholars have identified issues of racial bias in clinical judgment within cross-racial client-counselor relationships as a likely central factor contributing to this trend. The strength of the working alliance between counselor and client has been shown to be predictive of positive client outcomes. Factors within the helping relationship, such as color-blind attitudes and racial microaggressions, which have been shown to erode the alliance with African American clients, are discussed, as well as the use of broaching strategies to directly address the issue of race with clients as a means of strengthening the working alliance.

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