Disrupting Three Prominent Racialized Trauma Tropes

Abstract

School-based actors can uphold racialized systems and White supremacy through the racialized youth trauma narratives they reproduce. With respect to the growing movement to better support trauma-exposed youth inside school contexts, it is imperative that school-based actors avoid perpetuating deficit views of youth of color, who are disproportionately overexposed to traumatic experiences. Drawing on the youth trauma literature and personal experiences with educators, this essay outlines three common trauma tropes: (a) the hearing gunshots trope, (b) the socioeconomic myth trope, and (c) the what happened to them trope. These narratives are viewed as tropes because they function as rhetorical tools that ignite White-racialized ideological responses and perpetuate the racial status quo. In closing, the author shares four recommendations to better support trauma-exposed youth and provides empirical pathways for researchers to further study the race-trauma nexus.