Understanding and addressing racial stress and trauma in schools: A pathway toward resistance and healing

Abstract

Youth of color are disproportionately impacted by stressful and traumatic life events, including race‐based experiences, which are linked to negative consequences. School is a salient context where youth encounter, witness, and process racial stress and trauma (RST). However, RST is often overlooked within general school‐based trauma models. Thus, we propose the School Trauma and Racial Stress (STARS) blueprint, focused on RST across three levels of the school ecology. By building upon and expanding the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration recommendations regarding trauma‐informed approaches (2014), the STARS blueprint applies a multilevel approach to acknowledging and addressing RST within schools. This integrated framework is a call to action across the school ecology, with the goal to increase recognition of RST within school‐based trauma‐informed approaches and to build racial equity and healing for students of color in K‐12 schools. Practical applications for schools are discussed.

ARCCH Model of Resilience: A Flexible Multisystemic Resilience Framework

“…In the ARCCH Model of Resilience, we recognize the numerous experiences (e.g., neglect, emotional abuse, observing interpersonal violence, parental substance abuse) that can be characterized as traumatic and at the same time—until the recent past—often went underrecognized and uncategorized as an adverse child experience and/or a traumatic experience rather than as structural, contextual, and historical experiences (e.g., cultural events; [ 5 , 26 , 61 ]. Consequently, the currently employed assessments and interventions may not adequately address the adversity and trauma experienced among racially diverse families, communities, and organizations (e.g., discrimination, institutional racism, community violence; [ 61 ]).…”

“…Although systems (families, communities, schools, and organizations) can induce trauma, they also can be positive and promote resilience [ 26 , 62 ]. Trauma and systems of oppression work in concert and thus organizations cannot be trauma-informed without a commitment to culture, equity, and social and racial justice [ 62 ].…”

“…The recent COVID-19 pandemic has exposed—once again—how racial and cultural identities and cultural contexts (risk prone ecological contexts) are implicated in differential treatment experienced by racial, ethnic, and language minorities among other populations [ 6 , 8 ]. Given that ACEs and other traumatic experiences disproportionately impact racial minority populations, this lack of attention to culture is a significant gap in the empirical, theoretical, and clinical literature; in turn, there is also a gap in what is known about what works and the number of available empirically supported, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed models [ 25 , 26 ]. What is established in the accumulated literature—composed of primarily White American samples—is how attachment, regulation, and competence are factors that can be affected by trauma and how they can be promotive factors for resilience.…”

“…Scrine [ 29 ] and others [ 26 , 30 ] highlight the importance of the cultural context (ecological, sociopolitical, organizational). In most cases, a consideration of cultural context is important because many current systems and contexts in the United States can be both trauma producing and trauma reducing [ 26 , 30 ].…”

“…Scrine [ 29 ] and others [ 26 , 30 ] highlight the importance of the cultural context (ecological, sociopolitical, organizational). In most cases, a consideration of cultural context is important because many current systems and contexts in the United States can be both trauma producing and trauma reducing [ 26 , 30 ]. Being trauma-informed requires a consideration of how the system and organization in which the model is being employed (e.g., ARCCH Model of Resilience) may be trauma producing (see [ 28 , 31 ]).…”