By Jamie D. Aten, Psychology Today, August 13, 2020
Jamie Aten: How did you first get interested in this topic?
Sabrina Liu & Sheila Modir: While attending graduate school together, the two of us quickly bonded as colleagues and friends over our shared interest in studying the impact of racism and trauma. As two women of color, we also connected over our personal experiences of racism and discrimination, recognizing that we could use our unique perspectives to collaborate on ways to improve outcomes for those with similar experiences. Dr. Liu’s research has examined youth risk and resilience to different types of adversity, including racism, that occurs across socioecological levels. Dr. Modir’s research has focused on discrimination experiences that the Middle Eastern American community has experienced across socioecological domains, including societal, community, relational, and individual levels. Our shared personal and research interests led us to write this commentary with the goal of raising awareness amongst our colleagues and the broader public, offering resources and insight from the field of psychology.
JA: What was the focus of your commentary?
SL & SM: In our commentary, we combine current COVID-19-related news with psychological theory and evidence to illustrate how the pandemic is driving individual, cultural, and structural racism against communities of color in the U.S. Specifically, we discuss the impact on three populations that are disproportionately impacted: Asian, Black, and Latinx communities. Recognizing that the breadth and pace of the news coverage coupled with the immediate impacts of the pandemic could be overwhelming, we attempted to pull the pieces related to racism, trauma, and health together through a psychological lens. In doing so, we wanted to clarify how insidious traumatic racism can be toward health and the ways it uniquely impacts different populations. We also wanted to remind mental health professionals of the important role they can play and specific actions they can take to mitigate and heal racial trauma across communities of color. Writing this paper as the pandemic continued to unfold was a unique experience for us as each day that passed laid bare new facts, figures, challenges, and stories of how COVID-19 was contributing to racial trauma across the country.
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