By Kali Holloway / AlterNet February 7, 2018, 4:19 PM GMT


While Donald Trump’s behavior has inspired an endless amount of speculation about his mental health (or mental illness, depending on who’s talking), there has been less discussion about the impact of his presidency on our collective mental states. Even as Trump has seemed to wage a sort of psychic war on black and brown communities, America’s psychological organizations have largely remained silent about the potential mental consequences of those attacks.

Theopia Jackson, who heads up clinical psychology at Saybrook University in California, has spent more than three decades pushing the psychological field to recognize and address the ways our politics and mental health are intertwined. In late January, the Association of Black Psychologists, of which Jackson is president-elect, published an open letter titled “We Can No Longer Be Silent: Psychological Damage By President Trump.” The missive presented a cursory review of recent Trump insults to black and brown populations the world over, from the infamous “sh*thole” remark leveled against an entire continent to the implication that Puerto Rican hurricane survivors are lazy for requesting help, and arrived at the only reasonable conclusion.

“Not only do these statements denigrate the humanity of the citizens of these countries,” the organization noted, “they are psychological assaults to our sense of wholeness and wellbeing….While we fully recognize that President Trump does not have the courage or character to apologize for these inflammatory remarks, which is a behavioral stance similar to a psychopath, our continued silence would be enabling and complicit in the psychological damage historically associated with African dehumanization and destruction.”

Having worked in multiple areas of psychology, from private practice to pediatrics to academia, Theopia Jackson is an expert in trauma, how it impacts our lives and how we grapple with its long-term affects. I spoke with her about the trauma Trump creates, how people of color can push back and the role of cognitive dissonance in the last election.

https://www.alternet.org/trump-trauma/how-trump-trauma-resurrecting-jim-crow-era

Over a barbecue grill last summer in a park in Springfield, Missouri, Jonathan Herbert and his friend Marlin Barber fell to ruminating about the challenges they faced as African Americans when driving across the country.

Barber, who teaches history at Missouri State University, was planning a road trip to Arkansas with his white wife and two young children, and was apprehensive about what they might encounter in the rural backwaters. Herbert had an idea – why not float the dilemma to friends on Facebook and see what came back?

“Sadly, it’s 2017,” Herbert went ahead and posted, “and we still have to consider the racial climate of some of the most beautiful places in this country before we decide to vacation there with our families.”

The comment sparked intense Facebook reaction. A black friend divulged the fact that he had been called the N-word in Oklahoma and had run into the KKK in Texas. “I remember not taking our kids through parts of Missouri or Arkansas out of fear,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/11/green-book-facebook-black-motorists-racist-america-road-trip-pitstops-safe?CMP=share_btn_tw