[3] As such, research indicates that race-based traumatic stress can be demonstrated as a number of negative outcomes, including psychopathological symptoms, social inequities, and internalized racial oppression.
Through direct experience from peers and/or authority figures, as well as indirectly through media exposure and/or bearing witness to the racial discrimination of their parents, research suggests children of color are particularly vulnerable to race-based traumatic stress.
[5] Despite the popular understanding that race is a socially-based construct, research indicates that it has critical social implications and plays a role in the way individuals navigate society.
Institutional racial discrimination occurs at the hands of trusted or imperative social structures of power in society that for example, may withhold services or resources from people of color.
In contrast, covert racial discrimination, often termed microaggressions, often come in the form of subtle messages, whether intentional or not, and demonstrate malicious, invalidating, or disparaging meaning for people of color.
Racial discrimination at the institutional level has been found to result in social inequities for people of color such as higher rates of incarceration, health disparities, and educational difficulties.
[1] Children are particularly vulnerable to the detrimental effects of race-based traumatic stress, as research indicates that oftentimes they lack the coping strategies needed to overcome these experiences.
In addition to experiences with peers, children can be targeted by negative interactions with authority figures such as teachers or school staff questioning their capabilities or making verbalizations discouraging their goals.
Individuals choose one of these experiences and address questions related to feelings after the event, which fall within the following subscales: Anger, Depression, Intrusion, Hypervigilance, Physical, Low self-esteem, and Avoidance.
[2] The little research on race-based traumatic stress suggests that treatment can focus on the symptoms associated with the experiences such as hyperarousal, low self-esteem, hyper vigilance, substance use, and engagement in risky-behavior.
[9] While seeking treatment from a mental health professional is an option, other research highlights racial socialization which is a concept that can be used by individuals to teach their children to cope with race-based stress.