The Discriminatory Gesture: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of Posttraumatic Reactions to Incidents of Racial Discrimination

Abstract

This article provides a basic psychological conceptualization of racial trauma. It considers how seemingly minor instances of bias or discrimination can lead to posttraumatic reactions, the proportions of which can be hard to understand from the outside. I propose to describe this non-extraordinary event of racially biased treatment as the discriminatory gesture in order to emphasize its fluidity and pervasiveness as an interpersonal event. Being the subject of a discriminatory gesture represents a unique source of trauma, particularly because it derives its destructive power from its occurrence in a wider contemporary context of pervasive racism, white supremacy, and the historical context of slavery.

Keywords:

• discriminatory gesture
• white supremacy
• racism
• trauma
• projective identification

Notes

1 I am a multiracial person. My father was African‐American, and some of our ancestors were Caribbean and some were native American Indian; my mother was eastern European Jewish, with immigrant parents from Russia and Poland. I identify as African‐American, and also as (ethnically) Jewish, black and white, and also mixed. In my practice as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, I have regularly been sought out by people of many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but particularly people of African American descent. These people have often viewed my racial‐ethnic background as relevant to their ability to be open with me.

2 These following two case examples are presented verbatim from my forthcoming book chapter (Hart, in press).

3 From Hart (in press).