Understanding Cultural Trauma

• In Event: 519 - Section on Race, Class and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 07. Perspectives Through History and Memory

Abstract

This project results from a multiyear research project to document the racial landscape of Nacogdoches, Texas fifty years after integration. A forthcoming book, Nacogdoches: Integration and Segregation, Then and Now edited by Michelle Williams and Brandon Fox examines the experience of African Americans both historical and current to see what progress, if any has been made since local schools were integrated in 1969. This essay takes a theoretical approach to understanding current racial inequality arguing that at least in part it stems from cultural trauma, the breaking and rebreaking of African American culture over the last 300 years of Nacogdoches’ existence. The current literature about cultural trauma is examined and a theory of cultural trauma is provided that is based upon the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz.

Authors

• Jerry L. Williams, Stephen F. Austin State University

• Michelle Williams, Stephen F. Austin State University