Two years after Floyd murder, racial trauma permeates US

Black Men Heal co-founder Zakia Williams was deeply moved as she watched a young Black man become emotional while speaking about the mental health toll the past few years have taken on him. This “impact of vicarious racism certainly has contributed to worsening mental health states, specifically within the Black community.” The past two years have been particularly traumatizing for Black Americans as the coronavirus pandemic cut a devastating swath through their communities, taking the lives of elders, community pillars and loved ones across the nation. “And the greater Black community, when you’re looking at how disproportionate the impact was to our mental health, our financial well-being and the loved ones who are no longer here, it’s really hard for us to move forward.” A collective sense of trauma resurfaced again on May 14 when 10 Black people were killed by a white supremacist in body armor targeting shoppers and workers at the Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York. Black Men Heal was launched in 2018 as a solution to the nation’s “broken, inequitable mental health care system” that has historically failed to center the needs of Black Americans and other people of color, group leaders say. And I think that it has really taken a toll on everyday citizens and our Black mental health workers, who are grieving and who are angry and who are feeling all the things that we are feeling.” Brown, whose group was formed after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to strategize ways to abolish racist systems and practices, said real change won’t come until the nation truly dismantles the white supremacy and racism that has been allowed to traumatize and terrorize Black people throughout history.