This paper explores whether white Americans experience moral distress or injury (VanderWeele et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1–11, 2025) by participating in the historical construction and maintenance of a white supremacist society. The authors suggest that witnessing or perpetrating racist incidents could potentially prove to be morally distressful or injurious. If so, we consider how white Americans might reconcile their race-based moral injury through embodied rituals of lament and through interrogating the causes of suffering. Doehring and Cowen (2025) propose a spiritually respectful process of lamentation for those experiencing spiritual struggles and moral distress arising from witnessing climate crises. They define moral distress and injury using VanderWeele et al.’s, Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1–11 (2025) moral trauma spectrum, which ranges from moral distress to moral injury across roles of witnessing, perpetrating, and being harmed. We review the literature on moral injury and then on racial trauma and find that the extant research on moral distress and injury and racial trauma seems to indicate the possibility of race-based moral distress and injury within white Americans. We then theorize white moral distress and injury, which serves as the paper’s argumentative hinge, before reviewing practices and principles for processing trauma that may successively inform a framework for addressing hypothetical white moral distress and injury. The conclusion addresses Christian pastoral implications and offers suggestions for further research.
