White Supremacy, Overcoming a Legacy of Cognitive Dissonance, and Unresolved Trauma

This chapter aims to identify and understand how radicalized behavior, being a by-product of white supremacy, is inculcated in individuals through continued cognitive dissonance and unresolved trauma. The avoidance of confronting uncomfortable emotions that comes with discussing this nation’s racialized history is symptomatic of an internal impairment. Subsequently, the legacy of a nation steeped in racialized exploitation and extermination of BIPOC individuals has dire consequences that are negatively apparent in educational outcomes, mental health, health care, employment, housing, law enforcement, and so many other aspects of life. Symptoms of white supremacy abound. From racial polarization to discrimination, all aspects of life in the United States suffer. A deeper understanding of this impairment is required in order to address how a large segment of humanity has developed a profound lack of empathy and fragmentation from humanity. This condition is deeply rooted in generational psychological adjustment to historical trauma. As we examine the field of generational trauma, which is also known as intergenerational trauma, transgenerational trauma, or secondary trauma (Doucet & Rovers, Generational Trauma, Attachment, and Spiritual/Religious Interventions. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 15:93–105, 2010), we offer promising efforts toward restoring mental, emotional, and physical well-being of a subset of humanity whose dispositional outlook may be rooted at any of the varied points within the white supremacy continuum. In creating spaces by which to move fragmented people from cognitive dissonance to cognitive resonance, we aspire to reintegrate a segment of the U.S. population by healing the relational fractures that break humanity into polarized pieces.