Summary
Policy, funding, and institutional reforms are urgently needed to effectively disrupt the dehumanization of BYMOC. However, individual and collective healing from intergenerational, communal, and personal racial trauma is equally essential.
”Culturally responsive healing practice (CRHP) is based on the idea that cultural values, rituals, language, and sense of identity all contribute to restoring well-being and mental health.”
“Rather than relying on Western therapeutic models, grantees employing CRHP explicitly lift up and draw from Indigenous and/or cultural understandings of healing based in spirituality— infusing a healing-informed approach into all aspects of programming.”
“Creating spaces for BYMOC to share their truth through stories of place, happenings, and experiences gives young peoples’ stories validity.”
Takeaways
- Dismiss the narrow, deficit-based interventions that currently drive funding and policy decisions. Instead, support asset-based healing strategies.
- Recognize the underlying cycle of dehumanization, along with the individual symptoms of psychological suffering from racism.
- Shift dehumanizing narratives that condition men to bottle their emotions and help them embrace their masculine energy in healthier ways.
- Integrate an understanding of historical trauma into culturally responsive healing programs, while acknowledging the collective unresolved grief that results from the violence of colonization and oppressive present-day policies.