Traces on the Blackboard: The Vestiges of Racism on the African American Psyche

This essay draws upon race theory, psychoanalysis, and pastoral care to address the remnants of past and current racial trauma in the African American psyche. The metaphor of “traces on the blackboard” is the chief means by which I attempt to delineate how African Americans, although experiencing new echelons of social progress, are still struggling to eliminate the distorted models of self-identification which were promulgated by the dominant culture. I also discuss the failure of psychodynamic psychotherapies to address the traces of racism, make proposals for how they may go about identifying these traces, and explore the role that pastoral care and, in particular, pastoral counseling may play in enervating these traces.