Racial Trauma in Media

The need for black joy, love, and unambiguous black families

Published in

The Shadow

5 min readFeb 12, 2021

Think about your favorite tv shows, movies, books. Think about the characters, their stories, and their background. Now focus on the black characters. First, are there are any in the show you can think of? And then onto their storylines, are they underdeveloped? Based almost solely on their race? Do they suffer the same fate as black characters across mainstream media? Are most of the black characters in your favorite tv shows stuck in a cycle of race-based trauma?

Looking back at the history of black characters in media, specifically in the United States. It begins with the minstrel shows in the early 19th to 20th century. Consisting of an all-white male musician group sporting blackface, they traveled all across the country. With exaggerated features, dances, and language, they depicted black people as lazy and ignorant. Portray black men as rapists and thieves. And fetishize black women. Minstrel shows were notorious for the birth of some of the most demonizing stereotypes towards the black community. Black men are “no good thugs,” and black women are angry, aggressive women that are only good for their hourglass shapes.

While minstrel shows came to their end, the stereotypes associated with black people did not. A study conducted by Statista found that in 2019 only 27.6% of movies featured a minority lead actor. And for most actors of color, that meant having to take on demeaning or incomplete storylines to find work. Often, stuck with 2-dimensional characters that lack depth and are only partially developed. There to offer support for the main character. And when they do have a storyline, they are usually confined to one episode arcs. Characterized; by gang violence, racist attacks, absentee fathers, and abusive households. Stories that black people have portrayed for centuries now. The same stories that black audiences are forced to relive over again to watch people that look like them.

To see the effect of race-based trauma, you have to look at the difference between that and general trauma. Trauma is defined; as an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. While racially charged trauma is the emotional and physical symptoms often experienced by black families and people of color due to the everyday occurrences of microaggressions. Black trauma spans generations and comes in every form of daily life. From walking into a new classroom at the beginning of the semester as one of the few black students. To hearing about the murder of another black person at the hands of the police. Most people have experiences with trauma some, that run deeper than others. Streaming media that reflect or share that story offers relatability that helps show people that they aren’t alone. But racially charged trauma is a specific type of pain that is reflected not only in a person’s personal life but every time they go on social media or watch the news. It is ignited again when people deny racism. And triggered when the only characters popularized by the mainstream are always of struggle.

Overall black trauma intersects with the criminalization of blackness. Especially when it is a non-black person writing these characters. When black people write a movie or a book on these issues, while it is still traumatic, are usually commentary of their own lives experiences. But because black people are constantly perceived as a threat so do their counterparts on the big screen. We are meant to fit these stereotypes, we are meant to be miserable in real life so what is the point of seeing black joy when every day there is another reason to hate being black.

We also have to remember that the examples of black joy that we see today most of the time revolve around ambiguous looking or light-skinned black characters and families. We need more instances of black joy, love, and unambiguously black families. We need more instances of black main characters and happy black children who aren’t forced to grow up faster than they have to. Not only does this reaffirm that being black is something you should be proud of, but it gives black people something to relate to that does not end with pain.

Black joy is resistance.