Teaching the history of systemic racial oppression during a time when racial hatred is explicit in policies and behaviors is traumatic. Learning about the links between enslavement, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration is emotionally draining and triggers helplessness in students and educators. Through Douglass' “Ernest Struggle,” we examine how students and educators often avoid addressing the stress that accompanies learning about hate. Racial literacy is a harm prevention strategy to prepare youth and educators to mindfully track the stressful impact of past racial violence on their thoughts, feelings, and bodies while confronting current proximal discrimination experiences in their daily lives.
Stevenson et al. (2026) studied this question.