Two years after Floyd murder, racial trauma permeates US

Nearly 80% of the men continue their mental health care beyond the free sessions.“If one man can heal himself, he has the possibility of healing his household, which then has the possibility of healing our community,” said Williams, the group’s chief operating officer.After the Buffalo shooting, some Black Americans have expressed outrage and fear, saying they should be able to go about their daily lives without feeling they could be threatened or killed. And I think that it has really taken a toll on everyday citizens and our Black mental health workers, who are grieving and who are angry and who are feeling all the things that we are feeling.”Brown, whose group was formed after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, to strategize ways to abolish racist systems and practices, said real change won’t come until the nation truly dismantles the white supremacy and racism that has been allowed to traumatize and terrorize Black people throughout history.“Unless white people are checking themselves and one another, unless white people are organizing at the rate at which Black folks are organizing,” Brown said, “it will be very hard for us to experience freedom in this country.”___Stafford, based in Detroit, is a national investigative race writer for the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.