My Grandmother's Hands

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Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, is a therapist specializing in body-centered trauma therapy. He has worked as a consultant for the Minneapolis Police Department, Minneapolis Public Schools, and the US military, focusing on issues relating to trauma processing and violence prevention. He has also appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil.

The concept of race, a fabricated construct, was deliberately created in early American history to divide and control. Initially, individuals were identified by their national origins, but the late seventeenth century saw the emergence of "white people" as a classification, excluding many groups like the Irish and Italians until later. This division was a calculated strategy by those in power to suppress solidarity among oppressed groups, laying the groundwork for white supremacy and the belief in white body dominance. This ideology continues to manifest in systemic injustices, such as the disproportionate killing of unarmed Black individuals by police and the rejection of job applications with "Black"-sounding names. At its core lies "white fragility," a subconscious belief in the vulnerability of white bodies and the perceived threat of Black bodies, leading to the control and subjugation of the latter. Both white and Black Americans have internalized these harmful narratives, perpetuating a cycle of fear and misunderstanding. The author illustrates this through personal anecdotes, including his grandmother’s damaged hands from picking cotton as a child and an incident of unconscious racial profiling by a Walmart employee. These stories highlight how racism, while often unintentional, is deeply ingrained in the nervous systems of white Americans and remains an unavoidable, daily reality for Black Americans. The cumulative effects of racism inflict profound physical and mental harm on Black individuals, contributing to chronic stress and illness, while perpetuating trauma across all Americans.

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