Toward Communal Healing

M. Colleen McDaniel

The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women and Girls:
A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse
By Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez, American Psychological Association, 2023.
$40 paperback.

DR. JENNIFER M. Gómez’s premier work, The Cultural Betrayal Trauma of Black Women and Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse, is a radical advancement of psychological theory, practice, and research around trauma and healing for women who have experienced sexual violence within marginalized communities.

Gómez identifies sexual violence committed within marginalized communities as particularly harmful because of group dynamics. For example, when a Black man sexually assaults a Black woman, the violence is not only felt as a betrayal from that individual. Additionally it violates their shared experience as community members who struggle against anti-Black racism, adding another layer of trauma.

Gómez’s theory is “placed within and atop more than 150 years of Black women’s (and some others’) scholarship and activism,” drawing on the work of Black Feminists such as Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Combahee River Collective. In explicitly peppering quotes from “brilliant scholars and activists, she rejects “a singular, individualization of [her] work in favor of contextualizing [her] contributions within the past and present collective We.” (Collins, 1991;2000) (10)

This powerful communal approach to her writing is an application of her own theory that calls for binding ourselves to the power of community for healing.

In a time of global shared traumas, as we experience both harm and hopefully healing, Gómez’ work, although in parts directed at mental health practitioners, is applicable to all who confront harm committed within our communities. As a result, we can learn to heal together, and end patterns of violence.

Gómez is highly critical of the field of psychology. She maintains that it “as a whole has problems with inequality being embedded within its foundational practices.” (98)

The hegemony of Whiteness within the psychological community permeates psychological pedagogy, research approaches, foundational theories and therapeutic practices. In contrast to a structural inequity that maintains a fictional universality, the author reframes the therapeutic approach. She calls for a “liberation psychology” which “links the individual and society with the goals of radically transforming both through clearly identifying and dismantling the personal and societal oppressions that bind.” (99)

The Theory: Roots of Silencing

Gómez’s theory, Cultural Betrayal Trauma Theory (CBTT), points to how a marginalized community promotes a sense of trust and loyalty of all community members. This is “a community orientation; as opposed to an individual one: What uplifts one, uplifts us all; simultaneously what harms one, harms us all as well.” (56)

If the person who harms them is also a member of their community, the resulting betrayal trauma severs their “(intra)cultural trust.” This trust breaks the “connection, attachment, dependency, love, loyalty, and responsibility” that provides emotional safety from racial discrimination. (53, 56)

Further, Black survivors may also face (intra)cultural pressure. This occurs where the needs of the perpetrator(s) and/or the community are prioritized over the survivor’s (57-58), when the community fears that if the survivor reports the case, it might bring harm on the whole community.

Gómez calls the most extreme form of this pressure “violent silencing.” She quotes an anonymous commenter who wrote, “Women of color who dare to discuss male predation/violence in minority communities often meet with violent backlash — rape and death threats, etc.”

Gómez validates this claim with the example of Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, who was sent death threats from some Black men for speaking out about sexual assault against Black women and girls. (58)

A notable feature of this silencing is its root in White Supremacy. When white men commit harm, society protects them because of their societal standing at the top of the hierarchy as “promising young men,” future (or current) successful leaders and businessmen.

White women too face disbelief and are certainly harmed by the criminal legal system and law enforcement through disbelief, victim blaming, and shaming. But if a white man is imprisoned, although incarceration inextricably harms communities, the impact on white people’s societal standing is nonexistent.

White Supremacy continues to benefit because that white man will be viewed as an exception: a sociopath or a sexual deviant. But Black communities have everything to lose from incarceration.

When a Black man is imprisoned, society accepts him as naturally and typically monstrous, violent and criminal. This sets up a bind for Black survivors: suffer silently or attempt to make use of a system that continues to harm Black communities and enforce White Supremacy in order to get some accountability.

Rooted in Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, Gómez’s CBTT notes that “what is means to be Black is different for Black women and girls because of what it means to also be female. This inverse of responsibility serves to preserve the power dynamics and hierarchy within the Black community: Black men are protected, while Black women and girls are structurally and interpersonally crushed, disposable, and disregarded.” (59)

Of course there is a structural reason behind this silencing. Gómez notes that within the Black community, “the ‘rape problem’ is not considered to be Black male-perpetrated sexual abuse against Black women and girls (cultural betrayal sexual trauma); rather, the rape problem is predominantly framed as White women falsely accusing Black men and boys of rape — which has historically resulted in an array of human rights violations, including lynching and imprisonment.” (40).

Therapy and Radical Healing

Gómez, in agreement with Crenshaw, points out that “solutions that preserve and extend Black males’ power, such as those that mirror White men’s freedom to dominate and oppress, will likely not eradicate sexual abuse in the Black community at all.”

Gómez boldly and righteously claims that “unequivocally, the reality of racism against Black men cannot be used to defend or permit such sexual abuse in the name of antiracism while Black women and girls remain largely unprotected, unsupported, and even violently silenced as [they] endure cultural betrayal sexual trauma.” (41)

Gómez highlights the necessity of “posttraumatic growth” that survivors can experience after trauma. Many survivors not only heal from trauma but gain new perspectives, skills and insights.

She calls for the need for the centrality of relationship building in healing from sexual trauma. But that means breaking from a medical model that defines signs like depression, anxiety, or eating disorders as an “illness,” rather than natural, understandable responses to the unnatural experience of trauma.

Instead of a model where the therapist holds the tools to fix or reduce the client’s symptoms, Gómez proposes “healthily repairing relational connections through validation, apology, and reconnection.” This can be a relearning process for those who have become disconnected from the protection of their community.

Gómez calls this process Relational Cultural Theory (RCT). It emphasizes building “collaborative relational dynamics centered on mutuality” so that people can build paths of healing together (96).

In alignment with her call for healing through relationships, Gómez calls for radical healing in the Black Community. This healing and the consequential change is effected in the individual, in their relationships, in their community, and in their society.

As individuals, for example, “part of healing” from sexual violence “can be reclaiming your body as yours, knowing that your body is nothing to be ashamed of.” (119)

Within communities there can be the practice of restorative justice, or at least its tenets: to name who was harmed, what their needs are, and whose is obliged to those needs. In the context of Black women and girl survivors, “her needs may include physical health care, validation and (intra)cultural support, and psychoeducation on sexual abuse.” (121)

Because cultural betrayal trauma is a community harm, “it is the obligation of those in the Black community — including but not limited to the perpetrator(s) — and the broader society that feeds the context of inequality to meet these needs.” 121)

That means we all must take responsibility and effect change, because as a society we are all responsible for these harms. Gómez goes on to discuss what this healing can look like in groups and families, as well as highlighting the specific roles of Black men in this healing process.

Although there is excellent detail in the book that is too long to address here, the takeaway is crucial: “Experiencing freedom, liberation, joy, light, and laughter is possible for everyone in the Black community, including Black women and girls who have endured cultural betrayal trauma” (131).
Struggle for Equality

Because cultural betrayal sexual trauma is the result of societal inequity, institutions also have a responsibility to address this harm. (134)

Gómez applies the work of Dr. Jennifer Freyd in making sense of how institutions can change. Although institutions can cause harm, Gómez remarks that they also have the power to help end violence by supporting survivors via institutional courage. She identifies an “antidote” that “requires institutional actors and the institution itself [to] promote equitable justice.” (139)

This call on institutions for courage and change is a radical shift in that hegemonic approaches to violence response hold individuals, but not institutions, accountable. If we are to end systemic sexual violence, we must hold accountable the very institutions which perpetuate social injustices.

This includes colleges and universities, K-12 schools, businesses, and governments. Not only must they be held accountable, but they must take an active role in the ending of sexual violence through institutional courage.

Gómez prefaces her theory with the question, “How can we radically transform the world?” She describes how she created the term “dreamstorming,” meaning that “extension of brainstorming” in which she “envision[s] liberation and engage[s] in fantasy for what has never been but what [she does] believe could be (brown & Imarisha, ed., Octavia’s Brood, 2015): a truly free world.” (xi)

In this work, she does just that, outlining how shifting our understandings of violence within marginalized communities in therapeutic practice and research can make that dream a reality.

Yet Gómez does more than that. She calls each and every person into an all-around critical revisioning of how we can heal from and strategize to change the intersectional systemic oppression that affects us and our communities towards liberation.

As Gómez states, “We’re not yet There. But it would not be life if we were not fighting to transform There into existence now.” (xi)

January-February 2025, ATC 234