“Collective-Self” Care: Our Healing, Health, and Wellness as People of African Descent by Anna Ortega-Williams, Ph.D., LMSW Assistant Professor Silberman School of Social Work Hunter College of the City University of New York
In the 21st century, there have been extraordinary challenges as well as wins for people of the African Diaspora. Wins include small steps forward in representation at many levels of decision-making power, recognition of egregious human rights violations, and enactment of policies affirming basic civil rights. Additionally, we have developed strong alternative institutions, programs, and initiatives that practice transformed ways of living and being to disrupt the status quo (Brown, 2017; Greene, 2020; Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, 2020). However, there have also been extraordinary losses, such as disparities in mortality during the global COVID-19 pandemic (Mude et al., 2021), and continued anti-Black racism exerted on interpersonal, institutional, and systemic levels, as well as the continued ripple effects from colonialism. In the United States, we live in a time where critically thinking about race using critical race theory is actively being challenged across the country (Ray & Gibbons, 2021) alongside active disenfranchisement (Abrams et al., 2020). How will we know when Black people are well in these times? What are our own indicators of healing, health, and wellbeing as a people? In this essay, the contemporary state of Black wellbeing in the United States will be explored through the lens of the “collective self” (Ortega-Williams, 2020). The wisdom of 20 Black youth organizers, from whom the concept of collective self was derived, will be presented as critical guidance for arriving at healed Black futures. The proposition is situated in international discourses about historical trauma (Brave Heart, 1998; Ortega-Williams et al., 2019; Walters et al., 2020; Williams-Washington & Mills, 2018) and intergenerational healing (Henderson et al., 2021). The essay will conclude by envisioning possibilities for intersectional Black collective wellbeing in these times, incorporating my personal standpoint.
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