NCJ Number
195270
Journal
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs Volume: 33 Issue: 4 Dated: October-December 2001 Pages: 391-402
Date Published
2001
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This article identifies cultural issues that must be addressed in drug treatment for African-Americans and uses case studies of African-American clients who were successful in recovery to show the importance of addressing cultural as well as personal issues.
Abstract
African-American culture comes out of 300 years of slavery and another 130 years of poverty, discrimination, and social-economic isolation. In addition, it is still not acknowledged and realized as an important force in its members' survival and ability to cope. Ironically, the successes of the 1960's civil rights movement and the collapse of Jim Crow segregation in the South after 1965 led to a rapid demise in African-American community life and cultural socialization. African-American culture now competes with other shaping influences. The hallmark of this period of rapid integration of African-Americans into American popular culture has been greater socialization into the White world, but it has also led to greater alienation and invisibility, despite African-Americans being major contributors to popular culture. An outcome of these changes is a racial self-image at war with itself that has rendered many highly susceptible to self-destructive behaviors such as drug abuse and violence. African-American drug abusers show classic evidence of internalized racism. Lack of regard for the potential of internalized racism by therapists is a continuous source of psychological misdiagnosis of African-Americans. This paper identifies six coping strategies that African-Americans may use to bury historic and personal trauma. These strategies have two things in common; they are cultural in that they are passed down from generation to generation as strategies to bury historic and personal trauma and a sense of powerlessness and humiliation; and they are ways to live with internalized racism and are the basis of intense and deeply held rage, which some control through drugs. There must be an effort to find models that have effectively addressed the distinctive cultural factors intertwined with drug-abusing behaviors among African-Americans. The case studies provided in this article are a step in this direction. 72 references