Compounded loss and repeated trauma have been part and parcel of the experience of boys and men of color in the United States in many aspects of their lives, on all levels of social functioning, from individual to societal, in generation after generation. The accumulation of such trauma creates high vulnerability to further disruption, loss, and trauma. Repeated, traumatic, and overwhelming losses have been endemic to the experience of boys and men of color in the United States. Until recently the reality of that experience has remained largely invisible, leading to a pervasive ignorance concerning their past and their contributions to the building of this country.

With no power to affect the writing of American history, few resources to disseminate their story, and little to no influence to assure that they would be listened to, their place in history has been known through stereotypes, untruths, and omissions that they have been unable to challenge. Because of the imperative of survival they have colluded in their invisibility by blocking out the painful degradation of their realities, sealing off the past, and looking to the future. This examination of loss and its effects upon boys and men of color is a contribution to the recent attempts at revising history to include the true experience of the marginalized, the subjugated, and the silenced.

The consequent confluence of conditions under which they have been forced to live has exerted an ongoing and unrelentingly disruptive and traumatic effect upon their efforts to build cohesive families and communities to ensure their survival. From their arrival years ago to the present day, their existence has been marked by massive and repetitive losses. As a result, the family and the community, the social institutions most significant to human survival, have been in perpetual peril.

Evidence of this trauma-plagued existence is reflected in many social indicators of the quality of current life for boys and men of color: the high rate of poverty, marital disruption, single-parent families, incarceration, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, poor school achievement, children in foster care, and disparities in health morbidity and mortality. These realities are the endpoint of multiple years of accumulated loss, traumatization, and the transmission of racial stress in a multi-generational and cultural manner.

The “Gaining Clarity & Urban Cultural Construct” models view all behavior as occurring in a larger social and historical context, serving a specific function. As such, behavior is a product of one’s learning history, encompassing family dynamics, specific circumstances, thoughts and feelings.