What is Racial Battle Fatigue?
It is the cumulative result of a natural race-related stress response to extended exposure to distressing mental and emotional conditions.
Post-election, a coalition of Thacher’s anti-racism groups sponsored a virtual event: Dr. William Smith presented on “Understanding and Disrupting Racial Battle Fatigue.” Dr. Smith is a professor and the department chair in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah. He also holds a joint appointment in the Ethnic Studies Program (African American Studies Division). He shared techniques for avoiding racial battle fatigue, which is the cumulative emotional, psychological, physiological, and behavioral effect that racial micro-aggressions and macro-aggressions have on people of color. He then enumerated techniques that can be used to mitigate racial battle fatigue. Dr. Smith finished the session by taking insightful questions from students.
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