# .

**Channel:** What Is STSR
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqqEISk9V74
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/zqqEISk9V74

## Chapters

- 0:05 — Why Current Approaches Are Failing
- 1:02 — Trauma as Violence's Common Thread
- 2:28 — Seeing People Beyond Their Problems
- 3:13 — Invisible Wounds and Devaluation
- 3:57 — Human Worth and Validation

## Transcript

**[0:05]:** I I wanted to share with you from the outset some assumptions that I make about the work uh just given from my own experiences and and I'd like to say just to sort of warn you this this is the world according to Ken Hardy Kenneth Hardy professor at Drexler University in the department of couple and family therapy. I feel this from the pits of my core like we're at risk of losing a whole generation of young people. And when look at uh the those who kill and those who are are killed, it it deeply concerns me that that we're losing a whole generation. Uh and it seems to be happening rather rapidly in front of our eyes. And so that it says to me that maybe some of what we have been doing is simply not working very well. And so there's a way in which we really need to rethink how we work uh with this population of young people.

**[0:54]:** There seems to be something broken with the way we're doing things. And yet we seem wedded to continuing to do the things that we do.

**[1:02]:** I don't I I don't know what causes violence. I spent the early part of my career uh in these headscratching moments trying to figure out what causes violence. But what I do know, what I do know is that trauma is a common denominator underpinning violence. That's a common It's a common denominator underpinninging violence. And that youth of color have to deal with uh all the classical manifestations of trauma that any other child does. I don't think it's enough anymore to just focus on a um person's psychology, if you will, if you if I use that sort of metaphor for their what's going on inside their head, but also paying some attention to one's ecology. So whether that be being exposed to uh an alcoholic parent and having one's family disrupted because of alcoholism or drug or substance abuse, uh being exposed to domestic violence, um that separation, divorce, all all those kinds of experience

**[2:03]:** that have uh a tremendous impact on on children's on young people's lives that that youth of color have those issues like any other child does. where where the line gets drawn is I I I believe that youth of color in addition to dealing with those manifestations of trauma also have to deal with the trauma that's associated with uh racial oppression.

**[2:28]:** Uh one of the shifts I've made in my own work is to think more about how um someone's family experiences help shape them. Um, but not only that, but but experiences with race and ethnicity and culture and gender and sexual orientation, all those issues that all of those things come together to uh help make us who we are and have a little piece to do with our the complexity of the human spirit. And so I think that the work we do has to pay attention to that as well. We look for what's wrong with you. We're less concerned about what happened to you. We're we we're concerned about who you are, not who were you before you became who you are. Who were you before the circumstances of your life situated you to be who you are now.

**[3:13]:** I think about the wounds as being very much invisible wounds. They're wounds that that those who carry the wounds, who sustain them, can't see them, and those of us who often work with them can't see them because the work we do is predicated on us seeing what we look for. And so unless we're looking for the wounds, we don't see the wounds. The most debilitating wound of all for youth of color and by extension for people of color is a wound of devaluation. It's a wound of devaluation. And so I do think that the core of the work that we do with young people has to there's a piece of it that has to be specifically directed toward um counteracting devaluation. Counteracting devaluation.

**[3:57]:** I like I think the one thing that there's one thing that sort of unites us in our humanity and I think that um will be true for myself as a Drexel full tenure professor and the homeless person on sitting on Chestnut Street that that he like I have a need to be validated and respected. And so uh I do think uh having the ability to look at the most egregious expression of the human condition and find something worthy and valuable within the context of that I think is uh time well spent.