CHAPTER 24: RESISTING INTERNALIZED RACISM: R.A.C.E. Mentoring as a Survival Strategy in the Ivory Tower

In Ending Internalized Racism in Outlaw Culture, bell hooks (1994) contended that the “wounds of white supremacist assaults will not heal if left unattended” (p. 213). When these lacerations of racism are left unmedicated or made invisible, they fester internally and never heal within. This is where I found myself. As an assistant professor at a predominately White institution (PWI), I was not healing from within because I had not yet addressed the racial trauma that was thrust on me as I stood in the Ivory Tower. Every day I was reliving it. I felt that I couldn’t escape. I thought that I couldn’t survive.