“There’s no trust at all, in anything” : psychosocial perspectives on trauma in a distressed African American neighborhood

Drawing on notes and interviews from my fieldwork in Baltimore, Maryland, as well as research interviews with medical practitioners, criminal justice personnel, and community workers in Oakland and Philadelphia, in this chapter I will undertake a psychosocial exploration of the traumatic stress experienced by the residents of segregated, disinvested and unsafe neighborhoods in American cities. I will argue that while residents of distressed Baltimore (and other urban) neighborhoods should receive far more recognition and effective resources including intensive therapy for those who want it, the problem should be seen not in terms of individual pathology such as PTSD, but rather as symptomatic of a national condition of denial and dissociation about the historical creation and contemporary maintenance and exploration of African American "ghettoes."