As part of its ongoing Urban Matters Community Healing Agenda series, The New Hood project of the Center for New York City Affairs talks about the reality of intergenerational trauma with the co-founder of Power of Two, a non-profit that since 2015 has done in-home parent coaching, stressing links to community resources, in Brownsville, Brooklyn and the South Bronx. 

 The New Hood: Please tell us a little bit about your role and experience in addressing intergenerational trauma in communities of color. 

Erasma Beras-Monticciolo: I am an Afro-Latina from Brownsville, Brooklyn.  

I come to this work with that historical knowledge very much present, not only intellectually but also in my biology. The confluence of the generational trauma passed down to me both as a Dominican and as a woman of color growing up in Brownsville, along with my experience as a mother in the United States, has shaped my commitment to heal communities by decolonizing parenting.  

That is why I, alongside Anne Heller and Dr. Kristin Bernard, co-founded Power of Two. Our organization acknowledges the root cause of intergenerational trauma and centers the Black, Latino, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) family experience, helping parents develop confidence in their inherent parenting abilities and strengthening their emotional connections with their babies.   

Our work prioritizes the decolonization of parenting for BIPOC, allowing families the opportunity to break from the colonial European parenting framework. That framework enforced strict discipline and fear as a mechanism of oppression and was adopted by BIPOC families out of the necessity of protecting their children. While the context has changed from slavery to the institutional and systemic racism that exists today, we continue to perpetuate these negative narratives for the same reason as before, to protect our children.  

Our historical, intergenerational traumatic experiences alongside the toxic stressors directly correlated to marginalization have led to maladaptive behaviors in the parenting of our children that are oppressive and harmful, and which causes so much compounding trauma. 

That combination of both historical and ongoing trauma gets passed down through our biology and although we're now living in a time when we can change that, it's so inherent to the way we were brought up that we're having a difficult time pulling away from it. 

I come to this work with an abundance of pride in my community's strengths and my community's history of resilience, and with a real fervent commitment to help my Black, Latino, indigenous, and all people of color heal from the intergenerational trauma wrought by colonization and by existing systemic racism. Helping our communities reconnect to our indigenous values, which really centered children and welcomed them as part of the community and as contributors to the social fabric of the community, is what my work is about.  

TNH: Please tell us about the root causes of trauma in the families that you're working with. 

Beras-Monticciolo: You may be familiar with Dr. Joy DeGruy's work on post-traumatic slave syndrome. There are a lot of opinions about it and its use of epigenetics as a way of helping to understand that trauma has been intergenerationally embedded into who we are, both into our psyche and our physicality or physiology. It posits that trauma is something that we carry within us but also that the environment in which we find ourselves very much influences what happens and how that particular trauma manifests itself.  

If you're constantly exposed to living in a community that has experienced disinvestment; if you're constantly being badgered or dehumanized by police; if you're constantly dehumanized when you go to the welfare office to ask for support because you can't pay your rent or pay for food; or if you're living in shelter and then have to navigate the bureaucracy of the homelessness system – all of that is compounding on our historical trauma. 

In those moments of dehumanization, violence, and despair, what often happens is that our family units fall apart. The constant battering takes a toll – on the individual parent, on the children, on entire generations. Colonization is the methodology through which racist ideologies were configured into societal structures to create a consistently punitive outside world for BIPOC families. In order to survive that world, we've had to develop behaviors that are incredibly maladaptive and that have torn away at our community's ability to heal itself. 

Next week, the conversation continues, focusing on how historical, intergenerational trauma manifests itself, and what the incoming City administration should do to address it. 

A 2021 New York University Senior Leaders Fellow, Erasma Beras-Monticciolo is the co-founder and executive director of Power of Two. 

As New York City rebuilds through the pandemic, the next mayor and City Council will need to consider a comprehensive policy agenda that recognizes the historical collective traumas that Black and Latinx communities face. This article is part of an Urban Matters series bringing together perspectives on forming such a community healing agenda and building long-term strength, vitality, and wholeness for Black and Latinx New Yorkers.