Trauma mining: Do you really need that “tough conversation”

Earlier this year, our world was rocked by the bombardment of events that left so many of us craving the feeling of being in community, while demanding we stay apart.

The death of Black and Indigenous peoples by law enforcement, and a slower death by racist systems felt so overwhelming. There were calls to actions that were hard to ignore, even for folks who had never before been confronted with the horrors of inequity.

Many organizations directed their energy towards creating what they believed to be safe spaces for people of colour to share the intimate details of their lives, their trauma and the reality of being a person of colour in North America, and in the workplace.

Across the country, brands shared announcements about meetings held over zoom that were full of tears, and earth-shattering realizations of white folks who never knew what their colleagues were going through.

To-date, these sessions have been one of the most popular requests from folks who reach out to QuakeLab. 

Here’s the challenge.

These sessions, when mishandled, is what we call trauma mining.

A quick Google search probably won’t explain what the term trauma mining means because it’s a term we’ve coined at QuakeLab

Trauma mining: the process of creating an environment that demands that Black people, Indigenous peoples, women, Disabled people, members of the LGBTQ2S community share experiences of discrimination. This process is branded as necessary for the moving forward of an organization in it’s journey to become more equitable. However, it serves no purpose to those who are forced to relive their trauma, but attempts to prove to their colleagues that racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. is in fact real.

So there it is. 

We often as two questions when we are asked to do these sessions:

1. Who is it in service of?

2. What is it in service of?

When we push this line of questioning long enough, we often find that the answer to both these questions is usually white people, or the people who are least disenfranchised. 

You see by demanding, or even kindly asking that folks come to the table, prepared to relive the trauma they have faced, possibly in the very same environment, it is almost always going to be harmful to them. The only beneficiaries of this process will be the folks who needed the gory details, the blood and the carnage of the most disenfranchised to understand the problem. This is essentially, trauma porn. 

Trauma porn, in the words of Destiny Singh, is “using other people’s trauma to shock our system to galvanize support…” It’s the same idea that propels folks on the internet to share videos or images of Black people’s death and dead bodies in the name of activism. 

So trauma mining is essentially the process by which you create an environment specifically to collect people’s trauma to garner support or shock folks into action at the cost of those who have shared their trauma. 

The greatest problem with trauma mining can be broken down into two parts:

First, it dehumanizes the people who have been forced to relive their trauma. It communicates that the only way their colleagues and superiors can be moved to making their workplace and communities safer, is by seeing them bleed. It states that their humanity is at best, not sufficient and at worst, doesn’t exist because we can only really empathize with those whose humanity we acknowledge.

Secondly, it requires folks to relive trauma, or retraumatize themselves with no action. Imagine this: you are struck by a driver in their vehicle, the authorities arrive at the scene and tell you they’re here to help and they want to know what happened exactly. You give them the details of how you are struck, how you have an injury and you are bleeding on the street. The authorities are visibly shaken, some of them even cry. When you finish your harrowing story, they pat your back, and say “thank you for sharing.” You are not offered medical care or some understanding as to why that information was collected or any consequences faced by the driver. 

That is essentially trauma mining in these sessions. 

Without the clear communication about how the trauma these folks lived will be addressed, and if necessary, the consequences faced by the perpetrators, you are mining for trauma. 

So what is the alternative? 

First and foremost, get some clarity on what it is you want to do? What is the objective and who is it meant to serve. Understanding and identifying the need, will help you gain clarity on the tool, or method. If the need is to support your marginalized colleagues, here are so quick, but non exhaustive options:

1. Assess the parts of your organization that are harmful to them and work to dismantle and redesign them

2. Offer or remind them of the staff benefits they have access to including therapy and counseling. If these are not available, perhaps include that in your assessment of harmful aspects of your organization!

3. Build and communicate a method by which staff can make complaints or reports of discrimination, be clear and transparent about the process and outcomes. Keep in mind that trust must be established for your team to use these avenues. 

To recap: trauma mining is bad, rigorous assessment of your organization and responding to harm is good!