Goals:

1. To collect, record, analyze and understand the effects on individuals of any sort of different treatment as a result of that individual not being a member of the dominant culture.
2. To communicate that information in various forms, including professional journals, popular magazine articles, textbooks, popular books, television, radio and internet media.
3. To study and understand the effect of various positions taken by members of the nondominant culture on their own reaction to the situation, and their subsequent well-being.
4. To establish, if warranted, a diagnostic category comparable to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that clarifies and legitimizes the effects of this type of stressor, and to differentiate this type of effect as a unique syndrome.
5. To clarify and document cases in which an individual believes that he or she has been the target of unfair discriminatory practice, but in which the perceived negative results are due to some other circumstance.

1. To enable each individual who has experienced some painful episode to express and describe the story of what happened. Often, individuals who experience a painful life even find relief in the telling of the story. Our goal is to allow each and every individual to tell his or her story. Each story told provides a way to study the effects of discriminatory practices on the individual. The goal statement is flexible in order to allow any model developed as a result of this project to encompass the effects on individuals in any non-dominant culture
2. Communicating the information is one way to allow the dominant culture to see and hear and understand the harmful effects of discrimination on the non-dominant culture.
3. Each individual who has been involved in discriminatory situations has taken some individual position in reaction to that stressor. Our goal is to understand what additional effect that stance may have on the effects on the individual of the discriminatory situation.
4. Before the Vietnam War, the traumatic after effects of war were called "combat neurosis". A board of the American Medical Association currently determines diagnostic categories. Political action, combined with other information, defines the diagnostic categories. Issues such as whether homosexual identification is a diagnostic category, or not, are determined by political action. Without political action, post-discrimination stress disorders will continue to be overlooked as a formal category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in future versions. The DSM is the single criterion by which symptom clusters are currently adjudicated. If the harmful psychological effects of discrimination are to be respected, seen, heard, and taken seriously in legal situations, then it is necessary to research and establish a formal diagnosis equivalent to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

 

5. To clarify and document cases in which an individual believes that he or she has been the target of unfair discriminatory practice, but in which the perceived negative results are due to some other circumstance. One such circumstance arises from a situation in which the individual over-values his or her contributions, or worth, to a situation. In such circumstances, an individual constructs theories to explain the discrepancy between perceived merit and actual results. One goal of this project is to place such individuals with a theoretical framework.

This project is based on the belief that understanding and studying a problem can lead to solutions.

The Psychological Resource Center Project for Understanding the Effects of Discrimination is based on a commitment to respectful clarification of issues that seem to divide the dominant culture from the non-dominant culture. The goal of this clarification is to allow for peaceful, respectful and non-violent resolution of conflict where it exists or seems to exist.

The Psychological Resource Center Project for Understanding the Effects of Discrimination is based on the belief that offering a format for the expression of each person's experience can lead to a better resolution than would be the case if such a format did not exist.

The Psychological Resource Center Project for Understanding the Effects of Discrimination endorses the use of wording that shows respect to individuals on either side of the problem. Our goals is to move towards a higher moral ground, not to exchange places in the paradigm of oppression.

Through the use of language, we hope to provide a format for discussion that is valid not just for racism in the USA but for all situations in which a dominant culture fails to encourage and support a non-dominant culture.