Financial Trauma Literature Review
INTRODUCTION
The concept of financial trauma is often treated as a pathology–or not considered at all–despite the increased interest in developing a deeper understanding about the impact of psychological trauma and systemic oppression on finance. As a theory developed by Chloe B. McKenzie, with its roots in intersectionality and Maria Root’s concept of insidious trauma, the paradigm of financial trauma provides scope to detail the effect of being socioeconomically harmed by an economic system that was designed to concentrate wealth and power for those who benefit from racialized and gender-based privilege. The central aim of this paper is to disrupt the narrowness of experiences that are currently considered traumatic, clarify the danger of treating financial trauma as a pathology, and demonstrate why Black women must be centered in our efforts to understand the impact financial trauma has on wealth inequality.
DISCUSSION
1. FINANCIAL TRAUMA IS TRAUMA.
Trauma refers to the experiences, set of experiences, and/or impacts from social conditions, that break or betray our inherent need for safety, belonging, and dignity (Haines, 2019). It also can be defined as the imprint left by an experience that has ongoing consequences for how a person manages to survive in the present (van der Kolk, 2015). Although the concept of trauma and its effect on behavior has been well researched, it is only in the last decade that there has been a renewed interest in advancing trauma theory to include oppression and oppressive systems as the location of how people become traumatized (Kirkinis, et al., 2018). Despite this revival of interest, there is still a narrowness of experiences that are considered traumatic.
The word trauma originates from the Greek word meaning “wound,” which led many researchers to prioritize experiences that involve
Method
This is a literature review paper. The paper outlines the theoretical frameworks that have developed over the last several decades in trauma studies. The review focuses on the trajectory of studies that attempt to delve deeper into understanding the impact of trauma on personal finance and socioeconomic experiences. This paper attempts to narrate why financial trauma needs to be included as a category of trauma more intentionally and invites individuals to consider why using a category of trauma to pathologize groups targeted by racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression is harmful and limits our understanding of the full scope of their personal finance and socioeconomic experiences.
physical and physiological wounds (Davis & Meretoja, 2020). Yet, as Kurtz (2018) explains, the development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as clinical condition consolidated trauma studies and gave rise to Cathy Caruth’s and Maria Root’s theories on trauma.
Caruth (1995) defined trauma as “a response, sometimes delayed to an overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of repeated intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors” (p.95). Though many theorists continued to build on Caruth’s conceptualization of trauma, Maria Root’s and Judith Herman’s feminist reconstructions of trauma theory uncovered how Caruth’s theory failed to acknowledge that trauma could be prolonged and originate not just from one single event. In fact, Root’s and Herman’s theories on trauma rebuke the idea that a single event of magnitude can be the only locus of trauma.
Maria Root (1992) introduced the concept of insidious trauma, a trauma category that acknowledged how everyday experiences of violence and oppression can be traumatic. Root asserts three things: 1) whether an incident or series of incidents is considered traumatic or not is decided by the traumatized person rather than the observer, 2) trauma is qualitatively different from stress, and 3) experiences of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression can be traumatic. Root (1992) argues, “broadening the scope of experiences that are traumatic allows us to delve deeper into understanding trauma and to construct a more inclusive general theory of trauma” (p. 230).
Root (1992) cognizes trauma as a socio-culturally embedded phenomenon—something that is often collective and structural, not just something experienced by an individual. This led to the introduction of her conceptual definition of insidious trauma. She details that insidious trauma is usually associated with the “social status of an individual being devalued because of a characteristic intrinsic to their identity is different from what is valued by those in power…” (p.240). As a result, it is often present throughout a lifetime and may start at birth. Center to her conceptualization of insidious trauma is the understanding that its effects are often cumulative and directed toward a community of people.
Ultimately, insidious trauma highlights the role of social structures, institutions, and oppressive systems in
traumatic experiences instead of only focusing on the subjective and phenomenological experiences of trauma. Despite the emergence of these theories, it still has taken decades to move toward a conceptualization of trauma that acknowledges the deep wounds oppression can have on not just an individual person, but a community more broadly.
Appropriately though, especially since the racial reckoning from the summer of 2020, trauma theorists have begun to understand that psychological, emotional, and affective wounds caused by oppression, which may or may not have physiological causes, can be considered trauma as well. This is particularly evident in the increasing interest in racialized trauma. Since 2000, scholars and researchers have studied and discussed racism and trauma at length (Bryant-Davis & Ocampo, 2005; Carter, 2007; Clark et al., 1999; Carter & Forsyth, 2009; Carter, Forsyth, Mazzula, et al., 2005; Harrell, 2000; Comaz-Diaz & Jacobsen, 2001; Helms, Nicolas, & Green, 2010) with the goal to compel healthcare professionals to be more attentive to the social factors that have a direct bearing on health and well-being.
As the discourse about racialized trauma has grown, more evidence about the way racism wounds those targeted by it has grown as well. Most recently, researchers discovered that experiences of racism alter a person’s neurobiology, which increases the vulnerability for brain health problems (Fani, Eghbalzad, Harnett, et al., 2022). Even as Maria Root enjoined trauma researchers to let the traumatized group determine whether their experiences were traumatic, there is now additional empirical and scientific evidence demonstrating how oppression not only deeply wounds, but also harshly traumatizes certain groups more than others.
With an abundance of research that classifies sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of oppression as traumatic, it is troubling that there is still so little literature on how the inherently oppressive design and function of the United States economic system can be traumatic. By conducting this literature review, it has become clear that there are two primary reasons for this: 1) most of the studies do not use the term financial trauma, and more importantly, 2) most of the studies on the impacts of different forms of trauma and socioeconomic experiences only look at individuals and their responses.
1.1. THE HESITANCE TO CATEGORIZE FINANCIAL TRAUMA AS TRAUMA.
Whereas it has become more acceptable to categorize experiences of racism and sexism, even experiences of poverty in some cases (Kiser & Black, 2005; Klest, 2012; Santiago, Wadsworth, & Stump, 2011), as traumatic, there seems to be a hesitance to do so with experiences of socioeconomic harm. Chloe B. McKenzie’s (2021) conceptualization of financial trauma, which builds on Maria Root’s maxim that insidious trauma is designed to be collective and structural, outlines how participation in the U.S economy can be, and often is for certain groups like Black women, traumatic. In fact, McKenzie (2023) asserts that two of the central features of the American economic system are trauma and violence because the system was premised on slavery. As such, the absence of categorizing adverse socioeconomic experiences as traumatic stems from, “a kind of not thinking and unaccountability to the fact that wealth and trauma are inextricably linked,” (McKenzie, 2023).
McKenzie’s (2020) earliest conceptual definition of financial trauma is the response to the cumulative harming of a person’s wealth-building capability caused by events, actions, policies, and cultural messages that inequitably reinforce a person’s socioeconomic condition or positioning. Then, McKenzie (2021) posited an alternative definition: “The effect of being required to experience economic violence, financial abuse, financial shaming, and/or (chronic) financial stress…” to build material wealth. The next iteration of the concept emphasized the fact that financial trauma is not just a single response to participation in the economy, but an experience that often happens repeatedly and cyclically. Defining financial trauma as a cycle of triggers and reactions that limits a person’s ability to build wealth helped uncover that the traumatization of certain groups is self-perpetuating. McKenzie (2023) maintains that the goal of the American economic system is still to limit, if not eliminate, certain groups’ opportunities to fully participate in the national economy. To achieve this goal, the institutionalization of financial trauma as an experience when interacting with the system is necessary. McKenzie (2023) writes, “This is the idea: make it so painful, scary, and/or destructive to fully participate in the national economy,” so that many will
not want to fully participate. Limiting participation leads to suppressed wealth. This led to the development of a measure for nonparticipation, as McKenzie named it as an indicator of financial trauma.
But, the most recent iteration, again, decisively emphasizes the role of the inherently oppressive economic system as the source of violence and trauma that is then experienced by groups of people, especially those targeted by racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression (McKenzie, 2024, in press). Thus, another way to define financial trauma is as, “The effect of being systematically exploited, harmed, and/or betrayed by an economic system and its institutions, which then ensures the continued concentration of wealth and power in the few, namely those who enjoy racial, gender, class, and ability privileges.” (McKenzie, 2023). Simply, financial traumatization has the purpose of perpetuating wealth inequality. It is not inadvertent or an unfortunate externality, it is a deliberate tactic to realize the original aim of the American economic system, which is to concentrate wealth, resources, and/or power in the few, despite the many people and institutions aiming to disrupt and re-architect the way the system functions.
The hesitance in using the term financial trauma is likely no accident. Racism is traumatic. Sexism is traumatic. Ableism is traumatic. So, when these systems of oppression interlock and shape our socioeconomic experiences, categorizing those experiences as traumatic is not only appropriate, it is necessary. Researchers have begun to move toward this understanding, but this has led to another problem in the literature, which is only capturing the phenomenon from an individual level.
1.2. FINANCIAL TRAUMA’S IMPACT IS FIRST, AND FOREMOST, COLLECTIVE AND STRUCTURAL.
Studies that focus on the condition whereby financial circumstances become so great that individuals have adverse health and social consequences often use, without any precise definition, the following terms interchangeably (Starrin, Aslund, and Nilsson, 2009): economic/financial stress, economic/financial hardship, economic/financial strain, economic/financial vulnerability, and economic/financial deprivation. Table 1 defines these terms and others that dominate the literature.
Term Definition
ECONOMIC DISTRESS
FINANCIAL ANXIETY
FINANCIAL (DIS)SATISFACTION
FINANCIAL DISTRESS
FINANCIAL HEALTH
FINANCIAL STRESS
FINANCIAL STRESSOR EVENTS
• Combination of economic deprivation and economic strain
• A psychosocial syndrome whereby individuals have an uneasy attitude toward engaging with and, administering, their personal finances in an effective way (Burchell, 2003)
• Subjective assessment of the adequacy of one’s financial resources or financial situation (Hira & Mugenda, 1998)
• Feelings about, and reactions to, one’s financial condition (Kim et al., 2003)
• Is not dependent on income but on whether one is able to meet his/her/[their] economic responsibilities (Aldana & Liljenquist, 1998)
• Subjective perception of one’s personal finances (Kim, Garman & Sorhaindo, 2003)
• Inability to meet one’s economic responsibilities (Northern et al., 2010)
• An experience that happens in the recent past, usually one year (Tokunga, 1993)
• Inability to meet one’s economic responsibilities but also being influenced by psychological factors such as attitudes, beliefs, and cognitive appraisals of demands and available resources (Aldana & Liljenquist, 1998; Kim et al., 2003)
• Problems that arise when a person is faced with the threat of a shortage of money in combination with a lack of cash reserves and difficulties making ends meet (Starrin, 2009)
• Non-normative financial events such as “home went into foreclosure,” “had items repossessed,” and “had wages garnished.”
• Accumulation of financial stressor events may cause financial stress and lower financial wellbeing (Kim et al., 2003) TABLE 1
Existing research is missing the important opportunity to name financial trauma as a driver of wealth inequality because the literature largely focuses on an individual experience. Just as Maria Root criticized Caruth for focusing on a single event of magnitude as the locus of trauma, Chloe B. McKenzie’s (2021) conceptualization of financial trauma identifies that the hyperfocus on individual financial experiences and behaviors fails to acknowledge that trauma can be located throughout the lives of oppressed groups and the effects of trauma in the context of socioeconomic experiences are cumulative and directed toward a community of people. When research only considers the effect of socioeconomic inequities on the individual, it becomes easier to normalize the experiences of insidious traumas—like financial trauma— and dismiss them from mainstream discussions of trauma studies (Root, 1992; McKenzie, 2023).
The aforementioned terms are important factors to consider, but their hyperfocus on the individual has left a major gap in the literature that could have otherwise accelerated the understanding of financial trauma as a category of trauma. Still, researchers have at least implied that financial trauma is a possible scope to categorize socioeconomic experiences through the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) and other measures of PTSD that explore the impact of trauma on personal finance and financial behavior. But, this has led to another problem in the literature, namely the pathologization of financial behavior, and therefore the inclination to treat financial trauma as a pathology.
2. FINANCIAL TRAUMA IS NOT A PATHOLOGY
The development of PTSD as a clinical condition consolidated trauma studies (Kurtz, 2018). As the DSM of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) evolved, medical and cultural categories of trauma were consolidated, which led to trauma often being situated as a pathology in research (Kurtz, 2018; Horwitz, 2021). That the use of financial trauma as a category of trauma is still met with hesitance reflects the intra-professional divisions regarding the role of diagnoses and the use of the DSM. Horwitz (2021) explains, “researchers require specific diagnoses to create homogenous groups that can reveal the etiology, prognosis, and best treatments for the particular condition under study,” (p. 7). Yet, “clinicians must deal with the idiosyncrasies of particular clients. For them diagnoses are practical tools, not the basis for standardized protocols,” (p. 7). This tension has not only shaped recent editions of the DSM, but it also has reverberated into the literature on the impact of trauma on finance.
Since the development of the consolidated form of trauma studies did not originally integrate an understanding of how oppression can be traumatic, much of the advancement of the field had to begin with critiques and reconstructions of trauma theory like those introduced by Maria Root and Judith Herman. For example, Herman (1992) recognized that the “most common posttraumatic disorders are not those of men in war but of women in civilian life,” (p. 28). Because Herman’s theory spoke to women’s traumatic experiences beyond rape, sexism has gained more medical and cultural significance in the context of trauma theory, as evidenced in Laura Brown’s (1995) push to reform the then DSM III, which she felt failed to understand and address the role of oppressive structures that define the lives of marginalized groups.
In the context of finance and socioeconomic outcomes, research typically only goes as far as indicating the strong relationship between financial stressors and psychological stress, anxiety, and depression (Conger, et al., 2002; Fryers, Melzer, & Jenkins, 2003; Lorant, Deliége, Eaton, Robert, Philippot, & Ansseau, 2003; Santiago, Wadsworth, & Stump, 2011; Starkey, et al., 2013) on the individual to then inform how helping professionals may support their clients (Courtois & Ford, 2012). While it is important to provide such treatment arcs for helping professionals, the practice of only considering the impact of oppression on the individual and their financial behavior is shortsighted. It holds the individual accountable when, as a collective, we should question the impact of the system we operate within.
Even if researchers and practitioners entertain the integration of a category of stress-related disorders, the underlying assumption upon which the diagnostic criteria is based still attributes personality defects and deficits to the individual and pathologizes normative responding to horrible situations (Root, 1992; McKenzie 2023). This is why Arline T. Geronimus (2023) even acknowledges that modern stressors are often “chronic or repeated… and psychosocial.” That modern stressors rarely have a clear end point, Geronimus (2023) found it necessary to classify the effects of such experiences as weathering, another category that rebukes the pathologization of our experiences, as she even admits current understandings of the impacts of stress do not adequately capture the harm people experience. In her latest conceptualization of financial trauma, McKenzie (2023) urges the field to stop considering financial trauma as a pathology because it participates in victim-blaming and refuses the idea that there are multiple ways of validating people’s post-trauma responses and ultimately narrows the lens through which we can place financial trauma in context.
In her latest conceptualization of financial trauma, McKenzie (2023) urges the field to stop considering financial trauma as a pathology because it participates in victim-blaming and refuses the idea that there are multiple ways of validating people’s post-trauma responses and ultimately narrows the lens through which we can place financial trauma in context.
Certain groups of people experience sustained insidious financial traumas in the context of socioeconomic experiences, but their experiences are often misinterpreted and do not consider the context of their socioeconomic experiences (Root, 1992; McKenzie, 2023). In the midst of a traumatic event, the primary goal is to restore a sense of safety as quickly as possible (Menakem, 2017). And too often in the American economic context, that means being compelled to make financial decisions that are not in a person’s or a community’s long-term financial best interest (McKenzie, 2023). Conceptualizations like “disordered money behaviors” and the “money script inventory” (Klontz, 2009; Klontz, Britt, Archuleta, & Klontz, 2012) can lead some to pathologize the financial decisions of others without any context. Given this, some researchers and practitioners may become more accustomed to asking, “What is wrong with you?” as opposed to “What happened to you?” Even as the research acknowledges that being poor or having low financial knowledge itself cannot explain disordered money behavior (Klontz, Britt, Archuleta, & Klontz, 2012), describing financial behavior as disordered in response to people’s and communities’ unique struggle against wealth inequality provides little
etiological or conceptual utility outside of the individual’s perception of experience. When financial trauma is not treated as a pathology, it requires researchers and practitioners to define “normal behavior” in a situational, historical, and anti-oppressive perspective. This means the notion of trauma will be more inclusive of purposely ignored groups’ experiences, especially those who are targeted by various forms of oppression.
Certain communities continue to sustain financial trauma, which prevent the ability to recover socioeconomically and reinforce financial behaviors that may look disordered, but are actually logical when trauma is placed in context. These groups often respond to their repeated experiences of financial trauma with non- or limited participation in the broader economy (McKenzie, 2023), meaning that the more a group must experience the violent force of the economic system, the more the group becomes organized for non- or limited participation in the economy. The pathologization of marginalized groups’ responses to socioeconomic harms—including income and wealth inequality— erroneously and dangerously denies that the category of financial trauma, construed as a personal and subjective experience, is best understood as caused by power and its unequal distribution. Black women’s unique struggle against wealth inequality fully embodies this conceptualization.
3. WHY WE MUST PRIORITIZE BLACK WOMEN
“Income inequality, or wide gaps in income between the highest and lowest wage earners in a society (Moss, 2002), is another oppressive system rooted in racism (Massey, 1990) that may contribute to high rates of PTSD in urban Black communities” (as cited in Ravi et al., 2023, p. 568). Also, Black Americans are disproportionately affected by trauma and its effects compared to other racial groups (Himle et al., 2009; Roberts et al., 2011; Sibrava et al., 2019).
Alarmingly, while lifetime rates of PTSD in the general population are about 7% (Keane et al., 2009), rates of PTSD in the overall Black population are 8.7% (Roberts et al., 2011), and much higher (53.8%) among Black women living in urban environments (p. 568). Since Black women are at the highest risk for living in poverty and experiencing racial and gender-based discrimination, Black women would benefit most from a non-pathologizing methodology for understanding how financial trauma and economic violence are perpetuated while addressing an important gap in our field.
Hudson, Neighbors, Geronimus, & Jackson (2012) studied the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and depression among African Americans. The researchers noted the inverse relationship between SEP and depression is one of, “the most universal findings in the field of psychiatric epidemiology,” (p. 373-81). However, their findings do not hold true among African Americans, especially African American women. The researchers found that among the respondents who identified as Black women, neither SEP nor wealth indicators appeared to be significant predictors of depression. This deviation from the universal findings left the researchers with several questions, which compelled them to call for others in the field to, “pay close attention to the role that gender plays…in the prediction of depression,” and other psychological outcomes.
Although the literature regarding the impact of trauma on personal finance continues to center the individual, increasingly researchers are beginning to utilize intersectional frameworks to better understand the ways that multiple forms of oppression interlock and create the conditions for trauma to be a possible experiential outcome (Watson, DeBlaere, Langreher, Zelaya, & Flores, 2016; Starkey, Keane, Terry, Marx, & Ricci, 2013; Assari, 2019). As evidenced in the aforementioned literature, Black women’s unique struggle against wealth inequality continues to deviate from much of what researchers consider to be the universal findings about socioeconomic position and mental health—that as socioeconomic position improves, mental health improves. Financial trauma offers us important insights as to why Black women’s experiences deviate from universal findings. This understanding is also laid bare when applying a political economy lens to discussions of financial and insidious traumas.
Although the literature regarding the impact of trauma on personal finance continues to center the individual, more researchers are beginning to utilize intersectional frameworks to better understand the ways that multiple forms of oppression interlock and create the conditions for trauma to be a possible experiential outcome (Watson, DeBlaere, Langreher, Zelaya, & Flores, 2016; Starkey, Keane, Terry, Marx, & Ricci, 2013; Assari, 2019). As evidenced in the aforementioned literature, Black women’s unique struggle against wealth inequality continues to deviate from much of what researchers consider to be the universal findings
about socioeconomic position and mental health—that as socioeconomic position improves, mental health improves. Financial trauma offers us important insights as to why Black women’s experiences deviate from universal findings. This understanding is also revealed when applying a political economy lens to discussions of financial and insidious traumas.
A. Insidious Trauma through a Political Economy Lens
Individual experiences of economic violence which produce insidious trauma are inextricably linked to the creation and evolution of given modes of economic organization, as well as the associated institutions that these modes themselves sustain and produce. The organization of an economic system in any particular time is the product of complex interactions between social, political, and material forces that combine to produce a set of outcomes that are never experienced in quite the same way by members of a given society.
We can look to the work in the discipline of political economy focused on explaining why the development of institutions of social protection, specifically but not limited to the institutions broadly characterized as the welfare state, vary so much across different societies (see, for example: Albert, 1993; Skocpol, 1995; Pierson, 1996; and Cooper, 2017). Many of these efforts are focused on trying to understand why different societies develop economic institutions that insulate, to a greater or lesser extent, some individuals from the risks inherent in participating in a market economy. Drawing these types of comparisons can help enumerate both the specific risks individuals and communities in U.S. society, especially communities of color, experience as a byproduct of their baseline participation in economic life, as well as the differential impact shouldered by some in society that others are able to avoid (Hacker 2004).
Danish political economist Gosta Esping-Andersen famously coined the term “decommodification” to describe the degree to which members of a particular society can rely on social and economic support from the state to guarantee them a standard of living regardless of their participation, or performance, in the market economy (1993). These supports range from social rights to basic needs like food, housing, and medical care, to a variety of protections against lost market income from illness, old age, disability, or pressures from other caring responsibilities like parenthood.
These interventions, as with the concept of decommodification itself, are connected to an analysis of how any society or political community chooses to manage the range of risks individuals and families must face in the course of participating in modern life (Yang, 2014). Our work is motivated by the belief that these social risks are not faced equally by all members of society. Inherited wealth, for example, may provide a person built in protection, from birth, against the risk of illness or disability, or against the unforeseen consequences of one’s own financial decisions. When the distribution of such wealth is determined, as is the case in the United States, by a long history of racial and gender-based discrimination, subjugation, and exclusion from full and equal citizenship, we naturally see people of color—especially women of color—more often forced to bear the full extent of social risk when compared to white people.
Without the protection of decommodifying social supports that remove, or otherwise attenuate social risks, the legacy of economic violence and racialized inequality underpins a unique set of financial trauma(s) that Black women experience at higher rates than others. This inequality of access, by international standards, to the threadbare system of social supports in the U.S. has been demonstrated to exclude especially Black people as a matter of design (Alesina et al., 2001; Floyd et al., 2021), while mechanisms of benefit sanction have been shown to impact non-white people at much higher rates than others (Walsh et al., 2023). Finally, decommodifying social supports are critical protective mechanisms against volatility and crises at the macro-social or macroeconomic level that always hit excluded or marginalized communities the hardest. Low or limited access to these supports exacerbates the experience of financial trauma and Black communities in particular have been shown to bear long-term economic consequences that result from economic crises (Kuhn, Schularick and Steins, 2018).
Black women’s unique struggle against wealth inequality fully embodies the conceptualization that 1) financial trauma is not a pathology and; 2) financial trauma is not a predictor for or indicator of financial precarity (Hudson, Neighbors, Geronimus, & Jackson, 2012; McKenzie, 2023). McKenzie (2021) posits that we would not know this without studying Black women. Black women’s systematically suppressed wealth-building capability demonstrates that there is a multi-layered texture to the maliciousness of the
wounds sustained by financial trauma (McKenzie, 2021). This should compel researchers to explore the category of trauma from an intersectional lens because intersectionality helps us expand the definition of trauma beyond conventional definitions and include the experiences of many more members of society, “who sustain traumas that are unrecognized because the sequelae may not appear to be what the observer is familiar with,” (Root, 1992, p. 242). There are many gaps in the literature today, such as failing to treat financial trauma as a category of trauma. If financial trauma is used, the literature often fails to consider communitywide trauma and measure it beyond just the individual level. Centering Black women in research is essential because Black women, as a group, require researchers to travel across historical and demographic dimensions
CONCLUSION
The theory of financial trauma as conceptualized by Chloe B. McKenzie, with its roots in intersectionality and Maria Root’s concept of insidious trauma, provides scope to detail the effect of being socioeconomically harmed by an economic system that was designed to concentrate wealth and power for those who enjoy racialized and gender-based privilege. Although research on oppression as the cause of trauma continues to increase, when researchers study the impact of this trauma on personal finance too often oppressive ideals
to present transhistorical and anti-oppressive discourses whose origins are not restricted to the individual level.
Restoring the conceptualization of financial trauma as a category of trauma that is not a pathology and an effect that has community-level impact is necessary to address the gaps in the literature discussed in this paper. Since Black women have been the most structurally positioned to experience financial trauma, they have a right to demand their experiences be at the center of more research, and more importantly, that they be the ones to research the circumstances of their oppression. Doing this would create the possibility of emerging works of research that could then measure and ideally lead to breaking the forms of violence and oppression that cause financial trauma and perpetuate wealth inequality.
are reinforced. The gaps in the literature embody this. As such, future research must 1) disrupt the narrowness of experiences that are currently considered traumatic, 2) be attentive to the danger of treating financial trauma as a pathology, and therefore, treat it as a valid category of insidious trauma, and 3) center Black women, as their experiences are influenced by multiple forms of oppression (e.g., at least racism and sexism) and therefore can more accurately capture the impact financial trauma has on wealth inequality.
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