Beyond empathic failures: Cultural racism as narcissistic trauma and disenfranchisement of grandiosity

Applying a self-psychological perspective, this paper explores the effects of cultural racism on a person's sense of self. Racism assaults victims with experiences of being perceived as less-than-human by the social milieu. Such experiences can utterly erode self-esteem and ambition and cause a "depression of disenfranchisement" whereby one feels abjectly ungrandiose. The paper utilizes a literary example and one from clinical experience to illustrate how chronic experiences of antipathy-derived from cultural racism-can erode a person's sense of self by virtue of the disenfranchisement of grandiosity.