The racism experience: a West Australian study of emotional wounding and healing

[Truncated abstract] This is a study of recipients of racism, their wounds, and processes of recovery. It analyses the effects of racism on participants' emotional, mental, and social experiences, and how they may transcend the limitations generated in their lives. Providing an insider's perspective of what it means to live with racism, this study presents a dimension of social experience rarely revealed. The research is based on the biographies of fourteen individuals, all located in the state of Western Australia. Each of them belongs to the professional class, a group in which many seemed to have managed to not let racism destroy their lives. Collected through non-‐directive interviews, their stories expose how people experience racism, an inner process that is not visible to the outsider's gaze. Biographical sketches of five participants are presented to illustrate the various processes attached to their experiences, and how stories of racism are articulated. Based in inter-‐disciplinary research indicating the detrimental effects of racism on recipients' health and wellbeing, this study progresses into the largely unexplored domain of self-‐recovery and healing of racism.