Aaron David Gresson III is Professor Emeritus of Education and Human Development at The Pennsylvania State University. Trained in both sociology and psychology, he is the author of several books including The Recovery of Race in America and The Dialectics of Betrayal: Sacrifice, Violation, and the Oppressed. He previously taught at Brandeis, Colby, Brown, Hershey Medical School, and the State University of New York. Gresson is currently a psychotherapist in Baltimore and teaches at Morgan State University.

Contents: The Dance of Agency in the 21 Century - Racial Pain and its Discontents - America's «Atonement» and the Right to a Non -Spoiled Identity - Racial Pain in the 21 Century - Spoiled Identities and Traumatized Relations - White Pain and the Dance of Agency - The White Male and the Masculinity Crisis - Again - White Studies and Racial Pain in the Academy - The Plight of the Neo-Liberal Agenda in the Existential Moment - Ritual Recovery, Yellow Ribbons, and Patriotic Wars - Multiculturalism and Social Justice - White Pain and the Search for a Non - Oppressive Cultural Turn - Toward a Psychopedagogy of Healing - Mourning and Mending Difference in the New Millennium - Relational Justice and the Pedagogy of the Wounded Healer.

The second edition of America's Atonement: Racial Pain, Recovery Rhetoric, and the Pedagogy of Healing argues that racial pain is a driving force in contemporary race relations and is especially prevalent in social discourses on identity, fairness, and social justice. Despite its importance, racial pain is too often glossed over as mundane or disingenuous. For this reason, social justice activism and education are in danger of undermining the needs and opportunities to more effectively convey what has been called «difficult knowledge». This book highlights emergent examples of psychic and relational healing.