Racial disparities in alcohol use, alcohol use disorder (AUD), and trauma exposure between European Americans (EA) and African Americans (AA) have been reported in female cohorts (Grant et al., 2012, Hawkins et al., 2010, Sedlak et al., 2010). Adolescent and young adult EA women experience higher rates of alcohol use and AUD diagnosis (Grant et al., 2012), but some research suggests AAs who develop AUD problems experience more severe symptoms (Mulia et al., 2009). In addition, EA women report lower rates of sexual abuse (SA), physical abuse (PA), experiencing a life threatening injury and witnessing injury or death (Duncan et al., 2014) than their AA counterparts. That said, studies have revealed significantly elevated risk for early initiation of alcohol use and development of alcohol use disorder following trauma in adolescent girls and women (Sartor et al., 2010, Sartor et al., 2013b). However, despite their lower rates of trauma exposure, problem drinking is more common in EA than AA women (Grucza et al., 2008, Sartor et al., 2013b). This seemingly paradoxical relationship between trauma exposure and alcohol outcomes in EA and
