What is post-traumatic slave syndrome? Well this is the work of Joy
DeGruy, and it's about she explains that the ramifications of the trauma of
slavery having been so absolute and so profound and debilitating and it was
sustained--a very important point that she makes--for over 300 years plus all
the post-slavery--Jim Crow and all the rest of it--that it continues
reverberating emotionally and behaviorally, which is exactly how
post-traumatic stress disorder works. You have a post traumatic stress disorder
which means it continues to affect emotions and behavior. And the
interesting thing is that captivity has been very well studied so that Joy
DeGruy's work with post-traumatic slave syndrome, of course, dovetails were the
work done on post traumatic stress disorder, which has been studied by many
many. But Judith Herman who studied captivity like Elizabeth Smart, who
was you know held captive for years and then escaped and learned to tell her
story, that in studying people who have been held captive even for a short
period of time or a year or whatever, the residual effect from the post-traumatic
syndrome is shame of all things. Not fear. Shame is the residual impact of being
held in captivity and she describes someone who's held for a period of time
as "Each enslaved person," she writes, "is in a permanently disordered shame status." So
here they're being...they might be being raped and hit and abused and
burned the cigarettes whatever oh no shame is the main thing that they
are left with at the end. Shame. So you can imagine the implications of this to
people who endured 300 plus years of being
enslaved in a most brutal way. So the reason we have the intensity of
post-traumatic slave syndrome according to Joy DeGruy that we have is has
something to do with America's special brand of slavery. Okay. So what is
America's special brand of slavery? Okay so it's unique in all the world and in
all the world history it has to do with permanent slavery. So initially when
captives were brought to this the country as it was being founded
and starting you know the colonies. They came from all over. There were you know
all from all different European countries in Ireland and all over and
Africa of course. Initially, everybody was indentured forty acres and a mule but
at some point it became expedient. The Irish could escape and blend in with the
rest of people you know. There were certain disadvantages: the Native
Americans kept dying from diseases they weren't immune to, you know. But the
African slaves who were physiologically the most similar to the European
settlers in terms of immunology they they're practically one continent with a
you know with across the Suez Canal you know and they had all the skills. They
had bricklaying, and leathermaking, and textile--all the skills that were needed. So it
was decided there's the slaves. We're making that's it from here on in anybody
who has evidence of African ancestry meaning skin color is now a permanent
slave. Not like it usually is where my people conquer your people and we think
you as slaves. No. You're permanent slaves. So the economics of the
plantation power structure created the myth in order to have this work of
people from African descent being a separate race, a
subhuman race. Inferior. So that they began to manufacture and a sort of a
pseudo-scientific idea of separate races. So you can imagine the effort that it
took for you know for this to be pulled off in a country where "All men are
created equal" they had to make the people with African descent
automatically slaves and say they're not equal. They're sub-human, so they don't they
don't count under that rule. And then not only were they slaves, their children
were slaves, and the children of their children were slaves just by virtue of
their skin color. And then you know came the one-drop rule so that if you had any
evidence of African ancestry or any "taint" as they said of African ancestry
you are automatically labeled black and you were a slave. So you know white means
no taint. It's the exclusion of all color and black is just the taint. So if you
have any of that you're a slave. And this color-based system
which created consciousness about skin color so that if you're you have any
your slave. This led to what we have today which is the black/white dichotomy.
What do you mean by the black/white dichotomy? Well it's you know
a binary system which belies the fact that we're really all one race and we're
just you know on a genetic continuum. It belies that because it makes it
look like people are on either side of a biological divide. We are on either side
of a social divide. But the dehumanizing designation of putting people in a
separate color box and labeling them inferior--sub-human during slavery--it has
created like a gouge in our society, like a trough.
It has created a chasm so that you have people on either side of that. And this
it creates the infrastructure that we use to organize all sorts of binary
things like it's using white as the standard: White versus people of color,
white versus brown and black people. I hear all these different ways of
saying it. White versus non white people. But my question is when do we get to
question the word "white"? White is not a parallel construction. Once people of
color--people of African descent--began referring to themselves as African-
Americans, people labeled white should start referring to themselves as
European-Americans. Or once people started referring to themselves as
Latino Americans then the parallel construction - that would be Anglo
Americans. But Anglo Americans all kinds of people speak English so "Oh that
wouldn't work. We need a designation that shows this perfect pigmentation, this
aestheticism that we have about white." Those words black and white are so
important because they sound like opposites, there's so much contrast, what
is the most contrasting thing to put against white is black and against black
is white as if we're just opposites that's what the words imply. Okay so what
is the meaning of black and white? well in Western culture it's not true in Eastern
culture but in Western culture white is the color of purity and innocence and
spotlessness and goodness and it's the absence of any change you know. White it is
the absence of color. So white is exclusive and excluding and it's the
perfect word for the ruling class to use to identify themselves: white. In Western
culture also black is the color of funerals, it's the color of
death, it's color of evil. You know the guy with a black hat and the cowboy
movies is the one who brings the danger and the evil. It's the color of filth.
It's the color of taint. So it was the perfect word for the ruling class to
come up with to label people of African descent so that they could be oppressed.
You know black is the inclusion of all colors. We've come a long way you
know in terms of negative connotation of the color of black. "Black is beautiful
and we've come so far really creating that that much better way of viewing
things. We still see people though in color boxes of black and white so the
the post-traumatic impact of post traumatic slave syndrome still
lives on in our country. And what are the symptoms of this post-traumatic
slave syndrome? Well, Joy DeGruy goes into this. And it's a fascinating study.
They of course dovetail with the symptoms of any post traumatic stress
disorder--the universal symptoms. But if we kind of look at the symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder of abandonment and we kind of look at it
from the point of view of people who descended from you know from this
tradition of slavery, we see a whole lot of stuff that's very interesting. The
defining feature of post-traumatic stress disorder is shame. This toxic
traumatic shame that affects us from within secretly. And then we have the low
self-esteem, the little sense of entitlement where we
we have lack of confidence, lots of self-doubt, self-hatred, we have
insecurity and our relationships, those of us with post-traumatic stress
disorder of abandonment and we can be easily triggered into having that primal
abandonment fear. There are self-defeating behaviors
you know like getting in our own way. Self-destructive impulses drugs alcohol
that kind of thing. A lot of performance anxiety that prevents us from achieving...[to be continued]