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Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing

2018-11-30T18:14:53Z

Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 229
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2005), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plague the African American community.

While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today"(13). It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior”(13).

DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility”(7). DeGruy began to compare the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression”(13), hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”

DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.

She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619 (73). Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (73-86).

She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse (52). DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons’” (48). DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans”(49).

In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s "symptoms"(113-114). Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (114). What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants (120). DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multi-generational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society(121).

As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity”(4). She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering”(4-5).

DeGruy admits that there is no empirical proof to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others claim that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. In an article published by the African American Intellectual History Society (2010), historian Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016), believes that the concept of PTSS is “racist in nature” and that negative behaviors make black people a human group – “imperfectly equal to all other imperfect human racial groups” (1). DeGruy’s book, and her theory of pathology, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Theories of black pathology such as DeGruy’s gained traction in 1965 when social psychologist Kenneth B. Clark published Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power. In the article “Who Speaks for Harlem? Kenneth B. Clark, Albert Murray and Controversies of Black Urban Life” (2012), author Daniel Matlin claims that in Clark’s efforts to address “[t]he problem of the American Negro,” he described how northern ghetto life impacted the psyches of African Americans creating pathological negative behaviors and “group-hate” (876 - 878). Later that year, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, serving as Assistant Secretary of Labor under Lyndon B. Johnson, reinforced the idea of black pathology when he released a report entitled “The Negro Family: the Case for National Action.” Moynihan suggested that the family structure was holding African Americans back, and while he blamed racism and “unimaginable treatment” for the state of African Americans, he was criticized for his claims in relationship to pathology (879-880). DeGruy’s work on this topic makes it evident that as there continues to exist economic and social disparities between blacks (and other people of color) and whites, causality will continue to be studied, written about, and debated.

Bibliography

DeGruy, Joy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and
Healing. Oregon: Joy DeGruy Publications, 2015.

Matlin, Daniel. “Who Speaks for Harlem? Kenneth B. Clark, Albert Murray and the
Controversies of Black Urban Life.” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 4 (November 2012):
875-894, accessed November 11, 2018, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23352469.

Kendi, Ibram X. (2016) “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is a Racist Idea.” Black Perspectives:
African American Intellectual History Society. Accessed November 20, 2018.
https://www.aaihs.org/post-traumatic-slave-syndrome-is-a-racist-idea/.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing

2018-11-30T18:03:42Z

Klynch:

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing

2018-10-24T00:40:46Z

Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 229
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2005), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.

While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today"(13). It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior”(13).

DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility”(7). DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression”(13), hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”

DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.

She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619 (73). Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (73-86).

She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse (52). DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons’” (48). DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans”(49).

In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms"(113-114). Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (114). What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants (120). DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multi-generational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society(121).

As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity”(4). She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering”(4-5).

DeGruy admits that there is no empirical proof to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing

2018-10-22T23:09:18Z

Klynch: Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing | author = Joy DeGruy | publisher = Joy DeGruy Publicatio..."

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 229
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2005), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.

While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²

DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”

DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.

She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶

She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹

In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³

As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵

DeGruy admits that there is no empirical proof to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T22:54:41Z

Klynch:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Joy DeGruy [[Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing]] (2005).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Robert Frank. [[The Americans|The Americans: Photographs by Robert Frank Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).
* Elizabeth Fraterrigo [[Playboy and the Making of the Good Life of Modern America]] (2009)
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[Social Darwinism in American Thought]] (1994).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Mae Ngai. [[Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America]] (2014).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Aviva Chomsky. [[Linked Labor Histories| Linked Labor Histories : New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class]] (2008 .

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy and Enduring Injury and Healing

2018-10-22T22:52:56Z

Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 229
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg|Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome|alt=cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2005), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.

While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²

DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”

DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.

She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶

She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹

In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³

As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵

DeGruy admits that there is no empirical proof to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg

2018-10-22T22:52:02Z

Klynch:

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy and Enduring Injury and Healing

2018-10-22T22:51:22Z

Klynch: Created page with "{{Infobox book | name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing | author = Joy DeGruy | publisher = Joy DeGruy Publicatio..."

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 229
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg|200px|alt=cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2005), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.

While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²

DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”

DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.

She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶

She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹

In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³

As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵

DeGruy admits that there is no empirical proof to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

Twentieth Century United States

2018-10-22T22:50:43Z

Klynch:

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* William Fitzhugh Brundage. [[The Southern Past|The Southern Past: a Clash of Race and Memory]] (2005).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Ta-Nehisi Coates. [[We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy]] (2017).
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).
* Stephanie Coontz. [[The Way We Never Were|The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap]] (1992).
* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Alfred W. Crosby. [[America's Forgotten Pandemic|America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918]] (2003).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Joy DeGruy [[Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy and Enduring Injury and Healing]] (2005).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Robert Frank. [[The Americans|The Americans: Photographs by Robert Frank Introduction by Jack Kerouac]] (1958).
* Elizabeth Fraterrigo [[Playboy and the Making of the Good Life of Modern America]] (2009)
* Christina Greene. [[Our Separate Ways|Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina]] (2005).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[Social Darwinism in American Thought]] (1994).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Benjamin Hufbauer. [[Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory]] (2005).
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Sharon Foster Jones. [[Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue: A History]] (2012)
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Lucy Kaylin. [[For the Love of God | For the Love of God: The Faith and Future of the American Nun]] (2000)
*Kempton, Willet [[Environmental Values in American Culture]] (1999)
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
* Tim Lawrence. [[Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983|Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-83]] (2016).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Fredrik Logevall. [[Choosing War|Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam]] (1999).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* John Markoff. [[What the Dormouse Said|What the Dorm Mouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Indsutry]] (2005).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Mae Ngai. [[Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America]] (2014).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. [[Deaf in America|Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture]](1988).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Patrick Phillips. [[Blood at the Root|Blood at the Root: Racial Cleansing in America]] (2016).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* David Roediger. [[Working Toward Whiteness|Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs]] (2005)
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969)
* Dawn Spring. [[Advertising in the Age of Persuasion|Advertising in the Age of Persuasion: Building Brand America, 1941-1961]] (2011)
* Ann Laura Stoler. [[Haunted by Empire|Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History]] (2006).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Yellin, Emily [[Our Mothers' War]] (2004).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)
*Aviva Chomsky. [[Linked Labor Histories| Linked Labor Histories : New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class]] (2008 .

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Klynch: {{Infobox book | name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing | author = Joy DeGruy | publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc. | pub_date = 2005 | pages = 229 | isbn = 13...

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Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 220
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg,1|200px|alt=cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.
While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.
She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶
She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³
As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵
DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

File:12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg

2018-10-22T17:01:27Z

Klynch: Klynch uploaded a new version of File:12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 220
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg,1|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.
While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.
She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶
She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³
As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵
DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

File:12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg

2018-10-22T16:43:17Z

Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 220
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[File:Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.jpg,1|200px|alt=cover]]
}}
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.
While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.
She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶
She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³
As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵
DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

File:12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg

2018-10-22T16:16:59Z

Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 220
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome jpg|200px|alt=Cover]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.
While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.
She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶
She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³
As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵
DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

File:12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg

2018-10-22T15:54:26Z

Klynch:

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 220
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, 12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg
901 × 1350, 218 KB]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.
While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.
She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶
She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³
As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵
DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5

File:12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg

2018-10-22T15:34:52Z

Klynch: {{Infobox book | name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing | author = Joy DeGruy | publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc. | pub_date = 2005 | pages = 220 | isbn = 9780985217...

{{Infobox book
| name = Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: A Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
| author = Joy DeGruy
| publisher = Joy DeGruy Publications Inc.
| pub_date = 2005
| pages = 220
| isbn = 9780985217204
| image = [[12595-Farnworthcover (1).jpg
901 × 1350, 218 KB]]
}}

In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007), Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.
While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.”
DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.
She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶
She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³
As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing. She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors. DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵
DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans. Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.

Citations
1: p. 13
2: pg. 13
3: pg. 7
4: pg. 13
5: pg. 73
6: pg.’s 73-86
7: pg. 52
8: pg. 48
9: pg. 49
10: pg.’s 113 -114
11: pg. 114
12: pg. 120
13: pg. 121
14: pg. 4
15: pg.’s 4-5