'Slave syndrome' may still affect black behavior

[icymist]

Saturday, October 15, 2005

'Slave syndrome' may still affect black behavior
Professor's theory set for talk today

By JOHN IWASAKI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The troubling images of African Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' impoverished neighborhoods didn't startle researcher Joy DeGruy-Leary.

"All Katrina did was reveal what was already there. I wasn't confused, wasn't surprised," she said. "I knew what the 9th Ward was about. The difference was, (before the disaster) everybody was OK about it. It was business as usual."

DeGruy-Leary, an assistant professor in Portland State University's Graduate School of Social Work, will discuss her theory of the relationship between race, culture, poverty and history today at the third Seattle Race Conference and tonight in a separate talk.

Her theory of "post-traumatic slave syndrome" concludes that African Americans needed to adapt to survive more than two centuries of slavery, and that those adaptations are reflected in their behaviors today.

(more)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/244686_seattlerace15.html

[knowbody0]

1. many from the 9th ward

had NEVER left their neighborhood. and many families had been in the same home for over 5 generations.
but Halliburton hires illegal imigrants

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. I have always felt

that two centuries of slavery could not be easily erased. Not only were they folks pulled from a culture totally alien the 18th and 19th Century western civilization, they were enormously inhibited from establishing positive family relationships.

I live in the very deep south. I teach children whose families have NEVER LEFT the actual plantation where they were once owned. I have taken fifth grade children on field trips to "The Mall" which is about five miles from their rural homes, and many have never been there before.

It is a different world down here.

[hiabrill]

6. This "post-traumatic slave syndrome" is induced......

...... Probably intentionally by the mainly wealthy "White" Population in these regions.

It's unacceptable that we allow the status quo to remain 100 years after the end of slavery and several decades after the Civil Rights Movement......


The Federal Government has not done enough. To me this is proof that "Affirmative Action" has not worked effectively in all States....

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. And this is a reason

why I personally support some sort of reparations. At the very least, full scholarships to state schools, downpayments on houses, business start-ups that are NOT loans.

We owe these people. Their sweat built the deep south.

[jaysunb]

7. Not just the South....

The city of Washington D.C. and the capitol the looks over it was built by slaves on loan to the United States government.

I thank you for your efforts on behalf of my people.

[murray hill farm]

4. While i sure am not a biblical scholar...

I think that is says somewhere in the bible..probably old testiment...that the sins of the father will be visited on something like seven generations of his offspring. i often think this actually is true...in families with abuse, etc...that it would probably take seven generations of offspring to overcome that trauma. I think it may also be true for the whole family of mankind..that the social sins against a people might well take seven generations to overcome for those who were sinned against by their father. slavery must certainly qualify as the worst of all abusiveness.

[Maraya1969]

5. A few black men have told me that even though they were educated

they still felt that they had to work twice as hard as a white person to get ahead in this country. Maybe this is true or maybe they have the feelings that this women is speaking about. Maybe it is both.

Personally if I may, I would like to encourage every praying person or meditating person to visualize or pray for our nation's poor to be healthy and happy and prosperous. If you are not of this persuasion please do not flame me. It is just something I have been doing since Katrina and I want to share the idea with whoever wants to hear it.

[nashville_brook]

8. i think there's a "master" syndrome down there

what i saw was police threatening anyone who wanted to leave.

[Lisa]

9. I reminded my parents ...

... after they said something a while back about black people not being motivated to excel in education and politics (and use that to reform the system), that all it took was ONE major incident (wartime internment of those with Japanese ancestry) to scare them off any kind of political activity for the rest of their lives. They won't so much as go to an anti-nuclear rally, because 60 years later they're still scared that the cops will use any excuse to pick them up. In fact, the feds still have their names on file (as a relative found, when she was applying for a sensitive government job).

As I was growing up in the 1970s, when my classmates made racial taunts, my folks were scared to go to the authorities because they "didn't want to be seen as making trouble". And they were educated, middle-class professionals (a teacher and a nurse). They gave me the standard line of "just ignore them, don't stoop to their level, and don't tell them they're wrong because it will upset them further" -- but they were clearly torn.

So it's not hard to imagine what generations of legally-sanctioned, state-sponsored repression could do. (Not to mention the fact that most jurisdictions said it was fine to beat and torture any slave who so much as expressed curiosity about learning how to read, or asked questions about what life was like in other places.) It's not the kind of thing that can just be forgotten -- especially when a lot of the same structures and attitudes are in place that allowed it to continue.

[FloridaPat]

10. BS. Women have been held down for centuries and we've managed to

come a long way in the last 100 years. But white women have had the same educational opportunities that white men have had. And with some good lawyers and laws, we done a lot.

There are stories even today of beatings and murder and discrimination against other minorities. Combine that with a bad education and you have people that still can't get equal with the top race on the continent.

And if anyone was to call people's intelligence into question - a great line from www.whatreallyhappened.com about how * approval rating it now 2% with African Americans = "... ending forever the claim that Blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. :)".

[hiabrill]

13. BS. You cannot compare White women to the poor Black Community

Not all minorities are treated equally.

LISA gave an excellent insight to a prejudice that unfortunately still prevails.

Should we ignore the poor black folks and blame them for not fighting hard enough??? I personally believe they need a helping hand to break-out. Having said that I think that's exactly what Katrina already did..... harsh as it was, we're finally touching on an issue that's been ignored for long enough and it's not going to go away easily.

[FloridaPat]

16. That was my one of my points, Most poor people have a lousy

education. And not all minorities are treated equal. But to say their problem stems from slavery issue 140 years ago is bunk. It has been the relentless white discrimination against them that is the main problem.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

21. I like your take on this

[Kailassa]

11. I'm astonished that you guys can't see through this crap.

Any "explanation" of Black behaviour given in this context is pushing the insidious presumtion that it is Black behaviour that needs explaining. Agaim we are being fed the notion that the Blacks of New Orleans were responsible for their own predicament.

How about a "never-got-over-being-a-slaver" syndrome instead to explain the neglect, by those who had the power and money, of those levees? Why not look at the mental problems causing police to shoot at people dying of thirst who wanted to get take their children to somewhere that might have water? And the absolute insanity of FEMA, blocking all aid, cutting telephone lines? A government that redirected electricity to look after pipelines?

Can anyone explain the sickness of a culture that laughs when radio hosts joke about thousands dying, suggesting they would be too fat to sink anyway?

Americans wonder why other people hate America. Well it's because we see the contempt with which most of the Americans who have "made it" regard those who, in their eyes, haven't. That is Not civilization. In a civilized country people are cared about, given a chance to succeed, and those who truly can't are looked after.

I'm sure the Blacks of NO after Katrina were influenced by a past of slavery and hardship; they showed it in their strength and fortitude, their restraint from the violence Buschco hoped to generate, and their willingness to look after each other. So let's give them credit for what they managed in that terrible time, and not allow anything to deflect blame from this government, who can only be defended from charges of murder by the admission of criminal incompetance.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

15. All behavior can be explained

in some fashion. I think the "never-got-over-being-a-slaver" syndrome is alive and well in many places.

I don't see acknowledging this proposed slavery syndrome as feeding the notion that the blacks of New Orleans were responsible for their own predicament.

There were obviously many things that contributed to this tragedy, not the least of which was a natural disaster. But one of the underlying reasons for people not evacuating was the poverty that curtailed many of them from finding a way out of town, and also (from what I have read..sorry no link) from a belief that someone would come and pick them up in busses. They were tragically misled.

As you state, the same "syndrome" that can produce dysfunctional behaviors can also produce strength and fortitude. But we shirk our repsonbilities for what this country has done to these people if we don't acknowledge the role our ancestor's behavior has played in keeping this race of people in poverty.

[Kailassa]

18. I'm sad to see you doing the same thing.

Yes, a lot of lies were told about the reasons people stayed behind in New Orleans. But I would think you would be able to see through them. There was not enough transport to take everyone out, the shelters within the city could not accomodate everyone and turned people away, and if you were there, with no money, no transport out of the city, and no-where to go to anyway, what would you do?

It was not the hurricane that killed people, it was the levees that did. For many people it was reasonable to decide they were safer in their own homes than hiking out into a country where they had no friends and no-where to stay; a country that hates Blacks.

Again you mention "dysfunctional behaviours". It's unhelpful to parrot terms without considering where they come from and how they are used. There is no proof that this hypothesised syndrome exists, much less that it causes disfunctional behaviour. It is merely a nice sounding way of enticing even people who regard themselves as Liberal to spread the word about Blacks being responsible for being in the hole us whites dig for them.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

20. I agree

with much of what you say. I have spoken to many of the evacuees who were here in town when I volunteered in two shelters. Since then I have worked with three families who are resettling into this area. I know what they say were their reasons for leaving and the reasons some of their kin did not get out.

You made my point for me when you said "if you were there with no money, no transport out of the city, and nowhere to go..." and in my opinion, you are describing poverty. My point is the the author makes sense when describing one important, albeit not the ONLY reason for that poverty.

The hurricane produced the water that destroyed the levees. And I have not been one of those folks who criticize anyone's decision to stay put during that evacuation. I live on the gulf coast and have had to make that decision myself. But then you go on to mention that they were afraid to hike out into a country where they had no friends, a country that hates blacks. Is this true? Or is that their perception (forgetting for a moment that perception is truth). Because if it is a perception, then that also lends credence to the author's point. The concept of a country that "hates Blacks" however might lose some merit when you consider that southern Louisiana is a predominantly black area. These folks are very much the majority ethnic group.

My biggest disagreement is perhaps with regards to my "parroting" terms such as dysfunctional behaviors. I was not aware the author used that term, altho I haven't gone back to look. It is a useful term to me and simply means behaviors that don't work. I use the term a lot professionally.

Your final statement kind of takes us full circle. If the author's theory (I agree there is and can be no proof for this) is "merely a nice sounding way of enticing.." liberals to believe that blacks dug a hole for themselves.. well, the very essence OF the theory is blaming whites for creating and perpetuating the problem in the first place. So it certainly lets NO one off the hook!

I respectfully add that I think you may be, because of your passion about this topic, assuming something from my posts that I don't intend to convey. Perhaps this is because you have heard so many of these standard arguments, you seem to think I am also making them.


edited for typo

[TallahasseeGrannie]

12. Am I NUTS? or did this

thread disappear and then reappear??

[hiabrill]

14. The thread was moved

by the moderator to a different forum....

[icymist]

17. This thread was originality posted by me in LBN

It was moved. I don't know why or even if I should ask why for, in the past I never got a reason.

I just figure this is the new 'Don't cause trouble. Don't rock the boat." I hope I'm wrong.

[callady]

19. The conditions haven't changed

in measurable terms. If you are still enslaved is it just a syndrome?

Thanks for this article.

[cally]

22. I have had friends say this to me for many years

They see a difference among their fellow blacks whose families were never slaves and those whose ancestors were. I've never seen the difference but I've always wondered about this theory. I do know that I have a sense of entitlement that others don't. My family is white and has been well-educated for many generations. When I first tried to organize in poorer communities, I was surprised that folks were fearful about speaking out. I never worried about approaching government to demand services. I never worried whether the police would respond. It's not just slavery but a continual lack or respect and power in our society.