The Psychological Legacy of Slavery

 

I am completely cognizant of the fact that this article will be met with a certain level of incredulity, disdain and even hostility. There are a significant number of people who are more than happy to pretend that slavery never existed, and there are even more who suggest that the fact that we are 150 years removed from American chattel slavery that the slavery experience no longer impacts the lives and behaviors of African Americans. So, when someone, like myself, suggests that there is a psychological legacy associated with slavery that has an immense impact on the current state of black America, it is not surprising that many want to simply dismiss it as being an effort to excuse the failure of blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Ironically, it is the complaint of many of these same people, concerning the recent news that no black actors or actresses were nominated for academy awards that has led to this article.

Allow me to elucidate my intent here. This is not an article meant to address the Oscars. I have already done that. This article is meant to illuminate key elements of influence that impact how blacks respond to certain situations, as well as how we develop our paradigms.

I will not spend an exorbitant amount of time here attempting to explain or substantiate the idea that over 300 years of chattel slavery has proven to be an enduring influence on the progression, or the lack thereof, of African Americans. Those whose broad shoulders I now stand, including Dr. Na’im Akbar and Dr. Joy DeGruy, among many others, have produced a wealth of pragmatic and empirical evidence to provide more than enough data to prove that slavery was such a devastating psychological force that its impact on the descendants of slaves is lucidly visible. What I would like to do here, is simply highlight some of the behaviors, and the thought processes or cognitions that influence these behaviors, that are the manifestation of the enduring legacy of slavery — offering some simple suggestions of how we must engage these thoughts and behaviors in order to produce efficacious results in our quest for elevation and empowerment.

Support The Black Community Empowerment Initiative!

One of the first things that we must understand is that failure to give proper attention to problematic issues will only ensure that the negative impact of those issues will be exacerbated. Allow me to properly frame this situation within a context that should make the dynamic easier to understand. Over the last 15 years, the U.S. has been in some type of continuous military conflict, in which we have placed U.S. soldiers and other military personnel in harm’s way. What we have witnessed is an exponential increase in the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

According to the DSM – 5, PTSD is a psychological condition that is caused by the exposure to actual, threatened death, serious injury or sexual violation (Staff, DSM-5, 2013). In the DSM-5, PTSD was moved from underneath the classification of an anxiety disorder, and reclassified as a stress-related disorder. PTSD is characterized by a number of diagnostic criteria that must be the result of one or more of the following scenarios, in which the individual is involved:

• Directly experiences the traumatic event
• Witnesses the traumatic event in person
• Learns that the traumatic event occurred to a close family member or close friend (with the actual or threatened death being either violent or accidental)
• Experiences first-hand repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event

First of all, it can be easily argued that slaves experienced all of these scenarios simultaneously. Furthermore, it can be argued that these types of experiences did not cease after slavery ended in 1865, but was perpetuated through other means during Jim Crow Segregation, economic discrimination, mass incarceration and mis-education. In these instances, the disturbing event that serves as the trigger for PTSD causes significant emotional and psychological distress or impairment in the individual’s social interactions, capacity to perform their normal work responsibilities or operate in other areas of functionality. This diagnosis does not include the physiological result of another medical condition, medication, drugs or alcohol; however, a physiological injury can serve as a trigger.

Some of the most common symptoms of PTSD fall under several categories. I will not list all of the symptoms, but I will list all of the primary categories.

Intrusive Memories

• Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event
• Reliving the traumatic event as if it was happening again
• Disturbing dreams about the event
• Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds the person of the event

Avoidance

• Focused effort to avoid thinking about or talking about the traumatic event
• Avoiding specific places, people and activities that are associated with the traumatic event

Negative Changes in Thinking and Mood

• Having negative feeling about themselves and others
• An inability to experience positive emotions
• Feeling emotionally numb
• Hopelessness about the future
• Difficulty maintaining close relationships

Changes in Emotional Reactions

• Irritability, angry outbursts or aggressive behavior
• Hypervigilant when it comes to danger
• Overwhelming guilt or shame
• Self-destructive behavior
• Being easily startled or frightened

(Staff M. C., 2015) (Staff E. , DSM-5, 2013)

The Psychological Legacy of Slavery

I don’t believe that there are any rational detractors that would suggest that slaves did not suffer from severe PTSD. In fact, many of the aforementioned symptoms can be witnessed in a large majority of contemporary African Americans. Dr. Joy DeGruy and Dr. Na’im Akbar both use the term Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome to describe the current situation on a social scale, concerning the current state of Black America (Akbar, 1996) (DeGruy, 2005). It is important to understand that there are a couple of distinctions between PTSD and PTSS. First of all, PTSD is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, and it is listed in the DSM-5 as a mental disorder. PTSS is not currently listed as an official mental disorder, and there are a number of reasons why — some political, some economic and some social, but none having anything to do with its validity. There is an overwhelming wealth of evidence that underwrites the hypothesis of PTSS.

Get your signed copy of The Mis-education of Black Youth in America!

Another difference between PTSD and PTSS is that PTSD, as a disorder, is treatable, while PTSS, being a syndrome has become a perpetual pathology. It is an embedded dynamic that is complex and enduring. It makes us a more reactive than responsive people. We are emotionally unstable, and we tend to be hyper-aggressive in ways that do not serve us well.

We must understand that slavery was such a devastating force that it was immensely destructive to the natural life processes of slaves, and their descendants. Dr. Na’im Akbar, who has successfully deconstructed the Eurocentric system of psychology and reconstructed it to consider the unique psychological dynamic associated with being the most unique race of people on the planet, the survivor of the most horrific era in the history of mankind — American Chattel Slavery (Akbar, 1996) (Clark, 1972), goes to great lengths to outline the correlation between the slavery experience and current state of mind of contemporary African Americans. I am in agreement with Dr. Akbar in his assessment that slavery, more than any other single event, has shaped the mentality of the present African American.

Our view of work, leadership, property, social interaction and the belief that the “white man’s ice is colder” all have their origin in the slave experience. It is more than the trauma of slavery at work here. It is also the conditioning that accompanied the trauma, the hopelessness, the inferiority complex, the need to be accepted and validated by a race of people we perceive to be greater.

…to handicap a student for life by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless, is the worst kind of lynching. It kills one’s aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime[1].” (Woodson, 1933)

I would argue that one of the greatest impediments that has become engrained in the psyche of far too many blacks is the sense of hopelessness associated with the belief that their blackness is, somehow, a curse. The inferiority complex at work in this dynamic not only destroys the aspirations and dreams of a child before they begin. I speak about the importance of identity in great depth in my first and sixteenth books, The Invisible Father: Reversing the Curse of a Fatherless Generation and The Mis-education of Black Youth in America: The Final Move on the Grand Chessboard — respectfully. One of the most devastating effects of slavery was the fact that it robbed the African slave of their identity. They were renamed bearing the last name of the person who owned them. The family structure was completely dismantled and redefined, something that we never completely addressed. In fact, there is no negative impact of slavery that has been successful addressed by the black collective. We have become so dysfunctional that we have no idea of what authentic functionality is. When your dysfunction becomes your normalcy, dysfunctional events and realities become the norm.

We have been conditioned to believe that we are absolutely dependent upon the white power structure, so we thrive for the acceptance and approbation of those within the white power structure. In fact, we seek acceptance from whites at a substantially greater level than we do from our own. Sadly, many of us would gladly abandon our blackness to be accepted within white culture. The presence of an inferiority complex is antithetical to the development of cultural pride and responsibility — minimizing its positive influence on our identity.

There has to be a focus on discovering our identity — building a strong sense of self that is no longer dependent upon receiving the approbation and acceptance of our white counterparts. We must become comfortable with writing our own narrative — being willing to tell our own story, our way. We must embrace our exceptionality with passion and fervor, as we move inexorably toward elevation and empowerment.

No one can rationally argue that American chattel slavery was not traumatic, although some attempt to do so; however, there is simply no historical foundation for that argument.

Here is the problem. A significant amount of emphasis has been placed on the physical bondage that initially subdued the African, but very little energy is devoted to understanding the psychological bonds of mental subjugation, rendering the African American vulnerable to the psychological machinations that are used to keep us bound. Anyone who has invested in serious study of the power and influence of mental bondage understands that it is a far more sinister and pernicious mechanism of control than that of physical bondage.

“Mental slavery is a state of mind where discerning between liberation and enslavement is twisted. Where one becomes trapped by misinformation about self and the world… So, someone can claim to be conscious; they can read all the books, they can recycle the popular rhetoric, but still be unable to balance real-world priorities and self-interests.” ~ Alik Shahadah

What is most important to understand about psychological slavery is that the invisible shackles that are so prominently enforced through multitudinous psychological modalities can be easily passed along over multiple generations in a self-imposed manner. The truth is that many of the psychological impediments that limit the social and economic mobility of contemporary African Americans were passed on to them by their parents. When an inferiority complex is so deeply rooted as to be associated with a person’s genetic makeup, it cannot be overcome through academic or financial accomplishment. A person cannot wrangle themselves free of it through excelling in their sphere of passion and expertise. The only semblance of comfort comes from pseudo-acceptance and approbation by the group viewed as being superior.

The problem with acceptance as a means of escaping mental slavery is that it is not authentic and it is not attached to the autonomy of self. Any type of liberation or freedom that is dependent on anyone other than self is still bondage. Authentic liberation begins with freeing the mind of the need to be validated by anyone other than ourselves.

We must be willing to leave whites with their organizations and fraternities of acknowledgment, acceptance and celebration. We must divest ourselves from providing the opposition with power by whining and begging for their acceptance and acknowledgment. As stated so eloquently by Jada Pinkett Smith, “begging for acknowledgment diminishes power.”

There is an abundance of adequacy and exceptional potential inextricably associated with the very nature of blackness. We do not need to be affirmed, we are the affirmation. We don’t need to be approved or accepted, because we are self-authenticating. If fact, we are the standard by which exceptional, enduring and infinite are measured. It is time to unwrap the truth of our greatness! ~ Rick Wallace, Ph.D., Psy.D.

[1] Woodson, Carter G. “The Mis-education of the Negro,” The Crisis, August 1931, p. 266

 

Bibliography

Akbar, N. (1996). Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery. Tallahasee, FL: Mind Productions & Associates, Inc.

Clark, C. (1972). Black Studies or the Study of Black People. New York: Harper & Row.

DeGruy, J. (2005). Post Traumatic Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Portland, OR: Uptone Press.

Staff, E. (2013). DSM-5. American Psychiatric Publishing.

Staff, E. (2015). PTSD: National Center for PTSD. National Center for PTSD, 1.

Staff, M. C. (2015). Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – Symptoms. Mayo Clinic, 1.

Woodson, C. G. (1933). The Mis-education of the Negro. New York: Seven Treasures Publiscations.