>> Good afternoon, everyone.
And welcome to this most special diversity salon.
We created the UVA Diversity Salons for us to engage in critical conversations about issues
that we might not normally discuss in our everyday lives.
And today, we have what I believe is the most special speaker of all for these salons.
My name is John Gaites, I'm associate dean for Diversity and Inclusion,
in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Joy Degruy, a nationally
and internationally renowned researcher, educator, author, and presenter.
Dr. Degruy is an ambassador for healing and a voice for those who've struggled in search
of the past and continue to struggle through the present.
Dr. Degruy is an acclaimed author, having authored Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,
America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: The Study Guide,
and Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome Part 2: The Healing.
Dr. Degruy holds a bachelor's degree, a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications,
and two Master's degrees in Social Work and Clinical Psychology,
and a PhD in Social Work Research, as well as having spent over 20 years
as a professional in the field of social work.
This education and practical experience has provided her with extensive research on,
as well as hands on experiential insight into the various cultural and ethnic groups
that form the basis of contemporary American society.
Through these lectures, workshops, seminars, and special guest appearances, Dr. Degruy continues
to shine a light on those critical issues affecting our society.
Dr. Degruy's presentations have been lauded as the most dynamic
and inspirational lectures currently being delivered on the topics of culture,
race relations, and contemporary social issues.
It is my great privilege to present Dr. Joy Degruy.
[ Applause ]
>> -- watch that bottom stair, [inaudible], fall up the stairs.
So, good afternoon, is it afternoon?
I'm in a weird time zone thing going on.
So, I've been asked to do an amazingly difficult task,
I've been asked to compress a 10-week graduate level course into 45 minutes.
And how many people here are actually familiar with my work?
Okay --
Okay. No, no, I always ask that question
because it always determines where, what I'm going to talk about.
So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to -- you're going to see a lot of slides.
I will skip some, a lot of them actually, to try to get to the point.
So, let me just start with what Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is,
what it is not, and how I arrived at it.
So, I think I first began to look at behaviors within the African American community
that were disturbing to me as a child.
I grew up at a time where Black, to be Black, wasn't necessarily a good thing.
And in fact, when Black people insulted other Black people,
whatever they called you, they called you Black first.
"You Black," then fill in the blank.
"You Black."
And even as a child that seemed odd, because the assumption is, one,
I'm going to hurt you by calling you Black.
And that always seemed odd to me, because well, you are Black.
So what does, what does Black somehow mean
that I can assault another Black person with the word?
So even as a child that didn't make sense to me.
Or I heard things like, oh, she was really,
a really attractive girl, even though she was dark.
Or, he was really, you know, he was really good looking,
he was light skinned, and he had good hair.
Okay? And these were all, to me, symptoms of something I didn't quite understand.
I didn't get.
But as a social scientist it became very important to me.
So when we look at trauma for those of you that, you know, hear the term trauma,
it was very interesting for the response I got when I actually came
up with the term, post traumatic slave syndrome.
It's actually exactly what it sounds like, multigenerational trauma.
Multigenerational trauma's not a new concept,
we've looked at multigenerational trauma with other groups.
We've looked at victims of natural disaster, we've looked at Aboriginal folks in Australia,
First Nations, Native Americans, you know, we've looked at war, veterans, and all --
you know, we've looked at all kinds of people.
But it was very interesting the visceral response I got when I said slavery.
In fact, there are people who maybe even saw slavery in the title
and decided they weren't coming today.
Oh come on, surely you -- you're free now, aren't you?
I wasn't there, okay, I didn't -- I didn't own slaves.
Well, I wasn't there either.
Or, you know, hey, get over it, you know?
All of these are the responses you get when you say the term slavery.
And I thought, as a social scientist, that's very interesting.
How come I can't say slavery but I can say, well holocaust?
How come? And I'll tell you why, because Jewish people honor their Holocaust.
And they don't particularly care what you think about it.
They're going to tell their children, they're going to tell their children,
and then Spielberg will make another movie if anyone misses it.
But what we're not going to do is not talk about our Holocaust.
But what I'm talking about is a Holocaust.
A Holocaust we've never really looked at, but we've been told to get over.
One we've never really observed or examined, but we've been told to get over.
So when we talk about trauma, if I were to shoot this individual seated here,
that would be a horrible thing and this person would be traumatized, you think?
Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that.
The person seated next to them is also traumatized because they saw me shoot them.
Someone in the hall heard the shot, later found out who was shot, they're traumatized.
The family members in Arkansas find out they've been shot, they're traumatized.
Then seated on the other side of the table was someone else that witnessed it
and we invite them to tell us their experience, and they go yes, Joy, it was horrible.
Blood everywhere, it was, yeah, when's lunch?
Not traumatized.
Because everyone's not traumatized by a singular traumatic event.
But when we talk about American chattel slavery, we're not talking about a single event.
We're talking about, about 339 years of trauma.
So we're not talking about it being plausible that people escape trauma,
they just never got treated for it.
It never got acknowledged.
So now let's do some math on that and let's take a look at what that means.
So, if a person experiences post-traumatic stress disorder,
which is only one stress-related illness,
they have certain symptoms that are associated with that.
Now, let's do some math on it, 339 years of trauma, and no help, because no one came
in to help you when you had trauma.
There was no Dr. Phil, right?
No doctors in the borders or outside the borders,
nobody showed up for that, for 339 years.
Okay, so then you got freed, any help then?
Anybody come and say, you know, I know it's been, you know, people beaten,
mutilated, raped, sold, experimented on.
Any help? Any group therapy?
Historically?
No, so let's see, 339 years of trauma, no help, freed, no help, did the trauma continue?
Three-hundred and thirty-nine years of trauma, no help, freed, no help, more trauma.
What we are is a miracle.
But what we've been told is well, we don't want to talk about that,
so let me give you some real upfront examples of it, hidden in plain sight.
Let's first give you an example, and I use this example and the reason why I'm starting here is
so that we can have a point of reference, because we can't heal what we don't understand.
So let's say you have a Black mother and a white mother.
Or a Black father and a white father.
It's not gender specific.
But you have a Black mother and a white mother, each one of them have sons.
And the sons know each other, they kind of grew up together,
and they're very much my son's experience with his friend, Nick, who's Greek.
He grew up with Nick.
Nick would show up in the living room, or show up in the kitchen table, and I go, Nick,
I didn't even know you spent the night.
Does your momma know you're here?
You know, Nick, he ended up being in his wedding.
So, you have a Black mother and a white mother, both their sons grew up together.
The Black mother finds herself seated next to the white mother at a meeting like this one,
and both of their sons are on either side of them.
And the Black mother leans forward and says to the white mother, "You know,
I just wanted to let you know, I noticed your son is really doing well."
And the white mother's very excited, "Thank you so much for noticing, did I mention he's in TAG?
That would be the Talented and Gifted Program.
In addition to that, you know, he also won the Science Fair, just last week.
You know, his uncle's an astronaut.
The boy is just brilliant, we're so proud of him."
And she's oozing with enthusiasm and she sits back, feeling warm and fuzzy.
And as she sits back, she realizes
that the Black mother's son is actually excelling her son.
So she leans back and she says to the Black mother, "Wait a minute,
you're talking about my son, your son's the one that's really coming along."
And the Black mother's response, "Girl, get out of here.
You should have seen that boy yesterday, whoo, he's something else.
He works my nerves, that boy is a handful.
Whoo! He's something else.
Girl, shut up, get out of here."
Now, how many people have seen or heard that behavior?
Okay. So what I wanted to understand is the etiology of the behavior.
Where did it come from?
I've been to seven countries in Africa, it's not an African thing, it is a Caribbean thing.
In fact, there's a secret, and it is always the secrets that make us sick.
It is not something that most of us even question.
Particularly those born in this skin, because everyone in this room that's of African descent,
know this secret, and the secret is that even though the parent, male or female,
father mother, is saying, oh that, oh he's something else, they're proud at the same time.
Am I telling the truth?
Okay, so now everybody's giving me that nod because we know, and it's regardless of class
or education, but I wanted to understand the etiology
of that, and I actually traced its roots.
And the way I did it was two ways, one, I read thousands of slave narratives,
and number two, I interviewed elders.
Adelaide Sanford, Vice Chancellor of Education of New York, called me while I was
on a radio show to confirm and verify that her grandmother, who had been enslaved,
told her what I said as a child, sitting at her feet.
So now let's roll the whole thing back several hundred years.
And you have a Black mother, and you have a white mother.
And the Black mother, of course, is enslaved and therefore also her children.
And so perhaps she's in the fields, or perhaps she's in the house,
but she's working and she's enslaved.
And a white slave owner comes through, male or female,
and says to the Black mother, "Is that your boy there?
That your boy?
Huh, that boy sure is coming along.
Look at him."
And what is she going to say?
"No sir, he's stupid, he's shiftless," because I don't want you to sell him.
If it is my daughter, I don't want you to breed her, so I denigrate them to protect them.
That is called, Appropriate Adaptation, when living in a hostile environment.
Post traumatic slave syndrome.
You know how many of those there are.
Everything from what we eat to what we believe it means to live
in this skin that's colored by history.
But you see, we've never unpacked this because we never had the conversation,
because we've been told to get over it.
Or we say this other thing, which we can ill afford to say, well, it's their culture.
Well you see, African Americans cannot swallow whole what we call cultural,
because well, there's poison in the cookies.
And what I endeavor to do is to tease the poison from the cookies, because you see,
along with culture is adaptation and survival.
And that is all folded in to what it means to live in this skin in 2017.
But you see, most people look at this experience of slavery and they say,
you get immediate pushback, visceral, well, come on now, that slavery is not a new institution.
After all, almost every society had some form of indentured servitude or slavery,
or even your people, they enslaved each other.
You see, this is what the apologists say to throw you off.
But you see, American chattel slavery was different from every form that preceded it.
It differed in the manner in which a person became enslaved.
It differed in the treatment of the enslaved, it differed in the length of servitude,
but most importantly, it differed in how they were perceived as human beings.
Before the European slave trade began, most people became slaves as the result of a war.
Two societies went to war, winner's enslaved the losers.
Europeans however, systematically turned the capturing, shipping, selling,
and breeding of other human beings into a business.
A business that would develop into the backbone of an entire economy.
That's different.
So we have never had the conversation to ever stop having the conversation.
And again, we've, you know, there's just numerous things we can take a look
at as it relates to this, but that's what I began to look at so we can understand it.
So, moving forward, say this word, Dinquinesh.
>> [multiple] Dinquinesh.
>> Okay, they called her Lucy, but she was from Ethiopia
and they called her Dinquinesh, which means, thou art wonderful.
Very interesting that they called her Lucy, you think?
Based on mitochondrial DNA, we know that well, we all owe a debt of real support and pride
for Dinquinesh because we are a result of her DNA.
And she was African, but it escaped your text.
Why is that?
Why is it you knew about Lucy, but you didn't know about Dinquinesh?
Is Dinquinesh hard to say?
Is it obscure?
Is it something we didn't know?
No, it simply was summarily removed because you see,
then you have to begin to explain man's origins.
And well, Dana don't lie, the DNA does not lie.
So, how many of you, some of you have gray hair, which is what I have under this hair --
some of us had to read the Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
how many people had to read this?
It was mandatory reading when I was in my undergraduate studies.
By Thomas Kuhn.
And, you know, how many people are 50 or above, don't be afraid.
Isn't it wonderful not caring what people think?
It's just, it's such a freeing space to be in.
It's a development stage, I love it.
Anyway, so during the time that I was growing up, you know, I had a concept of reality
that was a little different, because my family was a little different.
But Thomas Kuhn said something in this book, the only thing I remember
by the way, was the structure of change.
How does change happen?
We always want change, but we don't act very well about changing things.
We go out kicking and screaming.
For example, if we don't understand how change occurs, we can't very well make it happen.
But we need to understand the structure, the symptoms, the signs of change.
For example, there was a point, I remember, when there would be actually ashtrays in this room.
There literally would be ashtrays in the room, right?
And then, you know, if you were my, you know,
my family and during the holidays you would go visit the family during the holidays
and they would break out the nice ashtrays.
Those would be the ones on the stands, and they had little marble,
with the little multiple, you know?
And you knew, oh, can't touch those ashtrays, because those are special.
Very special ashtrays.
I was having this conversation and my grandkids were like, so what's an ashtray?
They didn't even know what an ashtray was, right?
And in fact, if someone lit up a cigarette today in this room,
well I think the peer pressure alone would put it out,
but if for some reason the peer pressure didn't put it out, then we'd start doing,
you know, kind of a therapy thing.
Has there been a death in the family?
Is there, are they suffering some depression right now?
We start trying to diagnose the person, because clearly they are not well
if they have lit a cigarette in this room.
Right? That's how clear it is for us.
Now, how do we go from, I remember as a child running to the store to buy all the people,
adults in the neighborhood cigarettes.
Joy, get me some Winstons, some Cools, some Salems, you know?
And they would literally give you 50 cents.
I don't know what that means, but it's the truth.
I'd go run to the store.
How did we get from that to the point where if anyone even kind of tried to act
like they were going to smoke in this room, there would be some sort of revolt?
How, how did we get there?
Clearly the tobacco industry, well, lied.
And millions of people died while they lied.
But what happened between that period and this period was one, a lot of death,
a lot of struggle, and a preponderance of evidence.
So much evidence, in fact, was produced about cigarette smoking that even when you go
to the doctor now, right after they get that insurance form,
whatever you're coming there for, they're going to ask you, "Do you smoke?"
Because it exacerbates your health that much.
A preponderance of evidence forced a paradigm shift, never to return.
Well we, you know, have had similar experiences,
although there's a few scary people that believe the Earth is flat.
Most of us know it's not.
I'm really pleased, I'm very saddened that there's the Flat Earthers who still,
I'm thinking, haven't you seen the pictures?
I don't know.
But anyway, there was a preponderance of evidence.
Folks like Galileo, you know, Bornov, this was an individual
who had a dream that the universe was expansive.
He just dreamed it, and they burned him alive.
That's how much we fight against change.
And I want you to know we're on the precipice of change as it relates to race, and racism,
we're on the precipice, and you can tell because, you know, one,
there's a preponderance of evidence.
Never in our history has there ever been a time when the entire globe has looked
on at America and said, shame on you America.
Because you see, now you can't convince me, because well, I've seen it.
Now I can push a button and I can see it all.
And there is a preponderance of evidence
and like any other paradigm shift, it's going to be ugly.
Matter of fact, it's going to get far worse than we have ever seen in this room.
Because people are going to go out kicking and screaming before they're willing to share.
That reality is upon us, so this does not become simply a philosophical conversation.
I believe that truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of the world of humanity,
and I believe it's the secrets that make us sick.
So one of the things we have to take a look at is one reality, and that is a majority
of the world, what we call world, over the 7 billion-plus people on the planet,
the majority of those people are people of color.
That's just simply numbers, it's the truth.
It's the truth.
And guess what, we're seeing it reflected well in this room, and of course it is Be Kind
to Negroes Month, so some have come for different reasons.
But, a better reflection, a truer reflection of the world is the fact that well at this point,
we can't even guess who's coming to dinner.
So, I'm going to skip some of the warm and fuzzy things.
The reason why is because, you know, people -- this gets really thick and it gets intense,
one because it's compressed, and two, because it's intense.
One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea
that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over.
We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk,
but only remember that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer.
We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner,
and simply remember the things we regard as credible and inspiring.
The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is
that history loses its value as an incentive and example.
It paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.
So it is America's pathology is her denial.
That is why this issue of race continues to be one.
Because of our denial.
But I'm going to talk about why we have the denial.
So when I start talking about the numbers, 339 years, I want you to know where it came from;
1526, although there was slavery started long before this,
but in terms of the enslaved Africans, these folks were taken to the Carolinas
and so we're looking at 339 years.
So if we consider something called post-traumatic stress disorder,
when I was working on my second masters, which is in clinical psychology,
and we reached this particular part in the DSM, Diagnostic Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, I wanted to, I was curious about this post-traumatic stress disorder,
which post traumatic slave syndrome is not.
So who gets it?
Well, victims of rape, war veterans, heart attack victims,
victims of natural disasters, victims of severe accidents.
Well I raised my hand, I said, well you know,
I think enslaved Africans should be put on the list.
And they said no.
I said, okay.
So, what is the diagnostic criteria?
Now these are some of the symptoms that one might exhibit that has a diagnosis,
now understand that you don't have to have all of these,
you just need to have a couple of them to get the diagnosis.
Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize
or resemble an aspect of the event.
Physiological reactivity to these things that resemble the event.
Marked diminished interest or participation in significant activities.
Feeling of estrangement from others, or restricted range of affect.
A sense of foreshortened future.
Difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Irritability, or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating,
hyper vigilance, exaggerated startle response.
Now, what we have to understand is there's two things that happen, one is you have the trauma,
you exhibit some of those behaviors.
And my question is, during this period of chattel slavery, this is --
these are the experiences that people had, and thus these were the behaviors they exhibited.
But we didn't know Big Mama was broken.
It was just Big Mama.
We just got to be quiet some time.
Oh yeah, so such and such across the way, he screams out sometimes, he gets violent.
Are you following me?
So these are behaviors that not only people experience and folks have their own trauma,
but they also model the behavior.
So people began to learn, Bandura, Social Learn Theory,
you learn from the people in your environment.
And if those people are broken, you're learning broken behavior.
Does that make sense?
Right, so nobody got really well.
We just learned how to make do.
So then I thought to myself, okay, would then enslaved Africans warrant the,
at least some of them, because inevitably there's always people who are saying,
but Dr. Degruy, weren't there happy slaves?
Weren't there, weren't there some happy ones?
Because people really need to believe that there were happy ones, all three of them, go ahead.
Just throw them in there.
Again, you know, live free or?
Die. That's how important freedom is to us,
but somehow we should reconcile ourselves to a life of bondage, happily.
Permanent bondage.
So, for those that, let's say, weren't happy with it, we have to assume that, you know,
they experienced some levels of stress.
So if we consider the diagnostic features of post-traumatic stress disorder, again,
post traumatic slave syndrome is impacted by and infected by post-traumatic stress disorder,
but it is not post-traumatic stress disorder, which is treatable with, you know,
talking to people softly twice a week, medications, and such.
Post traumatic slave syndrome is not so easily solved.
It requires social justice, in addition to the healing.
Most common trauma involved, let's see if the enslaved Africans got it,
and those after slavery, they get it too.
Let's see, a serious threat or harm to one's life
and physical integrity, did we get that one?
Yeah. Threat or harm to one's children, spouse, or close relatives.
Did we get that one?
Thug destruction of one's home or community.
Seeing another person injured, killed as a result of accident or physical violence.
Learning about a serious threat to a close friend
or relative, kidnapped, tortured, or killed.
Stress was experienced with intense fear, terror, and helplessness.
Disorders considered to be more serious and will last longer
when the stressor is of human design.
Seven out of seven.
Not likely that, or plausible that we escaped it.
Not plausible.
But we're an amazing people, extraordinarily resilient.
So, we'll look at the role of history
and shaping our contemporary attitudes and beliefs about race.
Let's start with the United States Constitution, which of late has been
such an important contested issue.
People are always, my constitutional right!
And I don't know why I just had such a response to it.
And this is something internally just would trigger stuff for me.
But I kind of know why now.
Because one of the things that the United States has had to deal with is
that cognitive dissonance that's associated
with its fundamental beliefs in freedom and democracy.
Cognitive dissonance, by the way, how many people know what that is?
It's thinking discord, it's literally what it sounds like.
When you are simultaneously holding contradictory ideas,
beliefs, thoughts, behaviors.
So we have a country that says, send us your poor, your tired,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
How does one reconcile the very obvious contradiction, the hypocrisy associated
with that, while enslaving Africans for 339 years, and committing genocide
against the natives of this land?
How does one reconcile the contradiction?
Well, here's what you have to remember, always, in order to oppress or subjugate an entire group
of people, regardless of who that group is, in order to resolve the dissonance, you have to,
number one, justify your behavior, which calms the conscience.
And two, you have to re-label the people in such a way that it fits your behavior towards them.
Somehow then, slavery must be reasonable.
But let's look at Thurgood, and anyone who doesn't know
who Thurgood Marshall is, shame on you.
This was written in 1987, and this was at the bicentennial, you know,
celebration of the writing of the Constitution.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Well, most of you in the room were not included in that.
It did not include women, and it most certainly did not include people
who were three-fifths human.
While slavery was never mentioned in the Constitution, what Thurgood Marshall says
at this particular meeting, and you should read the entire document, you can go online
and read it, he said it was defective
with the first three words of its preamble, we the people.
No doubt it will be said when the unpleasant truth of the history of slavery
in America is mentioned during this bicentennial year, that the Constitution was a product
of its times and embodied a compromise, which compromise is that?
That would be the three-fifths compromise, we'll get close with that one.
Which, under other circumstances would not have been made,
but the effects of the framers' compromise have remained for generations.
They arose from the contradiction between guaranteeing liberty and justice
to all, and denying both to negroes.
But in the propaganda, W.E.B. says, against the negro, since emancipation in this land,
we face one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings.
An effort involving, look closely, universities, history, science, social life, and religion.
I looked a little further in my book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, it is not exhaustive,
it's just all I had time to look at.
Because you see, every single one, every major institution in America had
to normalize chattel slavery for 339 years.
They had to somehow make it make sense.
Are you following me?
Every discipline, engineering, business, law, medicine,
all of it had to justify this, you see?
Because it produced dissonance.
We're talking about a people from Europe that deemed themselves superior,
noble, intelligent, civilized, moral.
But they engaged for 300 years in something that was the antithesis of that.
They engaged in barbarism.
How does one reconcile this notion of intrinsic nobility, while engaging in barbaric behavior?
You have to remove the dissonance.
I'm not going to talk about racism, I usually, I've spent a lot of time
with my graduate students in the School of Social Work, most of whom are women,
social workers, MSW students, most of them white, that end up in my class.
And I always tell them, don't take my class because it fits in your schedule.
Not the kind of -- I try to weed out the folks, thin it early.
I do try to thin it, because it's a life-changing class, it truly is.
Ten weeks in my course, you're not the same.
You can't un-know it.
And so I always tell them, you know, tread lightly, and don't try this at home.
I told them, I try.
And then I also try to warn them.
I used to go, I put the syllabus out there, you know, you can go online and look at it.
It tells you that it's an African American, you know, we're going to look
at African American history, multigenerational trauma, my area of expertise,
and violence, it's very clear, the syllabus.
So what I mean by that is, I'm going to talk about Black people this week,
I'm going to talk about Black people next week,
I'm going to talk about Black people the week after that.
In fact, all 10 weeks I'm going to talk about Black people.
And I'm going to also show up Black myself.
So, I'm trying to warn you that there's going to be a thing about Black people.
And inevitably, no matter what, there's always a student, you know,
my evaluations were always quite high, but there would be one student that would say, gosh,
you know, Professor spent an inordinate amount of time talking about Black people.
Wish she would have included other people.
And you know, here's the thing, I have four degrees, three of them advanced,
you know how much of that was about white people?
But one 10-week course, oh gosh, it's just too much.
Absolutely amazing.
So you know, I usually try to, again, weed it out, and then you know,
I have to weed out the folks that, you know, that don't understand what racism is.
So I said, let me just apply my definition so everybody can be clear.
It usually thins the class as well.
People get upset, you know.
I say, don't get in your feelings in my class, if the white girl cries in my class,
she's going to have to get a tissue.
Nothing stops.
Because you know, white girls' crying stop everything.
It's caused people to be lynched when a white girl cries.
Well, I let them know on the frontend, this song is not about you.
So, let's be clear about that.
It's not here to take care of you.
I'm not here to take care of you.
So part of my work is always trying to help, again, I do no harm.
At the end of the day, I don't, if you all go out of my class,
I don't want you to harm anyone that's already injured, with your niceness, or your ignorance,
or your whatever the new words are,
your difficulty understanding the ally position, or cultural humility.
Whatever word fits, just don't hurt people, how about that?
And this always centers around this notion of racism, right?
Which people usually mean prejudice when they're talking about racism, because you know,
I ask my audience, I've actually cleared out classes.
And I usually don't do it myself, I actually have my graduate students come in
and do this ahead of time, so I don't have to deal with the person that goes, are you sure?
I mean, aren't things better for you people now?
I mean, you had a Black president.
Come on. Right?
See, I don't have time for that.
That's race relations 101.
Don't have time for it.
Because I have students in the class talking about, we want reparations, right?
And you've got someone that's going, are you sure?
So it's, anyway.
I try to help them understand that it's more than just a system of advantage based on race,
so then I have to give them an equation so that they can understand what I mean by racism.
So I ask my students, and I ask audiences of people, do they understand what racism is,
and you know, of course people are like scared.
They go, is this a trick question?
I go okay, so, we'll talk about it.
So I ask my students, do you think there's such a thing as white racism?
And that means white racism enacted by white people on other folks.
Do you believe that exists?
And again, it's a kind of fear, yeah, kind of thing.
Yeah, I think we pretty much know that, preponderance of evidence.
Okay. Do you think there's, in America right here, Black racism?
Equal number of hands go up.
Okay, so now we're going to define racism so we can all be on the same page,
because I always assume people are on the same page, but we're not.
Most people aren't.
So, I would like for you, audience, to tell me in what ways white racism adversely,
negatively impacts the lives of Black people as an entire group
of people in America, in what ways.
Name them.
Economically, jobs.
Incarceration.
Healthcare.
Identity, education.
Okay, so actually write it down, so everybody can read it.
And then we go on and I stop them.
I'm going, okay, so now we're going to go over to the category of Black racism.
I need you to tell me how Black racism adversely impacts the lives of white people
in America as an entire group of people.
And that's when they go, I'm leaving.
She's calling me a racist, I'm out, I'm out.
I'm not calling you a racist, I'm just explaining to you that I may not like you,
you may have Black people that hate white people, invite folks over,
throw darts at pictures of them, drink beer.
But you still get the loan.
You still get, you know, are you following me?
So it's not just that you don't like me, but you have the power
to impact me as an entire group of people.
That further thins the class.
So let's start with something we all recognize,
how many people have been to the Statue of Liberty?
Okay, I've been to the Statue of Liberty now four times, but I was resistant.
A really good friend of mine works for the Department of the Interior,
and back in 2008 said, Joy, he's over all the national parks in New York State.
He says, Joy, I want you to come to the Statue of Liberty.
I said, no Floyd, I'm not coming.
He said, why?
I said, because it's going to make me mad.
He goes, come on Joy, I really want you to come.
I said, no Floyd, I don't think I'm ready to come.
I'm not going to have a good attitude.
He goes, come on, I can get you a pass, you can go up in her eye and everything.
I said, okay.
So I go to the Statue of Liberty, and the reason why I didn't want to go is I'd already been
to France, I'd already seen the earlier renderings of Bartholdi, and you know,
so when you get there, first of all, there are thousands
of people getting off the little ferry, right?
And the little kids with the little rope are walking,
and the people with the cameras, and everybody's there.
Every 20 minutes, thousands of people.
And you know, you get kind of pushed together in a little group and I had already decided
that I was going to have to go twice,
because I knew I wasn't going to be objective the first time.
So I already planned a trip to come back,
because I knew I wasn't going to have the right attitude.
And I actually was traveling with a really good friend of mine, her name is Faith Holmes.
White white, Faith is very white.
And Faith almost got us thrown out because she had a meltdown.
Okay, it was Faith that did it.
But anyway, so we're traveling together and, you know, we get --
the little ranger gets everybody, he goes, I'm going to be your ranger today.
And you know, I'm going to be the one touring you through.
Well see, I already knew that this rendering, now this is a bad picture,
I actually have a better picture, I need to put it in there, but this is the one I took.
And you can actually see Floyd's reflection, we're bouncing off the -- because this is --
I knew this picture was here, because it's a historical document.
And this is one of the earlier renderings of the Statue of Liberty, by Bartholdi,
and she has broken chains in her left hand.
This was commissioned in 1865, important date, do you think?
Yes, because it was to celebrate the end of the Civil War, the end of slavery.
And Bartholdi thought it was an excellent idea
to have broken chains symbolizing the break with slavery.
Now, I knew that this existed, matter of fact, I actually found it.
I can almost guarantee you, you didn't, when you went to the Statue of Liberty.
It was in the basement of the Statue of Liberty, encased in glass,
behind some figurines, facing a wall in a hallway.
I went looking for it, because I knew it had to be there.
So when my ranger pulled us all together and he says, I am going to be touring you,
and if anyone has a question -- I was wondering if you could talk to us about the chains.
And of course, now it's translated, and chains?
Chance? What is she talking about chains?
He says, thank you so much for that question and we'll talk about it later.
Well, you know, they tell you more than you ever want to know about the Statue of Liberty.
They tell you how thick it is, they cut it in half, they show it to you,
they tell you it's green because it's copper and that's why it turned green.
They tell you how they got it over there.
They say, this is our first chance at the torch over here, there's her head over there.
They just tell you everything.
But they don't talk about the chains.
So, we end up in the Bronze Garden, and here is Bartholdi, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.
I didn't pronounce that right, but that's as close as I can get to it.
So Bartholdi ended up in a huge argument with the United States around the chains.
Remember, this is the Statue of Liberty, of course we want to forge this relationship
with France, but we also, you know, want to acknowledge the end of such a horrific period
in American history, by showing the chains.
The United States said, no.
Bartholdi said, well no, I'm going to have to insist.
And the United States said, no.
Who won? Who won?
Bartholdi won.
They are at her feet, where it is impossible to see them under any circumstances.
Unless, of course, you have a zoom lens from a helicopter.
Because you see, once you show the chains, then you have to explain them.
And that would cause cognitive dissonance, especially for Timmy and Cindy.
So we almost had news at 11:00, in the ranger house.
And I was, I said, I don't understand, because you let me --
they said, well Dr. Degruy, what's the issue?
I said, well you know, inevitably when you go to the Statue of Liberty, you will hear people go,
yes, well you know, my great-great came through Ellis Island.
You know, our great-great, you know, Mayflower.
You know, my great-great -- These are white people.
You see, Black people, men, women, and children, look on curiously at Lady Liberty
because they feel no connection to her.
But how much taller would they stand if they knew that she was standing on the chains
that their ancestors came in the belly of ships?
How much prouder would they be, young Black men, about the shoulders upon which they stand?
Because, you erase the chains, you erase me.
And so I had a, I was acting, and feeling some kind of way about that.
As an educator, you see.
And so you know, I went, and I spoke, went to the ranger station, we you know,
had some moments that the ranger station.
And nothing happened.
So I started telling this story all around the country.
Matter of fact, not only around the country, all around the world.
I show the slides.
And I ended up with the, you know, getting a call from the Department of the Interior,
because you know, when I went back.
Remember, I told you I went back again, I wanted to find out a couple things, one,
if the chains would be mentioned unasked, and they were not.
So when I got to the Department of Interior, there was a meeting of the higher ups,
and they said, first of all, Dr. Degruy, we want to apologize, you know,
about the whole situation here with the chains, and what we would like you to do is we'd
like to hire you to come in and train all of our rangers, and that picture is now
on display at the Statue of Liberty.
[ Applause ]
Only problem is, only problem is, they kind of mentioned, sort of,
Statue of Liberty is a tapestry of all symbols woven together to create new meaning,
her classic face, classical face and drapery suggests a Roman Goddess of Liberty,
the broken shackles symbolize freedom, newly achieved, whose?
You see? So that's, one of you all are going to have to -- I'm done.
I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm done. So you all got to fix that one.
Hidden in plain sight though, you see?
Hidden in plain sight.
And these are things that are not obscure, they're just deliberately left out.
But you see, I cannot heal myself if I don't know who I am.
If I don't honor the shoulders upon which I stand,
everybody in this room, someone paid for you to be here.
Everyone. Someone paid for you to be here.
But people of African descent don't know, because we've been told to get over it.
So, only way to see the chains, this is you know, first trip.
This is leaning backwards, there's a little lip, you can see the little lip on the --
that's as much as you could see with the naked eye, leaning backwards with a zoom lens.
So, that picture, and you'll know it's a new picture, because it's the only one in color.
So when you go on the tour, and you go through the ranger station,
you'll see that picture in color that's now there.
So we know there was a Trail of Tears, which was a forced relocation of Native people,
we know thousands died as a result of exposure.
We know that there were individuals who offered reparations to redress some of the issues,
one of them the boarding schools, which were torture chambers, truly, for Native children.
Of course Native people laughed out loud at the $250 million that was offered them.
But we also had a Trail of Tears.
These are pictures, how many people have been to Ghana for the slave castles?
Well, you know it's interesting because this picture escaped my text.
They somehow didn't make it to the text.
All two pages of Black history, and one was a picture, this one didn't make it.
So, first of all, this is the Door of No Return at Elmina slave castle.
Now, I don't know if people realize it,
but we weren't all just waiting on the coast for the cruise.
People were marched from the interiors of Africa to that coast.
And based on historians, there millions died in route.
But you didn't hear about them.
You didn't know how many fought back or died of exposure, or got lost, or became sick.
You just didn't know.
But it's not obscure.
Big old giant castle, I took these pictures.
Cape Coast slave castle.
When you first walk in, there's two things that greet you, one, not only the cannon balls
and everything else, but that's not actually meant for enslaved Africans,
that's for the European invaders, they were fighting each other.
So on one side is a female dungeon, on the other side is the male dungeon, slave dungeons.
And what happened immediately is upon entering, when they would bring the enslaved men, women,
and children in, they would rape the women within 50 feet of the men.
In front of their fathers, their brothers, their sons, their husbands.
They would rape them to remind them, he can't protect you.
This is the male slave dungeon, Cape Coast.
Now, it's difficult to see, but in this photo,
I wish we could turn the lights out, is that possible?
No? Alrighty.
So, the floors are actually slanted
and the first thing you want to do when you go in is get out.
It smells, it's wet, it's slippery, you're sliding because the floors are slanted .
In the middle of the door, it's hard to see, there's a trench,
because there's no running water, no facilities, hundreds of men and boys are packed
in this facility, and they warn you before they do what I do next, and it's,
that is they turn out the light, because there was no light, and the only source of light
and ventilation, and this is a vaulted situation, were those three little openings
which is what they, you can imagine the toxicity in terms of the waste.
Then there was the death cell for African men.
This becomes really important I think, for young Black men
to understand how frequently African men fought back,
so frequently that they created a death cell for them.
Meaning that when they were placed in this cell, they were no longer given food or water,
the only source of ventilation are the small holes in the door.
The big square you see I will explain next,
but they would literally thirst to death, and suffocate.
But almost in total darkness they carved these symbols.
They actually to this day don't know how they did it, because this is solid stone.
But somehow they managed to carve into solid stone, these symbols, African symbols calling
out to the ancestors to please come and to deliver them from their suffering.
Next door to them was a cell where white soldiers were held for no more than 24 hours.
That is their window and the latticed door.
This is where I had a bit of a meltdown, these are stairs leading
from the governor's bedroom to the female slave dungeon.
He commissioned to have these built, even though his wife and children lived with him
in the apartment above, he needed to have absolute
and immediate access to girls and women.
This is a steel ball enslaved Africans women were chained to when they resisted being raped,
they were chained in the middle of the courtyard naked, no longer given food or water.
Another cell, death cell for African women who fought back, more like a pit or a hole.
UNESCO, having made these particular castles tourable, were having difficulty
with this particular one, note that there seems to be a watermark at the top, where it's light.
They were trying to level the ground, the workers, they couldn't figure
out why they couldn't and they were trying to break
through two feet of solidified human waste.
Which means that Africans, enslaved Africans, were wallowing in two feet
of waste, and Europeans never removed it.
And right in the middle, of course, well bit of a contradiction you think, is a church.
Now the church is not there for the enslaved Africans, it is there for the soldiers
so they can worship in the midst of it all.
Now, I want you to say this word, maafa.
Maafa is a key Swahili word, which means the "great suffering," the "great catastrophe,"
and what we refer to as the Black Holocaust.
It is a triangular route, the Middle Passage of slavery, which brought enslaved Africans
through various places, Cuba, Caribbean.
And I want you to look closely at this picture, it's interesting,
one of the few things that remain that you look at.
And it bothers me, because you see, it's peculiar absent of any feeling,
but those are really great, perfect dimensions.
People were packed that tightly, because after all, they were cargo, you see.
And like any cargo, they're tightly packed because there's an expectation
that some of it will spoil en route.
And in that case, what would this mean for enslaved Africans?
To spoil en route.
It means that they would die.
But why? Why were they estimating that so many would die?
Let me give you some dimensions as approximately an average of 18 inches of space between them.
It is where they slept, it is where they wept, it is where they ate,
it is where they defecated, it is where they urinated, it is where they menstruated,
it is where they vomited, gave birth, and died.
Eighteen inches of space.
The lowest figure on record for those that died during the Middle Passage, is 9 million.
Based on ship manifests, like Amistad, ship manifests kicked that number up to 15 million,
because at least as many died as actually arrived.
But it didn't make it to your text.
How is that?
How many Jews died during the Holocaust?
Say it. You know.
How many? Six million.
Of course you know.
And you should never forget that.
But you didn't know how many died during the Middle Passage, now did you?
Is this obscure?
It is not.
Why is it?
How is it we don't honor them?
There's not a plaque, not a moment of silence, anywhere in this country,
except the burial ground, that acknowledges this holocaust.
Why is that?
It's not obscure.
Are you following me?
Because it causes cognitive dissonance.
It's a picture of the shackles and of the people.
Based on the International Criminal Court,
this squarely placed the United States having committed crimes against humanity.
Clearly stated that America has never acknowledging nor paid for her sins.
How many of you knew that the United States apologized for slavery, twice?
Two-thousand-eight and 2009.
Interesting.
They apologized twice.
House of Representatives, U.S. Senate.
But it wasn't like, you know, CNN didn't take a special moment,
there weren't, you know, assemblies at school.
Pretty important moment in our history, don't you think?
How is it it escaped?
Hidden in plain sight.
Well, let's - I just took a piece of it, you should, you know, it should be everywhere.
It should be a document somewhere, I don't know, but somehow even Black people don't know.
Two-thousand-and-eight and 2009, and did they just remember then?
Why then? I'll tell you why, because 2008 marked the 200th anniversary
of the end of the slave trade in America.
In 2007, I was in Europe, because the prime minister invited me, among other scholars,
to come to the country to acknowledge the 200th anniversary of the end
of the slave trade in Europe, 2007.
Well, America had to do something.
And they say, we acknowledge, the Federal Government, the injustice, cruelty, brutality,
and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow.
The resolution states that the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day,
African Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow --
long after both systems were formally abolished -- How?
" -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss
of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives,
and the long-term loss of income and opportunity --
" They knew, but they dared you to say anything about it, and so, you didn't.
So when we look at the more recent statement by the UN, 2016, January,
"UN Working Group of Experts on People
of African Descent released its preliminary recommendations after more than a week
of meetings with Black Americans and others from around the country, including Baltimore,
Chicago, New York City, the District of Columbia, and Jackson, Mississippi.
After finishing their fact-finding mission, the working group was extremely concerned
about the human rights situation of African Americans.
The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation,
racial terrorism, and racial inequality in the U.S. remains a serious challenge
as there's been no real commitment to reparations and to truth
and reconciliation for people of African descent.
Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent
of the racial terror lynchings in the past.
Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis
and must be addressed as a matter of urgency."
That would be 2016.
But we didn't talk about it.
It came and went, hidden in plain sight.
So now we have to understand the branches of the various --
somebody needs to tell me where I am in time too, because I have no, I can't -- have no idea.
How much time do I have?
You said five minutes?
Are you serious?
It's not his fault.
It really isn't.
Okay, so I'm going to go really fast and, very hard to do this.
Okay, so we will go to Carl, now you all know Carl, Carl von Linnaeus, everyone in the room,
because we took him through high school, in high school biology.
And I just want you to know that you should get concerned whenever you see someone dressed
like him.
Carl von Linnaeus, 1707 to 1778, most well-known for classifications of things, species,
phylum, genus, he just classified stuff.
He also took, made his attempt to classify human beings.
Now remember I told you, every major institution in America had to be complicit
with slavery and to somehow justify it.
So let's see what Carl had to say.
Carl describes Homo Americanus, now understand that we're talking
about science here, who might that be?
Those would be Natives.
He says they are reddish, choleric, abstinent, contented, and regulated by customs.
No science yet.
Homo Europesnus, that would be white people, he says they're white, fickle, sanguine,
blue-eyed, gentle, and governed by laws.
Homo Asiaticus, that would be Asians, he says they're sallow, grave,
dignified, aborishas, and ruled by opinion.
And then there's Homo [inaudible], Black, phlegmatic, cunning, lazy, lustful,
careless, and governed by caprice.
These insights into what Linnaeus defined as racial character, personality traits,
and a host of other related categories are more fixed in the races themselves.
And by the way, there's not a shred of science.
At this point, again, my students feeling cognitive dissonance push back,
Dr. Degruy, but look at the year, 1707.
I said, do you not still hear these attributions about Black people?
Doesn't matter.
But no one checked his vitae.
Let's see.
Linnaeus, after one week received his PhD for a 13-page dissertation from the Dutch university
of Harderwijk, which one historian of science designated as a mail-order institution.
The University of Harderwijk was known for selling degrees.
There's a saying in the Netherlands for a person who's scientific knowledge is questionable,
well, he's from the University of Harderwijk.
Then there's Johann, you all know Johann, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, you can just look at him
and know there's something wrong here.
Johann, Johann originated the term, "Caucasian."
Now this man decided that, you know, the Caucasian stock, of course, was superior,
he says, and it you know, revealed the most beautiful form of the skull,
from which is the meaning primeval type, the others diverge by most easy gradations
on both sides of its ultimate extremes, that is on the one side, the Mongolian, the other,
the Ethiopian, besides, it is white in color.
Anybody ever met a skull that wasn't?
Okay. Which we may fairly assume to have been the primitive color of mankind.
Zippity-doo-dah, no science here, but well, they didn't check his vitae either.
Blumenbach received a medical degree from the University of Göttingen
after submitting a 15-page long dissertation.
Boy, if only I had lived -- well no, I'd be enslaved.
The result of one year's study, one year, with an older professor
who owned an extraordinarily large
and disordered natural history collection, that would be skulls.
Now this becomes very important, because this set the stage
for what we understand as white racism.
Because you see, racism and the concept of whiteness did not exist.
So what began to happen was we created this notion of beauty, Caucasian beauty,
and therefore we had this whole idea of a superior race,
breeding better human beings, eugenics became a movement.
But what we know based on contemporary science is that race is biological fiction.
We are 99.99% the same, 9999.
So it begs the question of the bell curve now, doesn't it?
But there's a reason why people want to, and it keeps reemerging, this notion of inferiority
and superiority, because then you can justify your behavior.
So as the secrets make us sick, we need to understand what happened about that fear
of that original number I showed you, and I told you the majority of the people of the world
of color, the world is a world of colors, the majority of people.
Well, the first fear that showed up was a fear of annihilation,
and this is not something I'm making up, this came straight out of,
in this particular case, the Oregon Territory.
The negroes associate with the Indians, inter-marry, and if they're free ingress
and courage are allowed, there were a relationship spring up between them,
in other words, the fear is they're going to get together, they're going to make a lot
of children, they're going to kill all the white people.
Now, according to a mid-1800s census, there were 600 thousand mixed race children born,
even though miscegenation laws were in effect, meaning it was illegal to be
with someone of a different race.
Six-hundred-thousand, that's how many they counted.
That's a lot of sneaking out back, you think?
And do you think this, these are men of colors kind of sneaking into white women's parlors?
No, this is the rape of women of color.
And we have numbers for that.
It's not my opinion, that's a fact.
Want you to take a close look at what happens when you have that much fear.
This was 2014, showed up in front of an immigration organization in Oregon.
Diversity equals what?
White genocide.
That means death.
Stay with me, remember I told you we were on the precipice of change?
You know we are because when that kind of a fear arises, it's us against them.
Hence, you can see what's going on in the country and around the world.
It is a real fear, and I'm not making it up.
Here's someone who let us know in his own words.
This is Dylann Roof, who went into a church and shot nine people.
He says, Black people are raping our women, interesting, and taking over our country.
Someone needed to do something about it for the white race.
I may be paranoid, but it appears someone's following me.
So, Southern Poverty Law Center put this out in 2016, and actually, this has increased
since then, the number of hate and radical anti-government groups are both up 14%.
The 10 states with the highest number of hate groups, Texas, no surprise, number one,
California, number two, 26 of the 68 are racist hate groups.
It continues and that is on the rise, because remember,
I told you we're on the precipice, on the precipice.
So when we look at politics, and you look at people
like James Madison, again, look how he's dressed.
And this is where he basically deals with the three-fifths compromise,
which you can barely know he's talking about human beings.
Look at the way it's written, "Blacks are inhabitants but is debased
by servitude below the equal level of free inhabitants, which regards the slave
as divested of three-fifths -- " Really?
What does that mean?
It means that you have just, with the stroke of a pen, dehumanized me.
Now we also know that a whole lot of presidents have had slaves.
Now, this list, by the way, again, not obscure, but it's not showing up in textbooks.
Matter of fact, it's been removed.
Now let me say that again, not going to be removed, has been removed.
In fact, Texas is the Walmart of textbooks.
That's where poor school districts go to get their books.
And they have changed the textbooks.
So the two pages of Black history that was there, is not there anymore,
and slavery has been totally removed, and they have to memorize now, students,
the actual speeches of the confederacy.
If you don't believe me, recently what arose, this was on Facebook, became a huge thing,
a kid that was in a geography class was reading something, and it said something
about the America bringing over workers and laborers.
And he took a picture of it and sent it to his mother, and all hell broke loose.
And of course they removed that back from the shelf, only to be replaced with the same thing.
But we should have gone after the editors, and publishers, and everyone involved.
But you see, this has been done on our watch.
Not going to be done, has been done.
And then we get to well, your guy.
Thomas Jefferson, actually closed out my book with a soliloquy from Thomas Jefferson,
where he says and I quote, "Indeed I tremble for my country, when I consider that God is just,
and that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Those were his words.
Thomas Jefferson becomes a very important person as we begin to look at perceptions,
because you see, if Thomas Jefferson said it, it must be true.
He set the stage for not only what his countrymen believed,
but what everyone believed around the world.
He said, Blacks smell bad and were physically unattractive.
This is a little inconsistent with his behavior, you think?
Now most Black people knew about Sally Hemings, my grandmother used to talk about Sally Hemings,
but this is amazing, white people started clutching their pearls, not Thomas.
Then he goes on to say something even more egregious, he says that we required less sleep.
And you see, for me as a social scientist, this became very interesting.
Why would Thomas Jefferson, in other words, what cognitive dissonance was he experiencing
that he somehow had to mediate, what was he feeling that he would make
such an assertion that we required less sleep?
What was a work day for an enslaved African?
From can't see to can't see, the slave narratives say.
From can't see to can't see.
And here's what you get faced with in 2017, oh you know,
you African Americans, you're over sensitive.
You have, what empirical evidence do you have to support that?
How can you count and measure that?
Do you have any physical evidence to suggest
that they didn't have breaks and vacations and what have you?
What do you know?
Because this, and you know, it's a shutdown.
You get the pushback.
Well, we actually do have evidence.
Well you can at first ask the enslaved Africans.
They can tell you.
This is Sarah Gudger, she said, "Never known nothing about work, never knew rest,
felt like my back was going to break, that's the gospel truth."
And then something even more peculiar happened,
our people unearthed themselves well on Wall Street.
Most people don't associate slavery with New York or the North,
truth is all 13 colonies had slavery, with estimates of 10-20 thousand people buried
in this seven-acre burial ground, it's considered the largest known site of its kind
in the U.S. Blakey's analysis of human skeletal remains revealed that these men
and women were literally worked to death.
How do you know?
They suffered from enthesopathies, a condition resulting in the muscle detaching itself
from the bone as a result of people being worked beyond human capacity.
You lazy people you.
Isn't it amazing?
Who worked so hard that the muscle actually detaches itself from the bone, who does that?
I'll tell you who, someone who has a gun trained on them from sunrise to sunset.
And yet he asserted these things.
He goes on to say something even more egregious, he says, "we were dumb,
cowardly, and incapable of feeling grief."
These are his words.
Why would Thomas Jefferson, one, assert it, number two,
why would he need to believe we could not feel grief?
What was he and others like him, doing?
While you were ripping mothers away from their babies, and husbands from wives,
and brothers from sisters, surely they cannot feel grief, that would make them what?
Like him. And yet he asserted it.
But here's my question, do you think he saw grief?
You think he didn't hear and see the mothers screaming and crying
and begging them, don't take my babies?
The man saw it and then asserted it didn't exist.
And that is the pathology that surrounds whiteness.
That denial has permeated so much.
So, moving to education, I want to kind of -- I don't even know where to go.
Education has done its fair share as it relates to pathologizing, you know, the Negro problem,
and the whole idea the white man's burden.
That all came out of the idea of benevolence and we're just trying
to make you all, we're trying to help you.
We're trying to civilize you.
So let me move forward, gosh, I wish I had time.
A very little known thing, Albert Einstein lecturing to a segregated group
of African American students at Lincoln University says,
"My trip to this institution was on behalf of a worthwhile cause, there is a separation
of colored people from white people in the United States, that separation is not a disease
of colored people, it is a disease of white people.
I do not intend to be quiet about it.
And he was not.
But you didn't hear about it.
So when we start talking about post traumatic slave syndrome,
and I'll try to wrap this up, I don't know how to do it.
This is a book, the Mis-Education of the Negro, by Carter G. Woodson, everyone should have,
because it is upon his shoulders that I truly stand with my work.
I want you to listen carefully to this, it says, "The same educational process, which inspires
and stimulate the oppressor with the thought that he is everything
and has accomplished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark
of genius in the Negro, by making him feel that his race is does not amount to much,
and never will measure up to the standards of other people's.
The Negro thus educated, is a hopeless liability of the race."
Why? Because the difficulty is that the educated Negro is compelled to live
and move among his own people whom he has been taught to despise.
As a rule, therefore, the educated Negro prefers to buy his food from a white grocer
because he has been taught that the Negro is not clean.
It does not matter how often a Negro washes his hands, he cannot clean them.
And no matter how often a white man uses his hands, he cannot soil them.
post traumatic slave syndrome.
Why can't they get along?
How come they're always putting each other down?
Why is it they can't seem to get together on anything?
How come they -- Well, that would be because of Stephen.
If you all saw Django, Samuel L. Jackson's character, Stephen.
Matter of fact, not only does Stephen exist then, Stephen exists now.
In fact, white people always hire Stephen.
Let's be clear about that.
Now that's not my opinion, we got the data, and the data says that white people are,
the darker you are, the bigger you are, the greater the fear.
Conscious or unconscious.
So white people gravitate to Black people who don't like themselves.
And those people then become what we have here, Black here, we have your representative.
And everybody Black is like going, Lord.
How are we going to somehow work around this fool?
Who becomes the spokesperson and the gatekeeper.
And we go, well there they are.
And those people are actually more harmful than someone white would be.
Stephen. And so when white people in particular, you know, school districts,
mental health facilities, county districts, they'll say Dr., Dr. Degruy, we want to be,
you know, we have an equity standard here, we want to have representation.
We want to make certain that our staff is reflective of the -- you know, we want to have,
you know -- in other words, we want to hire people of color.
I'm going, really?
Who's going to hire them?
Well, we are.
What makes you think you can?
Because I already know who you're going to hire, the data's in.
So you need to get Black people to vet whoever the person of color is you're talking about.
And that happens in every group, by the way.
Every group gets this.
And we're all looking, and shaking our heads, going Lord.
And this is the Black person that doesn't even want
to accidentally see Black people during the day.
But that's how it shows up, you see?
Because everybody goes, but we have your Black representative.
But those Black representatives have post traumatic slave syndrome.
And I almost feel like if you like them, there's probably a problem.
So you need someone to even come in to vet them before you can hire them.
Does that make sense?
But you see, we don't have this conversation, we pretend it's not true.
We pretend and we are in an environment of hostility all the time.
Students, faculty, everyone has to deal with that person.
Matter of fact, sometimes Black conscious, woke Black folks,
have to then warn the students about the Black person.
We've got to say, okay, let me just help you navigate this.
The reason I know it was because, you know, I work in universities.
I used to have to do the same thing, doesn't matter, every major institution got them.
They've got Stephen.
How many of you knew they put a Black man in the Bronx Zoo?
Hmm, again, not obscure, Ota Benga was placed in the Bronx Zoo.
He's from the Congo.
Eventually he was released, he shot himself in the head.
But let's look at who really defended him.
That would be the New York Times.
You don't quite understand the emotion which others are expressing, it's absurd to make moan
over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering, the pygmies are very low
in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead
of a cage ignores a probability that school would be a place
in which he could draw no advantage whatever.
The idea that men are all much alike, except that they have had or lack opportunities
for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.
They supported it.
But this wasn't during slavery, this was 1906.
Hidden in plain sight.
And then they wondered why we might have had a problem with this.
This is the first Black man ever to appear on the cover of Vogue Magazine.
That would be LeBron James.
And when Vogue Magazine was confronted with the similarities between the picture
that they had him pose for, and that of the brute, they said, oh coincidence.
Well look closely, they got it down to the blue dress.
And they had to tell LeBron to open his mouth.
But you see, LeBron probably did not know about, well that.
Because if he had, he wouldn't have done that.
And most of you didn't know that there were human zoos throughout Europe.
Here's one from 1958, they're feeding this little girl a banana in a zoo, in Brussels.
I was born in '57, just saying.
So, where did slavery go?
Well, the first thing that happened after slavery ended was, it didn't.
It was peonage, the unlawful selling of people back into slavery.
You know, hence 12 Years a Slave.
Well, it wasn't just him.
Then that was followed by Black codes and sundown laws,
saying you might be free, but you better not come here.
Then this was moved into convict leasing, we want to know about that,
look at the new documentary by Ava DuVernay, 13th,
or the new Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.
It'll get clear for you.
So we need to understand that what followed slavery was trauma.
I want you to look closely at this, because I want to unpack this just for a moment.
I want you to look at this picture, these pictures aren't in my book,
very deliberately not in my book.
But I want you to look at it, not because I want you to feel, you know, uncomfortable and queasy,
I want you to look at who's in the photo.
It's a famous photo, actually.
I want you to see that the people are in white because they've been to what?
And after church they went to the?
And look at how everyone is there.
Let me put this in perspective for you for trauma, so if there was a puppy that ran
in here, let's just get that nice little yellow lab, runs in and starts flipping
around and licking people's ankles.
And I take some of the wires up here and I wrap it around that puppy's neck,
and I hold it up in front of you until it chokes, gasps, and dies.
Two things will happen, one, I'd be arrested faster than if it was a Black man
on the other side, and number two, you'd be traumatized.
Look closely at this photo, because no one is.
He is less than a deer.
People often ask me, Joy, what did 339 yours do to Black people?
Well, this is what 339 years of trauma did to white people.
Can't feel it.
Hence Katrina, can't feel it.
Can intellectualize it, but can't feel it.
Are you following me?
Because there's no way you can be that close to a human being
and feel nothing except that he is nothing.
And that is how you resolve the dissonance you see,
is you dehumanize so it's not quite that bad for them.
To this day, 2013 research into hospitals, doctors,
who believe Black people feel less pain.
Hence the new epidemic in heroin addiction
and then the following pharmaceutical opioid medications, all that's for white people.
They're calling it accidental poisonings.
We call them ODs.
But the white people are now getting addicted to heroin.
Why? Because of an over prescribing of opiates.
Then the research, New York Times, look it up, New York Times looked up, said well wow!
Why are all these young, white students becoming addicted to heroin?
Why aren't there more Mexicans, and Asians, and Black people?
Because of racism we are denied opiates.
Because the assumption is we're trying to sell them or we're really not in that much pain.
That's a fact.
So, racism helped us this time.
Look at this picture, even worse.
You see, these are the pictures, we have these notions of hooded folks on horses
with toothless, no, no, no, these are regular folks.
Thousands of people participated in lynchings.
Thousands.
Now, here's a question.
When I first saw these photos, they're all actually in a book called, Without Sanctuary.
But I wondered, my God, did they get them from an attic?
Were they in a basement?
These are postcards.
That's why we have them.
Postcards.
So, when you start talking about, so when did the trauma end?
Contrary to popular opinion, trauma of slavery, trauma of lynching, all over the United States.
Then you had sharecropping, right?
Because we're going to bring us all the way up to 2017.
Sharecropping, these are people who went back,
went back to their former slave owners, why would you do that?
Well, you might be free, but you better not come here.
This is taken from the Constitution in the state of Oregon, where I worked,
"No free Negro Mulatto not residing in the state at the time of the adoption
of this constitution shall come, reside, be within the state holding any real estate,
make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein.
And the Legislative Assembly should provide by penile laws with removal by public officers
of all such degrees and mulattos, and for their effectual exclusion from the state
and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them in the state, implore --
this was repealed November 3, 1926.
My father was alive.
But we're free, aren't we?
Can't I go north?
Maybe if you people worked harder, if you pulled yourselves up from your bootstraps.
What if I stand on my constitutional right that I have the right to be there?
That, if any free Negroes or Mulattos shall fail to put the country as required by this act,
if guilty upon trial, shall receive upon his or her back not less than -- We'll beat you!
But aren't we free?
Hasn't the playing field been leveled for you people?
See that's the mythology, because we don't know our history.
Or our present.
We don't know it.
So that's why they went well back.
And guess what happens to them?
They couldn't read or?
So, we said oh, I know you don't have anything,
I'm going to advance you tools, seed, and a mule.
Don't worry about it, we'll settle up at the end of the year.
What happened at the end of the year?
Well, they were found owing.
Well, how do you settle that debt?
Which is another form of?
But you all are free.
It's a mythology, you see, this causes dissonance.
Because nobody believes it's true.
So I'm going to move all the way forward, I wish I had time.
I just simply don't.
Convict leasing, big business then, big business now.
Companies that employ slave labor, oh, I'm sorry, prison labor.
Jim Crow, separate but equal, ever been equal?
Still separate now though, isn't it?
I'm sure there's a Black community here somewhere.
But there's no sign on your freeway that says, next right, hood.
But you always know when you're in the hood, don't you?
Because instead of banks you see check cashing places,
and then there are liquor stores, and then of course, churches.
How come I know?
We also know that police use of deadly force is a major problem.
I just don't have time to talk about it all.
But I want to say this, that one last thing I want to share and then I will close it.
Because again, can't do it in 45 minutes, nor should we be.
But that's just how we have to do it.
There's something called epigenetics.
Now my work, you know, nine years of research, and I look specifically at violence, actually.
I gave and created some empirical evidence and some measurement.
A measurement tool, called the Respect Scale, which I won't have time to cover.
But I want to talk about epigenics because you see, my work has to deal with, you know,
multigenerational trauma, socialization, and social learning.
Behavior can be affected by events in previous generations which have been passed
on through a form of genetic memory, animal and human studies suggest.
This came out of recent research, where they took a rat, and they accustomed
that particular rat to develop an aversion for peppermint.
So, they basically shocked the rat, you know what they do,
they release the smell, shock the rat.
Creates an aversion, reinforcement, conditioned response.
Then they said, well, let's check the babies.
So they checked the babies of that particular rat, and the babies were born with an aversion
to peppermint, having never been exposed.
And then they checked the grandbabies of that rat.
And the grandbabies of the rat were born with an aversion
to peppermint, having never been exposed to it.
And they realize now that trauma is trapped in the DNA.
A body of research shows that your DNA may contain a biological memory
of the stress your grandparents endured.
Can trauma, stress, and even nightmares be passed down from generation to generation?
Scientists say, yes.
The findings provide evidence of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance
that the environment can effect an individual's genetics, which can in turn be passed on.
As previously explained, significant life-threatening experiences alter genetic
coding, and this is heritable in subsequent generations, therefore, it stands to reason
that a child conceived post-trauma will acquire this adaptive genetic information.
So again, you can't break my leg and then complain that I'm limping.
And what we have to understand is, everyone is broken.
There's a reason why white people cannot feel for Black people.
I'm not talking about intellectualize it, rationalize it, they can't feel it.
And to me that is pathology.
Similarly, you have Black people who have, are hypersensitive, struggle in schools
and institutions, feel disconnected, feel unwanted, feel disrespected, feel fear.
It is trapped in the DNA, and we've got to do a whole lot more than Black history month.
So I think, again, I have probably 100 more slides, but I will end with this one.
They're just so much, you see how much I was going to kind of -- It does take a village.
But please don't say that, if you've never been to one.
If one more person tells me that that's never been to a village.
So this is my granddaughter, we started working with her at 2 years old to teach her
to love herself, because of what we knew she was going to have to impact in the world.
Not just from white people, but from Black people, who are injured with post traumatic.
So we got her involved in positive racial socialization activities, you know,
this is Portland, Oregon, there's only four Black people, I guess they were all there.
Her father developed a basketball camp for her, because well, there wasn't one there
and we started, I started to look at this notion of light skin and good hair.
You know, there are a number of videos that you should take a look at, A Girl Like Me,
and Dark Girls, Billy Duke, who's a friend.
When I went to Ghana, when I went to Ghana I noticed
that the children didn't have any hair, so I mentioned it.
I said, I notice the children don't have any hair.
People said, they're in school.
I said, yeah, but you know, they don't got no hair.
They go, well they're in school, what are you talking about?
I went, okay.
So maybe it's the little ones.
Well, no, there's middle school kids, no hair.
I'm going wow, maybe it's the -- nope, it's the high school.
And that young woman was looking at me, gave me permission to take that picture.
But you don't get a sense of confusion about their Blackness.
And they're not preoccupied with hair.
So it's not an African thing.
In this village, the young woman, Michele Yeboah, who is seated next
to the two little girls, one's drinking water, that's her village.
The man was looking off to the side, that's the chief of that village.
And everywhere we went, Michele's, the women would follow her and surround her,
and just start crying and screaming.
We didn't know what they were saying, because it was in another language.
I was traveling with a group of other scholars.
And we didn't know what was going on.
But what turns out is the matrilineal matriarchal society and the next chief has
to come through her, and she hasn't had a child.
And they were very upset with her about that.
So, I snapped this picture of these men, had never seen this before,
it was a whole group of men babysitting.
I'd never seen it.
Not a woman in sight.
All men were babysitting.
So I took the picture, and this is a zoom lens, really far away.
The man holding the baby saw me take the picture and he started walking towards me.
Fast. So I put the camera down and -- you know -- my heart started beating,
I'm going, Joy what have you done?
You fool. And the man walks up to me and I'm thinking I'm, you know,
I must have done something wrong.
And my heart's beating.
He doesn't say anything to me, hands me the baby and he leaves.
So I'm holding that little baby you see there and the man going, going, gone.
So I'm thinking, surely he's coming back.
After about 20 minutes he didn't come back.
Everybody's gone except me and the baby.
So I'm, it's okay, okay.
So I go inside to the house where I'm staying, and I sit down.
And the women are, you know, and men, and everybody's talking, and people I'm traveling
with are looking at me and they're, you know, handing out refreshments.
Does anybody ask me about the baby?
They know I didn't come there with a baby, right?
So I'm sitting there, the baby falls asleep.
So my friends are like, Joy, what's with the baby?
I'm going, I don't know.
So there after about 45 minutes, the baby starts stirring, and I'm going, is this now my baby?
What's going on?
Where's Children Protective Services when you need them?
And you know, then I'm going, when the baby wakes up, what am I supposed to do?
Am I supposed to feed the baby?
What if the baby's wet?
What am I supposed to do with the baby?
I don't know what to do, right?
So after that, I'm a little sweaty, I'm just -- so I'm sitting there on the couch,
the baby is waking up, and someone reaches over, a young girl, 12 or 13, picks the baby up.
I'm sitting down, she lifts the baby up and walks out the door.
I'm going, oh no, no, no, no, no, that's not how this is going to work.
So I go out there, and I say to him, couldn't help noticing
that you gave me this baby and then you left.
He said, you took a picture of baby, I figured you wanted the baby.
That was it, there was no other conversation.
He didn't know me, my name, he only knew one thing and whose house I came out of.
That's a village.
And that's a village I grew up in.
I grew up in a village in South Central Los Angeles,
where my daddy would tell you, bad news will beat you home.
Because Mr. Isador could check you, and the lady who lived across the street who was
from some other country, white family, spoke a language we never figured out what it was,
but she would feed our dog when we left.
We had a community.
We had a remnant of a society.
And it worked.
So yeah, we need to build village.
It's the village that will help us.
But I think that for me, when I was standing out, and some of you probably were there,
when I stood out the Door of No Return, and I was looking out, looking at these fishermen
out fishing, doing what they had been doing for generations, and I read a proverb that says,
"If you wish to go fast, then go alone.
But if you wish to go far, go together."
Let's go together.
Thank you so much.