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>> Good afternoon, everyone.
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And welcome to this most
special diversity salon.
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We created the UVA Diversity Salons for us to
engage in critical conversations about issues
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that we might not normally
discuss in our everyday lives.
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And today, we have what I believe is the
most special speaker of all for these salons.
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My name is John Gaites, I'm associate
dean for Diversity and Inclusion,
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in the School of Engineering
and Applied Science.
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It is my pleasure to introduce
Dr. Joy Degruy, a nationally
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and internationally renowned researcher,
educator, author, and presenter.
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Dr. Degruy is an ambassador for healing and
a voice for those who've struggled in search
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of the past and continue to
struggle through the present.
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Dr. Degruy is an acclaimed author, having
authored Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,
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America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing,
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: The Study Guide,
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and Post-Traumatic Slave
Syndrome Part 2: The Healing.
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Dr. Degruy holds a bachelor's degree, a
Bachelor of Science degree in Communications,
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and two Master's degrees in Social
Work and Clinical Psychology,
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and a PhD in Social Work Research,
as well as having spent over 20 years
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as a professional in the field of social work.
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This education and practical experience has
provided her with extensive research on,
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as well as hands on experiential insight
into the various cultural and ethnic groups
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that form the basis of contemporary
American society.
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Through these lectures, workshops, seminars, and
special guest appearances, Dr. Degruy continues
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to shine a light on those critical
issues affecting our society.
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Dr. Degruy's presentations have
been lauded as the most dynamic
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and inspirational lectures currently
being delivered on the topics of culture,
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race relations, and contemporary social issues.
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It is my great privilege
to present Dr. Joy Degruy.
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[ Applause ]
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>> -- watch that bottom stair,
[inaudible], fall up the stairs.
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So, good afternoon, is it afternoon?
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I'm in a weird time zone thing going on.
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So, I've been asked to do
an amazingly difficult task,
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I've been asked to compress a 10-week
graduate level course into 45 minutes.
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And how many people here are
actually familiar with my work?
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Okay --
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Okay. No, no, I always ask that question
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because it always determines where,
what I'm going to talk about.
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So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to
-- you're going to see a lot of slides.
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I will skip some, a lot of them
actually, to try to get to the point.
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So, let me just start with what
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is,
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what it is not, and how I arrived at it.
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So, I think I first began to look at
behaviors within the African American community
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that were disturbing to me as a child.
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I grew up at a time where Black, to be
Black, wasn't necessarily a good thing.
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And in fact, when Black people
insulted other Black people,
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whatever they called you,
they called you Black first.
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"You Black," then fill in the blank.
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"You Black."
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And even as a child that seemed
odd, because the assumption is, one,
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I'm going to hurt you by calling you Black.
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And that always seemed odd to
me, because well, you are Black.
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So what does, what does Black somehow mean
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that I can assault another
Black person with the word?
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So even as a child that didn't make sense to me.
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Or I heard things like, oh, she was really,
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a really attractive girl,
even though she was dark.
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Or, he was really, you know,
he was really good looking,
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he was light skinned, and he had good hair.
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Okay? And these were all, to me, symptoms
of something I didn't quite understand.
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I didn't get.
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But as a social scientist it
became very important to me.
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So when we look at trauma for those of
you that, you know, hear the term trauma,
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it was very interesting for the
response I got when I actually came
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up with the term, post traumatic slave syndrome.
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It's actually exactly what it sounds
like, multigenerational trauma.
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Multigenerational trauma's not a new concept,
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we've looked at multigenerational
trauma with other groups.
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We've looked at victims of natural disaster,
we've looked at Aboriginal folks in Australia,
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First Nations, Native Americans, you know,
we've looked at war, veterans, and all --
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you know, we've looked at all kinds of people.
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But it was very interesting the visceral
response I got when I said slavery.
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In fact, there are people who
maybe even saw slavery in the title
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and decided they weren't coming today.
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Oh come on, surely you --
you're free now, aren't you?
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I wasn't there, okay, I didn't
-- I didn't own slaves.
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Well, I wasn't there either.
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Or, you know, hey, get over it, you know?
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All of these are the responses you
get when you say the term slavery.
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And I thought, as a social
scientist, that's very interesting.
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How come I can't say slavery
but I can say, well holocaust?
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How come? And I'll tell you why, because
Jewish people honor their Holocaust.
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And they don't particularly
care what you think about it.
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They're going to tell their children,
they're going to tell their children,
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and then Spielberg will make
another movie if anyone misses it.
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But what we're not going to do
is not talk about our Holocaust.
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But what I'm talking about is a Holocaust.
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A Holocaust we've never really looked
at, but we've been told to get over.
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One we've never really observed or
examined, but we've been told to get over.
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So when we talk about trauma, if I were
to shoot this individual seated here,
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that would be a horrible thing and this
person would be traumatized, you think?
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Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that.
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The person seated next to them is also
traumatized because they saw me shoot them.
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Someone in the hall heard the shot, later
found out who was shot, they're traumatized.
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The family members in Arkansas find out
they've been shot, they're traumatized.
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Then seated on the other side of the
table was someone else that witnessed it
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and we invite them to tell us their experience,
and they go yes, Joy, it was horrible.
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Blood everywhere, it was, yeah, when's lunch?
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Not traumatized.
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Because everyone's not traumatized
by a singular traumatic event.
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But when we talk about American chattel
slavery, we're not talking about a single event.
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We're talking about, about 339 years of trauma.
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So we're not talking about it being
plausible that people escape trauma,
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they just never got treated for it.
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It never got acknowledged.
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So now let's do some math on that and
let's take a look at what that means.
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So, if a person experiences
post-traumatic stress disorder,
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which is only one stress-related illness,
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they have certain symptoms
that are associated with that.
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Now, let's do some math on it, 339 years
of trauma, and no help, because no one came
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in to help you when you had trauma.
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There was no Dr. Phil, right?
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No doctors in the borders
or outside the borders,
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nobody showed up for that, for 339 years.
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Okay, so then you got freed, any help then?
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Anybody come and say, you know, I know
it's been, you know, people beaten,
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mutilated, raped, sold, experimented on.
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Any help? Any group therapy?
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Historically?
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No, so let's see, 339 years of trauma, no
help, freed, no help, did the trauma continue?
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Three-hundred and thirty-nine years of
trauma, no help, freed, no help, more trauma.
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What we are is a miracle.
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But what we've been told is well,
we don't want to talk about that,
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so let me give you some real upfront
examples of it, hidden in plain sight.
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Let's first give you an example, and I use this
example and the reason why I'm starting here is
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so that we can have a point of reference,
because we can't heal what we don't understand.
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So let's say you have a Black
mother and a white mother.
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Or a Black father and a white father.
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It's not gender specific.
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But you have a Black mother and a white
mother, each one of them have sons.
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And the sons know each other,
they kind of grew up together,
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and they're very much my son's experience
with his friend, Nick, who's Greek.
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He grew up with Nick.
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Nick would show up in the living room, or
show up in the kitchen table, and I go, Nick,
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I didn't even know you spent the night.
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Does your momma know you're here?
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You know, Nick, he ended
up being in his wedding.
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So, you have a Black mother and a white
mother, both their sons grew up together.
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The Black mother finds herself seated next to
the white mother at a meeting like this one,
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and both of their sons are
on either side of them.
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And the Black mother leans forward and
says to the white mother, "You know,
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I just wanted to let you know, I
noticed your son is really doing well."
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And the white mother's very excited, "Thank you
so much for noticing, did I mention he's in TAG?
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That would be the Talented and Gifted Program.
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In addition to that, you know, he also
won the Science Fair, just last week.
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You know, his uncle's an astronaut.
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The boy is just brilliant,
we're so proud of him."
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And she's oozing with enthusiasm and
she sits back, feeling warm and fuzzy.
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And as she sits back, she realizes
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that the Black mother's son
is actually excelling her son.
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So she leans back and she says to
the Black mother, "Wait a minute,
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you're talking about my son, your son's
the one that's really coming along."
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And the Black mother's response,
"Girl, get out of here.
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You should have seen that boy
yesterday, whoo, he's something else.
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He works my nerves, that boy is a handful.
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Whoo! He's something else.
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Girl, shut up, get out of here."
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Now, how many people have
seen or heard that behavior?
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Okay. So what I wanted to understand
is the etiology of the behavior.
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Where did it come from?
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I've been to seven countries in Africa, it's
not an African thing, it is a Caribbean thing.
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In fact, there's a secret, and it is
always the secrets that make us sick.
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It is not something that
most of us even question.
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Particularly those born in this skin, because
everyone in this room that's of African descent,
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know this secret, and the secret is that
even though the parent, male or female,
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father mother, is saying, oh that, oh he's
something else, they're proud at the same time.
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Am I telling the truth?
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Okay, so now everybody's giving me that nod
because we know, and it's regardless of class
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or education, but I wanted
to understand the etiology
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of that, and I actually traced its roots.
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And the way I did it was two ways, one,
I read thousands of slave narratives,
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and number two, I interviewed elders.
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Adelaide Sanford, Vice Chancellor of
Education of New York, called me while I was
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on a radio show to confirm and verify that
her grandmother, who had been enslaved,
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told her what I said as a
child, sitting at her feet.
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So now let's roll the whole
thing back several hundred years.
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And you have a Black mother,
and you have a white mother.
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And the Black mother, of course, is
enslaved and therefore also her children.
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And so perhaps she's in the fields,
or perhaps she's in the house,
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but she's working and she's enslaved.
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And a white slave owner comes
through, male or female,
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and says to the Black mother,
"Is that your boy there?
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That your boy?
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Huh, that boy sure is coming along.
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Look at him."
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And what is she going to say?
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"No sir, he's stupid, he's shiftless,"
because I don't want you to sell him.
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If it is my daughter, I don't want you to
breed her, so I denigrate them to protect them.
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That is called, Appropriate Adaptation,
when living in a hostile environment.
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Post traumatic slave syndrome.
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You know how many of those there are.
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Everything from what we eat to
what we believe it means to live
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in this skin that's colored by history.
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But you see, we've never unpacked this
because we never had the conversation,
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because we've been told to get over it.
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Or we say this other thing, which we can
ill afford to say, well, it's their culture.
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Well you see, African Americans cannot
swallow whole what we call cultural,
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because well, there's poison in the cookies.
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And what I endeavor to do is to tease the
poison from the cookies, because you see,
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along with culture is adaptation and survival.
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And that is all folded in to what it
means to live in this skin in 2017.
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But you see, most people look at this
experience of slavery and they say,
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you get immediate pushback, visceral, well, come
on now, that slavery is not a new institution.
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After all, almost every society had some
form of indentured servitude or slavery,
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or even your people, they enslaved each other.
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You see, this is what the
apologists say to throw you off.
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But you see, American chattel slavery was
different from every form that preceded it.
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It differed in the manner in
which a person became enslaved.
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It differed in the treatment of the enslaved,
it differed in the length of servitude,
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but most importantly, it differed in
how they were perceived as human beings.
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Before the European slave trade began, most
people became slaves as the result of a war.
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Two societies went to war,
winner's enslaved the losers.
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Europeans however, systematically
turned the capturing, shipping, selling,
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and breeding of other human
beings into a business.
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A business that would develop into
the backbone of an entire economy.
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That's different.
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So we have never had the conversation
to ever stop having the conversation.
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And again, we've, you know, there's
just numerous things we can take a look
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at as it relates to this, but that's what
I began to look at so we can understand it.
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So, moving forward, say this word, Dinquinesh.
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>> [multiple] Dinquinesh.
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>> Okay, they called her Lucy,
but she was from Ethiopia
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and they called her Dinquinesh,
which means, thou art wonderful.
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Very interesting that they
called her Lucy, you think?
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Based on mitochondrial DNA, we know that well,
we all owe a debt of real support and pride
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for Dinquinesh because we
are a result of her DNA.
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And she was African, but it escaped your text.
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Why is that?
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Why is it you knew about Lucy, but
you didn't know about Dinquinesh?
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Is Dinquinesh hard to say?
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Is it obscure?
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Is it something we didn't know?
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No, it simply was summarily
removed because you see,
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then you have to begin to explain man's origins.
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And well, Dana don't lie, the DNA does not lie.
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So, how many of you, some of you have gray
hair, which is what I have under this hair --
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some of us had to read the
Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
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how many people had to read this?
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It was mandatory reading when I
was in my undergraduate studies.
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By Thomas Kuhn.
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And, you know, how many people
are 50 or above, don't be afraid.
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Isn't it wonderful not caring what people think?
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It's just, it's such a freeing space to be in.
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It's a development stage, I love it.
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Anyway, so during the time that I was growing
up, you know, I had a concept of reality
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that was a little different, because
my family was a little different.
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But Thomas Kuhn said something in
this book, the only thing I remember
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by the way, was the structure of change.
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How does change happen?
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We always want change, but we don't
act very well about changing things.
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We go out kicking and screaming.
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For example, if we don't understand how change
occurs, we can't very well make it happen.
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But we need to understand the structure,
the symptoms, the signs of change.
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For example, there was a point, I remember, when
there would be actually ashtrays in this room.
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There literally would be
ashtrays in the room, right?
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And then, you know, if you were my, you know,
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my family and during the holidays you would
go visit the family during the holidays
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and they would break out the nice ashtrays.
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Those would be the ones on the
stands, and they had little marble,
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with the little multiple, you know?
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And you knew, oh, can't touch those
ashtrays, because those are special.
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Very special ashtrays.
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I was having this conversation and my
grandkids were like, so what's an ashtray?
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They didn't even know what
an ashtray was, right?
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And in fact, if someone lit up
a cigarette today in this room,
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well I think the peer pressure
alone would put it out,
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but if for some reason the peer pressure
didn't put it out, then we'd start doing,
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you know, kind of a therapy thing.
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Has there been a death in the family?
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Is there, are they suffering
some depression right now?
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We start trying to diagnose the person,
because clearly they are not well
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if they have lit a cigarette in this room.
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Right? That's how clear it is for us.
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Now, how do we go from, I remember as a child
running to the store to buy all the people,
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adults in the neighborhood cigarettes.
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Joy, get me some Winstons, some
Cools, some Salems, you know?
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And they would literally give you 50 cents.
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I don't know what that means,
but it's the truth.
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I'd go run to the store.
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How did we get from that to the point
where if anyone even kind of tried to act
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like they were going to smoke in this
room, there would be some sort of revolt?
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How, how did we get there?
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Clearly the tobacco industry, well, lied.
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And millions of people died while they lied.
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But what happened between that period
and this period was one, a lot of death,
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a lot of struggle, and a
preponderance of evidence.
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So much evidence, in fact, was produced
about cigarette smoking that even when you go
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to the doctor now, right after
they get that insurance form,
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whatever you're coming there for,
they're going to ask you, "Do you smoke?"
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Because it exacerbates your health that much.
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A preponderance of evidence forced
a paradigm shift, never to return.
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Well we, you know, have had similar experiences,
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although there's a few scary people
that believe the Earth is flat.
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Most of us know it's not.
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I'm really pleased, I'm very saddened
that there's the Flat Earthers who still,
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I'm thinking, haven't you seen the pictures?
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I don't know.
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But anyway, there was a preponderance
of evidence.
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Folks like Galileo, you know,
Bornov, this was an individual
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who had a dream that the universe was expansive.
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He just dreamed it, and they burned him alive.
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That's how much we fight against change.
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And I want you to know we're on the precipice
of change as it relates to race, and racism,
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we're on the precipice, and you
can tell because, you know, one,
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there's a preponderance of evidence.
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Never in our history has there ever been
a time when the entire globe has looked
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on at America and said, shame on you America.
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Because you see, now you can't
convince me, because well, I've seen it.
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Now I can push a button and I can see it all.
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And there is a preponderance of evidence
-
and like any other paradigm
shift, it's going to be ugly.
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Matter of fact, it's going to get far
worse than we have ever seen in this room.
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Because people are going to go out kicking
and screaming before they're willing to share.
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That reality is upon us, so this does not
become simply a philosophical conversation.
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I believe that truthfulness is the foundation
of all the virtues of the world of humanity,
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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
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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.
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That's just simply numbers, it's the truth.
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It's the truth.
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And guess what, we're seeing it reflected
well in this room, and of course it is Be Kind
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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.
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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.
-
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.