As a black person it’s likely you’ve heard, at some point in your life, “that happened hundreds of years ago” or “you should move past that.” Many non-black people hate for you to mention slavery. Some schools have even been called out for trying to refer to slaves as workers or unpaid interns. The mental and physical effects of slavery were so egregious and comparing them work or internships is a complete slap in the face. Many of us continue to harbor deep-seated and painful feelings about the numerous injustices that were meted upon us at different times in history. One of the major social injustices that were committed in history were done during Slavery and even continue today.
Could the effects of Slavery be passed down from generation to generation?
Many people are not aware that the trauma from slavery can be passed on from generation to generation. This greatly affects the society and the generations that follow subsequently because they continue harboring the sad and often traumatizing details of the type of injustice they experienced.
Many authors around the world have highlighted in detail the severity of slavery (not that we didn’t already know) and its adverse effects in the United States. One such author is Gerry Spence, he researched, in grave detail, the effects of slavery and wrote about it in his book, Give Me Liberty. Some people in the medical field such as Dr. Rachel Yehuda have conducted research and found indeed, slavery has tremendous negative effects, including trauma on the victims. She also found that post-traumatic stress disorders, PTSD, can be passed down from one generation to the next through the genes. This simply means that the children of the victims will inherit the genes that have been affected by trauma.
To prove her findings, Dr. Yehuda conducted research using victims that survived the Holocaust. She found out that those who survived the Holocaust had a similar hormonal profile to Vietnamese soldiers who suffer from PTSD. Various researchers have found out that slavery caused deep psychological, emotional and mental effects that are intense enough to cause trauma to survivors.
Bottom Line
Slavery was gruesome, our ancestors endured hell on earth and the fears and stress they had to deal with have been passed down for centuries. Despite it all, we are survivors and always have been and history continues to show us that. Something else our ancestors passed down to us was “how make something out of nothing.” The question is, could this be one of the reasons mental illness is prevalent in the black community? How do we move past this when black people are still being murdered in the streets by white people and no one bats an eye?
Many of us are still praising jesus. This gives us an example of lessons learned in slavery still being unquestioned and simply passed down. Also I know very few Africans with an economic relationship to Africa, another indication of slavery. Until we are not expected by default to be christian and we have an economic relationship with our own homeland we are still feeling the affects of slavery.