Nationally and locally, issues of race quite literally afflict our body politic.
At home here on our idyllic Central Coast, many white folks—who make up 71 percent of our community—can see racism, whether it comes in the form of frat boys putting on blackface, or, not that many years ago, Cal Poly students hanging a noose on campus. Just days ago, a local man was arrested for threatening to shoot minorities moving into his neighborhood. Police found handguns, rifles, and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his home.
While these seem to be infamous but isolated incidents, sometimes we may hear a friend or co-worker utter intentionally or unintentionally disparaging comments about people of color. Worse, we may fear the explosive harm that some racist fanatic may perpetrate on our own neighbors of color.
That’s why we’re often reminded of the guilt we share over slavery and the effects of structural inequality.
With these realities in mind, I recently attended a workshop sponsored by RACE Matters SLO County on “Preparing to Put in the Work: Intersectionality in Action.” The purpose of the event was to initiate a community-based conversation on how to build a “beloved” community that is welcoming and incorporates inclusivity and racial justice.
I learned how transgenerational trauma, sometimes called “intergenerational suffering,” magnifies the violence done by racism on both the minds and bodies of people of color. In fact, I learned a new word: epigenetics, which is the science of how traumatic events affect us at a molecular level, altering genes that are passed from one generation to the next.
In other words, black Americans carry the trauma of slavery in their genes to this day.
This concept nearly undid me. With a little research, I found recent studies on epigenetics, transgenerational trauma, and post-traumatic slave syndrome, which widened my understanding of the lasting effects of systemic racism, starting with slavery and followed by lynching, Jim Crow laws, segregation, mass incarceration, and discrimination in housing, education, and employment.
Black Americans inherit the kind of hurt that invades their lives, imputing multigenerational maladaptive behaviors that can negatively affect an individual’s productivity and ability to succeed.
Transgenerational trauma can be triggered by a relatively small event, a recurring aggression, or the reporting of news that reflects racism and oppression. Leola Dublin Macmillan, a cultural scholar and co-presenter of the intersectionality workshop, recounted a trigger incident in which she was stopped by the police near Cal Poly for what we’ve come to call “driving while black.” If she goes out for a walk in our town, she has to remember to carry identification in case she draws attention for being out of place and therefore suspicious. If you’re white, do you worry about carrying an ID for such purposes? I doubt it. If you’re black, reactions to your skin color likely trigger ancestral trauma and PTSD-related symptoms going back centuries.
Transgenerational trauma isn’t solely the experience of black Americans, of course. In one study, children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were reportedly overrepresented by 300 percent among referrals to a Canadian psychiatry clinic. Descendants of students at American Indian boarding schools, who were removed from their families, also exhibit the signs of transgenerational trauma.
Look at the very recent news and ask yourself: What can we conclude will be the lasting, multigenerational effects of separating children as young as 4 months from their parents at the U.S. border and detaining them in appalling conditions?
What can you do about this and other ugly situations? On a governmental level, you can call your representatives, including state Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, state Sen. Bill Monning, Congressman Salud Carbajal, and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. (You can find contact information for all our local representatives at slochamber.org/our-community/elected%20representatives).
What else can be done about the transgenerational trauma and socio-economic repercussions stemming from slavery? There are large and small steps we can take, none of which are merely symbolic. Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, signed the first bill in the nation that outlaws racial discrimination based on hairstyle. No longer can California employers or schools ban Afros, braids, cornrows, and dreadlocks.
Before we vote, we should investigate candidates’ records on civil rights and consider their plans for social and racial justice. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have both introduced major proposals to address racial disparities. Harris’ $100 billion investment plan would reduce the racial gap in homeownership.
On a personal level, we can help mend transgenerational trauma through simple acts of kindness, civility, and recognition. If someone you know says something racially offensive, don’t harden their misconceptions by scolding them. Take them aside and ask if they’ve thought through the implications of their words.
And when you meet a person of color on our streets or walking the trail on Cerro San Luis, raise your eyes to theirs, smile, and say, “Hello.” You’ll breathe easy, and so, most likely, will they. Δ
Amy Hewes is actively involved in grassroots political action. Send comments through the editor at clanham@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in 55 Fiction 2019.
Indoctrination by the liberal establishment into feeling guilty for black slavery that took place in the industrializing world is a good example of modern political brainwashing for an agenda that cant be directly promoted.
Perspective:
Slavery has always been a raceless issue. Before there was black slavery in the colonies, the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish were enslaved by the ruling elite of the time. While many slaves are taken because they are seen as lesser, all races have been victims of slavery, and that includes whites. In Greece whites were enslaved and used for the manual tasks the rich did not want to partake in. In Rome, Gauls and Angles were taken as slaves Caesar enslaved as many as one million Gauls. Viking raiders sold captured Britons into slavery in the Muslim world. White slaves acted as a form of foreign exchange when dealing with Muslim countries mostly English people living on the coast, Slavs, Irish and Flemish slaves were sold to the Muslim world, or kidnapped by Muslim pirates, and while the men were worked to death as galley slaves, women and children were made into prostitutes. The establishment likes to make us think that the slavery that took place in Spain involves a mass number of black slaves but until the fall of Muslim Spain, whites made up the majority of slaves in Spain. The Russians, when they werent enslaving each other, were being enslaved by Ottoman and Mongolian raiders. In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and fifty-one of his comrades were captured at sea by the Barbary pirates (corsairs). Their captors, Ali Hakem and his network of Islamic slave traders, had declared war on the whole of Christendom. France, Spain, England and Italy had suffered a series of devastating attacks. Thousands of Europeans had been snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis, and Sal in Morocco. Historian Richard Dunn has stated that the early sugar plantations of the British West Indies were nothing more than mass graves for white workers. The most recent direct slavery that whites had to endure took place when British parliament passed laws that resulted in the poorest Britons being sent to work in the colonies (USA). An Englishman, William Eddis, after observing white slaves in America: they groan beneath a worse than Egyptian bondage. Aristocratic Tories supported the program of slavery forced upon the poorest. This came at a time when British Parliament was condemning the black slavery that was taking place in the West Indies. Yes while complaining about mistreated black slaves in the West Indies, they were passing laws that enabled their own people to be sold into slavery. Work that one out! Oliver Cromwell, known for oppressing Catholics, also enslaved many Protestant whites; many of them also sent to the colonies. In February, 1656, Oliver Cromwell sent 1,200 poor women for enslavement and deportation to the colonies. In March, he repeated the process, but increased the order to 2,000 young women of England. Charles II continued to enslave white Protestants after Cromwell. In 1656, when ensuring the enslavement of Protestant rebels in the Caribbean colonies, the legislation he passed resulted in very harsh conditions for the slaves Richard Hall noted The condition of these Rebels was by this Act made as bad, if not worse than the negroes. Slavery manifested itself in all sorts of forms. The Cherokee Indians and many blacks were even known to have purchased or obtained white slaves. The Southern Confederacys land owners were actually known to treat the black slaves to better clothes, accommodation and food as compared to the white slaves. This was because black slaves, being much rarer in the earlier years of slavery in the colonies, were also much more costly and so land owners treated the blacks well, even if for their own interests. Due to this, many white slaves died of malnutrition or of various diseases. If a white slave was to have sexual intercourse with another slave during the 18th century slavery in the colonies, the period they are expected to be a slave would be extended, and if the female white slave got pregnant, the children would have to serve a modern life sentence (give or take a few years) in slavery. On the topic of child slavery, many British children sold into slavery, some as young as eight, were sold so that they can work on the Virginia fields as laborers. Some were even used as human brooms to sweep chimneys. One could argue that the horrendous wages Britons were expected to work on during the industrial period was just wage slavery; just as slaves were given the basic necessities to stop them from dying, British workers were given a wage only high enough to afford the basic necessities to stop them from dying. Long after slavery was ditched by the British Empire, white children were forced to work down in the mines, or, as the apprentice of a chimney sweep, both jobs that were very low paid and very dangerous. However, if the child didnt do the job, they would starve and die in the street; nobody would help as people during this time were relatively deprived and had their own families to look after. We could go into how American Africans are the wealthiest and most privileged Africans on earth, specifically because they were brought over as slaves, or how its funny to talk about slavery when companies like Amazon exist, but this is a good place to end the lesson.
Did they teach about any of this at the white guilt workshop? The next time someone comes at you with this anti-white agenda, tell them to check their privilege and thank White Christians for ending slavery (and the values of the enlightenment in general). Im still waiting on reparations from North African Muslims for my people being stolen from their homelands. As a white person Im epigenetically affected by this tragedy.