Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome Essay

Do you have Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome? African Americans today are still suffering from the disgusting horrors of slavery. One woman, author Cindy George, wrote “Do you have Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome?” Published in 2015 on Ebony magazine, and she suggest that the way African American people respond to racial events may go back to harrowing treatment of our enslaved ancestors. George begins building on recent events such as Eric Garner who was choked to death by a police officer on camera and the cop was able to walk away with no charges. Another case in a Dallas Suburb of McKinney, Texas where an African American teenage girl and her friends were harassed and physically touched by the white neighbors and even worse the police officers. To the bloody beating of an African American college student in Virginia, to the massacre of nine congregants attending bibles study in Charleston, SC, church in June. George begins to build her arguments with
Joy DeGruy whom for 25 years studied and researched this case in order to come to her final conclusion that we suffer from Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. She quoted Dr. DeGruy saying “Researchers have long investigated how historical trauma is passed down through the generations, and findings suggest actual memories are transmitted through the DNA for Jews, Native Americans, and other groups” DeGruy indicates that some concept can be applied to the impact of slavery on African Americans. It gives the sense of unfairness of being treated for the problem. The entire time it took Dr. DeGruy to do research on African Americans to see if African Americans suffer from the same thing since the African Holocaust as the Jews did from Hitler’s holocaust, there had not been any research done prior to then only on the Jews and Native Americans, which means we didn’t receive treatment as the groups