Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary: Post Traumatic Slave Disorder

[Music] there's a kind of a fundamental basis for posttraumatic slave syndrome how many of you familiar with posttraumatic stress disorder yeah okay so these are things I mean most of you are are are people who are in the field that have done the work you're here representing uh the people who are really in the trenches and I appreciate and respect that uh the theory very often uh when People hear it post-traumatic slave syndrome I try to kind of get at uh uh kind of what's going on in the room there there's ambivalence there's feelings of

you know what come on now what do we saying now about the slavery thing it's over you know it's get over it you know it's we're done we have that kind of feeling and how possibly is she drawing a connection between something that happened so long ago and contemporary Society you know come on Are you trying to find an excuse are you trying to blame people you know these are the natural kind of knee-jerk reactions to hearing the term post-traumatic slave syndrome however I would I would submit to you that you know my it's based

on Research so uh I did about six years of of research specifically looking at violence my my area of focus is violence and I'll cover that in my umu my PowerPoint also some of you may not be Able to see points of the PowerPoint uh but we're going to make it available to you so you don't have to worry about it there's a website where you'll be able to download my PowerPoint isn't that correct is that did I say that right okay so that that part you don't have to worry about but I kind of

want to set the ground so that we can all advance and move forward together now the reason I do that and the reason why I begin that way it's because there's an Assumption a fundamental assumption in a room this size with people very well educated people very well exposed that we're all entering this discussion at the same level and we are not I can guarantee you we are not we all have our ideas and our beliefs and then we all have our experience for example the people of color that are in the room all the

people of color that are in this room are arriving in this room at a different level because they have lived In this skin and we're rarely given any kind of appreciation or understanding of what you have to live with walking through the world with this skin so you're you kind of come in at a different level of awareness about the discussion and then you have folks that come into this discussion that are educated around it that are clear about it but can't really empathize their way through it in other words it's not a feeling thing

it's a cerebral thing so Some people stay intellectual because that's a level of comfort nothing wrong with that but very different from the person who lives in the skin it is personal and it is emotional okay so all of that's going on in this room even before we get started but as people commit it you know it may get a bit uncomfortable but that's okay because it's been uncomfortable living in this skin it's been uncomfortable and we have To learn how to deal with that discomfort and stay in room so when we look at the

fundamental premise of trauma and we understand the nature of trauma we know that there have been other groups that we've looked at the ideology of their of contemporary Behavior based on multi-generational trauma one group Jewish Holocaust families of Jewish Holocaust and the fact that the Jewish Community is very very clear about honoring that Holocaust So much so that Spielberg will probably make another movie and I'm not mad at him because what he's doing is ensuring that the generations that come will never forget the Holocaust and its impact upon Jewish people you'll look at folks throughout

the world even Aboriginal folks in the United States where more focus is being done on what colonialism has done we've looked at uh Japanese interment we've looked at Australian Aboriginal folks we've looked At multi multigenerational impact of trauma on people who have had tragedies like the tsunami victims we'll look at everybody but when it comes to looking at Africans there's a visceral respon oh come on let's not why are you and it's a curious thing as a social scientist to me that you get so much push back when you talk about Africa and we look

at the legacy of slavery you get so much push back but more importantly is why do you Get the push back back see as a social scientist I'm less concerned with the material which I'm clear about I'm more interested in why the behavior why is there such reticence at looking at this issue and there's the answer is when you peel back the layers of this we peel back everybody's layers everyone gets naked in this room and that's not always comfortable it's also very comfortable to talk about the other's pathology and the reason why I Think

that becomes important is so that when we begin to engage in this discussion we don't find ourselves falling victim to the fear guilt all of that stuff that's no not useful to anyone it's not useful this means we're going to peel the layers back and while 246 years as it were in American history of American chadow slavery starting with 1619 to the ratification of the 13th Amendment in United States we're looking at 246 years of American Shadow slavery And it's very comfortable and I think to some degree people can say you can't have 246 years

of trauma and expect that nothing happened especially when that trauma was followed by more trauma especially given the fact that there was never a point of healing not difficult to do the math here not this is not deep and philosophical it really makes sense but you know what else is true you can't have 246 years of folks engaged in a Traumatic experience that were white that went unaffected that means everybody has been affected and infected by this thing so that's the part that gets uncomfortable because it's usually okay to look at the other we're going

to look at everybody this is going to be one where we really uh show the elephant in the room and only for the purposes of recognizing that unless we do so none of us can heal this is not a process that any of us can Do individually by ourselves this is a collective process and so therefore we're all going to be engaged and it's not just a pointing of fingers at anyone it's recognizing that you and I all of us have been impacted by historical multi-generational trauma now let's look at it very specifically when we

look at trauma in its very you know clinical sense you know my background clinical sense psychology understanding what Trauma is people can experience a single trauma one trauma indirectly meaning that they didn't have to be present for the direct trauma meaning say for example you all heard about 911 and taking down the buildings in New York right yes 911 everybody in the world got told about that matter of fact I think everybody in America got diagnosed with postraumatic stress disorder as a result of that but I would submit to we were Traumatized long before that

but there were individuals that were at Ground Zero and I know them my niece was in one of the buildings so she decided while she was in one of the buildings they kept telling her just stay where you are they kept stay where you are we think people should stay where they are she said everything in her mind said get out so she got out matter of fact she leapt over the security guard to get out of The building and it's a good thing she did but during that time there were people at Ground Zero

for example like my niece and there were people who watched it on television and then there were people in other countries who heard about it so there are varying levels of understanding around this trauma that happened in the United States there were people at Ground Zero were there had Soft folks falling out the sky got videotaped footage of it watch it on television invited folks over and drank beer not traumatized no trauma there were people in maybe in another country in Brazil saw it on television in Psychotherapy right now can't get on planes on medication

and people talk softly to him twice a Week so the variance in terms of those who are traumatized by a traumatic event and those who are not we are unique as individuals everybody's not traumatized by a traumatic event whether it's direct or not but when we start talking about Shadow slavery we're not talking about one trauma we're not talking about a specific event we're talking about generations of trauma with no Intervention based on what I know about sugar plantations tobacco and the Caribbean what I know about American Catt slavery and the plantations there does anyone

right now ever recall mental health assistance to Slaves anybody remember sending in the therapist after I sold off your son daughter raped folks any at any point never second question after slavery was officially Over now you're free anybody any remember remember any therapy then we know it's been rough it's been deep for you it's been difficult we're going to do a little group therapy anybody remember that that would be no number three after slavery officially ended both in the states the Caribbean the British ended do you remember whether or not trauma continued did the trauma

continue for People of African sin I need to know okay so now let's do the math hundreds of years of trauma no treatment freed more trauma no treatment what do you do the math do you think there may be residual impacts of that trauma of course there is it didn't end friends and it hasn't ended yet so I think one on one point African people and people of African decent are Extremely resilient matter of fact I think we're a miracle far be it for us to pathologize or to look and cast this idea of weak

and sick people oh on the contrary we are I'm profoundly resilient because we've done everything we've done thus far with no help with not even the ability to have this discussion as though it were possible we escaped injury in all those hundreds of years and the years that followed so this this Kind of Journey I'm going to take you on is going to be one that really gives a perspective on what this trauma was what it looks like and clinically what is post-traumatic stress disorder what does it look like let me give you a little

snapshot we'll get into it in more depth a little later but postma stress disorder if in fact you are diagnosed with that again remember direct or indirect trauma here are some of the symptoms a feeling of foreshortened Future now what does that mean a feeling well you're not GNA live long how many of you are running into young people that don't believe they're going to make it past their 20s feeling of foreshortened future exaggerated startle response Outburst of anger difficulty falling or staying asleep hypervigilance right these are symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder this is like

DSM stuff diagnostic statistical manual mental disorders it's in there And there's a whole listing of all these symptoms now I want to roll it back so you can understand what I what the transmission theory is because I'm going to talk about transmission so how does a person that's been traumatized by post literally has a diagnosis of postmatic stress disorder and can we if we are logical and we are reasonable people assume that a fair number of Africans had to have had postraumatic stress disorder you think I'm not talking about Us I'm talking about them untreated

though right okay so now let's do the math mom who saw Dad sold or sister raped had has postm stress disorder still Mom though right only Mom now has outbursts of anger feeling of foreshortened future difficulty falling or staying asleep hyper vigilance that would be mom now Johnny or Mary Shaquisha does not have did not have the original trauma but what are they learning this is called social learning Theory what am I normalizing exagger at startle response outbursts of anger are you following me so I didn't have to be traumatized now the other thing is

do you think Johnny and Mary got traumatized too do you see so what happens in your environment you learn from the significant others in your environment and if they're broken guess what you're going to be you're learning from broken people and you're normalizing that Behavior and then it becomes years later 2008 that's their culture that's just the way they are that's their culture so there's poison in the cookies right but how are you going to tease out that poison that means you have to look at the ideology of the behavior which is what I spent

many years doing and it's not rocket science this is not deep like I said this is not required that you know someone has you it's just common Sense how many of you in the room think you can cook come on now I know it's a strange place you all have the hottest food in the world trying to tell you that now those of you those those of you that know how to cook who taught you how to cook Mom Dad family who you think taught them hello social learning theory you learn from those in your

environment and if they couldn't cook Yeah likelihood as you can't either okay so there's things that we and we don't question them this is what goes in the curry what are you talking about this this is how you make curry well how you know cuz that's the way my mother made it well maybe you know she didn't get the recipe right actually I wrote postmatic slave syndrome the book which is is here the book is called postmatic slave syndrome America's Legacy of enduring injury and Healing I recently have written the study guide which is being

edited now but the reason why I wrote the book is really to put a name to what I was looking at I started to look at behaviors in African people people and people of African descent very long time people asked me all the time I just was inter interviewed by ABC and they wanted to know how did where did this come from it came from growing up Black no there's nothing deep there I grew up looking at black folks and wondering why we behave the way we did very little had to do with white people

very little I was looking at black people and I wanted to understand our Behavior I am 50 years old and I remember looking at people who were um you know growing up in in South Central Los Angeles that's where I grew up my P my parents are from the south from Louisiana and from Biz and one of the things that I started to notice there certain behaviors that that black people engaged in that I started realizing not just African-Americans African Caribbean people I came here heard the same thing behaviors around uh our what we look

like like for example I would hear people and you all most people here white or black or wherever you are in the Spectrum you've seen the behavior and wondered about it I know you have Because I wondered about it where you have black people that aren't black how many people have met black people that actually aren't black now this is an interesting phenomena these are black people that will tell you before you know first of all they they certainly look black to me they look black but they don't say they're black they well you know

I've got quite a bit of Indian in me did I mention that have a Lot of my family are from you know all of a sudden there's something else right and you looking going sure could have fooled me you look black to me right now this would be something that I could ignore if it stopped when I was a child in South Central but it didn't you could hear it in rap music today same behavior matter of fact the rap videos that they just need to clone the same girl right you could I could draw

her right now what She looks like like the little wavy hair and you know she she's black but not too black okay and what is that about what is its ideology and why does it persist that means that it's an Intercultural phenomenon that's being passed along through generations but why what is this self-loathing that I see in contemporary black folks I'm not going back to slavery I'm talking about today who hate and despise the reflection in The mirror that's what I wanted to know so that's what led me on my journey if you will again

not an unusual journey in our of course I'm going to kind of pop back and forth through British history and American history James Madison was a very important figure um in American history president of the United States said 1751 1836 he said blacks are inhabitants but as debased by servitude below the equal Level of free inhabitants which regards a slave as diversive of two fifths of the man this is the um this is called the uh the three fist compromise and what they were trying to figure out uh is what are we going to do

how are we going to how are we going to count these these black folks because you know based on how many people you have residing in a particular State the more Representatives you can s send to the House of Representatives and thus the More power that particular State can wield so the question was how do you count the slaves well southerners who of course enjoyed slavery uh they wanted to count them they say yeah count them that gives us more power where the Northerners saw it as an opportunity to abolish slavery said well you can't

count them because you don't consider them human how can you count people who have AB absolutely no Freedom that you do not Count or be treat as human beings so the agreed upon solution is to count three fifths of a state's total slave prop you know population and so as a as a result they became three fifths of a man divested of that but it's almost as though you're not talking about a human being anymore and that's what's scary about this and I and I always start my Talks by saying that when you see folks

dressed up like this and I know you all see a lot of them you should get worried I always get concerned when I see him dressed up like that like this guy here this next guy was was someone that I struggled with you you all know him Richard oswal he's the son of a presbyterian Minister International Trade of enslaved Africans what's so deep about this gentleman is how wealthy he became as a result he would be worth based on the 1700s right now he would be worth 68 million based on the number of slaves the

slave Trade and colonies ships all the stuff that he basically utilize but again uh these folks are held in high regard when I read about him in your history one would you would never know Google him you'd never know the ugly trade that he was engaged in because we've sanitized that you see it all got kind of sanitized but what's important is to understand the wealth amassed and see this is where people get afraid particularly Europeans this is where the Whole oh my God dare I say the big ugly word most folks are afraid of

because we don't really care too much about the healing that healing stuff go on and get better you people but don't try to touch the resources that would be reparations we don't want to have that conversation we don't okay if you all go heal however you're gonna do that but let's not talk about the reparation story but when you start looking at the wealth amass Then you got to look at the church of England it gets real ugly because then you start realizing what is a foundation for the Church of England folks that bless the

slave ships and then of course and this is interesting about uh John Newton because we all know about in every the first thing you hear John Newton what's the next thing you hear Amazing Grace John Newton Amazing Grace well let's figure out what happened before you got Amazing Grace he said slaves are lesser creatures without Christian souls and thus are not destined for the next World now what becomes important about this kind and you'll see it both in American history as well and there is this kind of dehumanization of African people because you got to

ask yourself this question how do people who deem themselves Superior who see themselves as the civilizers who recognize themselves as The what we call manifest Destiny The White Man's Burden of civilizing all the rest of the the races how do you reconcile being the superior being and engaging in barbaric Behavior what that produces is something called cognitive dissonance how many people are familiar with that cognitive dissonance is really thinking Discord it's when you begin to feel conflict between what you believe or understand or hold to be true and you are then Faced with behaviors either

in yourself or others that conflict with your fundamental belief it produces cognitive dissonance human beings don't function well with cognitive dissonance you must remove the cognitive dissonance in order to function so in order for people to perpetuate slavery and to perpetuate that whole system that lasts for centuries you had to remove all dissonance associated with it can't be anything wrong with me Certainly isn't us we're the civilizers we're the superiors so it must be them oh yes well you see they don't even have souls now I can go to sleep because I'm not really dealing

with a human being are you following me okay let's see what else he said he said when the women and girls are taken on board a ship naked trembling terrified they are often exposed to the wanting rudeness of white savages the prey is divided upon the spot look at the choice of words the Prey resistance or refusal would be utterly in vain and then he says I sinned with a high hand yeah and then he wrote Amazing Grace okay so it's really important to understand that hand inand with the behavior was a mindset that is

so damaging you see I call it the secret not the secret that everybody's been talking about that's that secret The secret is kind that makes you sick how many people here are in mental health doe specific have done direct mental health treatment with folks if you done you know that the secrets make us sick yes isn't it the secrets that cause people the pathology right how long have white people had to hold this secret how long and how many generations had to stop and pretend Grandpa didn't do what he did that the wealth we enjoy

was not on the backs of of some of these Little girls think about how long one had to keep that secret and the only thing you could do is either pathologize the other it's all their fault because it certainly wasn't great Granddad look how well he dresses do you understand what I'm saying so this when I say that this pathology goes hand in hand I kid you not then you have science and whenever we are in a process of trying to Legitimize things it's so amazing you know people always say this to me even black

people people when they hear about post- trumatic because you know it's not correct unless you can count it and measure it right science is the the final it is the number one if you can say it's scientific then you basically Trump everything else right science determines reality so if we can scientifically assert a thing to Be true then in fact it is true because it's scientifically proven it's a scientific fact matter of fact that's what people will tell you when you when you try to say to them I don't know if I agree with you

you know it's scientific it's a scientific fact what I'm saying here right which somehow makes it what true and it's also in a book now let's do the math it's in a book and it's scientifically proven did Anybody here realize that recently we lost a planet anybody know what planet we lost how you lose a planet you know I was I became fond of the little picture with the we lost a planet we didn't lose a planet you know what it means science was wrong now have they ever said you know we were wrong about

that planet thing no it's called a paradigm shift so let's go to science and I think It's important that we do so we then again we go to someone named Carl Vine Lanas now Carl Vine Lanas becomes an important character in this whole conspiracy of silence and legitimacy and removing the dissonance Carl vinas developed a system based on a Criterion of skin color and laid the basis for 19th century racial classification lus properly began the science of anthropology so here we have the father of Anthropology although color classification of races dated back to the ancient

Egyptians anthropologists refer to laus's system mat of 1735 as the first modern study of man while L's Advanced classification with this use of a color Criterion he also fixed on his four families of man certain moral and intellectual peculiarities that continued into the 19th century anthropological vocabulary he described homo americanus who might that Be that would be Native American American IND Indians homo americanist and what did he say about them he said they were reddish cheric obstinate contented and regulated by custom homo europeus as white fickle sanguine blueeyed gentle and governed by laws homo asiaticus

that' be Asians as salow Grave dignified avaricious and ruled by Opinions and Homo AER as black fmatic cunning lazy lustful careless and governed by Caprice these insights into What lenus defined as racial character personality traits Behavior intelligence language and a host of other related categories were transmitted into subsequent attempts at a science of classification and became more fixed than the RAC themselves not a shred of science here but it is in a Book and it's touted as science and what's more important you know my students I teach graduate students and social work and I say

but Dr lry my God we're looking at 1707 to 1778 we are right after all but do you not hear these same attributions today you know those blacks they're lazy you know all of the exact same am I telling the truth in your newspapers in your accounts of them do you not hear these very same things so does it matter That it started in 1707 and 1778 and has no scientific Merit that's multi-generational is it not it's being passed along part of the swallowing into to the social gullet those are the beliefs you see so

it doesn't matter whether it's true or not and thank you Carl Von Lanz again he's removing the cognitive what don't they deserve to be treated the way we treat Them have we not just Justified what we've done after all I just told you this is who they are we're not wrong we're just trying to keep the uh domestic tranquility makes sense I'm having a clicker thing there we go Johan friederick blumenbach just look at him he's not right we could tell already but he had to contribute his part as Well he says now this man

Yan friederick blooming bot he was a individual how many of you familiar with the term Caucasian oh yes then you know youran he would designated five races or varieties of man in the session in the second edition of his work on the natural variety of mankind his division into Caucasian Mongolian American Ethiopian and Malayan races with the added Carl Von lus descriptive peculiarities became the Subsequent basis of most 19th century anthropo medic studies while Carl Vine Lanas founded his system principally upon skin color blumenbach considered a combination of color hair skull and facial characteristics as

fundamental means for classifying the five varieties of man Central to his study was a Caucasian a term which he originated he took the name Caucasian listen for the science from Mount Caucasus because its Southern Slope had cradled what he felt To be the most beautiful race of men the Georgian the Caucasus near Mount Ararat upon which the biblical Arc came to rest after the flood seemed the appropriate source for the original race of man no science yet now I'm going to quote him these are his words for in the first place the stock displays as

we have seen the most beautiful form of the skull from which is a mean and primeval type the others diverge by most e easy gradations on both sides of the two Ultimate extremes that is on the one side the Mongolian on the other the Ethiopian besides it is white in color anybody here ever met a skull that wasn't besides it is white in color which we may fairly assume to have been the Primitive color of mankind zi doah no science nothing to found this whole thing he figured white skull Humanity began white it's scary but

it's in a book and it's touted as science and we swallowed it without Question but race is a concept of society that insists there is genetic significance behind human variations in skin color that transcends outward appearance however race has no thank you has no scientific Merit outside of sociological classifications there are no significant genetic variations with within the human species to justify the division of races mankind is one we are one Humanity isn't it a shame that we are Still debating that in 2008 but the reason why we continue to debate it is we still

try to reconcile the ugly stuff that we've never dealt with we still want to say they deserved it so no one has to feel bad about all of those little babies dying and ignoring the ravages of Africa and killing young black males and urban cities all in disproportionate imprisonment and disproportion disparities and health oh it must be Their fault how do you reconcile it you see rather than deal with it we we just continue to try to to justify the behavior Thomas Jefferson you all know him yes he's one of my favorite people actually I

close out my book with a soliloquy from Thomas Jefferson I actually end my book with it because Thomas Jefferson made a statement here's a man highly regarded in the United States I mean there are more statues of him than probably anybody and he made a statement towards the end of his life he says indeed I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just and that his Justice cannot sleep for him you see it haunted him to his grave because Thomas Jefferson knew he knew what would happen matter of fact he predicted exactly

what we're dealing with today would happen between people of African descent and those of European Descent predicted it he was a bright man how do you reconcile behaving in such a barbaric way well let's see what he said he said uh blacks smelled bad and were physically unattractive well this was inconsistent with his behavior because you know he fathered slaves Sally hemings so it didn't smell that bad huh now here's a more important one he Said we required less sleep now that one's more interesting to me why would he need to what dissonance was he

feeling that he would need to believe that blacks required less sleep why what did he do you know he owned slaves so what do you think how hard do you think he worked them what was the work day for a slave sunrise to sunset but do you have any empirical evidence Joy can you prove that because you know can't if if you can't write you know count it and measure it it didn't happen in European culture is that correct got to count it and measure how many if you have measurable objectives measurable outcomes you better

measure it I don't care if you tell them can you tell your boss really truly at the end of the year we're doing better now I've been to work every single day I've watched and I can guarantee you we're doing better is that GNA fly that would be no that means you have to count it and measure it and if you didn't count and measure didn't happen so when you start looking at the notion of requiring less sleep that's an interesting thing because I have to believe if I work you that hard and boy I

I got humbled when I found out how hard folks worked in the sugar plantations o we I got Humbled by how hard folks in the Caribbean were worked but what I decided to do is I looked at the Library of Congress most of my work over the nine years that it took to write the book six years of that was research the other part of it had to do with doing um interviews of Elders and reading slave narratives and there are thousands of them this is just one taken from the Library of Congress Sarah gudger

from North Carolina wrote never known nothing but work never knew rest felt like my back was going to break just the gospel truth then I looked at uh what happened in the sugar plantations and this was amazing one final set of grim numbers underlines the way slaves on sugar plantations like codrington uh was the plantation of Barbados were systematic worked her in early death when slavery ended in the United States slaves imported over the centuries had grown to a population of nearly 4 million when it ended in the British West Indies total slave Imports of

well over two million left a surviving slave population of only about 670,000 more than twice as many slaves were shipped to the island of Jamaica alone than all 13 uh North American colonies combined the Caribbean was a slaughter house in fact the reason why there was more importation of slaves to These plantations is because they died so frequently they were treated so badly ate so poorly that females never reach their menstrual cycles they never actually started their menstrual cycles so they couldn't reproduce you see and so many of them died they had to import more

that's how treacherous was you lazy black folks that you are isn't that ironic though what's so ironic is black people run From the shame of feeling like they're perceived as lazy I I mean I live with that so much that when I would go to hotels I would leave it cleaner because your mother everybody's mother taught you leave it cleaner than you found it so black folks are so hyp sensitive I was cleaning up the hotel room because I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm dirty right now all the people in the audience that are

of color how much Harder did your parents tell you you had to work to get to even how much harder you had to work twice as hard now how come I knew that about you how come I knew that think about it and yet at the same time white people think we're lazy you see but we're so hyp sensitive because of the shame right and then our ancestors will work to death to death recently they Unearthed the slave Cemetery they Unearthed actually a slave Uh Cemetery in um New York York City it's on Wall Street

by the way in the shadow of the bull unearth the slave cemetery and they still to this day they're struggling they recently you know have done a lot in terms of commemoration I went to the took me everything to get to it they had it blocked off so you couldn't get to it but they because they didn't want to deal with it you know you can't just bulldo a cemetery so here in all these Skyscrapers in the middle of it is this little cemetery and there's slaves in that Cemetery more important than that was what

the bones told us because you know now you know you got CSI hell I can go in there and tell you what's going on now you know so with the CSI thing now I you know they they've discovered a little bit about the bones and to me the most phenomenal thing about the bones is what they told us about those people and how they live Majority of the people in there were children infants and children High mortality infant mortality rate they even know what they died of died of uh malnutrition and starvation because they could

tell by the rotting of the teeth in the jawline so even though they most likely grew food they weren't allowed to eat it and then they found something even more peculiar that speaks to this idea of why he believed we required less Sleep they would show a large frame man and they would find an injury where the muscle actually detached itself from the bone as a result of exertion and not injury stay with me it it detaches itself from the bone as a result of exertion that means you work so hard the muscle detached itself

from the bone you don't see those kind of injuries in contemporary Society because no one's going to work that hard unless of course you have a gun trained on you from Sunrise to sunset so we do have empirical evidence of how hard folks worked then he went on to say that we were dumb cowardly and incapable of feeling grief why would Thomas need to believe that why would he need to believe we didn't feel grief what was he doing do you think that produced cognitive dissonance you were killing people not only were you killing people

beating Them you were selling them yes selling mothers away from their children and husbands away from wives and surely they don't feel it because if they felt it that would make them human like me so I simply say and you see it's not so much not it's not even so much that he said it but he was an important person if Joe nobody said it but he said it so what do you think the rest of the folks uneducated uh laborers believed Well they don't feel grief you know after all Thomas Jefferson says they don't

so he becomes a critical person in making those statements but you see it was all to relieve and to set settle the cont ience that he died with but these become very important as you see how these things move forward then there was J Mar and Sims I won't spend a lot of time with him he's another figure you can Google him he's a there's a statue actually of him in Central Park and J Marian Sims was an individual credited he was a father of of modern Gynecology how many women in here know what a

vaginal speculum is and for those men in the room that we lost vaginal speculum is a device designed to open up the vagina it was considered uh one of the most important advancements in medicine uh that was made he was credited as being the wealthiest man uh to have Wealthiest physician to have ever lived and what's interesting about him you know look at the metals pinned on him I was just very curious about how it was uh they regarded this man because no one ever really looked at how did he come up with that vaginal

speculum the way he did it was he he actually uh worked on UN anesthesized created did experiments on un anesthesized slave women he created a a makeshift Hospital in his backyard in The mid 1800s he built the first vaginal speculum from a peor spoon and he reasoned that slave women were able to Bear great pain meaning we don't need any anesthesia because their race made them more durable and thus they were well suited for painful medical experimentation we didn't even you know because we didn't feel like other women could feel this man would cut into

women cut into them and just said well since They're black they don't really feel it unbelievable and more importantly is what he did to infants because not only did he experiment on women he also experimented on infants he said that black infants suffered from something he called trmus n senum which is now commonly referred to as neonatal tetanus neonatal tetanus originates in horse manure which was a Likely cause of the disease in slave infants he contri he attributed it to the indecency and intellectual flaws of slave infants together with skull malformations at Birth um that

is a shoemaker's all and that's the 1800s shoemakers all he would stick that into the heads of brand new infants in an effort to realign their skulls based on the indecency and intellectual flaws of their parents to treat the malady of course it was a 100% Death rate but that's what he would stick in the head of a baby at birth and so these are things that are so horrific that you you you can't possibly wrap your head around it and this man is I mean just Googling and you think to myself I think to

myself if I were up here in front of you right now and this is going to become very important as you move I move into the other slides um if I stomped The puppy to death out here up here just a little puppy and stomped it right here to death in front of you most of you would need therapy and I would be arrested probably faster than killing a black man for killing a puppy how could you do that do you realize how much dissonance you have to remove in order to stick that into the

brain of a child more importantly the child can no longer be human are you understanding what I'm Saying the reason why it could do it is they weren't human they didn't even feel pain that's what this man believed now you may look at that and go those are horrific things from the past there's a book out right now not table reading it's called called medical aparti this is written by Herod Washington came out last year this book Chronicles the experimentation on black people up to contemporary day see we want to look at the Tuskegee Experiments

we want to look at Sims and go oh that just still going on implicated Harvard John Hopkins cuz we weren't what human so that dehumanization is something that we really got to appreciate uh went on for a long time can you go back back one more no white could ever rape a slave woman the regulations of law as to the white race on the subject Of sexual intercourse do not and cannot for obvious reasons apply to Slaves their intercourse is promiscuous we've now Justified raping black women because they can't be raped they we aren't raping

them they're promiscuous by Nature so we can't do it uh forward one more the fact that white men could profit from raping their female slaves does not mean that their motive was Economic the rape of slave women by their masters was primarily a weapon of Terror that reinforc whites domination over their human property rape was an act of physical violence designed to stifle black women's will to resist and to remind them of their surval status these become important instruments that you look at and I want to give you some statistics as it relates to American

history by the mid 1800s there was over 600,000 mixed raced children Born 600,000 how many of you know what U mation is mation is an illegal marriage between people of different races actually was very profound here that was illegal to marry someone of another Race So when you consider the fact that one of the greatest issues and one of the number one reasons why black men were lynched beaten and imprisoned had to do with the fear that they were going to rape Whom white women now the numbers I mean we're talking about pure numbers numbers

alone it was who being raped okay it was it was black women being raped but they can be raped let's Advance forward before we get into um The Casual killing act the Casual killing Act was written uh because of the number of people who were killed by while being corrected okay and if any slave resists his master own or other person by his or Her order correcting such slave and shall happen to be killed in such correction it shall not be counted felony but the master owner and every other person so giving correction shall be

acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same as if such accident had never happened so that means that if you happen to be correcting someone and you beat them to death you know how hard it is to beat someone to Death I mean you know I thought about that I said it happened so frequently that they created a law so that you wouldn't feel any what no guilt because you were simply correcting them wasn't your fault so I went back to look at who was beating folks to death I wanted to know and it

was white women white women were beating black children to death that's who is being beaten to Death but she it wasn't her fault she was just correcting them you see what we do is we rob ourselves of our own Humanity when we refuse to look at this stuff we rob ourselves of our humanity and that's what people didn't know happened going forward one more then you had the mental health folks this is how we got in we got in to try to fix it in the early years of the 19th century a physician named Samuel

A cartright argued that two particular Forms of mental illness caused by nerve disorders were prevalent among slaves one was draped demania which was diagnosable by single symptom the uncontrollable urge to Escape From Slavery so now what we've done is we've now pathologized your desire to be free must be something wrong with them keep keep trying to free themselves and again it would be funny if it weren't in journals you see all of this is to remove the Cognitive dissonance now we have look at all the people joining in you got lus you got anthropology you

got Physicians all of them saying they deserve it it's not us we don't need to adjust anything and if they just tried harder how how about you people just pull yourselves up from your boot straps what's the matter with you the playing field has been leveled well we're going to see if in fact it's been Leveled or is that conjecture move forward now I want you to look at this photo very closely and I want you to see who's in it more important than the man hanging because you got to understand the lynchings that occurred

in America happened after slavery not during thousands of lynchings happened after slavery because this is a reaction to white fear of what we would do once free but we didn't create a vigilante group To take out white people but they did create a vigilante group to take us out now that we're free see that happened after slavery they were called the what the clu clux Clan they don't wear hoods anymore they wear suits but they're alive and well all over the world even here so look at who's in the picture I want you to look

at this little girl in particular you can't see her closely but She's actually grimacing like smirking now remember let's go back to the puppy concept here she would be loathed and torn up probably if this was a puppy which means he's less than that cuz she's not Disturbed this little girl is not is not disturbed by this but she should be shouldn't she people always ask me they go joy what was the impact on white people there it Is right there can't feel any empathy for him none zero zip there's a little one back here

even smaller because whatever she's been taught or told socialized to believe makes him no longer human that's the greatest danger to white people is that they can't feel it and there's a reason why white people can't feel what we're talking about my God what would you then Feel it's tough so I've got to believe oh it's all over now it's not my fault I don't benefit it's not a big deal let's move on it's not all of those things but we don't say that to Jewish people I dare you but you have to understand when

you want Earth this one that's what we did to our children let's move forward this is a similar photo to the one that uh is used in um Denzel's movie now look and again most important this Is a man that's being burned also I won't read the depiction but there are newspaper accounts of this it's written in a book called 100 Years of lynching by Ginsburg no pictures just newspapers that say not only did they burn him they decapitated him cut him into pieces and use parts of his body as things to put on mantels

so people would say get me a tongue would you or a li liver a little crisp so I can put it on the mantle now again I want you to look at The folks I want you to look at who's here we're not talking about the toothless big gut hooded Wonder are we we're looking at plain old common dressed up folks they're squeezing please I want my picture taken are you following me this is somebody's cousin uncle somebody and the ability to do that dehumanize this man and Rob them of their Humanity all at the

same time all at the same time that is the most Dangerous treacherous thing that could happen what did Hitler do he humanized human beings put babies in ovens anything that robs us of our humanity is a danger to everyone and that is what's going on with people of African descent all over the world because not only did it get done here but who do we tell the entire world we told these people don't deserve any value everyone wants to be American not Y'all but when we go I mean I literally go to countries all over

the world America sets the standard and thank God for what happened later let's move forward so a lot of people start saying well we all got free right y'all are free everything was fine because that's it that see whatever you talk about postmatic slave syndrome people get locked there so there's a myth that after slavery ended the playing field was leveled was it Remember all the lynchings occurred after slavery that wasn't during after slav slavery so you had black sharecropping now we didn't get a lot of black history in our schooling I have four degrees

and three of them Advanced degrees never did I get black history I got about two pages of black history and one of them one page was a picture and it was a picture of the little folks with the cabin you probably Saw the same picture it's a little cabin the little guy on the porch with the banjo little children running frolicking about eating watermelon right everybody happy and we certainly need little Mary and little little Johnny to believe that they were they were happy the slaves were happy people and they had nice place to live

because we couldn't have them feeling cognitive what not little Mary she can't start questioning what Grandpa did so I want you to see this because those are leftover slave quarters he's a sharecropper so now let's go back and take a look at sharecropping now these are folks that were slaves no longer slaves decided I'm going back to be a sharecropper on the same Plantation that I was enslaved why would you do that let's move forward here's why because when you did try to Leave and you go north because you're free I want you to go

north now I live in Oregon right that's where I live here we go no free negro Malto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution shall come reside or be within the state or hold any real real estate or make any contracts or maintain any suit therein and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public Officers of all such Negroes and mados and for their effectual exclusion from the state and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state or employer Harbor

them this was repealed November 3rd 1926 my father was alive section six that if any free negro malat shall fail to quit the country as required by this act if guilty upon trial shall receive upon his or her back not less than 20 nor more than 39 we'll beat You that if any free negro malal shall fail to quit the country within the term of 6 months after receiving such stri he or she shall again receive the same punishment over once every six months until he or she shall quit the we going to beat you

till you leave but you're free the playing field is leveled pull yourself up from your bootstraps are you following me so he went back to the plantation let's go Back he went back to the plantation to be a sharecropper because that's the only place he could live but he can't read or write because it was illegal to educate a slave so I'm illiterate I go back and I say to the slave owner who past slave owner okay now I'm coming back to work for a fair wage because I'm free and the slave owner says sure

you can come back so here's what I'm going to do I'm going to advance you seed tool and a Mule in other words you know I am going to um give you that grant that you want and we're going to let you work with that and at the end of the year we'll settle up well the Grant's Never Enough is it and so at the end of the year he's found owing and what must he do to pay off that debt he's got to work it off yes and his children have to work it off

yes that's Called debt servitude or another form of slavery but you all are free what are you whining about let's move forward move forward so well can we lease them now everybody wants to know big issue you have over representation here guess how I know over represent representation criminal justice system as its ideology it was big business then it's big business now you're gonna get free Labor one way or another new slavery is imprisonment well let's see why was this it was so successful by the mid 1898 nearly three quarters of Alabama's total state revenue

came directly from this institution well of course I wanted to do research on what they did because they're free but now we're arresting them at alarming rates and for what 12 years for vagrancy Loitering startling a white woman looking minister ly at a white woman that's what they got 10 12 15 years for and many of them 25% died under convict lease more than during slavery because there were no protections because now we have another label to justify our Behavior towards them and what's their new label well after all they're convicts they're criminals don't they

deserve it you see what I'm saying so when did It end is a question move forward you all heard about Katrina yes yeah see I was there my family's from Louisiana I went to the ninth W sometimes you can't pay attention to what the news says it's important to actually go eyeball what's going on which was very interesting because it was one of the most horrific events I'd ever seen and probably will ever see in my life where black folks were just simply treated differently did you Notice that here's the good news about everybody noticed

it so all the rest of the world where we learn send us your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free your democracy your equality they said what happened with that Katrina thing all that stuff y'all talked about well let me read this this is from Associated Press taken straight from the newspaper the front actually the top part here is actually a woman but they think it's a man anyway it says A young man walks through chest deep floodwater after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday August 30th 200 five same body of

water down here excuse me two residents weighed through chest deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store now same event same water white people black people we've told you what you see Now that removes your what distance because these people can't be perceived as looting they're white people white people people don't loot now the truth of the matter is I don't care what any of them are doing it doesn't matter but I'm going to steal the social conscience by letting you know don't forget this is a looter matter of fact what

you last heard was that they were looters and rapists did you Not so don't they deserve it that wasn't back in oh I don't know slavery though was it now we're going to kind move into operationalizing that to look at what is it how does it how do we begin to uh connect that that behavior those that history to what we're dealing with and what you're dealing with right now and what we're seeing and very often people say well is everything postmatic slave syndrome obviously that that would you know trivialize all the work you Know

we cannot lay squarely on the shoulders of post-traumatic all the problems that we see we see nor can we uh place all problem squarely in the shoulders of white people or any of the above so hopefully we won't um digress into anything that is that foolish in terms of a discussion because you know that's another thing that happens in terms of trying to to deal with the push back around this uh then we move into extremes and it tends to dilute the Realities that are going on so um hopefully we're Way Beyond all that well

now she's saying everything is post no I'm not um and most of my work my background is really in the field doing um you know doing work in the community and Grassroots that's where I my training was in terms of my clinical work and just you know the fact that I've always been uh this work started on the ground it didn't start here matter of fact the attention I got the Attention of places like Oxford and Harvard and you know the um ivy league and major institutions even even the uh the FBI you know but

those were things that happened after um I did started doing the work on the Grassroots level um um and so it's for me my my commitment is to Healing so this is not an an exercise uh in some kind of broad intellectual esoteric it's really about how do we then take this information and help a person extricate themselves from Uh behavior that they've learned and or been socialized to believe black and white and everyone in in the middle that's been affected by this um what do we do so this is kind of looking at the

Contemporary uh kind of reflection of the trauma uh which is right right Supremacy and terrorism that continues we we see that on a daily basis in the United States as well as as here uh this book is called um breaking Rank by Norm Stamper Norm Stamper is a 34-year police Veteran he was a chief of police for the cities of San Diego and Seattle this is a white man wrote this book called breaking Rank and he really did that's all I can tell you is he broke rank I've been trying to meet Norm Norm travels

quite a bit and he gets a considerable uh amount of uh death threats because of what he's done but he talked about and this is contemporary and remember that's what we're looking at how does it reflect Your today I've heard some police officers refer to prostitute slayings or to the slayings of blacks as misdemeanor murders employing an unofficial code for them NH which means no human involved now these are on telephone call these are on calls that you hear on police officers speaking hey what do you have or we have a in nhi we have

no human involved it's a black person killed you see what I'm saying again the dehumanization reflecting itself in just Their casual involvement with one another San Diego cops confess to a myriad other acts of discrimination including additionally dehumanizing the references to blacks on a radio call just an 1113 [ __ ] 1113 is a code for an injured animal how many people think they understand what racism is show of hands come on you know you you think you know I'm not suggesting I know I just have a couple of definitions that uh that kind of

came to me as I thought About how many people think there are white races that there are white races out there how many think there are black racist out there okay now this is an interesting thing because this becomes important as we begin to Define Concepts now I do that I usually Define Concepts um all the all the way but one of the things that I I do is I try to help people get a picture of what I mean by by racism so tell me How it is I'm going to first category is white

racism then we'll deal with black racism so white racism tell me the ways in which white racism adversely impacts the lives of black people just what are the ways that white racism can adversely impact the lives of black people as a group what are some of those ways I'm sorry power but how is that defined specifically education okay I'm sorry economically Employment what else housing what else policing why are we here today Health Care okay now we could actually kind of grow that list now we're going to move over to Black racism tell me the

ways in which black racism adversely impacts the lives of white people as an entire group thank you the reason why you become silent there's one that always comes up and that's Fear white people are afraid of black people they are afraid of us and it's a very interesting thing because black people know it we know white people are afraid but you have to start getting into the psychology what are you afraid of why are you afraid but it's an interesting Dynamic now also you see the difference in what racism is do you not racism implies

you have not just Prejudice but the power to do something with that prejudice now I don't like you Not only that but I'm going to control whether you can get you know I may say I hate you I hate white people I hate them I hate them it's not going to change you getting that you know loan when you go to the bank you could go you could hate I could hate you all the way to the bank not going to change do you see the difference that whereas white racism says not only do I

not like you but I'm GNA change your the impact of where you can Live I'm going to determine with that racism where where your powers are you following me and I'm talking about as a group not an individual because people said I remember when my uncle didn't I'm not talking about your uncle I'm talking about the whole group I'm not talking about an incident that's a difference but white people are afraid so let's get into how this fear impacts criminal justice because if White people in this room were afraid of black people guess who else

are afraid afraid of black people only they have guns so now let's look at what he said simply put white cops are afraid of black men we don't talk about it we pretend it doesn't exist we claim color blindness we say white officers treat black men the same way they treat white men but that's a lie and here's a big one in fact the bigger the darker the black man the greater the fear any big Black men in here you got a big old Bullseye on you even if you got the suit on and it's

a truth because we statistics bear it out the African Community knows this hell most whites know it yet even though it's a central if not the defin ingredient in the makeup of police racism white cops won't admit it to themselves or to others he goes on to talk about actually learning it in the Academy Norm Stamper he told on everybody he had folks indicted he now lives in a cabin on a mountain somewhere in the San Juan Islands that's where he lives nobody knows where he lives because he knows they're coming after him and they

have this is a statement from the book also race and class discrimination are all too real in every phase of the criminal justice system from arrest to Sentencing impoverished black defendant and this is going to sound familiar to you are far more likely to wind up on death row than richer middle class whites or the three thou and of the 3700 inmates now awaiting execution Nationwide 43% are African-American black defendants are not accorded the same due process rights as whites their cases are not given the same scrutiny and consideration afforded a white defendant not now

Not ever not in this country this is what the man said it was dismal but he doesn't believe it's possible in the current system so what we have to realize we need to be realistic about that so what I have to do is teach my sons how to navigate this do I not doesn't matter what I think and old baby you know we are the world no this is real you do have a bull's eye on you when you when you're in a in the elevator with the only white woman there And you're the big

black man she's clutching her purse and she's worried that's a reality and if you startle her too much it used to mean you get lynched matter of fact I think she could scream rape now and you get taken down now this is interesting because this has to do with women you know my father used to say if a white man has a CO a black man has pneumonia and if a black man has Pneumonia a black woman has cancer it's just kind of figures out that way in 1986 on duty California highway patrol officer Craig

perer strangled at San Diego State University student named Kara not and threw her body off a 70 foot Bridge motive she' resisted his sexual advances now let's go back and understand that and this is an interesting thing I worked with adolescent adult male and female prostitutes for five years I don't want You to get that confused I'm not an exho I've actually had people say go she's come along you know she used to be she's done so well so somehow when I say that people think I'm I've never been in the life okay I work

with adolescent adult male and female prostitutes um as a case manager counselor okay and during that time um that I worked uh with folks it was very interesting to see the perspectives and the behaviors and the attitudes that People had uh about about prostitutes I mean when folks want to be if you want to start off as a serial killer just go kill the prostitutes nobody cares they don't even invest CSI investigate the the prostitute slayings right but when we we begin to see what's been happening with particularly women of color you know just historically

women of color have been fod for white men now what started in the in the in the back woods or in the cabin with the Slaves it never went away you know and I want I want to speak to this because this is a tough one to swallow too but imagine they did a they did a study back in the um in the actually in the 80s and they asked men cross the board cross races if you could get away with sexually assaulting a woman raping a woman in other words and there's no possible way

that you'll get you know penalized for do you ever get would what how many of you would consider doing it This is just regular Joe go to work with the kids 70% 70 said if I could do it I would do it imagine being able to do that for couple hundred years with impunity imagine you don't have to worry about you know you talk about pedophilia and all that imagine being able to buy that and then you could beat it to death too and get another one I know it's tough to wrap your head around

but what Happens to an appetite created like that where you could rape a black woman anytime you wanted to and it wasn't considered rape because she was promiscuous hundreds of years we're not talking about a few years hundreds of years protected by the law no moral could go to church it was all good where do you think that went after slavery Ended it didn't go away because guess who's the number one you got folks who are pimping the women and then you got the ones that are buying them and who's buying them same middle-aged white

males between 35 and 60 Married with Children I five years I work with them these are the John's still are the Johns and still are getting hold of some of that black body are you following me this is really Important no it just it just mutated into something else so now we have to figure out a way within the legal perspective to deal with these women who are out of control my car cautious guess is that 5% of America's cops are on the prow for women women you need to get concerned 5% of any Police

Department in other words they're folks who become police officers because they're predatory that's why think about it we Know where pedophiles go don't we you go where there are children thank you so we got to understand police officers plenty of them are twisted and I've worked for the last 20 years with police officers trust me I'm always concerned about someone that deliberately wants a gun aside from the short man in a department the size of Seattle is at 63 police officers in San Diego 145 in New York City 2000 the average Patrol cop makes Anywhere

from 10 to 20 unsupervised contacts a shift if he's on the make chances are predatory cop will find you or your wife your partner your daughter your sister your mother your friend that's in general and you see you get a freebie when you have a person of color because they have no rights it is not hard to understand why people of color the poor and younger Americans did not and do not look upon the police as quote theirs compare and Contrast are the police as an institution known for their protection of the innocent against deception

or do they deceive the innocent do the police protect the weak against oppression or intimidation or do they oppress and intimidate the very people they've sworn to protect again we're not talking about anybody that just fell off a truck we're talking about a 34 year police veteran who went back by the way to get his PhD now this was a study I did the research I did now let me explain kind of the the fa basis of This research 200 African-American male youth 100 of whom are incarcerated right 100 of whom are not but are

from the same neighborhood that was my uh the the the group that I was working with so one of the things that I wanted to do over here on the right side what you see is my uh dependent variable what I'm trying to predict and what I'm trying to Predict is the use of violence so what I discovered was the most significant predictor of African-American adolescent violence when I did the multiple in other words I put all the variables together to see out what was most significant the Baseline variables of witnessing and victimization we already

know they're going to fall out because they're Baseline we already know that was respect the most important predictor Respect think about that how do you get respect as African-American male period but a male youth 16 in your Society how does he get respect got to get it though because he's not gonna roll up in a corner and ball and die somewhere he needs to get respect and as black people I say this all the time I in here that we can ill afford to swallow whole what is called cultural we can ill afford to swallow

that because there's poison in the Cookies and the only way to get the poison out of the cookies is not someone from the outside looking in but those who are living in this to be able to look at themselves and assess it with a level of dignity a level of safety that perpetuates a sense a sense of well-being and healing thank you so much [Applause]