Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Joy DeGruy. Uptone Press, 2005, 2017. 241 pages.
In the time that I was reading this work, two things happened: first, I heard Joy DeGruy speak at the United Church of Christ General Synod, a compelling, energizing event that caused me to experience the remainder of the work in a different way; and second, I received editing notes for a chapter I was writing for a collection due out in the spring.
The title of this work, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, is intriguing, and on its face suggests something about the lives of African Americans in our time. From the prologue through the 4th chapter, DeGruy enumerates and describes with some force and clarity the history and current circumstance of African America.
She provides as a framework her travels to South and West Africa: South Africa post-apartheid, and her observations about the lives of black and white South Africans in a newer, more equal world; and West Africa to close it out, with emotional telling of her encounters with the infrastructure of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Early, she posits the necessity of telling the truth, as South Africa did with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and notes that America has never convened such a thing, never committed to telling the whole truth about slavery as the foundation of our nation-building and ongoing economic life. South Africa did this just two years after apartheid was dismantled, and “many white in South Africa owned up to the crimes they committed against their black countrymen.” Such a thing has not happened here, and, in fact, in recent months we have seen a tremendous, disingenuous, political backlash for the closest thing we have — an academic lens taught in grad schools called Critical Race Theory. Together with the University of North Carolina’s slighting of Nikole Hannah-Jones for her creation of the 1619 Project, it becomes clear that telling the truth is not a value here in the US.
DeGruy recounts a history of racist social and medical “science,” as well as racist approach to education, political organization, civil participation and almost everything else. These chapters, science, theory, history and personal narrative are woven together into a readable whole — a helpful review-plus for folks who are generally well-read and a primer for folks who are not.
In chapter 4, she cuts to the heart of the matter, delving into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the lasting effects of trauma on the body, mind and spirit. She carefully builds a case for the reality of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, the trauma to the mind, body, spirit and community of African Americans through the generations, the lasting legacy of chattel slavery: “a condition that exists when a population has experienced multigenerational trauma resulting from centuries of slavery and continues to experience oppression and institutionalized racism today.” She discusses three categories of behaviors related: vacant esteem, ever-present anger, and racist socialization.
As she progressed, I began (about page 102) to feel as though I was overhearing a conversation not meant for me, a white person. This hit hard beginning in chapter 5, and grew throughout most of chapter 6, as she talks about healing strategies. The first 40 pages of chapter 6 were the weakest part of the book. She veered deep into the weeds, and I had to push myself to continue reading. She ends chapter 6 with a more engaging section of moving stories from her travels in West Africa, and her observations about the differences in communities among African people there and African Americans here. Her notes on the “village” that it takes to raise children and to support autonomy and interdependence made me long for a different kind of community for all of us, apart from the competition and extraction that characterize life in our American economy.
Needed as is DeGruy’s research and perspective, and aware as I am that I'm the interloper here, and to the degree that I have any privilege to critique at all, my assessment is that the book is overwritten. DeGruy repeats herself in sharing non-vital information, she included detail I didn’t find added anything to the overall work, and made me think of a quote from a bible scholar exegeting a passage from John’s gospel: “Having never written a gospel myself, I don’t want to seem overly critical, but this story seems to be taking its time getting out of the chute.” Sometimes, she just took too long to get to the point, which works better in oral presentation than in writing. Perhaps she was trying to provide both primer and advanced observation at the same time.
So, my two things that came in the middle:
First, hearing her speak was riveting; those of us gathered for the webinar were desperate for the time not to end. I had expected that would cause me to engage with the book a bit more, as I could hear her voice and feel her passion; that didn’t happen. The opposite, in fact: it made me long for her to just tell me stuff.
Second, receiving notes from my editor was excruciating. And vital. The work is better because someone bothered to fix it — to save me from overwriting in some cases, from assuming too much in other cases, and from just using language carelessly in still others. This book needed an editor. In addition to the style and content editing needs (which were more than minimal and less than gigantic), someone needed to put commas in their places and ensure the lines of type were spaced uniformly. There were also a couple of times when I wanted to argue with her conclusions or contentions, but lacked her source.
None of that takes away from the substatntive contribution this book is to my understanding of the healing needed for Black people and the anti-racist work required of white people. Overall, this is a valuable contribution to my anti-racism education and probably to yours. I expect that in a reading group, and with the study guide that is also available, it would be a useful font of lively discussion.