Front Page > Issues > 2006>January

Blacks still inmates of America's past?

Let's start with the old adage “If it sounds too good to be true that’s because it is.” Okay, who is this author and where can I find the source of such a high boast? What would you say if if I told you the author resides in Portland, is African American and is female?

Well, Happy New Year! For the sake of suspense, allow me an extra second to make my point that much more salient.
This is the season of making resolutions. Some will cook black-eyed peas for good luck. Others will set a date to quit smoking or start a diet. I propose something a bit more profound to a mostly white, liberal, progressive, educated and left-leaning readership: read a newly published book by a black woman who lives in northeast Portland.

Not because the author is an assistant professor of social work at Portland State University. Not even because she’s a leading scholar on axiology, relational models and cultural competencies. Or that she has toured extensively throughout the lower 48 states, Alaska and the Caribbean with her message. No.

The greatest reason is that she has researched — and reveals long-held secrets about racism, inferiority-superiority concepts and American slavery. There is a difference. Dr. Joy DeGruy-Leary dissects the building blocks of Western philosophy, which embraces the fallacy of measuring intelligence by racial means. She breaks down the Western origins of dysfunction in black male-female relationships and families, white superiority, wealth and guilt.

Put simply, she brings to the forefront of American consciousness the question that arose when the Los Angeles Police Department introduced a badly beaten black man, Rodney King, to the country.

In her new book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (Uptown Press) DeGruy-Leary answers the question, “Why can’t we just get along?” with scholarly insight.

She writes with precision on the issues of why the American colonies sanctioned the arbitrary rape, torture, lynching and castration of black people. We read about the retroactivity of the emotional, psychological and economic scars sustained by blacks following chattel slavery, black codes, Jim Crow and race discrimination in America.

Leary queries the point at which a person or group is impacted by the repeated leverage of atrocity. Examples abound in her book. What resonated with me was how bewildered mothers employed coping behaviors to protect their children and husbands from the fierce, thieving hands of nomadic slave masters that ripped their families apart. These behaviors persist today, unnecessarily denigrating and arresting the intelligence and dignity of the black family.

Leary juxtaposes the effects of American slavery with the trauma African-Americans sustain in post-modern times. Much of this sustained trauma is the cause of current economic impotence, psychological trauma and health disparities we grapple with today.

And in the most compelling moment of the book, Leary deals with the central reason why this history remains buried. The book brings forth this hidden history‚ and begs for a metaphor of a people buried in the collective conscious, who carry the impact of untenable, episodic trauma and grief. This chapter of American history is glaringly absent from public discourse. Until Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome was written.

Yet Leary begins a healing process by confronting the subject, which offers a liberating moment for the reader and the nation.

As I read why black youth manifest anger, a lack of morals and an abiding sense of dread and nihilism, I was suddenly astonished as to why the question could even be asked. Not until Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome did we have a treatise — tangible proof located in a place where popular wisdom says to put information if you want to hide it from black people — a book. Well, not this time. And, this time, white Americans can’t hide either. It is required reading for every American. This is not a Black Thang!

Without blinking — or winking — Leary has researched the details of this particular aspect of American life. We learn about the rudimentary nature of how and why the Founding Fathers hurled so much hatred at another group on the basis of skin color and national origin, an attitude and perception which remains and guides behavior towards black people to this day — world wide.

No sane person should want to claim a system built on lies, deceit and hatred. And yet many successful blacks and whites are unaware of the role they play in this denigration, and further justify their enterprise through “cognitive dissonance.”

To pass by this book is to agree with the way things are. So, in 2006 let’s make that change. As a society we can work to close the achievement gap, eliminate disparities in employment, prison roles, addictions, preventable death and improve the quality of life for the human family. The choice is clear: anecdote over antidote for America. Thank you, Dr. Leary.

READ THE BOOK. Happy New Year!

Rashad’s writings deal with culture, aesthetics and spirituality. His topics, opinions and insights pay homage to the scholarly search for truth, which leads to personal responsibility and preservation of community life.