Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome and Intergenerational Trauma: Slavery is Like a Curse Passing Through the DNA of Black People

By David Love

The new reboot of the miniseries “Roots” reminds us of the physical toll that slavery has taken on Black people. Slavery was an exploitative system that built global capitalism through the theft, kidnapping, torture, and prison labor of millions of Africans.

However, that process is and continues to be an intergenerational one, in which Black people have suffered psychic damage. The experiences of the dreaded slave ship dungeons of the Middle Passage in which millions of souls still rest at the bottom of the Atlantic - the auction blocks, the rapes, whippings and lynchings, the slave patrols, the backbreaking and life-ending labor at gunpoint, the separation of families all inflicted psychological damage on the victims and their descendants. 

Though their trauma was profound, enslaved Black people had no mental health therapists available to them, no counselors to help them cope and heal. And the sickness was passed down to subsequent generations who to this day have not received the treatment they so desperately require.

Monnica Williams, Ph.D., director of the Center for Mental Health Disparities at the University of Louisville says Black people have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and they may not even know it. “PTSD symptoms typically include intrusive thoughts about the trauma, avoidance of thoughts or reminders of the trauma, anxiety, concerns about safety, feeling constantly on guard, fears of being judged because of the trauma, and depression.  

Individuals may also have flashbacks and feelings of dissociation.

Very severe PTSD can result in psychosis, and PTSD can be temporarily or permanently disabling,” Dr. Monnica Williams, clinical psychologist and director of the University of Louisville’s Center for Mental Health Disparities, told Atlanta Black Star. 

According to Williams who is also a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences and writes the “Culturally Speaking“ blog at Psychology Today - PTSD has particular significance in the Black community. “Symptoms specific to race-based trauma in African-Americans may include avoidance of white people, fears and anxiety in the presence of law enforcement, paranoia and suspicion, and excessive worries about the safety of family and friends.”

In a society in denial, racism is proclaimed dead and an historical phenomenon.  Yet it is very much alive, as manifested in the behavior of Black folk. In her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Dr. Joy DeGruy discusses the condition that serves as the title of her book:

Dr. DeGruy argues that typically society does not address the role of history in producing these negative behaviors and perceptions. African-Americans she contends adapted their behavior in order to survive chattel slavery, an example of “transgenerational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and ongoing oppression.”

“I think there is too much emphasis placed on racist individuals as opposed to the social forces that create racists. Everyone behaving a slightly racist way has a much more deleterious effect on Black people than a few people being very racist,” Dr. Williams said. “Racism is built into the power structures and institutions in our society, and White people are taught to propagate racism and not to see it. This process is maintained by pathological stereotypes and misinformation about Black people. White supremacy is a reaction to feeling one’s social status threatened by the advancement of African Americans.”

And while racial oppression has a psychological, multigenerational impact on Black people, it also leaves a biological and genetic imprint in its victims. In other words, research suggests the trauma is embedded in the DNA, changing one’s genetic makeup and becoming transferrable to subsequent generations.

According to the National Institutes of Health, chronic stress and exposure to stress hormones alter our DNA not the gene sequence but rather gene expression. When we are under stress, we produce steroid hormones called glucocorticoids, which affect various bodily systems. 

Past studies have shown that these glucocorticoids alter the genes that control the HPA axis, which includes the hypothalamus and pituitary glands of the brain, and the adrenal glands near the kidneys. When the Fkbp5 gene is modified, this leads to PTSD, depression and mood disorders. Studies involving the descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors under Nazi Germany found that these individuals had an altered Fkbp5 gene, along with PTSD, hypertension and obesity.

A 2008 study in the National Academy of Sciences found that people who were prenatally exposed to the Dutch famine of 1944-5 had an altered IFG2 gene which plays an important role in human growth 60 years later. Children of mothers who were pregnant during that famine developed a number of health problems such as obesity, diabetes, kidney damage and heart disease.

The implications for other inter-generationally traumatized groups who have endured genocide and racial oppression, such as Native Americans and African-Americans including Hurricane Katrina survivors are blatantly clear. When racism is understood not merely as a system of discrimination for a particular generation, but also a curse that is passed through generations and affecting our health like the DNA, this helps to shape the discussion on the full extent of the damages created by racism, and the need for remedies, repair and recompense.

Dr. Farah D. Lubin–Associate Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham told Atlanta Black Star that genetics is a matter of nature vs. nurture. “Nature is what you get from your parents, while nurture is how your environment shapes you as an individual,” she said, noting that an individual might have a predisposition to developing a certain condition such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or suicide. Lubin’s primary research is focused on investigating the molecular and genetic basis of learning, memory and its disorders.

 “You can experience stress early on or later on in life,” said Lubin, who is also Co-Director of the NINDS Neuroscience Roadmap Scholar Program, whose goal is to “enhance engagement and retention of underrepresented graduate trainees in the neuroscience workforce.” “Your gene sequence changes as you age, and stress can distort that trajectory for the rest of your life,” she noted, adding that there are different types of stress, such as acute, chronic and moderate levels. And if you are exposed to chronic, unpredictable stress, that could have an impact on how you respond to your environment.

Farah D. Lubin, Ph.D., Department of Neurobiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham says Epigenetics acts as an interface between your environmental experiences and how your DNA will be interpreted in response to those experiences,” Lubin said. “Sometimes these are extreme and destabilize you to your experiences". 

In cases on extreme stress, you can have long term effects.  The Bible refers to generational curses and influences, and interestingly nature actually supports what The Bible says, which is, there is an effect on the molecular epigenetic information that is affected by stress that is transgenerational and passed on to your offspring.”

What are the solutions?  “It is difficult because we are just beginning to understand these mechanisms and how they are triggered,” according to Dr. Lubin, noting all the complexities involved in the science of trauma. “Behavior therapy, environmental enrichment has been shown to cure a number of disorders. Exposing yourself to new, novel things is good for you, but we don’t do enough of it. In animals and humans we know enrichment helps to cure and alleviate disorders. The problem with enrichment and proper diet is that it takes more than taking a pill,” she said.

“As a science I know that diet changes your epigenetics and how you deal with stress. It helps you deal effectively and appropriately to stress.  It reduces cortisol levels so you are not as fearful. I think awareness first and foremost is most important,” Lubin added, noting that Black people are beginning to take matters into their own hands. “African-American society is embracing more of who they are. You see that with women wearing their hair naturally” she said.  Lubin also noted that attitudes about race are evolving among millenials, including Black young people. “But that’s not to say they do not have some of the residual effects of slavery,” she said.

In addition, Lubin says, we can learn from those who are resilient, and attempt to mimic what is present in resilient people in order to seek treatments for trauma. “There is a resilient population and a susceptible population. Whether they are disabled, have a background as slaves, suffer from the Holocaust, you can separate them into two groups. What make the resilient (bounce back) and what makes the susceptible stay stuck. The genes that encode are different in the resilient and susceptible groups.”

Interestingly, these generational effects of trauma are not believed to last forever, according to Dr. Lubin. “I believe it is six to seven generations (with 25 years a generation). Technically we are beyond these numbers, but we were re-inoculated with Jim Crow and the civil rights movement,” she offered.

“I think we as a culture need to make some major changes in the way we think about harm caused by historical trauma,” said Dr. Williams. “We now know it’s not simply ‘in the past’ but continues to influence descendants through both social and genetic (epigenetic) mechanisms. Reparations need to be meaningful and not simply symbolic to have any real impact,” she added.

Meanwhile, in the Black Lives Matter era, more attention is paid to the legacy of slavery and its significance in the present day. “Police have been killing and abusing our people with impunity for centuries, and now thanks to  dash-cams, cell phone videos, and public outrage (Black Lives Matter), this problem is now getting the attention it deserves.”

Williams said “These images can contribute to a sense of community/cultural trauma if nothing is done, but with continued attention I think we can bring about change.  These problems go back to the slavery where force of law was used to intimidate slaves and then after the Civil War to exterminate and neutralize Black males.”

Finally, Dr. Lubin responds to those who say that Black people should “get over” the trauma of slavery. “It’s a naive sentiment to say get over it, but they don’t even know what they are getting over. There are symptoms and they don’t even know why they are there. It is hard to say to a Holocaust survivor, ‘Get over it.’ They are having the same generational effect from their experiences as well.”

Report: Too Few School Counselors for Traumatized Black Children But Plenty of Punishment

By David Love

As the nation grapples with the problems of the school-to-prison pipeline and the intersection of racial justice, the criminal justice system, law enforcement and education, the need for new priorities for children comes to light. For example, in a national public school system that is now majority children of color, students are suffering from trauma.

And while there is a shortage of support staff to service public school children — including counselors, psychologists and social workers — children of color are hit especially hard.  Black and brown children, who are most likely to live with trauma, run a much greater risk of facing harsh punishment and school discipline rather than receiving the crucial mental health counseling they need.

A new research report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), “Counsel or Criminalize? Why Students of Color Need Supports, not Suspensions,” tells the story with the first-of-its-kind, state-level analysis on the shortage of counselors, psychologists and social workers in America’s public schools.

Consider, for example, that 35 million children in the U.S. are suffering from trauma, yet only 8 million (22 percent) have a school psychologist at their disposal.  Only 63 percent of public schools have a counselor, and a mere 18 percent have a social worker. 

Also the challenges facing children of color place the extent of the problem in full view.  African-American, Latino and Native American children, who are most likely to experience traumatic events, are also disproportionately poor, which in itself is a risk factor for psychological distress.

Moreover, nearly 3 million children are suspended from school each year, reflecting zero-tolerance policies that are racially discriminatory in nature.  Those students who face draconian disciplinary measures are also those who risk dropping out and going to prison traumatized children.

According to the report, 90 percent of juvenile detainees are living with trauma.  Further, Black children are three times as likely to suffer from abuse or neglect than white children, and are also three times less likely to receive mental health care.  And because of institutional racism and the perception that their behavior is disruptive, Black children also have a fourfold risk of suspensions over their white counterparts.  Meanwhile, Native American youth face the greatest barriers to mental health, as they have double the risk of committing suicide as other groups.

Delving into the statistics on a state-by-state basis reveals the extent of the crisis, which CAP says amounts to a “silent epidemic.”  While it is not surprising that the states of the South suffer from the most dire shortages of social workers and psychologists, it is shocking that the bottom is so low.

For example, the seven states accounting for 90 percent of the cases of corporal punishment of Black children in 2011-2012 — Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee — had psychologists in only 10 percent of their schools. 

Only 24 percent of Georgia schools have a full-time psychologist, while Alabama, Mississippi and Texas have the lowest supply of such professionals.  Alabama, which suspended 20 percent of its Black children, has almost no in-house psychologists.  In Mississippi, the schools have a student-to-counselor ratio of 436-to-1, nearly double the recommended ratio, while only 3 percent of schools have a psychologist.

And in Wisconsin, where more than one fourth of Black students were subjected to out-of-school suspensions, only 59 percent of public schools employed a counselor.

“The numbers are sobering,” said Perpetual Baffour, Research Assistant for Education Policy at CAP and author of the brief, in a press release.  “When millions of children live in poverty, experience physical or sexual abuse, witness tragedy in their communities, lose a parent to incarceration, and/or lack access to safe and clean drinking water, it should be no surprise when they experience challenges in the classroom. Children cannot learn when they lack adequate and meaningful supports for their well-being.”

The national issue of traumatized Black children receiving severe punishment rather than beneficial support services was on display in Spring Valley High School in 2015, when a recently orphaned girl named Shakara was assaulted by a police officer in her classroom for failing to comply with an unfair punishment, and then was arrested along with a classmate.  Atlanta Black Star has reported on the ways in which violence causes PTSD-like symptoms in Black people, and has examined the neuroscience of poverty and the impact of racism on the mental well-being of African-American children and adults.

The trauma facing Black people is hereditary and intergenerational, passing through the DNA and reflecting a legacy of oppression from the Middle Passage, though enslavement and Jim Crow to the present day.

Regarding the unaddressed trauma among public school children, CAP offers several recommendations, including making school-based counseling and mental health programs a funding priority, crafting an approach to school discipline that is restorative rather than punitive, and developing culturally sensitive policies for emotional and behavioral support services.

Trauma and Poverty Alters the Brains of Black People, and It Will Take Black Institutions to Stop It

By David Love 

The shame is not ours. That holds true of the horrors and the trauma of the Middle Passage, and the toll it exacted on the bodies and psyches of African people. And that applies to the continued racial oppression, the deprivation and the economic, physical and mental violence to which Black people are subjected every day. 

While white society has told Black people that their “problems” are of their own making, a result of their moral failures and lack of work ethic, white America promoted this false narrative by punishing Black folks through public policy.

What if the shame is indeed not ours? What if neuroscience, the study of the brain, can make sense of the effect of trauma on the very minds and behaviors of Black families, adults and children?  What if white supremacy takes its toll on the health and development of our minds, not just in a philosophical, political or cultural sense, but from a medical and scientific standpoint?

If the problem is one that Black people face, then Black institutions will solve it. For the first time, two African-American organizations — a health services agency and a fraternity — are teaming up to address the neuroscience of poverty and the impact of trauma on the Black mind and behavior.

The Columbus (Ohio) Area Integrated Health Services, Inc. (CAIHS) and the Columbus Kappa Foundation, Inc. — part of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity — have formed a partnership called the Global Life Chances Initiative.

The project will provide services, education and outreach to Black families hit the hardest by infant mortality, educational under-performance and economic dislocation. Further, through a concept known as the neuroscience of poverty, the initiative will address prevention and repair of Black people traumatized and damaged by economic deprivation and exploitation and the toll poverty has on the brain.

The concept represents a bold and innovative research approach.  Past studies have examined intergenerational trauma and post-traumatic slave syndrome, and the ways in which the psychic damage of enslavement, genocide and other forms of oppression can be passed down through generations.

A recent Newsweek article addressed how poverty impacts the brain.  Specifically, it said that “poverty, and the conditions that often accompany it — violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs — can affect the interactions, formation and pruning of connections in the young brain.”

Anthony Penn, President/CEO of Columbus Area Integrated Health Services, Inc. (CAIHS). Anthony Penn, President/CEO of CAIHS, told Atlanta Black Star that by focusing on the Black community, what the initiative learns ultimately will benefit all communities.

“This is an important initiative for this historically African-American mental health organization. For decades, we have witnessed clients that our agency has provided services for suffer from trauma and issues that professionals have found difficult to treat,” Penn told Atlanta Black Star.  “When you look at the high rate of infant mortality in Columbus, the parents that are impacted by high infant mortality, there is a large [amount of] depression and need for support to those families.”

Penn added that it is important for the African-American community to move beyond these long-term issues that hold our community back. As Nate Jordan II, President of the Columbus Kappa Foundation, Inc. noted, the new initiative will be based in the Mount Vernon section of Columbus, where the Kappa House is located.  Jordan told Atlanta Black Star that Mount Vernon is “one of the most economically depressed areas from redlining. A lot of abandoned housing, all of the detrimental things are exemplified in these housing areas.”

“In Ohio, the Black infant mortality rate is 48th in the country. In Columbus, the Kappa House is in [an area with] one of the highest infant mortality rates in Ohio, where there are seven hot zones” for infant mortality, he added.  Jordan noted that the Kappas became involved in the Global Life Chances Initiative through their engagement in infant mortality, safe sleeping issues and matters concerning Black fatherhood.

“We also looked at the father missing out of the family unit and how the father can make a big difference from an infant mortality standpoint…even when the baby is still in the placenta, having the father acting from a nurturing standpoint,” he said.

Jordan also mentioned the Kappa’s Nurturing Fathers program, an evidence-based, 13-week program in California that improves life chances for children and puts fathers back into the lives of their families. A group of 10-16 fathers receives services and education around their relationships with their child, the roots of fathering, nurturing, discipline without violence, anger management, nutrition, housing and other issues.

Nate Jordan II, President of the Columbus Kappa Foundation, Inc. “We’re Black men showing leadership, and we already have a tremendous following. We’re politically in position, and people are looking for our leadership. So this is another example of the Kappas being on the front burner, and this model we’re putting together will be going nationwide,” Jordan noted.

For Dr. Stacy Scott, a consultant with the National Kappa Foundation’s Healthy Kappas/Healthy Communities National Initiative says this new partnership makes sense. “I work in the infant mortality field, and we know the impact of stress on African-American women and the impact on their outcomes. We know African-American women have the highest rate of infant mortality, with 14 African-American babies dying for every 1,000 — 6 for white babies, so that is double,” Dr. Scott told Atlanta Black Star.

“We see a lot of babies who die because they are in unsafe sleeping environments,” she noted. “We are in the process of training Kappa membership to go out in the community to target specifically men on safe sleep practices for infants.  It is growing; it is amazing when you start teaching men.  When men are involved in prenatal care, especially in the first 3 to 4 weeks, we see how infants thrive,” Scott added.

Two issues that concern the participants in the Global Life Chances Initiative are the trust of the Black community, and the stigma over mental illness among African-Americans. “That whole trust issue, that’s why it is so important that the partners look like the community we’re servicing,” Dr. Scott said “A predominantly African-American membership is important because there is that mistrust.  We know because of the Tuskegee fiasco,“ she noted, adding it is important “to have key people and key researchers who look like our community and build that trust so that people will not be exploited.

There is such a disproportional representation of communities of color with health disparities, and it turns into an indictment of a particular group.  And it is not an indictment, but reflects discrimination and segregation, and so I think it is going to be a slow-moving train” she said, noting that it all adds up to getting the message out one person at a time.

“It is a fresh new phenomenon. and the community is ready. And we are tired of ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’ ” Scott added.  “Maybe it is not something wrong with me, and I am a victim of racism.”

Dr. Stacy Scott, National Kappa Foundation’s Healthy Kappas/Healthy Communities National Initiative says “On a national level, 1 in 5 people are impacted by a mental health condition, and we know that stigma and overcoming the stigma is real. But this is an awareness campaign we are launching to understand how to reach our community, how to make service delivery culturally sensitive, to take into consideration the historic stigma our community has faced with mental health issues, and neuroscience.  

So, that is part of our relationship with the Kappa Foundation, a fraternity that is well respected, and we go to the grassroots and find ways to be more effective,” Penn noted.  “Through education, through door-to-door outreach and having culturally competent delivery providers, we know we’re going to have more of an impact than what has been historically done.”

According to Penn, often there is a lack of understanding of how to work with the Black community.  The Global Life Chances Initiative hopes to provide a blueprint for upliftment though outreach to the community and addressing a serious condition.  

Given “the stigma that is associated with mental health issues, I personally want to see our organization and the Kappa Foundation be the institutions that lead this movement to make it easy for families, for individuals, for people of color, so that it is easy to come in and get help when I need it, to seek treatment when I need it. I don’t need to mask and hide the symptoms; I can come in. The same way you feel comfortable calling the doctor when you have a headache, people with mental health issues can find it easy to come in and ask for help,” he said.

“When you say ‘I am not quite right,’ I can give you a reason why I am not quite right,” Dr. Scott noted of this planned research.  “It does give you another tool, and if we put it out there right, people begin to get a better understanding in regards to why we are the way we are.

For example, why do so many African-Americans have high blood pressure?  It gives some foundations as to why the community has such plights,” she said.  “If you look at the brain and things of that nature, they want to blame the victim, and the idea that if we give you a pill and some job training, you’ll be OK.”

Meanwhile, the undertaking has serious implications in the public policy realm, with the potential to change the status quo. According to Dr. Linda James Myers, Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and African-American Studies at The Ohio State University and Director of The Ohio State University Black Studies Extension Center in Columbus, Ohio, the neuroscience of poverty provides a social context for what is affecting the Black community.  She argues that Western science, for instance, is not holistic, and fails to make the necessary connections between one’s environment and physical and mental well-being.

“A more African-centered perspective assumes that what happens in my physical environment will affect my behavior and my chemistry, and that constant stress will affect every aspect of my physiology, including the brain,” Dr. Myers told Atlanta Black Star.  She added that this more holistic and integrated African-centered perspective is nothing new.  Further, a holistic world view and a cultural frame of reference that was previously missing will allow us to counter the notion that poverty is the result of Black people making bad decisions.

Dr. Linda James Myers, Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and African American Studies at The Ohio State University and Director of The Ohio State University Black Studies Extension Center in Columbus, Ohio says “One of the big things that we want to concentrate on in the first phase is to educate the decision makers that make policy, allocate funding, educate them on this work that we are undertaking,” Penn said “What is different about this partnership that does not exist anywhere else in the country is that you have a unique partnership, with an integrated strategic approach on how to lay out a plan of dealing with the history of trauma that African-Americans have dealt with for decades. We have a strategy to begin to ask the questions and explore the research on how to better serve our community,” he noted.

“We know the issues exist, and there has been a system of a continued way of treating the problem, continuing to fund a certain model, but we’re looking at how do you, with scientific data, change the direction that we find many of our young people, many of our adults, living in poverty? How do we change the infection and change the cycle? 

We don’t want to lead by emotion, but we want our emotion to be inspired by research. It will benefit not only our community but all communities,” Penn added, as the program will be emulated nationwide. “White folks won’t believe it unless it is researched,” Dr. Scott suggested, offering that the program has the potential to upend policies such as the welfare system, which is based on the premise of a work ethic.  People in welfare-to-work programs are set up to fail, she noted, and people are punished as if it is a reflection on them. What happens, for example, when it is discovered they cannot perform certain work functions because of trauma.

“If there is long-term impact of trauma on the brain, that debunks the whole argument,” she concluded.  “It is really going to challenge the status quo, and looking at all these acts and the welfare system, you can make an impact because what they’re doing is not working, and there is going to be a lot of fallout, because people don’t like change,” Scott said.  “You don’t hear them talk about research and African-Americans with regard to this theory. This might be on purpose, because we would have another tool to say we want our 40 acres and a mule.”

Once the word spreads about this new initiative, Dr. Scott believes, it is going to be phenomenal.  However, she provides a warning: “We have to be very, very careful to make sure they don’t use this against us. We have to advocate, because if they think we have a brain dysfunction they will write us off. It is important to make sure advocacy groups are on the case, because it is not our fault.”

“One of the advantages with this initiative is trying to get the powers that be to see that what is different about what young Black people are experiencing in poverty today from what young Black people experienced back in the day with chattel enslavement and sharecropping is the role of the community, despite the poverty,” said Dr. Myers.

“Now we have urban renewal, our community has been fractured and displaced, our people were placed in public housing which is not good for our community as it produces anger and frustrationand now without the community to support and without the educational system you have complete disenfranchisement.  You have dislocation and generalized depression. Instead of asking what is wrong with these young people, we should ask: What is happening and how can we change it?”

“The fact that we see the physiological change because now we have the technology to monitor it has principal benefits and also great costs. The benefits mean that Western researchers must concede that these children are in a demeaning, disenfranchising environment that affects their brain. Maybe that means we not only need early literacy but to be more holistic in what children are experiencing.  That awareness is coming is a good thing. Unfortunately, it has taken a long time to come to that realization,” Dr. Myers offered. 

“The downside is, ‘Oh my God, these Black children are deficient.’ They are open to being stigmatized, and the Black community is going to be further disenfranchised.  We have to make sure that the people engaged in the research will not go that route,” she added, noting the evidence that the condition is not irreversible. “The evidence is the 250 years Black people spent in enslavement.  I can’t think of a more hostile environment.  Then you see Black people emerging out of chattel slavery making all the contributions to the industrial and technological revolution,” she added.

Meanwhile, Jordan reflected on the importance of having Black organizations step up to tackle this issue in the Black community, rather than rely on white society. “No longer can we depend on them to solve our problems.  We have the expertise, the talent, the facilities and the ideas. We live this. We are the ones who have been here 400 years, and we are going to get it solved.”