Posted on 10/15/2005 10:21:03 AM PDT by paulat
Saturday, October 15, 2005
'Slave syndrome' may still affect black behavior Professor's theory set for talk today
By JOHN IWASAKI SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The troubling images of African Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' impoverished neighborhoods didn't startle researcher Joy DeGruy-Leary.
"All Katrina did was reveal what was already there. I wasn't confused, wasn't surprised," she said. "I knew what the 9th Ward was about. The difference was, (before the disaster) everybody was OK about it. It was business as usual."
DeGruy-Leary, an assistant professor in Portland State University's Graduate School of Social Work, will discuss her theory of the relationship between race, culture, poverty and history today at the third Seattle Race Conference and tonight in a separate talk.
Her theory of "post-traumatic slave syndrome" concludes that African Americans needed to adapt to survive more than two centuries of slavery, and that those adaptations are reflected in their behaviors today.
Even though slavery symbolically ended after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, DeGruy-Leary said, African Americans were "virtually re-enslaved" through legislation reflected in peonage such as sharecropping, black codes and convict-worker leasing, all of which restricted blacks and allowed white-owned businesses to have cheap labor, and Jim Crow laws, which enforced segregation.
Add the horror of lynchings -- more than 3,400 from 1882 to 1951, according to records of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama -- and African Americans in the United States have undergone tremendous trauma, she said.
She contends that no one acknowledges that trauma, much less has allowed African Americans to heal from it.
[SNIP]
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
I just don't see how it applies to anyone who's never been a slave.
This is just another excuse masquerading as research to justify reparations.
Gee, Joy. Be more specific. What troubling images are you talking about?
That's because everyone knows it's bullsh!t.
Is the offer of 40 acres and a mule still on the table?
It's called welfare dependancy syndrome and can affect anyone of any race or ethnic background.
But President Kennedy WON the Silver War!!!!
There haven't been any slaves for twenty years!!!!
I agree. Every ex-slave should be entitled to free counseling and medical care, free meds, and a new Lexus. We'll have to exclude immigrants from Muslim countries, however, since that's where the real slaves are these days.
Kimberley Jane Wilson of Project 21, an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., is among the theory's critics.
"Anyone who embraces this theory is more of a slave than our ancestors ever were," Wilson wrote in an online commentary. "Browse through a good history book and you'll see. Our ancestors were not weak-willed people. ... There were hundreds of slave revolts in this country."
Guess descendants of white slaves must have outgrown the stigma of their ancestors slave days.
Meanwhile, in Africa, blacks who were never slaves have built a remarkably advanced civilization.
Bingo. Everyone of us descends from slaves.
This deserves a crapola alert. American blacks thrived in their own communities in the early part of the 20th century as business owners, landlords, bank owners and the like. Dunbar HS, a prominent black high school in Wash., DC, was so successful that their graduates were easily on par with and often exceeded the educational skills of whites from the best white high schools. Dunbar graduates were so highly recognized that they were given automatic entree to Harvard University.
I don't see any indication of "slave mentality" in these proven statistics. Instead, what leaps out at me is the fact that Democrat politicians hijacked blacks as their cause celebre and, thus, began their downfall into poverty and helplessness.
There's BS and, then, there's this article. Not worth either the paper it was printed on or the bandwidth it consumed.
Woo-Hoo! A new excuse to be lazy and indolent! Where's the reparations?
Populations don't change, or adapt, in this short a time. Contravening evidence is in the totally ignored intact black families of the thirties and forties, who went to church, went to work, and went to war. Also, the boycotts of last century would have meant nothing except for the powerful purchasing power of working black families.
This grasping at the thinnest of straws to excuse a culture of despondence and decadence makes me angry, but if I were black, it would infuriate me.
[Stuck On Stupid]
There's not a human in the world who has not descended from some slave, somewhere, at some time in history.
Slavery is abhorent. It has always been abhorent.
*** I just don't see how it applies to anyone who's never been a slave.***
I'm still sea-sick from when my ancestors came over on the boat!
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