Topic #2: Who is Assata Shakur? & Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

It's May 2nd, the 43rd anniversary of Assata Shakur's famous arrest. 

What? You've never heard about it? No kidding.

Assata Shakur is a black activist most famous for being racially targeted by the New Jersey Police Department and later the FBI. She was the target of a massive manhunt from 1971-73, culminating in her arrest when white police officers stopped the car in which she was traveling, citing a broken taillight. After her capture she was not charged with any of the crimes that had made her the subject of the manhunt. However, she was convicted by an all white jury for shooting white police officers during the traffic stop, even though forensic evidence showed that there was no gunpowder on her fingers and that she herself was shot in the back by another officer while her hands were raised in surrender. Assata was held in inhumane conditions in an all-men's prison, confirmed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, who in 1979 cited her case as "one of the worst cases of human rights abuses" and called her a "victim of FBI misconduct" who was "selectively targeted for provocation, false arrests, entrapment, fabrication of evidence, and spurious criminal prosecutions." (http://goo.gl/fKB13V). If you watched the Black Panthers documentary on PBS you know that unlawful arrests, entrapment, and murder were common strategies of the FBI's COINTELPRO branch, whose job it was "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence..." and to prevent black leaders "from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy…" (http://goo.gl/8RfWuR). With the aid of fellow activists, Assata escaped prison in 1979 and was ultimately granted political asylum in Cuba where she now lives. 

I was about to launch further into this topic when I nearly forgot to mention one little thing: The prerequisites. To be clear, if you don't believe that racism is inextricably embedded in the very fabric of our nation due to our shameful history of dehumanizing black people and the residue it has left on our current worldview, then you should most definitely complete the following prerequisites before proceeding. 

I borrowed the concept of prerequisites to racism education from the brilliant and distinguished Dr. Joy DeGruy, a scholar I met through a YouTube link provided by my new friend, activist, and musician Glenn Waco (check out his new release, Assata, here: https://soundcloud.com/glenn-waco/assata). You can determine your own necessity for the prerequisites with a simple self-quiz:

1. Let's start with an easy one: Roughly how many years did slavery last in the United States of America?
2. What does the word "chattel" mean in reference to slavery?
3. Other than a few small groups of white abolitionists who believed slavery was a sin, what was the reason cited by most white abolitionists to end slavery?
4. According to the U.S.. Constitution after the American Revolution, what "percentage of a person" was a slave? (Meaning, 1/2 of a "real" person, 3/4 of a "real" person, etc.)
5. When and where else in the world has human chattel slavery lasted as long as it did in America?
6. What is the estimated number of people who died while being transported overseas?

Here's my point: White people think we know about slavery because we learned about it in school and watched Twelve Years a Slave. But if we don't even know these basic facts off hand, how can we really be sympathetic to what Dr. DeGruy calls Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which by her account can explain a lot of the stuff us white people just do not understand about the black experience? Before I get into all that, here are the answers to the quiz. 

1. Human chattel slavery lasted from about 1619 to about 1863, so roughly 250 years.
2. Chattel is an item of property. Human chattel slavery is the proper name for what our textbooks call "slavery," during which humans were bought and sold and considered personal property of an owner who had full discretion over his or her treatment. This is the least prevalent form of slavery in the world today, and has been exceptionally rare across the globe throughout history. 
3. After the American Revolution in 1783 the new U.S. Constitution counted each person who was a slave as 3/5 a person.
4. The majority of abolitionists argued that slavery should end because it was inefficient and made little economic sense.
5. No other society has had a system of slavery like ours. American human chattel slavery is unlike anything anywhere else in the world in terms of the following:
1. Duration- more than 200 years
2. Race-based- slavery in other countries usually consisted of indentured servitude between people of the same race or ethnicity. Rarely was slavery based on one race enslaving another race and deeming the enslaved race subhuman.
3. Subhuman status by law- most other slave contexts involved exploitation but not dehumanization supported by law. 
4. Number killed in transport- see next item.
6. 9 million is one estimate of the number of slaves killed merely in transport due to the conditions (18 inches per person, see below). Just to give perspective, while it's hard to compare since the Holocaust occurred over only four years, it is estimated that 6 million lives were taken by the Holocaust.

Humans on a Slave Ship

If your reaction to Slavery 101: Basic Facts is, "But that was so long ago, why are we still harping on it?" then you failed the prerequisites.

On the other hand, if you can plainly see that it wasn't too long ago to have lasting residue, then let's get down to business. 

No one gets down to business like Dr. DeGruy, who plainly and masterfully details exactly what's on the minds of many of the black members of our shared society and why they are so freaking mad. Her two hour lecture is so thorough that I can only summarize part of it here, so this piece is entirely dedicated to what she calls Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

While obtaining her Master's degree in clinical psychology, Dr. DeGruy noticed some uncanny parallels between what she was learning about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and what her and her fellow black community members felt on a regular basis. In short, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is the residual mental anguish experienced by members of the black community because of the collective trauma that has been passed down by generations and the persistent triggers of this trauma that continue on a regular basis today. Years after DeGruy's first lecture on PTSS we now have scientific evidence that trauma is passed down generationally via DNA by a process called epigenetic inheritance (https://goo.gl/pqqrOO). Keep in mind that our black friends, coworkers, and neighbors are only two generations removed from the institution of slavery, meaning their great grandmothers could have been victims of human chattel slavery. 

See for yourself if you can find parallels between PTSD and PTSS. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), PTSD comes from exposure to traumatic events. The exposure must result from one or more of the following scenarios, in which the individual:

• directly experiences the traumatic event;
• witnesses the traumatic event in person;
• learns that the traumatic event occurred to a close family member or close friend; or
• experiences first-hand repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event 

The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

• recurrent and distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions
• acting or feeling if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience
• intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event [i.e., racial slurs]
• physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event [i.e. stop and frisk]

Persistent symptoms are indicated by two (or more) of the following:

1.       difficulty falling or staying asleep
2.       irritability or outbursts of anger
3.       difficulty concentrating 
4.       hyper vigilance
5.       exaggerated startle response

"The disorder may be especially severe or long lasting when the stressor is of human design (e.g. tortune, rape). The likelihood of developing the disorder may increase as the intensity of and physical proximity to the stressor increase."

DeGruy notes our society's willingness to diagnose Americans with PTSD from the effects of 911, even for those people who were nowhere near the event and unrelated to anyone who died, versus our unwillingness to consider that black members of our society may have PTSD from the residual effects of our culture's recent slave system. She explains, in describing the traumatic effects of both 911 and slavery:

 "It's not just the lives that were lost, but the symbol of what it meant...
wrapped in the notion of power, and control, and stability." 

I like Dr. DeGruy's work because her focus is on healing. How does our society heal from what we've done to each other? Validation and recognition that the trauma has occurred is a good start. Questioning our own worldview is key. Seeking information that may not have been revealed in our Euro-centric education helps. Checking ourselves any time we are tempted to discount or question the lived experience our black fellow humans are trying to share is highly recommended by the good doctor. 

If you have 2 hours to listen to Dr. DeGruy's entire lecture you can find it here: https://goo.gl/hNiji1
but if you just want to hear the part about PTSS start at 53:25.

Denial of the truly horrific nature of American human chattel slavery and resistance to the fact that its effects still permeate our society comes in many forms. For example, responding to the demand that Black Lives Matter with the retort that All Lives Matter. Or being annoyed by an "unfair advantage" given to minorities for jobs and resources to even the scoreboard created by a history of inequality. But today, on this anniversary of Assata Shakur's arrest what's on my mind is this: that I, a white woman, can post a blog about government conspiracies, murders, and police corruption without even batting an eye, with no repercussions and no real consequences. I can talk about slavery and won't be met with rolling eyes or the suspicion of desiring pity. This is privilege. If you have a privileged voice like I do, please be a white ally and share.