PTSS, History and Healing

The following ideas and quotations come from the book, "Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome", by
Dr. Joy Degruy, a black social worker:

"The first step to healing is to know what is in need of healing.  Knowledge of your history is a key to establishing good mental, emotional and physical health.  Any trip to the doctor will illustrate why it is important to know your history when seeking wellness.  Doctors always require that you fill out a form that asks you about your medical history and to the best of your knowledge your family's medical history.  This information is vital to the doctor in understanding the state of your existing health.  Knowing your history is a necessary key to knowing yourself, and it is precisely for this reason that I wrote the book: to help us understand who we were as a people and how the past has influenced our present state of being and the people we have become."  page 211

"During a visit to France, I saw early renderings of the Statue of Liberty replete with chains, so I was rather looking forward to engaging park staff in a dialogue about the monument in its present chainless form."

"The artist, Bartholdi, wanted to build a colossal monument to liberty holding chains in protest of the political repression in his own country and in recognition of the end of the Civil War in 1865 and with it the official end of slavery in America, but Bartholdi was met with opposition by American leadership who complained that the presence of the chains placed too much emphasis on slavery.  The statue was eventually changed to show here clutching something in her left hand."

"I wondered if all the rangers working as tour guides at the Statue of Liberty had this information and why there was such ambivalence about there being a minimal mention of the chains or their being associated with the end of slavery.  How can this edifice, I thought, that so proudly represents freedom and liberty be stripped of any association with the end of human bondage for millions of Africans--Africans who had literally chained and shackled?"

"Once again, America has affectively erased from public view and public conscience our history--black history--American history."

"Perhaps it is shame that causes America to hide the shackles, to covet the silence, to keep secret our nation's brutal past, troubled present and clouded future."

"Frederick Douglass, a formally enslaved abolitionist, knew all to well his country's great disgrace:
"At last our proud Republic is overtaken.  Our National Sin has found us out.  The National Head is bowed down, and our face is mantled with shame and confusion.  No distant monarch, offended at our freedom and prosperity, has plotted our destruction: no envious tyrant has prepared for our next his oppressive yoke.  Slavery has done it all.  Our enemies are those of our own household."

"I had been invited to give a lecture on my research at the University of Chicago.  After my lecture, standing before me, was a frail, dignified, black woman.  After a few minutes of silence she slowly lifted her hands, reached out to me, took both of my hands in hers', and pulled me in close so that she could look directly at me.  She smiled at me and paused before she spoke.  And although she only said a few words, I will never forget them: "I have waited for you my whole life, now I can die."

PTSS stands for Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.  So what happened to this older black woman was Joy had kind of spelled out a version of black history and black dignity that this black woman had never heard.  She had lived all of her life with the shame of being labeled inferior.  So Joy had come along and dignified blacks so that brought an immeasurable healing to this old, black woman; now she could die.