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 In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2007),       Joy Degruy proposes that U.S. slavery did not cease to exist with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Those who had been enslaved sustained not only physical scars, but also suffered psychological and emotional abuse, the effects of which they would carry into “freedom.” This abuse, she suggests, would manifest as trauma, and would play out in their daily actions and behaviors coming to rest on the generations who would follow in their footsteps. It is this process of trans-generational transference, which in this case is specific to African Americans in relationship to chattel slavery, combined with decades of continued societal mistreatment that DeGruy characterizes as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). DeGruy argues that psychological trauma stemming from slavery has played a significant role in the development of the African American identity, and is responsible for the manifestation of negative behavioral, often self-destructive, traits that plaque the African American community.   
  While DeGruy accepts as valid the claim that derogatory mass media images play a significant role in how African Americans perceive of themselves, she believes that the history of slavery and continued oppression are generally ignored in narratives intending to analyze the state and status of African Americans. She argues that “[w]e rarely look to history to understand how African Americans adapted their behavior over centuries in order to survive stifling effects of chattel slavery, effects which are evident today.”¹ It is the remnants of slavery, she believes, that have produced “negative perceptions, images and behavior.”²
 DeGruy’s thesis began to develop following a visit to Lesotho, South Africa. DeGruy recounts how she had difficulty “assimilating” back into American culture and that this discomfort was partially tied to her race and personhood. “Blackness” in Lesotho, she explains, offered a sense of normalcy, while “blackness” in America “offered cultural isolation and social invisibility.”³ DeGruy began to measure the behavior of African Americans with the behavior she observed in the townships of Lesotho wherein an ethos of mutual respect and generosity was the norm. She increasingly became more aware of negative patterns of behavior among African Americans which they often inflicted upon one another. She began to relate these behaviors to what she describes as “trans-generational adaptations associated with the past traumas of slavery and on-going oppression,”⁴ hence, the term “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.” 
  DeGruy presents motivating factors to support her claim that trauma exists. She intricately connects the historiography of blacks in America (slavery and post), while implicating the historical development and concept of race in the constructing of this history, and measures it from a social psychological perspective against the theory of trauma. This allows her to offer valid criteria she uses to explain the negative social circumstances that currently exist in the African American community, such as disproportionately high joblessness and incarceration rates, poverty, and black-on-black crime.    
 She describes the physical brutalization of millions of blacks which began with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and hence the incorporation of chattel slavery into North America in 1619.⁵ Chattel slavery resulted in atrocities from the rape of black women, torture, beatings, hangings, mutilations, and castrations. Institutionalized oppression, and to a large degree the same kinds of acts of violence, followed African Americans after slavery with the implementation of  Jim Crow, Black Codes, and the Peonage and Convict Lease Systems. African Americans were also subjected to other atrocities such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.⁶ 
 She explains that this physical abuse was directly related to beliefs that Europeans had about the innate racial inferiority of blacks (often relying on pseudo-scientific notions about their subordinate status to support these claims). These beliefs allowed them to justify their mistreatment, and to help them process through any “cognitive dissonance” they may have had with regard to this abuse.⁷ DeGruy refers to comments written by Thomas D. Morris in his book Southern Slavery and the Law,1619-1860 (1999). Africans, he wrote, were considered to be “natural slaves” because of their skin color, and also “‘thinking property’” and “‘inherently rightless persons.’”⁸ DeGruy states that it “was this relegation to lesser humanity that allowed the institution of chattel slavery to be intrinsically linked with violence, and it was through violence, aggression and dehumanization that the institution of slavery was enacted, legislated and perpetuated by Europeans.”⁹
 In order to support her hypothesis DeGruy relied, in part, on The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Orders IV, Revised. The manual describes “features of disorders,” reports conditions which may give rise to them, and lists each disorder’s symptoms.” ¹º Using this manual she reasons that slaves experienced mental and/or emotional trauma likened to that of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.¹¹ What makes Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome specific to African Americans is its link to the crimes committed on the enslaved and their descendants.¹² DeGruy defines PTSS as: Multigenerational Trauma together with continued oppression and absence of opportunity to access the benefits available in the society.¹³ 
 As the title suggests, DeGruy’s intent was not only to present an academic argument to support the claim that African American group trauma exists, and to describe how such trauma was constructed, the book calls equal attention to the act of healing.  She dedicates a portion of the book to discussing how healing in the African American community could evolve, while emphasizing that healing is essential if they are to claim their “humanity.”¹⁴ She also suggests that healing is equally important to descendants of the oppressors.  DeGruy reasons that “[t]hose who have been the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.”¹⁵  
 DeGruy admits that there is no empirical evidence to support her claim, and she has been criticized for such. While some scholars support her hypothesis, others have condemned it as it suggests that African Americans lack social, political, and economic agency. Others suggest that this way of thinking can be used as fodder for those who would want to interject that something is wrong with African Americans.  Her book, however, is stimulating scholarly conversation, and she is part of a growing body of scholars who are writing about and debating whether slavery and years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse can be directly tied to the current social and economic circumstances of African Americans.     
  

Citations 1: p. 13 2: pg. 13 3: pg. 7 4: pg. 13 5: pg. 73 6: pg.’s 73-86 7: pg. 52 8: pg. 48 9: pg. 49 10: pg.’s 113 -114 11: pg. 114 12: pg. 120 13: pg. 121 14: pg. 4 15: pg.’s 4-5