From “Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice” By Terrence Lester, PhD
While numerous historical texts outline the broad strokes of racism’s timeline in America, spanning from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans through the bloodshed of the Civil War into Reconstruction and across the pivotal civil rights movement, these tests – frequently written by White scholars – often paint a picture of closure, as if the deep-seated injustices of bygone eras had been conclusively addressed and relegated to history. The pervasiveness of this whitewashing of history obscures the impact of what Dr. Joy DeGruy calls post traumatic slave syndrome and does little to advance understanding of the phenomena detailed in the framework I created to understand the educational and other challenges seen in urban centers.
DeGruy, an academic researcher, lecturer, and former professor of social work, writes powerfully on how trauma can be passed down generationally. She makes a fascinating connection between historical suffering and the transgenerational trauma that we see in the collective trauma experienced by Black people.