A few years ago, I wrote of the power of silent racism. The original piece was stimulated by a segment on 60 Minutes on the atrocities of the Holocaust. This one was targeted towards the victims, mostly Jewish, of Eastern Europe. Unlike the victims at concentration camps whose names were documented, the names of these victims of mass killings were not. These victims were treated like animals, some even buried alive. Entire segments of villages in Russia were killed while some of their neighbors gathered to watch the slaughter. The French Catholic priest Patrick Desbois tells a story of these senseless events in this 60 Minutes segment.

Why do I bring this up again? As Americans, we can understand the need to continue to remind ourselves of the genocide that took place during World War II. It is not an issue of the past, but an issue of the present and the future. Father Desbois draws a direct line from the Holocaust to the ISIS. But let me take you back before the Holocaust to the Middle Passage of the slave trade to enslavement, Jim Crow to what is taking place in society today--something we don’t want to talk about and continue to discount in terms of its continuing impact on our society even today.

In the original piece I pointed to an event that illustrated what I was talking about. An edition of a World Geography book used in classrooms to teach the next generation referred to African slaves as “workers.” The text referred to the slave trade as a pattern of immigration, almost implying that the individuals who were being transport as willing individuals or individuals escaping from a terrible condition.

On the contrary, it is estimated that somewhere between thirty to sixty million Africans, men, women, and children, were savagely torn from their homeland, herded onto ships and forcibly brought to the shores of what now is the United States of America. Nowhere in the annals of history has any group of human beings experienced such a long and traumatic ordeal as the ancestors of today’s African Americans. What is untold is that it is estimated that only one-third of those people survived. I say estimated because no one kept good records, or at least records that we know of from the capture through being sold on the auction block to the journey to the home of the master to whom they were sold to , and then to their life on the plantation. Only today is there some talk about the present-day toll of what is being called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) (https://www.joydegruy.com/post-traumatic-slave-syndrome). Only recently have we, as a nation, become familiar with the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). But what of the impact of the mental stress of slavery and then Jim Crow for almost 500 years on the mental health of African Americans. Can it account for some of the negatives we are still observing today, along with the continued stress imposed by silent racism, institutional racism, and systematic discrimination? I often talk about the prophecy of Benjamin Franklin . Franklin in his asking the 1st US Congress to free the slave, talked about the inherent negative impact of slavery on American society, long after slavery would be eliminated. It was as if he was predicting the Civil War and everything to follow; the engrained bias to the well-being of its African American citizens.

Let’s look at what is taking place across America in African American neighborhoods and examine whether there is cause and effect that can be traced. The theory of PTSS is that its etiology explains the adaptive survival behaviors in African American communities across America. Think about 400 years plus of multi-generational oppression and the resulting consequences of such and then the absence of an effort to heal or access benefits. You are freed and then asked to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you don’t have any. As Dr. Joy Degruy so elegantly puts forth, under such circumstances, some of the predictable patterns of behavior becomes quite evident: a loss of self-esteem with a feeling of hopelessness, depression and a general self-destructive outlook. “Extreme feelings of suspicion perceived negative motivations of others. Violence against self, property and others, including the members of one’s own group, i.e. friends, relatives, or acquaintances.” Now take this and think about what is taking place in Chicago and other cities around the country. And finally, she mentions Racist Socialization (Internalized Racism).

So why is it that we, as a society, continue to deny the lasting impact of slavery and its resulting racism? Is it just a form of genocide, but in a more subtle sense? How many of you have read the book, Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide (http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Racism-Well-Meaning-People-Perpetuate/dp/1594518289)? Then there is the book by Lena Williams, It’s the Little Things – The Everyday Interactions that Get under the Skin of Blacks and Whites (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/its-the-little-things-lena-williams/1112112918?ean=9780151004072). If you have not, I strongly encourage you to do so.

I believe that we have truly entered into a climate of pervasive “silent racism,” having those subtle negative thoughts and images. They are harmful because they come out without the person realizing it, not to other races or ethnic groups, but to any oppressed group. We all have biases. Unfortunately, we don’t admit they exist. You can’t help but have a bias, if you are human. The problem is not having it, but being aware that you do, and then consciously act to correct it in a positive manner. Unfortunately, we as African Americans also have to deal with the baggage of PTSS, which makes it even more difficult to address.

Again, I believe the key to this threat to our well-being as a nation is to acknowledge that we have a problem and that racism still exists. I first say maybe we should initiate a 12 Step Program for Silent Racism. I am now past the suggesting phase. For instance, we have mandatory programs for sexual harassment; why not this? Why is it that efforts to deal with the biases that exist in our society with regard to race, ethnicity and/or culture are so hard? I think it goes back to a word I often put forth, that word is VALUE. Think about how do we value the lives of others. Think about the words we use that are degrading when it comes to valuing one race, ethnicity or social standing against another. The Father Desbois called it the disease of genocide. In war, we made groups less human to overcome the fear. We are still doing that. Just listen to the way some in our government are describing certain immigrants. As Dr. Harold Freeman once said “In our society we see, value, and behave toward one another through a powerful lens of race.” We see, value and automatically create a bias , whether this is conscious or unconscious. We see them, the others, and automatically form a judgment, good or bad, and act on it, before we think. But sometimes, it is through the sound of one’s voice. Think about it. In fact, think about this entire piece. Do you have a bias, even a little one? Then think about how you act on it. With that you have taken the first step toward solving the problem that has faced America since the first Europeans set foot on this soil and then brought over the first slaves.