African American Health and Posttraumatic Slave Syndrome: A Terror Management Theory Account

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explicate a terror management theory (TMT) analysis of the poor social and psychological well-being of African Americans by drawing upon a model of cultural trauma to explain the antecedents and effects of posttraumatic slave syndrome. Cultural trauma is defined as a state that occurs when a people’s cultural worldview has been destabilized to the point where it does not effectively meet its TMT function of providing a buffer against basic anxiety and uncertainty. The article outlines how the impact of slavery was a significant trauma to African American people, which was carried forward through successive generations; providing an explanation of their current anxiety-related conditions, poor health, and maladaptive behaviors. Findings from health and justice research and qualitative data from narratives of African Americans are presented to substantiate the adaptation of a model of cultural trauma for understanding the contemporary situation of African Americans.

Keywords

cultural trauma posttraumatic slave syndrome African American Health prejudice social justice

Could a curse come down so many ages? Did it live in time, or in the moment?

—(Baldwin, 1952, p. 200)

Introduction

The comparatively negative social and psychological conditions of African Americans are a clear indication of a nationwide problem with a range of manifestations and possible causes (Byrd & Clayton, 2002). African Americans experience higher rates of poverty and are generally less financially secure compared with other Americans. Prejudice, while less overt than in decades past, is still a barrier to the economic and social well-being of African Americans. Even so, it also likely that African Americans are burdened by a past that lingers on in their cultural psyche. The effects of African American enslavement transmitted through successive generations cannot be underestimated; the trauma of enslavement is argued to have been carried by African Americans and manifest in contemporary social, psychological, and physical problems (Akbar, 1996; DeGruy, 2017). The aim of this article is to develop conceptual knowledge on the relationship between intergenerational cultural trauma and the poor social, psychological, and physical health of contemporary African Americans.

Black American Health

On a range of critical measures, African Americans are reported to show comparatively poor physical, psychological, and social health outcomes. Whereas African Americans share a similar life expectancy to White Americans (75.3 vs. 78.8 years; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2012), their quality of life is significantly lower as manifest in rates of physical health. For example, the rate of diabetes is higher among adult African Americans at 11.3% compared with White Americans at 6.8%, the incidence of hypertension is 41.3% compared with White Americans 28.6%, the rate of premature death from heart disease is higher among African Americans than White Americans (65.5 vs. 43.2 per 100,000 persons), and rates of prostate cancer are 208.7 and 123.0 per 100,000 persons in African Americans and White Americans, respectively (American heart Association, 2007; Beckles & Chou, 2013; CDC, 2013; Di Pietro, Chornokur, Kumar, Davis, & Park, 2016; Graham, 2015; Thorpe et al., 2014).

At the psychological level, Sternthal, Slopen, and Williams (2011) reported that African Americans show significantly higher stress in a range of life domains (acute life events, financial, relationship, life, and job discrimination) and these were predictive of depressive symptoms, poor self-rated health, functional physical limitations and chronic illness. In another study, Williams et al. (2007) found self-reported ratings of poor mental health were significantly higher among Black Americans; among persons suffering major depressive disorder, 57% of Black Americans experienced chronic depression with more acute symptoms compared with a rate of 39% among Whites. Although African Americans report lower rates of generalized anxiety (Himle, Baser, Taylor, Campbell, & Jackson, 2009), they show more severe symptoms and greater functional impairment when anxiety is suffered. Moreover, African Americans more frequently meet the criterion for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than White Americans with symptoms persisting for a longer period (Himle et al., 2009; Perez Benitez et al., 2014).

African Americans appear also to show relatively poor outcomes on indices of social health. For example, homicide rates are higher among Black Americans compared with White Americans at 23.1 versus 2.7 per 100,000 population (CDC, 2013), Black men are 5 times more likely to be incarcerated than Whites at 1,408 versus 275 per 100,000 population (Nellis, 2016), illicit drug use is highest among African Americans compared to other Americans (Department of Health and Human Services, 2011), and families of African Americans experience higher rates of intimate partner violence (IPV; Taft, Bryant-Davis, Woodward, Tillman, & Torres, 2009). Nevertheless, Craemer (2011) cautioned that biracial comparisons on social outcomes may be subject to the “small percentages problem” (Craemer, 2011). For example, homicide rates are up to 10 times higher among African Americans compared with other racial groups (CDC, 2013), but the difference in incidence rate is less than 0.01% and disappears as a mere rounding error. As such, relative comparisons between different racial groups on small percentage incidence rates tends to overestimate and ultimately racialize the extent of social problems, such as homicide (Craemer, 2011). On other measures of social outcomes, however, the incidence rates are higher (e.g., 5% of the African American male population are incarcerated in many American states) and indicative of a distinct problem.

Explanations for the comparatively poor physical, psychological, and social health outcomes among African Americans are complex and entail appreciation of the direct and indirect impact of historical, economic, and societal factors on African Americans. Two such factors have received significant focus in the research literature and social policy initiatives: poor economic circumstances and social prejudice, with both being reported as the two most significant stressors to African American people (e.g., Williams & Williams-Morris, 2000).

Poverty and Prejudice

The current poverty rate among Black Americans is 27.4% compared with 9.9% of White Americans and Black unemployment (13.4%) is double that of Whites (6.6%) and has been that way since 1954 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2012). The median household income of Black Americans is half that of White Americans and has been so for at least the past 35 years, and the median wealth of Black families is US$5,677 compared with White families at US$113,149 (Pew Research Center, 2011). African Americans also have less home ownership at 43% compared to Whites at 73% (Callis & Kreslin, 2014) and whereas Blacks are 13.6% of the population, they only represent 1.4% of the top 1% households by income (DeNavas-Walt et al., 2012).

Given these data and the fact that poverty and ill health are strongly correlated (Wolfe, 2012), it is little wonder that African Americans suffer from relatively negative health outcomes. Indeed, Craemer (2011) maintained many of the gaps in social outcomes between Black and White Americans are largely explained by income-related socioeconomic indicators of poverty. Gaps in poverty and income also partially explain the comparatively poor physical and psychological outcomes among African Americans (CDC, 2013). At the same time, however, findings show that the comparatively negative health outcomes experienced by African Americans persist when income and socioeconomic status are statistically controlled on indices such as hypertension and diabetes (Beckles & Chou, 2013; Thorpe et al., 2014), chronic depression, PTSD, and stress (Himle et al., 2009; Sternthal, Slopen & Williliams, 2011).

Apart from poverty, racial bias is also a critical factor to consider in the exegesis of African American health. Although there is significant empirical work demonstrating that explicit racism has declined (e.g., Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, & Krysan, 1997) and that people express generally favorable views about Black Americans, research also clearly shows that implicit prejudice is widespread in the United States (e.g., Nosek et al., 2007; Payne et al., 2010). Moreover, prejudice has been related to negative health outcomes among African Americans (e.g., Brown et al., 2000) on outcomes such as psychiatric symptoms, stress, cigarette smoking (Klonoff, Landrine, & Ullman, 1999; Landrine & Klonoff, 1996) and myocardial infarction (Lukachko, Hatzenbueler, & Keyes, 2014).

Taken together, poverty and prejudice explain a large degree of the poor health experienced by Black Americans and have rightly been the subject of much research and policy initiatives. In 2013, President Obama announced five points to cut poverty in his State of the Union Address: create good jobs, raise wages, training the next generation, investing in children (education and care), and strengthening families (Boteach, 2013). Nevertheless, history is not on his side. Whereas some improvement to the poverty rate occurred with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the mid-1960’s and Bill Clinton’s policies to redress inequality in the 1990’s (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), the positive impact was short-lived; the economic status of Black Americans and the economic inequality between Black and White Americans have changed little in the past 50 years (Plumer, 2013).

Similarly, antidiscrimination laws and policies such as affirmative action have been designed to address prejudice in the workplace and in education. Although there have been success stories, many claim affirmative action policies have failed or at best been a limited solution (M. Alexander, 2011; Colby, 2014). Indeed, high school completion rates may be similar, but 34% of Whites and 21% of Blacks have a college degree (Pew Research Center, 2013), and Black Americans are overrepresented in lower paid service sectors, with lower job security, wages, and benefits (Hamilton, Austin, & Darity, 2011). Despite the best intent of antidiscrimination policies, extant prejudice and inequality is still felt and found by African Americans (Harris, 2010), albeit in more subtle forms; seemingly beyond the influence of explicit laws and policies to address inequality.

Contemporary policies directed to address poverty and prejudice may have limited effect as they primarily target the effect of present injustices and do little to consider the impact of past injustices on the current state of African American health. In this sense, the historical legacy of past policies of enslavement and its associated trauma represent an important sociocultural perspective from which to understand the present generations of African Americans. At issue is the question of whether African Americans live with intergenerational cultural trauma and how it may be related to their current health status.

Intergenerational Cultural Trauma Theory

There have been several theoretical developments toward clearly articulating the concept of cultural trauma and how it may relate to healthy psychological functioning. Cultural trauma is generally defined as a condition or syndrome that occurs when a collective has been subject to an unbearable event or experience that undermines their sense of group identity, values, meaning and purpose, or their cultural worldviews (J. C. Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser, & Szytompka, 2004; Eyerman, 2004; Salzman & Halloran, 2004). The cultural trauma literature has focused on the experiences of Indigenous peoples (e.g., Atkinson, 2002; Evans-Campbell, 2008; Halloran, 2004; Stamm, Stamm, Hudnall, & Higson-Smith, 2004), Holocaust and genocide survivors (Danieli, 1998; Robben & Suarez-Orozco, 2000), and the effects of enslavement on African Americans or postslavery trauma (Akbar, 1996; Pinderhughes, 1990; Pouissant & Alexander, 2000; Wilkins, Whiting, Watson, Russon, & Moncrief, 2013).

The notion that the traumatic effects of enslavement were transferred to successive generations has been put forward in the literature (Akbar, 1996; DeGruy, 2017; Pinderhughes, 1990; Pouissant & Alexander, 2000; Wilkins et al., 2013) and variously labeled as the Residual Effects of Slavery (Akbar, 1996; Wilkins et al., 2013) or posttraumatic slave syndrome (PTSS; Crawford, Nobles, & DeGruy, 2003; DeGruy, 2017). In his seminal treatise on the residual effects of slavery, Akbar (1996) maintained the social and psychological impact of enslavement persisted across generations and still affects the African American personality, in that contemporary Black Americans have inherited an extensive list of dysfunctional attitudes, habits, and behaviors from the era of enslavement. Consistent with this view, the emerging field of epigenetics proposes that the effects of environmental challenges faced by a parent may be displayed by offspring despite the children not encountering the same challenges (Harper, 2005). Although recent discoveries in the biological sciences show that the effects of Holocaust trauma at a molecular level can be passed to the next generation (Yehuda et al., 2016), PTSS entails more complex mechanisms and is generally thought to be transmitted via social processes within the family, community, and society (Crawford et al., 2003).

Theorists on PTSS are also generally in consensus about the significant role intergroup processes play in intergenerational transmission of PTSS; negative race relations, prejudice, and oppression have prolonged the trauma of enslavement. In the view of Baldwin (1984), Black American PTSS is perpetuated by oppression and racism wherein oppression based on relative group power has been a potent psychological force almost totally distorting the psychological adaptiveness of African American people (Kambon & Hopkins, 1993).

Theory on PTSS has further benefited from the work of DeGruy (2001, 2017), who developed a conceptual analysis on the distinct psychology of PTSS, as it bears little resemblance to the individual-focused DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) criteria for PTSD (Bryant-Davis & Ocampo, 2005; Stamm et al., 2004). DeGruy (2017) argued that vacant self-esteem, ever present anger, and racist socialization are the psychological markers for PTSS and explain dysfunctions in family, parenting, and sexuality, and the numerous disparities in health outcomes and well-being experienced by Black Americans. Research by DeGruy (2001) showed that perceptions of disrespect and its effect on lowering self-esteem predicted African American male youth violence. At the same time, meta-analysis by Twenge and Crocker (2002) showed no appreciable difference in self-esteem between the main racial groups in the United States; in fact, self-esteem was found to be generally higher among Black people. Moreover, Mahon, Yarcheski, Yarcheski, and Hanks (2010) found that race and ethnicity were unrelated to anger in their meta-analysis of research conducted with adolescents. T. M. Carson (2013) also found self-esteem and anger were in the normal range and relatively similar among African Americans, children of Holocaust survivors, and Japanese who were subject to internment during WWII. Whereas these findings suggest lowered self-esteem may provide a partial explanation of PTSS, alternative theoretical accounts develop a more complete view of PTSS as representing an intersection between social and psychological processes.

TMT and PTSS

Developments of terror management theory (TMT) provide a conceptual clarification of the social psychological processes underlying PTSS and its effects (e.g., Pyszczynski & Kesebir, 2011). The psychological importance of cultural worldviews is a central feature of TMT. From the perspective of TMT (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997), cultural worldviews are an important repository of valued cultural roles, identities, and standards of behavior, giving group members opportunities for deriving a sense of personal value. TMT further proposes that cultural worldviews have also evolved, in part, to assuage human anxiety about social isolation and existential anxiety. At the most fundamental level, cultural worldviews provide people with a sense of meaning and value; thereby assuaging existential anxiety. The corollary of this proposition is that cultural trauma, wherein a people have suffered a dramatic loss of meaning, identity, and value, would be associated with anxiety-laden thoughts and behaviors; ultimately leading to poor health and social outcomes. From this view, the psychological effects of PTSS would include a higher rate of existential anxiety, a lack of meaning, a fragmented identity, and compromised values. This set of conditions are likely to be manifested in learned helplessness (Maier & Seligman, 1976) or perceived self-inefficacy wherein an individual believes he or she has little control over events; adverse or otherwise.

A TMT perspective on cultural trauma also further clarifies the social processes that have been proposed to perpetuate PTSS. Chief among these is the widespread, persistent, and ongoing oppression of African American people and their culture by dominant groups (Baldwin, 1984; Nobles, 2013). From the view of TMT, dominant cultures are largely inclined to actively suppress minority or alternative cultural group practices and meanings supposedly motivated by the need to defend and protect their own cultural worldviews (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2003). Thus, a large part of intergenerational PTSS is the perpetuation of intergroup conditions that undermine cultural expression or any effort to recover or heal from the initial syndrome (Becker, 1971).

The TMT-derived framework elucidated here provides two main propositions about the nature and effects of PTSS that go beyond previous conceptions. First, PTSS is likely to be associated with a lack of meaning, a fragmented identity, and compromised values, which make individuals susceptible to existential anxiety and produces maladaptive coping strategies and poor health and social outcomes. Second, PTSS is, in part, exacerbated and perpetuated by dominant groups because they seek to undermine alternative worldviews as means of defending and asserting the veracity of their own cultural worldview. Evidence to support these propositions is revealed by analysis of African American narratives and discourse, and the extant empirical literature.

Evidence to Support a TMT Conception of PTSS

Personal narratives and discourse showing that African American cultural meanings, identity, and values during enslavement were unstable and insecure provide an important qualitative line of evidence to support a TMT perspective on PTSS. There was little value or meaning to African American lives; they were callously tied to their capacity for labor or ability to reproduce (Yetman, 2000). Moreover, their identity was literally supplied by whoever happened to own them such that there was “not even a separate identity the ego can claim” (Baraka, 1963, p. 60). African Americans were effectively banned from any pursuit of a cultural life through laws to prevent reading, writing, and most communal life (Du Bois, 1903).

Ultimately, there was little or no psychological meaning to the independent or unique existence of African American people or culture. As such, the TMT predicted symptoms of cultural trauma, in the form of hopelessness, despair, and anxiety, were evident during enslavement and found in personal narratives: “I was broken in body, soul, and spirit; the dark night of slavery closed in on me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (Douglass, 1845, p. 63). “I had rather live and die in jail, than drag on, from day to day, through such a living death.” (Jacobs, 1861, p. 63). Moreover, the words of the first African American woman to write of her experiences in enslavement allude to the transmission of cultural trauma:

The greatest curse of slavery is its hereditary character. The father leaves to his son an inheritance of toil and misery, and his place on the fetid straw in the miserable corner, with no hope or possibility of anything better. And the son in his turn transmits the same to his offspring and thus forever. (Crafts, 2002, p. 205)

Anecdotal evidence of intergenerational trauma or PTSS is shown also in the collective voice of narrative processes and discourse (Evans-Campbell, 2008). In the stories of many prevalent Black authors over the last 80 years, we see the traumatic and despairing lives of African Americans (e.g., Gaines, 1993; Morrison, 1987; Walker, 1982; Wright, 1940). In Black Boy (Wright, 1945), Richard Wright laments “My days and nights were one long, quiet, continuously contained dream of terror, tension, and anxiety. I wondered how long I could bear it” (p. 253).

Perceptions of helplessness and anxiety in African American music also support the TMT perspective on PTSS. African American songs of lament during enslavement reflected their condition: “To those songs, I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception.” (Douglass, 1845, p. 26). Still later, W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) similarly reflected on African American folk songs as being “the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing. . . ” (p. 215). Ultimately, the uniquely African American blues movement developed from this legacy; not only viewed as “the most plaintive and melancholy music imaginable” (Baraka, 1963, p. 78) but one of the most influential and sustained music forms across the 20th century. More recently, Rap music, with its overtones of misogyny and violence, can be seen to reflect and be a response to a culture of despair and helplessness, especially among men (Richardson & Scott, 2002).

Despite their anecdotal quality, the voices of African American people since the era of slavery are consistent with the TMT-predicted effects of PTSS; the nonprobability sample of African American narratives, discourse, stories, and views of music presented here is consistent with the idea that despair and helplessness were present in successive generations. Indeed, the contemporary situation of African American culture is viewed similarly and described by Baldwin (1984) as being practically on the edge of self-destruction and labeled as a collective pathology with respondents in a qualitative study by Barden (2013) claiming that enslavement legacies affect current-day African American psychological functioning. Moreover, research participants in a study by Jenkins (2001) expressed a sense of hopelessness and despair about contemporary African American culture with statements such as “we the African American family are lost; without a heritage, tradition, a foundation,” “we lost a sense of who we are,” “I don’t think we know who we are or where we are going,” and “stagnated.” Even though participants also reported that slavery was not talked about in families, they viewed that the effects of enslavement are still present today and slave mentality is still present among Blacks and Whites.

Direct transfer of PTSS may not occur at the family level, but the trauma of slavery on African Americans can be said to have been transferred through generations by several other means and processes that are consistent with a TMT account of PTSS. One very immediate process occurred at the political and legal level of American society with the failure of the postcivil war reconstruction policies to lift African Americans “up from slavery” (Du Bois, 1903), and the imposition of “Jim Crow” laws, which were in effect until 1965 (Litwack, 2009). The latter was a direct method to segregate Black Americans from the White population and impose racial discrimination resulting in a still oppressed, second class people. Moreover, the rise of White supremacy groups such as the Klu Klux Klan instilled the threat of death and terror upon African Americans who “dared” to exercise their civil liberties (Morewitz, 2008). The TMT perspective accounts for such prejudiced behavior as it predicts dominant groups would seek to suppress African American culture out of sense of fear of the “other” or to assert their own cultural superiority and self-righteousness. Indeed, Watt-Jones (2002) discussed internalized racism and the fact that part of the problem is that Whites commit prejudice out of sense of fear and anxiety; anxiety among Whites can engender anxiety among people of African descent.

Empirical evidence also supports the TMT account of two central PTSS processes: the relationship between PTSS and anxiety-related health problems, and the relationship between prejudice and the TMT-predicted effect of PTSS. For example, Conner-Warren (2014) found high levels of accumulated trauma among African American students with negative correlations between female perceptions of their health and systolic BP. Moreover, Neale, Rich, and Smucker (1994) found that African Americans diagnosed with a panic disorder experience higher rates of hypertension, and African American adolescents also reported higher levels of hopelessness in a study by Bolland, Lian, and Formichella (2005), which was further found to correlate with increased sexual risk-taking behavior (Kagan et al., 2012) and uniquely related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors in African Americans (Hisch, Visser, Chang, & Jeglic, 2012).

Research has also highlighted the negative psychological and health impact of prejudice on Black people that are consistent with a TMT account of PTSS. In one study, Soto, Dawson-Andoh, and BeLue (2011) found in a sample of 3,570 African Americans that race-based discrimination predicted generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and not PTSD or major depressive disorder and not in other groups (Afro-Caribbean or non-Hispanic Whites). Harrell, Hall, and Taliaferro (2003) also found in a review of 16 studies that racism increases arousal states such as anxiety and hypervigilance and symptoms of PTSD (e.g., Butts, 2002) and has negative effects on blood pressure (e.g., Krieger & Sidney, 1996). Research by Klonoff et al. (1999) found racial discrimination significantly accounted for 15% of psychiatric symptoms among Black Americans. Moreover, Landrine and Klonoff (1996) reported that African Americans who had experienced racist events in the past year showed higher rates of stress and cigarette smoking.

Overall, qualitative and quantitative evidence is consistent with a TMT account of PTSS in several ways. First, evidence supports the TMT prediction that cultural trauma experienced by African Americans during the period of enslavement and PTSS would be associated with existential anxiety, lack of meaning and value, hopelessness, and a fragmented identity. Second, there is evidence to show that trauma experienced by contemporary African Americans is manifest in anxiety-related physical and psychological problems predicted by TMT. Third, the evidence is consistent with the TMT prediction that intergroup processes such as racial prejudice are in a large way responsible for accentuating and sustaining PTSS and its negative effects on African American health and well-being.

Discussion

The comparatively poorer general state of African American physical, psychological, and social health relative to Americans of other backgrounds demands a comprehensive response from researchers, health practitioners, policy makers, and the community. The case made here and elsewhere is that cultural trauma experienced by African Americans during the era of enslavement was transmitted to the current generation, and PTSS is related to their current general state of poor health. However, this article extends current conceptions of PTSS by making the argument that TMT provides a robust account of the relationship between PTSS, prejudice, and the negative health and welfare of African Americans.

Whereas the negative psychological effects of slavery are argued from a TMT perspective to have been transmitted through generations to affect the health and well-being of contemporary African Americans, this does not discount the impact of lost intergenerational inheritances as a result of slavery estimated to be in the order of at least US$2-4 trillion (Conley, 2002). As argued by Mare (2011), there is a significant likelihood that economic disadvantages suffered by African Americans during slavery were inherited by successive generations, especially as institutionalized subjugation and segregation persisted. From this perspective, intergenerational transmission of economic “disinheritance” largely explains the comparatively high poverty rate among contemporary African Americans, which may be properly addressed with reparatory justice (United Nations, 2016). Similarly, a TMT perspective on PTSS suggests that the cultural trauma of slavery was transmitted through successive generations and provides a useful and additional explanation of the comparatively poor physical and psychological outcomes among contemporary African Americans especially as these outcomes persist even when economic disadvantage is taken into account.

A TMT model that clarifies the role of PTSS in the health of African Americans has a range of potential implications for health, policy, and the community initiatives. Current and past strategies to redress the inequalities in the health and well-being of African Americans have included a focus on alleviating poverty and prejudice. Except for some isolated and temporary improvements, these have largely proved ineffective; poverty rates have changed little over the past 50 years (Plumer, 2013), and African Americans are still victims of prejudicial and unequal treatment; as highlighted by the contemporary Black Lives Matter social movement (Garcia & Sharif, 2015). It may be that PTSS is an interrelated factor in the failure of poverty and prejudice strategies. W. E. B. Du Bois put this idea well when he said,

It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. (Du Bois, 1903, p. 160)

Similarly, PTSS may act as a reciprocal cause and effect in the state of African American health and well-being, and failure to acknowledge and act on this may undermine the efficacy of poverty- and prejudice-reduction strategies. The TMT approach would further suggest the importance of strategies to strengthen the resilience of African American cultural worldviews to remedy the negative impact of cultural trauma on their health. Such strategies have shown some signs of success among Indigenous cultural groups who have suffered cultural trauma (see Salzman & Halloran, 2004). For example, Stamm et al. (2004) reported that connection to heritage was associated with healing the negative impact of traumatic stresses of the past on Native Americans. The positive effects of racial respect, cultural pride, and socialization on mental health have also been shown among African Americans: transmitting rules, regulations, skills, values, history, and knowledge about culture and race relations from one generation to the next has been found as a harm reduction moderator among African Americans (DeGruy, Kjellstrand, Briggs, & Brennan, 2012). Moreover, Stevenson (2003) has shown interventions that harness cultural themes (e.g., cultural identity and values) significantly reduces anger and aggression in African American adolescent males. From a TMT viewpoint, community- and society-level strategies focused on supporting a secure and stable cultural identity, values, and meanings would be central to a resilient African American cultural worldview (also see Constantine, Alleyne, Wallace, & Franklin-Jackson, 2006) and be predicted to positively influence their health and well-being.

Of course, the success of any strategy to alleviate PTSS and its effects needs to be considered in terms of the bigger picture of relations between Blacks and Whites in the United States. In a way, there is some truth to the statement that “slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks” (Jacobs, 1861, p.61). Yet, the contemporary notions of collective responsibility from the past era of slavery and White privilege from the imposition racial inequality is largely unacknowledged or resisted by most White Americans (Pinterits, Poteat, & Spanierman, 2009). This is not surprising from a TMT perspective; dominant groups directly and indirectly act to defend their own worldview and suppress alternative worldviews out of fear or to exercise their superiority. As Martin Luther King put it: “When Negroes assertively moved on to ascend the second rung of the ladder, a firm resistance from the white community developed” (King, 1968, p. 6) and more recently remarked by M. Alexander (2011) “if your strategy for racial injustice involves waiting for whites to be fair; history suggests it will be a long wait” (p. 257). Nonetheless, recent research suggests that one way out of this dilemma is to emphasize a shared worldview and humanity (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005; Halloran & Chambers, 2011) to reduce the impact of intergroup tensions. Martin Luther King advocated similarly when he argued for a human rights rather than civil rights approach to alleviating the poor social and economic conditions of African Americans (M. Alexander, 2011). A human rights approach has the potential to heal the past Black and White relations in the United States and nullify any resistance there may be to the aims and aspirations of those who would seek to alleviate the negative effects of PTSS on the health and well-being of African Americans.

Conclusion

The analysis and evidence presented here provides a case for a distinct conception of the processes behind PTSS based on the TMT view of intergenerational cultural trauma. From a TMT perspective, cultural trauma undermines the protection cultural worldviews provide from anxiety; left unchecked, anxiety negatively influences physical, psychological, and social health. Not everyone is affected by PTSS of course (Stamm et al., 2004) and Black Americans may be more resilient to stress than White Americans because they are more prepared to cope with adversity (Assari, 2016), however, the current generation of African Americans appear to generally suffer from the effects of PTSS, via collective transmission through time and space of the traumatic impact of enslavement. Such an analysis provides important research directions to clarify the extent and effects of PTSS, and the TMT perspective suggests that strategies to improve African American health and well-being should take into account the impact of PTSS and the importance of strengthening the cultural identity, values, meaning, and significance of the African American worldview. Sustained and long-term efforts to acknowledge and take account of the impact of past trauma on current generations of African Americans with a human rights approach seems highly pertinent to strategies and policies that address their current state of poor health and well-being. As said by Gaines (1993), “you’ll see that it’ll take more than five and half months to wipe away—peel—scrape away the blanket of ignorance that has been plastered and replastered over those brains in the past three hundred years.” (p. 64).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Michelle Major is acknowledged for providing the initial impetus for this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Michael J. Halloran, PhD, is an honorary associate professor at La Trobe University, School of Psychology and Public Health. His research interests center on social justice, prejudice, and the effects of culture and cultural trauma on health and well-being.

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