Key Points:
- Cognitive psychology and epigenetics has highlighted that not only can traumatic stress modify behaviour, cognition, and psychological functioning, but that many of these effects can be transmitted to subsequent generations.
- For the UNESCO Slave Route Project, the challenge is extending this approach to acknowledge the impacts of postcolonial cognitive dissonance, and to develop a ‘healing map’ to better understand how to heal the persons and communities impacted intergenerationally and the structures of social and economic inequalities founded on historic wrongdoing.
- The violence of slavery did not end with abolition. Its contemporary consequences are still active in the form of the terrible poison of racism that continues to contaminate societies. Even today, racism kills, discriminates, and humiliates.
- Slavery contributed importantly to the wealth of the West.
- More generally, the economic prosperity of Western Europe and North America is largely due to a system of dehumanisation that included slavery, colonisation, and genocide, which caused unimaginable bloodshed and suffering, and which has also caused continuing exploitation and oppression.
- This has left many countries in Africa, the Caribbean and South America materially impoverished, economically underdeveloped, and politically vulnerable. It has left many peoples socially divided and spiritually wounded. For people in these regions, and for African Americans, healing directed at changing the sociostructural conditions of society is paramount. Without systemic transformation, other healing processes will tend only to scratch the surface.
- We need to change governance processes and institutional structures that treat human beings merely as economic gain. These are all part of systems of production that have been normalised and plagued contemporary global societies.
- This is a monumental task because abolishing racist capitalism would mean a fundamental change in the values that our institutions are built on: towards the recognition of the intrinsic value of human well-being and the equal value of all persons. This is the reverse of what we have now: practices that put wealth accumulation before well-being.
Summary:
A person is wounded when she is dehumanised, instrumentalised or treated as less than fully human. When a person is instrumentalised or treated solely as a means to an end, she is dehumanised. As such, dehumanisation is an element of ill-being, the opposite of dignity and well-being.Being dehumanised is something that others have done to one, be they a person, a group of people, a community, an institution, a set of cultural practices or a whole system.
Ultimately, healing is a process that addresses the root cause of dehumanisation and remedies its effects. It also includes recognising the structural conditions that dehumanise. Such processes comprise cognitive, emotional, relational and spiritual engagements in which, among other things, people directly experience each other’s humanity.
The fact that the wounding of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery has continued until today as dehumanisation in various social guises, including racism, inequality, injustice and white privilege, is important for understanding the intricate relationships between healing and wounding. Structural violence and harm experienced by people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere, such as material poverty, social deprivation, flawed justice systems, and lack of access to quality education, healthcare and housing, must be recognised as, in part, the consequences of this basic type of wounding. The same applies to racism inherent in cultural, political and economic systems and their implications in terms of people’s civic participation. The power dynamics affect especially people’s agency over their own destiny, as well as opportunities to partake in decision-making processes concerning their well-being.
- Although legal reforms in the United States, such as Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have ended some forms of discrimination, laws could do more than ending segregation; they could contribute to structural transformation.
- Although some universities allocate funds to support students from African American backgrounds, reparations must be situated within a financial system that ensures more fairness and equal opportunity. The situations are repeated in other parts of the world. For instance, although there are some legislative commitments to guarantee people of African descent access to land in many countries in South America, such as in Colombia and Brazil, such commitments are not sufficient in addressing the legacies of injustice as a result of slave trade and slavery.
Data:
- Since 2010, their America Healing initiative has been addressing the need for racial healing, including the wounds of trans-Atlantic slavery. The WKKF programmes stress the importance of shifting the narratives around racial divides towards the common humanity of all.
- Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) aims at helping communities to heal and transform. The TRHT Framework consists of five areas: narrative change, racial healing and relationship building, separation, law, and economy.
- The TRHT recognises that in North America, people’s life narratives have been shaped by an ideology of racism, which justified economic expansion through slavery. It seeks to create ‘new authentic stories that honour the complexity of the past while forging a more equitable future.
- Judith Katz (1987), people of European descent tend to be less aware of the institutional and structural nature of contemporary racism than those of African descent.
- Past trauma tends to leave ‘stings or scars in our emotional memory which could be passed from one generation to another. These arise from anger, fear, judgement, guilt, and misconceptions. Unless these resentments are removed through forgiveness, compassion and understanding, they will continue to serve as triggers of negative emotions and hostility towards oneself or others.
Statistics:
- In 1860, 80% of the gross national product of the United States was tied to slavery.
- Financial distribution is key to perpetuating institutionalised racism and continuing the systemic wounding of slavery. For example, about 25% of all African Americans live in poverty across the continent. The current economic system structurally and systemically favours the rich and disfavours the poor. Given our history, this is bound to have profoundly racial implications. Financial distribution is key to perpetuating institutionalised racism.
- In 2019, the US federal government spent just $105 million for magnet schools that stress racial integration and inclusion of students from deprived backgrounds compared to the $15.9 billion required for fully funding these schools.
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