We feel their pain
You know, I spend a lot of time defending both psychometricians and psychologists, because, technically, I'm both (my Ph.D. is in Psychology). Whenever some columnist rants that all standardized tests are designed to keep minorities down, I take it personally, but I'm also always ready to debate those who feel the entirety of clinical psychology and psychiatric medicine is just so much hoo-ha. The field of clinical psychology has had many beneficial effects on human behavior. I see cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical-behavioral therapy, and drug treatment as godsends for those with depression, manic-depression, and personality disorders, not just a bunch of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo and quack medicine.
And what thanks do I get for defending clinical psychologists? A group consisting of a clinical psychologist and two social worker have come up with the purely scientific, empirically-tested, theoretically-sound, nope-no-political-motivation-here "illness" known as "post-traumatic slavery disorder". No, this doesn't apply to people who are currently slaves in certain other countries (*coughMuslimcountriescough*) - this applies to Americans, living Americans, even ones whose ancestors were not slaves.
As Dave Barry likes to say, I am not making this up.
Mims, Reid, and Larry Higginbottom, another black social worker, recently taught a symposium at the Simmons Graduate School of Social Work and are writing a book about what they call ''post-traumatic slavery disorder'' - a derivative of post-traumatic stress disorder. They are holding workshops to propose to fellow professionals that drug abuse, broken families, crime, and low educational attainment in segments of the black community can be directly linked to the trauma of slavery, and that ''black people as a whole are suffering from PTSD,'' Mims said.
Now, Mims, Reid, and Higginbottom - none with backgrounds in academia - have taken it upon themselves to try to educate other mental health workers about their theory, and promote a curriculum and therapy based on the idea.
"Low educational attainment" - yup, those low SAT scores are directly attributable to the trauma of slavery - and not in a social or cultural sense, mind you; in a psychological sense. So, the idea of personal "trauma" has now been perverted to mean "something traumatic that happened to someone else in the past", and all social and cultural ills in the black community can be considered due to a horrible, wretched government policy that was rectified 137 years ago.
But, if this theory were correct, wouldn't the Civil War and the eradication of slavery have been as resoundingly therapeutic as slavery was traumatic? After all, the patients who are allegedly suffering from "post-traumatic slavery disorder" live in the only country in the world that tore itself apart in a battle to end slavery, and whose black citizens enjoy a higher standard of living than the black citizens of any other country in the world. This is not to say that there are no racial problems and no racial prejudice in the U.S., but the proposal of this "syndrome" seems to suggest that the social programs and the civil rights movements of the last forty years have had no effect whatsoever, and that black Americans are in fact no better off now than were their counterparts of 1866. This idea is simply lunatic to anyone with a knowledge of American culture and history.
Is the battle for the acceptance of "post-traumatic slavery disorder" a courageous fight to help those who are all helpless victims of post-slavery depression and psychosis - ''black people as a whole", plus Latinos, so we're talking about a vast number of Americans - or is it in itself an insidious, racist idea that robs blacks and Latinos of the opportunity to view themselves as individuals who are masters of their own destiny? Is it the case, as Ward Connelly says, that "Some people are just looking for reasons to fail...this notion of a post-slavery syndrome falls into that category...We don't want young black kids to grow up thinking they are weak and can't look after themselves.''
Interesting thought: How would black Americans respond to a white psychologist who suggested that blacks had no control over their behavior now because of the existence of slavery so many years ago? Do you think that if a white psychologist argued that blacks were doomed to poverty, drug abuse, and low SAT scores because of slavery, that might seem, well, quite a bit racist? Why should it be any different because it happens to be a black psychologist in this case?
Anyway, if you find this idea as racist, condescending, and just plain loony as I do, then you must NOT miss the OpinionJournal's contest for the best trauma-related "disorder" ideas. It's hard to pick my favorite, but here are a few of them:
Bill Odom: I suffer from pretraumatic middle-aged white-male disorder. As I grow older I become increasingly traumatized by the mantle of responsibility that I will acquire. It will soon be my fault that African-Americans were forced into slavery. It will be my fault that Native Americans were stripped of their heritage and lands. It will be my fault that women were second-class citizens and don't earn as much as I do. It will be my fault that Muslims around the world must face Zionist aggression (and I'm a Methodist!). It will be my fault the homeless have no home, the pro-choice have limited choice, and the poor have fewer tax breaks. And I'm supposed to laugh all of that off on the way to the bank?
Benny Goodman: I've got PTID, post-traumatic Inquisition disorder. After Spain threw out all the Jews in 1492, my family lost all their money and had to wonder around Europe for years. I can't even hear the word "Spain" or "Spanish" or anything even close to that without going into convulsions. I cannot enjoy My Fair Lady ("The rain in S---- stays mainly in the plain"). In high school I had to take French, because the other language offering was S---ish, and you can't believe how much I hated that. Even the word "Danish" gives me the creeps; it ends in "nish"! Thus, I can only eat cookies, and cannot enjoy a good Blueberry da----.
John Kuszewski: PTSD--Polish something, something . . . darn, what was the question?