400 Years of African Slavery in America

[Neto]

Both the US Constitution and every word in the Bible were written well outside of Josh's arbitrary 7-generation statute of limitations. By people long dead. I guess they are both completely irrelevant to our "situations today."

Whatever my ancestors were doing in the 1700s or 2,000 years ago is irrelevant to today. Whether they were "good" people, "bad" people, "oppressed", or "oppressors".

So segregation, Jim Crow and the Holocaust happened within living memory. The Armenian genocide and the Tulsa massacre happened less than seven generations ago (which is about 140 years). Are people allowed to be upset about those things?

My grandfather was a young adult when the Tulsa riots happened. But I'd say you'd be hard pressed to give an example of 7 generations in 140 years. But that's immaterial, really. The 4 generation I mentioned in my family background goes back to Gottleib Boese, born around 1788, died 1832. I was born in the mid 1950's. Not dead yet. That is +/- 170 years for 4 generations. But my point was that I cannot imagine being "shaken to the core" by what he went through in his rather short life or around 45 years. One of my great great grandfathers died in his twenties, leaving his young wife with two boys, my great grandfather, who was 4, and his younger brother, who was 2. From what I know most of my ancestors of that era were landless sharecroppers in the Mennonite colonies in Russia.

[Neto]

Whatever my ancestors were doing in the 1700s or 2,000 years ago is irrelevant to today. Whether they were "good" people, "bad" people, "oppressed", or "oppressors".

So segregation, Jim Crow and the Holocaust happened within living memory. The Armenian genocide and the Tulsa massacre happened less than seven generations ago (which is about 140 years). Are people allowed to be upset about those things?

Interesting you should mention Tulsa - I live in OK and the current excavation and DNA research are very much in the news here.

I grew up 16 miles north of downtown Tulsa, between Collinsville and Owasso. The "Black Wall Street" area (Greenwood) was on the north side of town, and we would go through or close to that area on the few occasions we went into town (until they put in the Mingo Valley Expressway).

[Only an Anz]

Interesting you should mention Tulsa - I live in OK and the current excavation and DNA research are very much in the news here.

I’m next door in SE Colorado. My in-laws have Oklahoma accents.

Congrats...or my condolences, depending

[RZehr]

So segregation, Jim Crow and the Holocaust happened within living memory. The Armenian genocide and the Tulsa massacre happened less than seven generations ago (which is about 140 years). Are people allowed to be upset about those things?

Interesting you should mention Tulsa - I live in OK and the current excavation and DNA research are very much in the news here.

I grew up 16 miles north of downtown Tulsa, between Collinsville and Owasso. The "Black Wall Street" area (Greenwood) was on the north side of town, and we would go through or close to that area on the few occasions we went into town (until they put in the Mingo Valley Expressway).

Interesting. I know people in Skiatook.

[Szdfan]

Whatever my ancestors were doing in the 1700s or 2,000 years ago is irrelevant to today. Whether they were "good" people, "bad" people, "oppressed", or "oppressors".

So segregation, Jim Crow and the Holocaust happened within living memory. The Armenian genocide and the Tulsa massacre happened less than seven generations ago (which is about 140 years). Are people allowed to be upset about those things?

My grandfather was a young adult when the Tulsa riots happened. But I'd say you'd be hard pressed to give an example of 7 generations in 140 years. But that's immaterial, really. The 4 generation I mentioned in my family background goes back to Gottleib Boese, born around 1788, died 1832. I was born in the mid 1950's. Not dead yet. That is +/- 170 years for 4 generations. But my point was that I cannot imagine being "shaken to the core" by what he went through in his rather short life or around 45 years. One of my great great grandfathers died in his twenties, leaving his young wife with two boys, my great grandfather, who was 4, and his younger brother, who was 2. From what I know most of my ancestors of that era were landless sharecroppers in the Mennonite colonies in Russia.

140 years is what Google told me seven generations were, I guess assuming that a generation is twenty years. It’s an admittedly imprecise measurement of time.

I don’t think we’re talking about people being “shaken by the core” — or having a strong emotional reaction to their ancestors’ suffering about what their ancestors experienced, I think we’re talking about transgenerational or intergenerational trauma, which is a lot more complex and subtle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transge ... nal_trauma

Transgenerational trauma, or intergenerational trauma is the psychological effects that the collective trauma experienced by a group of people has on subsequent generations in that group. Collective trauma is the effect of psychological trauma experienced by communities and identity groups and carried as part of the group's collective memory and shared sense of identity.

Transgenerational trauma is a collective experience that affects groups of people because of their cultural identity (e.g., ethnicity, nationality, or religious identity). Because of its collective nature, the term is not usually applied to single families or individual parent–child dyads. However, like survivors of individual child abuse, individually, both direct survivors of the collective trauma and members of subsequent generations may develop complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

For example:

https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/bitstre ... sequence=1

As I understand it, the concept of intergenerational trauma deals with how trauma shapes communities and culture, not so much your own personal feelings. Scripture seems to have some sort of understanding of intergenerationality:

Numbers 4:18

‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’

[PetrChelcicky]

If we are thinking about the aftermaths of Black history in America 1619-1866, can we perhaps include the aftermaths of Black history in Africa 10000 B.C. to 1619? (By the way, most Blacks did not come in 1619; it's rather 1719 or 1819.)
Perhaps the Blacks who came to America in 1619 (or whenever) brought some deficiencies with them which simply were not stopped by exposing them to a pre-modern to modern society?
Seen in relation, I think that two or three generations of slavery may have had only little impact, or none at all, on Blacks.

The theory that Blacks are deeply informed by the impact of slavery gets more and more threadbare. We can see this, as always in epistemology, by the growth of spurious inventions which become necessary to fill the growing holes and to uphold the theory at all (like "microagressions" or "intergenerational trauma").

[PetrChelcicky]

By the way it is correct that the Christan church had abolished slavery among Christians (which was thereafter replaced by "serfdom" resp. "bondage") in the European heartland and insofar early Quakers and Anabaptists had good reasons to look at this as a strange (and pagan) modern invention. The American legal apparatus for cattle slavery was created only in the time of De-Christianization: first the Renaissance (revitalization of Roman law!), then the Enlightenment - often as consequence of a lawsuit filed by a slave or former slave; then the negative verdict was used as a precedent.
Where Christians contacted with Jews, Muslims or Heathens, there was a constant quarrel about who is allowed to possess, or to trade with, slaves. On the whole, neighbouring Christians adapted the mores of the Muslims.

[PetrChelcicky]

"Intergenerational trauma" is one of those cases where clearly defined scientific (social psychological) concepts (like "racism") are more or less deliberately misused.
"Trauma", meaning something like thrust, stroke, collision etc., is at first the sudden cause of a physical damage and can be transferred to a similarly suddenly caused psychical damage.
Now, for instance, my mother had a real trauma. Having lived in Berlin during the air-raids she was completely beside herself when she heard alarm sirens (two times each year, b/o testing reasons). As a child I was impressed enough to become anxious when there was a plane above me. But that was not a trauma, but "induced fear". And my children would only have that fear now if I had insisted on telling them stories about air-raids and how their grandmother was affected by them. But of course I haven't done that. And even if, my children would not be "traumatized", because their fear would not be the unintentional product of a sudden experience, but the intentional product by my telling them stories.

[Neto]

Interesting you should mention Tulsa - I live in OK and the current excavation and DNA research are very much in the news here.

I grew up 16 miles north of downtown Tulsa, between Collinsville and Owasso. The "Black Wall Street" area (Greenwood) was on the north side of town, and we would go through or close to that area on the few occasions we went into town (until they put in the Mingo Valley Expressway).

Interesting. I know people in Skiatook.

Wow. That's not far from 'home' at all, and it's where I took my driving test. My great uncle Benjamin Wolgemuth (married to one of my Grandpa Wedel's older sisters - one of the few of my relatives who were born in Russia that were still living when I was growing up) owned the 5 & 10 there in Skiatook. Oklahoma State Highway 20 passes through town, so we always went through Skiatook on our way to the Kremlin-Hillsdale area, where my grandparents (Buller) lived.

[Neto]

I don’t think we’re talking about people being “shaken by the core” — or having a strong emotional reaction to their ancestors’ suffering about what their ancestors experienced, I think we’re talking about transgenerational or intergenerational trauma, which is a lot more complex and subtle.

The "seven generations" came from my post. I was responding to the BBC article I gave the reference for, in which the woman being interviewed said that she was "shaken to the core" by events 7 generations back. Maybe you missed my comments about that, because no one has actually quoted my post - just the reference to seven generations was picked up on by Josh. I was not responding to or commenting on the politics of this topic, I just thought it was strange, and rather over the top, to say that one was "shaken to the core" by events that far back, and it seems you would possibly agree. So if no direct response is intended, then please drop the references to 7 generations. It makes no sense outside of a direct response to the news story I quoted. Her personal "emotional reaction" to that event 7 generations back was the focal point of her comments, so at least for her, this plays a part in her experience as a descendant of slaves. Are you maintaining that her emotions in this respect are invalid?