UMSL holds White Privilege Conference
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
The seventh annual White Privilege Conference was held last week on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, which also co-sponsored the event. Participants from around the world converged in St. Louis for the four-day event dedicated to tackling the difficult issues of racism, white supremacy and white privilege, the theme this year being Youth: A Call to Action.
On Friday, Joy DeGruy Leary provided the keynote address on “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome.” An assistant professor of social work at Portland State University, Leary is an internationally renowned lecturer and consultant on matters of race, culture and education.
Leary described the way in which Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome affects self-esteem and standards of beauty of the oppressed people.
She said, “(Growing up), I remember people saying things like, ‘He was fine ‘cause he was light-skinned’ or ‘She got good hair all the way down to the root.’”
Leary discussed reactions to her personal decision to wear her “natural,” saying that people suddenly thought she was radical when she stopped straightening her hair. Their reaction, she said, was just another symptom of the pathology of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which she said many psychology professionals are reluctant to embrace.
Leary defined Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome as “the residual impact of multi-generational trauma unhealed.”
“We’ve looked at trauma as it relates to other groups, particularly Jews and the Holocaust,” she said. “We have documentary films being made to this day to document that trauma.”
Leary said that following the events of 9/11, “the entire country was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but whenever we raise the issue as it relates to black people, the response changes.”
She said the trans-Atlantic slave trade, “guaranteed the progeny of the white South would have privilege and the blacks would have debt and pain. The after-effects are still being seen today.”
Leary then asked the audience, “Is it plausible that a people escaped 246 solid years of trauma unscathed? “If you think 246 years of unpaid labor had no impact, you’re delusional.”
She returned to how Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome continues to affect the standards of beauty among African Americans who have co-opted a Eurocentric standard, while many Caucasians are veering toward a more African esthetic with collagen-injected lips, surgically enhanced backsides and (of course) tanned skin.
“They tell us that we’re ugly, and the most horrific part of it is we believe it,” she said.
Next Leary explained the psychological impact of years of racial violence on both blacks and whites.
“We talk about the Crips and the Bloods, but don’t talk about the most prolific and violent gang in the history of this country – the Klu Klux Klan,” Leary said, at which point she showed graphic images of lynchings and burnings of black people surrounded by smiling, well-dressed white adults and children.
“Look at who’s standing around,” she said to the visibly stunned audience. “These are not big, fat, toothless, redneck wonders. These are ordinary folk dressed up in their Sunday best rushing to be in the picture.
“We talk about what happened to black folks, but we need to talk about what happened to white folks too,” she added.
And that’s exactly what the white privilege conference aimed to do – provide an open forum for blacks and whites to really begin to dig deep into the issues of race, power and privilege.
“Racism is not just bias, prejudice and discrimination,” Shaki Butler, who presented a workshop on internalized racism, The Way Home: An Experiential Journey, said. “It is all of that, plus the power to impact policy and law.”
Butler is the executive director of World Trust Educational Services, Inc. and the producer and director of the groundbreaking documentaries The Way Home, Light in the Shadows and Making White Visible. She said that the purpose of the White Privilege Conference “was not to make white people feel bad or guilty, but rather to see how all of us, whether black or white, are embedded in this system and how the system maintains itself.”
There is probably no greater current example of the way race and class is intertwined into the fabric of American society than the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“Some black people were ashamed at seeing those poor black folks,” Leary said. “But they’ve always been there. We were just okay with not seeing them.”
The most shocking response came not at the apathy towards the human victims, but at the hypersensitivity to the animal victims displayed by some whites and mainstream media.
“White folks cried when they saw the pets,” Leary said.
“They cried and said, ‘Oh Fee-Fee’ and then sent planes to go and pick up the pooch. But there was no empathy for the blacks, because the reality is that they were closer to their pets than they were to black people. Black people were only the ones in the background, clearing the table or sweeping the floor.”
As the session drew to a close, Leary described a “diagram of oppression” in which white men were at the top followed by white females, black males of color and ending with women of color on the bottom.
“Women of color are the oppressed of the oppressed,” Leary explained. “And who do they oppress? The children, and the cycle continues.”
Leary said in order for the cycle of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome and the racism at its heart to end, “We must all heal. It’s a collective healing that must happen.”
