In the Black community worldwide, mental ill-health manifests in myriad individual and social dysfunctions. The impulse to harm others, which is a version of self-harm, has now been normalised in crisis proportions. Jamaica has the dubious distinction of dominating the field of domestic and community violence in the Caribbean and Latin America. From a low of 3.9 murders per 100,000 in 1962, to an apex of 52 per 100,000 in 2021, Jamaica has demonstrated a catastrophic capacity for self-destruction.
The relentless impulse for self-other violence is rooted in the brutal intergenerational practices that were orchestrated in the torture environment of enslavement plantations. This claim is likely to result in avoidance and rejection by those who would like to disassociate the present from the past. However, rigorous research points decisively in the direction of the destructive complexes entrenched in the dehumanising conditioning of black people by Caucasians over centuries.
This system of violence is being perpetuated by Blacks themselves these days. However, the violence provides evidence of the loss of self-efficacy in a present that cannot be divorced from the past. Sekou Mims, Larry Higginbottom and Omar Reid, the authors of Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder, suggest that the self-destructive behaviours of murders and maiming are not to be analysed in isolation from the genesis of such trauma.
The authors argue further that the tremendous syndrome of harm inflicted on others in the family and community rely on a systematic programming that was entrenched by the centuries of the dehumanisation engendered by the Maafa, the Holocaust of African enslavement. As they emphasise, “Black mental health providers will come to recognize the origins of ‘Mentalcide’, and how these issues of our past are affecting our collective present and future.”
According to these psychologists, persons who are unable to resolve conflicts peacefully and who, instead, choose to inflict deadly harm on their loved ones and enemies alike, are suffering from post traumatic slavery disorder. Their point of departure is that to deal with this troubling issue it is important to place the problem in its existential framework. This means acknowledging the connections between past trauma and the present terror of social violence. In this regard they suggest that “the vast majority of us do not have any understanding of how the atrocities of the ‘African Holocaust’ psychologically and economically impact the descendants of African slaves today”.
This ignorance is unfortunate, though, because the signs are legion. Present-day episodes of jungle justice mirror the mob lynchings that Africans suffered at the collective hands of racist Caucasians. And deadly practices of domestic violence reflect the routine ways in which blacks were eliminated in the past for the slightest infraction against whites. Pregnant women were hung on trees and their babies savagely ripped from their stomachs. Some were forced to watch as men were ripped apart as the horses to which they were tied were made to gallop in opposite directions. Women witnessing these scenes transferred the trauma to the unborn. These devices were used to deter the community from resisting the enslavement system. Since Emancipation did not exorcise the demons of internalised brutality, the syndrome of self-other-hate that was learned over centuries has continued to reproduce itself.
Bombardment of so-called black-on-black terror comes so thick and fast these days that there is a huge pool from which to draw macabre incidents of domestic violence. For example, in Clarendon recently, a woman attempted to strangle her mother during an argument. When the mother resisted, the daughter stabbed and killed her and then incredulously, turned herself into the police. A woman indicated to her partner that she intended to leave the relationship. Her partner shot her as they drove along Windward Road and then killed himself. A 12 year old girl went to the house of a 57-year-old man in St Mary to collect some items and he locked her inside and repeatedly raped her. And, do not get me started on the bizarre kidnapping and murder of 10-month-old Sarayah Paulwell and her 27-year-old mother Toshyna Patterson. The litany of abuse seems to have no boundaries.
Post traumatic slavery disorder provides a detailed analysis of the wide continuum of characteristics of the psychosocial disarray that results in domestic and community violence and neglect. Plumbing the depths of this disease, the book’s authors suggest that by internalising and reproducing the intentionally constructed model of inferiority, black people have become complicit with their own destruction.
Addressing the stud syndrome that results in disappearing baby-fathers from the scenes of their sexual irresponsibility, in mimicry of their oppressed ancestors, the book’s authors ask the seminal question, “how do we make it plain to see that the concept or practice in our males as it relates to fathering without obligation or commitment to the mother or the child originates in slavery?”
Answering their rhetorical question, the trio of authors insist that “We have to convey the important functions which fathers normally provide: teacher, mentor, role model, counsellor, disciplinarian, provider and protector. And we have to help them through their ‘mentalcide’ (mental suicide) toward internalisation of a new paradigm in the idea of ‘man’.”
However, it is not easy to deconstruct the dysfunctional tropes that are deeply entrenched in human psyches and social and cultural norms. Acknowledging this dilemma, the authors note that, “terror and fear immobilises and incapacitates an individual from selecting life giving/saving options.” Explaining how this works in everyday life, they suggest that young men will refuse to be the “nerd” who is distinguished by brilliance. Historical conditioning resulted in the dumbing down of Blacks in general and men in particular. The denial of access to education was part and parcel of the dehumanisation discourse of enslavement. This elongated syndrome has transcended time and space and taken its toll on the mindsets displayed by current generations.
The authors also cite economic terrorism as another indicator of the entrapment of Black people in the environment of post-enslavement violence. The fear and trembling that the professional who is dominated by power hierarchies experiences results in them being silenced by the possibility of losing pay check security. This terror robs such persons of dignity and their own autonomy. Salaries are thus weaponised to keep the “civil servant” progeny of the enslaved in their place.
In searching for solutions, we must consider that if we are who we will become from age seven, all institutions of socialisation must collaborate to create a new model of identity politics and social relations. This alternative paradigm must deliberately confront the impulse to reproduce the embedded enslavement behaviours that contribute to mentalcide. To subvert the negative values and attitudes in the cultural framework, it is urgent to undo existing patterns through re-education, social re-engineering, and a transformation of unwholesome patterns of self-identity construction. The violence of bad mind is a carryover from the divide and rule system of enslavement and has no place in the construction of a sustainable future.
Imani Tafari-Ama, PhD, is a Pan-African advocate and gender and development specialist. Send feedback to i.tafariama@gmail.com [2]