Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome?

Article (The Oregonian)

Thanks to Ramblings' Journal for exposing this article! Now "post-traumatic slave syndrome" explains murder.

A Portland lawyer claims that black folks' suffering by slaveowners explains why his client beat his 2-year-old son to death. Social work "expert" Joy DeGruy-Leary asserts that slavemasters beat slaves, black folks never got a chance to heal, and we still face racism so we suffer from genetic multigenerational trauma. The county judge threw out the theory at pretrial but says that she might consider it at trial if the lawyer can prove that it's a verifiable disorder (which the American Psychiatric Association doesn't recognize) and applies to this case.

You don't need to tell us that racism still exists. Yet excuse us, but didn't slavery end 139 years ago? The "expert" is a sociologist and not a licensed psychologist, so why is she proposing disorders? Why is our violence rate three times higher now than 50 years ago, when slavery was much more recent and we faced far more oppression? There are 38.3 million black Americans - over 90% of whom have slave ancestors - so shouldn't this disorder and attendant violence be far more widespread? Never mind that the vast, vast majority of black folks are law-abiding citizens.

At Ramblings' Journal, Michael King states, "America's courts are filled with shady shrinks paid by sleazy shysters ready to spout off any convenient theory for the bad behavior of pathetic people." Amen, Brotha Michael. This is one of the most repulsive things we've read this year!