In your essay discuss how a few of these systemic issues, such as, Jim Crow, Convict Leasing, Sharecropping, and the Tuskegee Experiments (as examples) have contributed to the present trauma of the African American lived experience in the USA

Assignment Question

Your fourth major essay assignment of this semester involves responding to and taking a position on a theme that Dr. Joy DeGruy presents in her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Your essay must be 5 double-spaced pages and should specifically address one of the topics discussed in her book. Carefully examine Chapters 1-6 in Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing and prepare yourself to use information from those chapters to help you support and clarify your own points and ideas. In Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing American, Dr. Joy DeGruy argues that a system of racial oppression, conditioning through enslavement and consistent terror contributes to the actions and repeated behavior due to trauma. Dr. DeGruy writes, “one traumatic experience can result in distorted attitudes, dysfunctional behaviors, and unwanted consequences, this pattern is magnified exponentially when a person repeatedly experiences severe trauma, and it is much worse when the traumas are caused by human beings” (9). Show through quotes, analysis, and the use of other sources how epigenetics has revealed through DNA testing that trauma can be passed along genetically to future generations.

In your essay discuss how a few of these systemic issues, such as, Jim Crow, Convict Leasing, Sharecropping, and the Tuskegee Experiments (as examples) have contributed to the present trauma of the African American lived experience in the USA. Draw upon historic and current evidence to support your claims. By the same token, provide an analysis of what kinds of treatments are being used to employ the healing from the legacy of injury as caused by the trauma. Carefully consider Dr. DeGruy’s premise and critically analyze her position while paying attention to the “historical lens of slavery and its aftermath”. In your essay of 5 pages, discuss whether or not you support Dr. DeGruy’s position and her insights regarding her “purpose of encouraging African Americans to view their attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors through the lens of history to gain a greater understanding of the impact that centuries of slavery and oppression have had on our [African] lives” (10). Remember to do the following in your essay: 1) state your own position in your thesis statement; and 2) support your thesis by discussing specific points that address De Gruy’s main arguments. All in all, your essay will include a combination of your own ideas, analysis, observations, and examples/details as they relate to the main points that DeGruy makes. Use 5 sources (e.g. DeGruy’s text plus two other credible book sources, two scholarly academic journals.), or you can use 5 books, or 4 books and 1 scholarly academic journal as well.