Episode 38 - Psychologies of Oppression: Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, the Death of Empathy & the Assimilation Blues

This episode is the first of three programs taped in front of a live audience at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE), held from May 29 to June 2, 2018 in New Orleans.

The guests — Joy Degruy, Jacqueline Battalora, and Rahuldeep Gill — explore the ways that people of color are psychologically affected by racialized injustice, from internalizing oppression to feeling intense pressure to assimilate, and the way whites in America are conditioned not only to accept our “superiority” but to restrain and subdue our own natural empathic tendencies, which might otherwise mitigate against injustice.

Additionally, the panel discusses the way racial trauma is transmitted across generations, the importance of using a sense of shared injury and pain as a bridge for building movement solidarity, and the issue of how and why we must begin to repair the damage of accumulated racial injury, both collectively and individually.