Generational Trauma

                                                   Generational Trauma

By Albert B. Kelly

 I was talking with a close friend recently about some of those strange habits our parents or grandparents had that seemingly out of nowhere, we end up adopting in our own lives. My grandmother, who was born in 1913, was loath to throw away holiday wrapping paper or shopping bags- these would be folded away carefully and stored in a drawer or cabinet. Friends have spoken about their grandparents who saved the plastic forks, spoons, and knives you get with take-out food. Once used, these would be cleaned and saved.

We laughed about it, and we laughed at ourselves, but in understanding why they behaved as they did, we also came to realize that saving everything is what you did if you’re among the generation that survived during the Great Depression when everything, and I mean everything was scarce. But that didn’t explain why we had the same tendencies. We didn’t grow up in the Great Depression, yet our views of what to fear, what to expect or avoid were imparted to us by people who lived through those times. It’s why I’ve got more shopping bags than I’ll ever need.

Think about those whose grandparents or parents survived the concentration camps of Hitler’s Europe or those whose parents or grandparents lived in internment camps here in the U.S during the Second Word War. How might those traumas have shaped their view of what to fear in this life or perhaps more to the point, who to fear? How much of it got passed on to the children they brought into the world? I suspect a lot got passed on.

I mention generational trauma because it is real and it might help us understand what’s going on in our country today in terms of race. It occurs to me that I was 9 years old when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Up until that point, discrimination could be done with impunity.

I was 10 years old when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed the various legal barriers to voting (poll taxes, literacy tests, etc) at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their under the 15th Amendment. And I was 13 years old when the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed explicit racial discrimination and racial segregation in housing (i.e. red-lining, etc.). Absent these laws, discrimination was legal.

My point is that discrimination in all its forms was only outlawed in my lifetime- not that long ago. Leaving aside the various ways some discrimination and exploitation still occur in society (subprime lending, gerrymandering, stop-and-frisk, etc.), some are genuinely confused by the anger and mistrust amongst groups. It would be easy if reconciliation were as simple as passing a law or flipping a switch.  

But reconciliation is hard, especially with generational trauma. Setting aside slavery which ended with the Civil War, there was 100 years of federal, state, and local statutes that legalized and normalized all manner of discrimination, segregation and exploitation. As suggested above, some of the most obvious forms of discrimination only became illegal during my lifetime, which is not that long ago. Accordingly, you can imagine that anger and doubt has been generational currency for far too long.   

The truth is that we, as a society, have only gotten truly serious about confronting this reality in the last fifty-plus years, again not that long ago. There can certainly be healing, but it requires all of us to be mindful of the generational baggage we’ve inherited from ancestors unto the fourth generation. Healing and reconciliation won’t happen all at once, it will require generations yet unborn, but we can move the needle toward justice and reconciliation in ways our ancestors couldn’t. Hopefully our great grandchildren will complete what we cannot now do, complete our unfinished work.  

But if we are to do what is in our power to do now, at some point it will require that we all acknowledge that there has been historic or generational privileges and that to whom much has been given, much shall be required. It will require making a genuine attempt to understand how others have impacted and as well as their hopes and fears. If we will better understand one another, then we can take genuine steps to have our institutions make repair in ways that don’t feel like it’s all a zero sum game.