Write aparagraph argumentative analysis about Dr. Joy Degruy’s speech:
They’re misdiagnosing the whole thing. Here’s a true situation. Two young brothers are out in front of a high school. One is 19 and one is 16. The one that is 19 has pulled a gun on the one that is 16. The crowd thins out. The guy points the gun, pulls the trigger and it jams. To me, that’s the time for the other kid to run. Instead, the kid stands there and throws his hands back.
So the guy hits the gun and pulls the trigger and it jams a second time. The 16 year old starts laughing. The 19-year-old tries it a third time and the gun jams again. The 16-year old said, “You think I’m afraid to die? I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid to live.”
The kid tried it a fourth time and the gun went off. To understand that behavior, I have to get into the psyche of a sixteen-year-old boy. How can it be that at 16 years old, he no longer wants to live? He can’t see a place in the world for himself and I’ll tell you why. We’re a man-object oriented system that says that you are what you are based on what you have. You are measured by your things. That’s why you have brothers walking around don’t have a home, don’t have a car, but they’ve got 50 gold chains. They’re thinking, “I’ve got to wear some worth, because I don’t have any worth.” So when you look at that what they’re saying is that I have to measure myself by things and then you tell me I can’t have them. You’ve barred every way that I have to get them and you tell me I’m nobody if I don’t have them.
That’s what our society does to Black men. These young men don’t see a way. They can’t find a place to be somebody. To maintain a sense of dignity and worth. When I looked at that I realized that’s Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. What I’m saying is that the injury of slavery was trans-generationally transmitted. We learned it. it’s knee-jerk, we figure it out. And every generation we give it to them because we pass on everything to the children. And the children begin to live out those things. It’s unconscious, I realize that it’s unconscious. And when I look at the brothers, I understand it’s a very, very different thing going on than what they believe. It’s one of the symptom of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
