I’ll use an alternative historical example to explain why your assertion is not true.
My grandmother was held in concentration camps. She was in this time raped regularly, starved, beaten, debased, and so deprived that when her closest friend died all she could think of was taking her shoes.
Eventually she was liberated, walked thousands of miles across Europe looking for family to no avail, and finally by chance met my grandfather.
Throughout her entire life she was emotionally destroyed, on edge, and nearly a witch in her ability to direct her emotional energy at those around her in order to protect herself when she felt threatened.
This hard edge of survival and death migrated into the emotional lives of my mother and aunt. Both of them demonstrated symptoms of severe PTSD even in early childhood despite having no personally experienced events that would be considered traumatic enough to induce such behavior. It was in the air.
I in turn have as well, two generations later, demonstrated a tendency toward self-protectiveness, have developed symptoms of PTSD from what would be considered normal life stressors, and have struggled to overcome this emotional inheritance.
Now, my personal example is the result of only a few years of war and inhumanity.
African Americans who descend from slaves descend from people who for hundreds of years underwent equally debasing, dehumanizing treatment. They were in the struggle so long that they developed broad cultural and interpersonal coping mechanisms to make life bearable beneath the threat of death and the absolute absence of personal control or privacy.
It is quite easy to see how, even many generations later, even if there were no more reinforcement from the environment of the trauma, that it can live on and continue to destroy the descendants of its victims.
Couple this with the continued social discrimination faced by African peoples and it becomes impossible to not see that the echoes of these atrocities live on in the minds and hearts of their victim’s descendants.
ianhawes|8 years ago
[deleted]
kingkawn|8 years ago
My grandmother was held in concentration camps. She was in this time raped regularly, starved, beaten, debased, and so deprived that when her closest friend died all she could think of was taking her shoes.
Eventually she was liberated, walked thousands of miles across Europe looking for family to no avail, and finally by chance met my grandfather.
Throughout her entire life she was emotionally destroyed, on edge, and nearly a witch in her ability to direct her emotional energy at those around her in order to protect herself when she felt threatened.
This hard edge of survival and death migrated into the emotional lives of my mother and aunt. Both of them demonstrated symptoms of severe PTSD even in early childhood despite having no personally experienced events that would be considered traumatic enough to induce such behavior. It was in the air.
I in turn have as well, two generations later, demonstrated a tendency toward self-protectiveness, have developed symptoms of PTSD from what would be considered normal life stressors, and have struggled to overcome this emotional inheritance.
Now, my personal example is the result of only a few years of war and inhumanity.
African Americans who descend from slaves descend from people who for hundreds of years underwent equally debasing, dehumanizing treatment. They were in the struggle so long that they developed broad cultural and interpersonal coping mechanisms to make life bearable beneath the threat of death and the absolute absence of personal control or privacy.
It is quite easy to see how, even many generations later, even if there were no more reinforcement from the environment of the trauma, that it can live on and continue to destroy the descendants of its victims.
Couple this with the continued social discrimination faced by African peoples and it becomes impossible to not see that the echoes of these atrocities live on in the minds and hearts of their victim’s descendants.