Thread by @EsqMontgomery

there is also another penetrating psychological twist to the actions of the boy hugging and seeking so-called "forgiveness" of the person who murdered his brother in cold blood, once you take his actions outside the paradigm of a religon that says

"your only path to God is to forgive your oppressor for all of his sins against you, including the murder of your own children and grandchildren - its called fear. Deep psychological fear, and terror.

An unrelenting, deeply ingrained fear that is inlficted upon a people intergenerationally. The fear is so deep, that you believe that the only way out, your only safe passage to escape harm is to embrace your tormentor.

It's an unconscious terror (that means you not even aware of it). Some have labled it "The Stockholm Syndrome." There is traces of it in the "Battered Woman Syndrome," a subset of "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

The phenomenon is discussed in Mein Knopf, as the Nazis' plan to strip and destroy the psyche of the children of jews through sustained and horrifc levels of shèer unrelenting brutality.

It's a psyche and mindset that we see present in the penitentiary, and in most of the hoods in this country. Its where you are "cool" with the most brutal and powerful person(s) in your hood. You show your love to keep from being victimized.

Its deep and most of us are not in a position to even begin to comprehend the enormity of our psychological submission to our sustained intergenerational oppression.

The result, we look to silly cliches to explain away conduct that is, on its face, devastatingly revealing, but for its sheer absurdity, almost comic.

For example, before even grieving and recovering, the survivors of the racist shooting rampage at Emanual Baptist Church show up at the arraignment, the arriangment of Dylan Roof to proclaim their forgivess for his unspeakable, horrific act of murder of 9 unarmed parishioners -

showing a twisted, almost perverted homage to God, a God who spared their lives. This syndrome is also manifested in use terms like "senseless violence," "wanting a seat at the table," "taking care of myself first, then I can look out for others," "forgiveness,"

“if he or she had complied, this would not have happened," etc. All are temporary psychological bandages that mask a deeper psychosis, a phychosis rooted in the terror and fear of enduring unchecked and untreated chronic inter-generational trauma.

Many have understood this phenomena and have tried to teach us but we are just too afraid, too scared of the truth of this powerful reality. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing addressed it in her brilliant book entitled "The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation; Dr. William Greer

Dr. Price Cobb in their 1968 classic "Black Rage"; Dr. Na'im Akbar's "Chains and Images of Psychological Slavery;" Dr. Kenneth Hardy's brilliant "Revealing White Privilege and Healing Racial Trauma;" or his "Psychological Residuals of Slavery,"

Dr. Judith Lewis Herman's "Trauma and Recovery," Chapter 4 "Captivity," Total Surrender, page 83, et seq., (the true brokeness occurs where the traumatized participates in the sacrifice of others to the brutality of chronic trauma); Dr. Joy Degruy's Post Traumatic Slave Disorder

This information is powerful and, above all, transformative. It takes the rare combination of intelligence, humility and courage to begin to understand the profound influence that the exposure to the horrific levels of chronic inter-generstional racial trauma has had on our minds

then there is Malcolm, he is always right there. Malcolm's 1962 speech in Los Angeles "Who Taught You Hate Yourself" is there for those who are not inclined to even look at the above books before denouncing them in favor of self-serving, useless cliches

that, in the end, simply reinforce hopelessness. There is a deep and penetrating perspective that emerges from a life time of study, understanding, experience, insights, humility, courage and wisdom. Its called freedom!