University of Virginia Health System

PAPERS

A Perennial Mourning: Identity Conflict and the Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma within the African American Community

by K. Michelle Scott

K. Michelle Scott is a doctoral student at Nova Southeastern University and an instructor at Clark Atlanta University. She has a B.A. in Communication Arts and an M.A. in Speech Communication.

Introduction

Members of communal groups who endure shameful and humiliating losses and traumas at the hands of enemy groups will continue, in an attempt to relieve their suffering, to transmit their "memories" of pain to subsequent generations. Psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychiatry Vamik Volkan has developed this theory in his concept of the transgenerational transmission of trauma. This study links the transgenerational transmission of trauma to an identity conflict affecting much of the African American community.

The complexity of African American identity reflects centuries of a transgenerational haunting associated with the pain of colonialism, slavery, exploitation and discrimination. In this case, mental representations of the pain are endured through verbal and non-verbal transmissions common in African American vernacular. The transmissions are related to the themes of acting black, acting white and colorism, each of which suggests a protracted identity struggle within the African American community. From the exploration of African American identity to the pointed examination of these frequently shared, intra-group transmissions, this paper will consider the latent conflict their usage imposes upon African American identity.

In Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism, Volkan (1997), uses the principles of psychoanalysis to search for the meaning of cultural identity, ethnic attachment, and the passions involved in large group relationships. One of the central theories of Volkan's analysis involves that of transgenerational transmissions between members of a large group which have en masse experienced a trauma so severe as to imprint upon their minds a sense of helplessness, shame and humiliation. He observes that, "When a whole society has undergone massive trauma, victimized adults may endure guilt and shame for not having protected their children" (p. 42). The by-product of such trauma is a perennial, collective mourning over the loss of group dignity, self-esteem and identity. The mourning is characterized by conscious and unconscious communications passed down from generation to generation in an attempt to mourn the group's losses and remove the collective sense of victimization.

Volkan proposes that as transgenerational transmissions of trauma occur, the trauma is perpetuated as its shared mental representation and is deposited into the psyches of subsequent generations, thereby impacting future generations with the same sense of helplessness, shame and humiliation experienced by the elders. Ultimately, the large group shares a collective identity which is perpetually haunted and stifled by its "memories" of victimization.

Applying the Theory to the African American community

Psychoanalyst Maurice Apprey (1998) states that the victimization and humiliation of Blacks by Whites may become internalized as an urgent but voluntary errand toward Blacks' extinction or destruction. This "errand" is urgently injected from without, but interiorized in multiple ways. Some retain the toxic errand as the mandate to die. Those who carry out the destructive errand serve as reservoirs for the deposits of messages about the trauma of slavery. According to Volkan's theory, African American teens are not only potential carriers of the deposited trauma, but they may also be unconsciously laden with the responsibility of repairing the humiliating effects of the trauma. Over time, what results is a shared victimized identity that each new generation has the mostly unconscious obligation to repeat or repair.

The idea that transgenerational transmissions of trauma are mostly unconsciously deposited is a critical concept. For it is this unconscious characteristic which makes the transmission process difficult to distinguish. Where the transgenerational transmission of trauma is not an unconscious construct, an African American father might well say to his son: "My grandfather was a slave; my grandmother was raped; my father was whipped; my uncle was hung from a tree; my niece was killed in a church bombing; my nephew was beaten to death. Our family has suffered these tragedies because of victimizations against our race. I want you, dear son, to take away the memories of pain that haunt our family. I want you to redeem our dignity and to fix things so that this type of suffering does not happen to our family again." But realistically, most fathers will not consciously make these deposits into the psyches of their sons. Similarly, a group will not consciously make the deposits into the psyches of its youth. To do so would be considered cruel, as it would overtly lade the young with the burdens of their ancestors' past. At the same time, the pain of the family-and thus the pain of the group-must be dealt with. If a sense of relief is to be felt, the mourning related to the losses and trauma must be worked through, and the humiliation must be reversed. As a result, transgenerational transmissions of trauma unconsciously burden the young with the difficulties of working through the mourning and reversing the humiliation.

But what happens to the generation of youth, which, because of structural forces such as racism and discrimination, is unable to work through and find relief from the mourning? If the transmissions were consciously deposited, the youth could go back to their elders and say, "We're sorry, but we cannot repair this. We cannot regain our family's dignity. We are still discriminated against. We still live a stereotyped existence. Our community is still suffering. We are plagued with AIDS, violence, crime, substance abuse and families without fathers. We have tried, but . . ." Unfortunately, most youth will be unable to share with their elders their inability to relieve the mourning and humiliation because the deposits were unconscious; in fact, the youth will likely not comprehend their own incorporation of the trauma or its burdens. If historical circumstances do not allow a new generation to reverse feelings of past powerlessness, the mental representations of the shared calamity bond group members in a continued sense of powerlessness (Volkan, 1997). Thus, the transgenerational mourning and attempts to relieve the sense of powerlessness become internalized-and the haunting continues.

Apprey (1998) observes that under the rubric of transgenerational haunting, there is a transfer of destructive aggression from one generation to the next. He notes that, "In such a transfer, we may witness a shift from suicide in one generation, murder in the next, followed by incest or physical abuse in a subsequent generation" (p. 32). This is the manifestation of an internalized aggression where the responsibility to repair the mourning associated with "extinction, humiliation, massacre and a legacy of ashes" (p. 33) goes unachieved. The result is the repeated transmission of the shared trauma in the guise of conflicted self-representations, thereby creating a legacy of a conflicted group identity. In other words, where the group is prevented by continued oppression from being able to work through the mourning to remove the effects of a massive trauma, the group turns its angst inward. It becomes so burdensome that members of the group are unable to initiate or resolve the mourning or reverse the humiliation. What makes this circumstance particularly painful for oppressed groups is that it becomes an issue of knowing that oppressive forces exist, but being unable to effect any change upon those forces. This is the state of affairs for much of the African American community. There is a perennial mourning of an identity long-lost and a perpetual sense of victimization that continue to weigh heavily upon much of the group.

It is important to note that all members of a communal group do not absorb the trauma or sense of victimization to the same degree. Members of a group (and their offspring) who have experienced a massive trauma may respond differently. Some may try to distance themselves or deny the trauma. In fact, a generalized denial by the group may occur. However, where the group's victimization at the hands of the oppressor continues, denial may be impossible.

Because group identity is deeply integrated within the individual, its formation is based on perceived similarities between group members and an awareness of a common fate (Jessica Davis and Oscar Gandy, 1999). Volkan (1997) suggests, "The influence of a severe and humiliating calamity that directly affects all or most of a large group forges a link between the psychology of the individual and that of the group" (p. 45). Therefore, individual identity is very much related to group identity; thus, it becomes difficult for an individual to deny or distance himself from the group's reality.

Certainly the complexity of the social behaviors and relations inherent in the African American community is more elaborate than that proposed by one theory or one study. Social systems are subject to cultural forces, which impact the behavior and worldviews of human beings in obscure and intricate ways. The impact of other forces not withstanding, I propose that much of what is occurring within the African American community is the story of intra-group, socially reproduced mental representations of a series of traumas. The result is a deeply conflicted social identity, and thus, an adverse existence for many within the group.

Linking the transgenerational transmission of trauma to the African American condition is not an attempt to negate or diminish the effects of the two and a half-centuries of overt oppression and enslavement experienced by this community or its ancestors. Nor is it an attempt to disaffirm or lessen the subsequent decades of terror, racism, and discrimination inflicted upon these human beings. In a society where racism and oppression have become social institutions, any attempt to deny their affect would be asinine. Instead, this analysis of the transgenerational transmission of trauma in the African American community examines how this group perpetuates the traumas of its past, and thus supports a state of conflicted identity and conflicted existence.

A Transgenerational Haunting: Tracing the Trauma

The haunting of the African psyche can be traced to pre-American slavery days. In Elizabethan England, the English culture formed and disseminated preconceptions about the "blackness" of African skin that would linger with members of this racial group for a seeming infinity. These preconceptions would lead to deep-seated and ultimately widespread beliefs that Africans were uncivilized, evil, and animal-like. Jonathan Turner, Royce Singleton, and David Musick (1984) write that during this time, "There was much speculation about the relationship between apes and Africans . . . and the concept of their black skin connoted baseness, danger and repulsion" (p. 12). Marked by tyranny and degradation, European colonialism signified the initial haunting of the Africans. Social science scholar Cornel West (1990) has observed that European colonialism included brutal enslavement, institutional terrorism and cultural degradation of Black diaspora people. It was based on this initial haunting of the Africans that the haunting of the African American began.

For African Americans, the transatlantic slave trade would come to symbolize the type of severe trauma that lingers to haunt a group. During the mid-1600's the first slave ships made the long and arduous journey to transport Africans from their homeland to America. For the next two hundred years, these men, women and children would endure lives of sheer terror. Families were dismantled, men were treated like animals, women were treated like breeders, children were bought and sold like material goods, and many, many lives were lost. According to West (1990), "The death of nearly 75 million Africans during the transatlantic slave trade was but one result of the assault on Black humanity" (p. 527).

As slavery concluded near the end of the 19th century, arguments supporting the continued debasement of Blacks flourished. In the guise of Darwinism, an enhanced type of psychological slavery building on the early colonialist preconceptions of Africans was introduced. The Darwinian theory of evolution became widely accepted by many as evidence of a superior white race. This "scientific" racism was later sustained by the disciplines of sociology and psychology, which lent credence to racist claims of a superior race by arguing that the vast physical and psychical differences between the races fostered a "consciousness of kind" (Turner, Singleton, and Musick, p. 30). Claims of the innate biological inferiority of Africans would go largely unchallenged until the late 1920s when experts began to link social and environmental factors to human behavior. But by that time, the damage imposed by theories of racial inferiority was too deeply implanted; much of today's racist ideology attests to the irreparable consequences of this legacy of falsehoods. Thus, a century since their inception, Darwinian theories continue to legitimize in the minds of oppressors the dehumanization of Black people throughout the world.

Between the end of slavery and the period leading to the 1960s Civil Rights movement, the physical oppression and psychological massacre of Africans in America continued. Murderous lynchings, beatings, threats, coercion, intimidation and other tactics designed by the oppressive white culture to maintain its dominance, characterized these years. Despite the unification of the African American community during the 1960's to combat its victimization, the mental representations of its shared pain would linger.

For the millions of Africans in America whose ancestors endured two hundred forty-four years of slavery and nearly a century of institutionalized terrorism (West, 1994), the seeds of a massive trauma had been planted. Efforts to redeem a positive self-perception through the popularized "Black Power" and "Black is Beautiful" slogans of the 1970s would only scratch the surface of a deeply rooted identity conflict. Volkan (1997) suggests that although "ideas such as Black is Beautiful rendered the African American less susceptible to externalizations from whites," (p. 99), the group would continue to struggle with the weight of its trauma. A snapshot of the African American community today demonstrates how it remains haunted by its past:

- In the December 1998 edition of African American Health Facts, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicated that in 1996, 69.8 percent of childbirths in the African American community were to unwed mothers.
-The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 1996, the life expectancy of African American males was 66 years; this life expectancy is lower than that of White men, Black women and White women.
-The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 1997, approximately 26 percent of the African American community lived below the poverty line.
-The U.S. Department of Justice reports that the violent victimization rate of Black males 16-19 years of age was almost double that of White males in the same age range.
-Bureau of Justice statistics released in 1994 indicate that Black males aged 12 to 24 were almost 14 times as likely to be homicide victims as were other members of the general population.
-In 1995 the U.S. National Healthcare Statistics reported that the homicide rate for Black males was 56 percent.
-The National Data Book reports that in 1986 there were 159,178 Blacks incarcerated. By 1996 the Data Book indicates that the number of Blacks incarcerated swelled 55 percent to 288,900.
-In 1995, the CDC reported that 30 percent of non-Hispanic Black teens surveyed reported carrying a firearm during the preceding one-month period.
- Recently published CDC statistics indicate that in 1996, 42 percent of AIDS deaths were African Americans.

Considering that African Americans comprise only about 12 percent of the U.S. citizenry, these frightful statistics should be disquieting, and indeed troublesome to the African American and the national conscience. Psychiatrist Frances Cress Welsing (1991) observes that, "Many in the Black community are reaching the conclusion that such issues have become a problem of epidemic proportions" (p. 81). These "issues" are representative of a deeply embedded and traumatic condition of dis-ease in the African American community. Further, they are symptoms of the lingering pain of a collective self-esteem and identity long loss.

The Complexities of African American Identity

Professor of Dispute Resolution Jessica Senehi (1996) writes that, "Identity is an enduring sense of self as positioned within the socially constructed reality of the society as formed by language" (p. 151). But for the African American, the realization of an enduring sense of self has been rife with conflicted social constructions from the very beginning. The challenge to an identity, a sense of self, was a challenge first faced centuries ago by their African forefathers whose homelands were invaded and whose lives were subjected to the tyranny of colonization. In The Wretched of the Earth, psychiatrist and activist Frantz Fanon (1963) proposed that the very act of colonization involved a negation of the humanity of the colonized. He wrote, " . . . colonization forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: 'In reality, who am I?' " (p. 203).

For those Africans transported to America for the purpose of enslavement, the question of identity was similarly profound. To justify the oppressive nature of slavery, the oppressors would build upon the preconceptions of Africans as characterized by the English colonists, and perpetuate what would later become deeply entrenched stereotypical images of Blacks. Some of the more caustic stereotypes included those of Africans as immoral studs, ignorant bucks, and child-like buffoons. These stereotypes, coupled with the "scientific" racism of the late 19th century and the legislative classification of Blacks as less than human, indeed, only three-fifths of a person, deeply affected the psyches of Africans in America. Davis and Gandy (1999) suggest that social categories used to oppress people may become important sources of social identity. As such, like their colonized predecessors, the new group-the African Americans-was also confronted with an identity question: who are we?

Following emancipation, Africans in America encountered innumerable dilemmas, among the most immediate and apparent of which was physical survival. But there was also the on-going dilemma of identity. At the conclusion of slavery, the Africans in America were neither African nor American. Fanon (1961) notes that such ambivalence placed these men and women in America in a position where they needed to attach themselves to a cultural matrix. Following an unsuccessful attempt to link themselves with Africans, the American Negro was forced to confront his problems in America (Fanon, 1961).

Identity: Social Construction and the Other

There is much evidence to support the human need for a positive sense of self. The basic idea of social psychologist Leon Festinger's Social Comparison Theory (1957) is that a positive self-concept is a part of normal psychological functioning, and that we need to have a positive self-concept to deal effectively with our world. The concept of identity is related to an innate human need to develop a positive sense of selfdom, including self-esteem, dignity, and self respect. To support a positive self-perception, psychologist William James (1890) suggested that individuals have an enduring need to perceive a sense of "sameness" about themselves whereby a consistent and firmly established self-image emerges. However, when African American scholar W.E.B. DuBois, a student of James, wrote about double-consciousness, he proposed (1903) that for the African in America, the sense of sameness "was lost on a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see through the revelation of the other world" (p. 164).

The essence of DuBois' theory of double consciousness has been proven time and again, not just for the African in America, but for all of humanity. For example, sociologist Charles Horton Cooley's Looking Glass Self Theory (1902) suggests a reflected self which is perceived through the minds of others. In fact, there is widespread acceptance among social researchers and philosophers that man needs others to fulfill within him a sense of identity.

Sociologist George Herbert Mead (1929) observed that this idea of needing the other to define the self relates to the social construction of identity whereby one's identity is absorbed through symbolic interactionism. Therefore, the concept is not peculiar to any particular group. For example, West (1990) notes that, "European immigrants who arrived on American shores as Irish, Sicilian, and Lithuanian had to learn that they were white by adopting an American discourse of positively-valued whiteness and negatively charged blackness" (p. 529). What differentiates the socially constructed racial category of being Black in America from that of being immigrant in America then, is the negativity associated with blackness. Where the social construction of a group's identity is laden with negativity, the individual members of the group are subject to the incorporation of the negative constructs into their own self-perceptions. So that, while yearning with the innate desire for a positive self-perception and sense of dignity, group members are continually confronted with the negative social construction of their identity. As such, economics professor Glenn Loury (1993) acknowledges that, "African Americans cannot be truly free men and women while laboring under a definition of self derived from the perceptual view of the oppressor" (p. 9). The challenge for African Americans however, is not limited to laboring under the identity constructions derived from the oppressor, but also analyzing the consequences of the identity constructions derived through its own transgenerational transmissions of trauma.

Individual and Collective Identity: Establishing the Link

This discussion of collective identity is not meant to suggest that an individual's identity is solely linked to his racial, cultural or ethnic identity. In 1892 social theorist Anna Julia Cooper wrote that, " . . . no man can represent his race . . . whatever the attainments of the individual may be, he can never be regarded as identical with or representative of the whole" (p. 179). A century later, Loury (1993) concurred when he wrote, "I am so much more than the one wronged, misunderstood, underestimated, derided or ignored by whites" (p. 8).

Mead (1929) also observed the many dimensions of the self when he wrote, "We are one thing to one man and another thing to another . . . we divide ourselves up into all sorts of different selves" (p. 227). Similarly, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1929) proposed that human beings do not have one, individual psyche; instead, he suggests a mass psyche composed of feelings and instincts of community and solidarity. But Fromm (1929) also suggested that, "It is equally important that psychology not underestimate the fact that the individual person in reality exists only as a socialized person" (p.223). This suggests that even the construct of racial identity is only a part of the complex, multidimensional construction of identity. Yet, racial identity is considered to be a powerful determinant of individual behavior. Davis and Gandy (1999) cite evidence that suggests that racial identity continues to be stronger than identities based on class, gender, religion, or any other social characteristics as a predictor of attitudes. Thus, for the African American, the command of racial identity is substantial, if for no other reason than the fact that the blackness of African American skin is the single, most distinctively obvious, and thus unifying, characteristic that group members share.

Despite the acknowledgement of a complex mix of selves joined to comprise the individual, Mead's research also suggests the concept of a unitary or complete self. According to Mead (1929), a person who is somewhat unstable may encounter a "line of cleavage" within the unified self; when this occurs, there is a disassociation of self which threatens emotional upheavals. In other words, when the unified self is torn and conflicted, the individual experiences a sense of discontentedness. Similar to the "unified self", Volkan (1997) suggests the importance of the "core identity." According to Volkan, individuals possess mutual sub-identities (which can either be embraced or rejected) and a core identity, which if lost or destroyed, is terrifying.

Volkan's concept of the transgenerational transmission of trauma involves the application of individual-based psychoanalytic theory to large groups. The formation of individual identity is likened to the formation of collective identity. Linking psychoanalysis to sociological theory is not a new concept. What is most important for this discussion is to establish the role that an enduring, core, or unitary collective identity plays in the resolution of identity conflict. The reparation of the African American community's victimized identity would go a long way towards resolving the primary aim of transgenerational transmissions of trauma.

One need only consider the many self-referents with which the African American community has struggled to identify itself to conclude that developing a core identity has been a problem for African Americans. Africans in America have used the terms African, Black, Negro, Colored, and African American in an attempt to factor out the cultural and historical dimensions that give rise to a people's identity (Obiagele Lake, 1997). Clearly, this plurality of self-designations suggests the dilemma of a group in search of an identity.

What connect the transgenerational transmission of trauma to the identity dilemma of African Americans are the negative intra-group transmissions and self-referents, which pass from generation to generation. These transmissions are the messages, both conscious and unconscious, verbal and non-verbal, that African Americans have deposited into the minds of their children and their children's children about who they are, who they should be, and who they can be.

Having briefly laid the foundation for an understanding of the historical trauma associated with African American heritage, the on-going plague of much of the African American community, and the sources of identity conflict within the African-American community at large, we will now consider three prominent intra-group messages which suggest the transgenerational transmission of trauma.

An Analysis of Three Transmissions

"Act your age, not your color"

Even some of the grown-ups who set out to arm their young with racial pride seemed haunted by contradictions, which their children absorbed . . . Without knowing what they were doing, a lot of adults in Black families passed along notions to their young about white folks' superiority (McCall, 1994, p. 12).

In Makes me Wanna Holler (1994), writer Nathan McCall tells the story of a remark that his mother would make to him and his brothers in the midst of a family night out at a restaurant (or other public place). The particular excerpt of the family's dialogue shared by McCall should not be unfamiliar to most of those who have grown up Black in America. According to McCall, ". . . when one of us dared to cut up in public, Mama would yank him firmly and whisper through clenched teeth, 'Stop showing your color. Stop acting like a nigger!' " (p. 12). The threat levied by McCall's mother was related to the popular African American adage, "act your age, not your color," which translated means, don't act Black.

Surely, McCall and his siblings, like many other African American children, probably wanted to ask their mother to explain what it meant to "show one's color" or "act like a nigger." But because the warning was delivered with such deliberate intensity, most children would meekly infer, I am Black, but it is not good for me to act the color black. Therefore, the color black, my color, must be a bad thing. Because this particular message is primarily transmitted to children, it is unlikely that the multitude of questions that may have unconsciously arisen in their minds following such an admonishment were ever verbalized. No doubt, few among them would ever ask: How does one act a color? Is my color so awful that neither I, nor anyone else, should ever act it? Is the behavior that I am being punished for associated with my color? And ultimately, what color am I supposed to act?

The phrase "act your age and not your color" has strong connotations. It suggests that there is something wrong with one's color, and therefore, something wrong with one's self. This message threatens to create in the mind of a child a sense of ambivalence about himself. As the child grows into adulthood, there is a discrepancy between who he is, who he should not be, and who he is supposed to be; for these children, the latter is never quite clear.

Loury (1993) acknowledged that as an African American, he has often experienced a dissonance between his self-concept and the socially imputed definition of who he should be. He writes, "I have always had to confront the problem of balancing my desire not to disappoint the expectations of others, both Blacks and Whites, but especially Blacks" (p. 5). He adds, "I used to think about the irony of some Blacks seeking to excommunicate others . . . the Blacker-than-thou crowd, but in White America, I am always Black" (p. 7).
Other intra-group vernacular which might be considered sub-components of the "acting your color" adage are:

"I'll slap the black off of you"- This comment might be shared during an argument between African Americans. In fact, it was recently used as a line in the film comedy, Life, featuring African American actors Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. The suggestion, of course, is that there is something under the cover of black skin such that when the skin is slapped off, the individual will begin to act appropriately.
"Your people"- This comment might be shared amongst a group of African Americans following an inference or observation that another African American(s) is acting in a way somehow embarrassing to the group. The suggestion is that because the person(s) is acting in this way, he is of a different people than the one making the observation.

In the African American community, such messages serve to transmit a negativity associated with black skin and African American culture. This is a message that the group first absorbed from the oppressor-through the traumas of colonialism, slavery, exploitation and discrimination. This message continues today as a transmission of the trauma from the oppressed to its young.

"Acting White"

Enemy neighbors who do share similarities will stress and elevate the importance of major differences such as language, skin color, religion, history, food, music, dance . . . and exaggerate the importance of minor differences such as colors that one wears, type of dress or style, a way of worshipping, what one eats (Vamik Volkan, Bloodlines, 1997, p. 108).

The group name, African American, inherently suggests a certain melting of the two cultures, African and American. For many African Americans, however, the term also serves to distinguish the Black American from the White American. The identity border between the two groups is crucial to the maintenance of each group's identity.

In keeping with the writings of Lenin, Mao Tse Tung wrote of the significance of the "other" in developing one's sense of identity. According to Mao (1937), "a contradictory aspect cannot exist in isolation. Without the other aspect, which is opposed to it, each aspect loses the condition for its existence" (p. 264). In other words, the condition for one's identity is dependent on a clear perception of the other's identity. With reference to Black and White in American life, each race needs to perceive differences in the other for the survival of its own identity. Therefore, the unique cultural ways of distinction are not necessarily harmful to a group's identity, until they are made harmful, as pointed out earlier in the association between negative behavior and acting Black. In this case however, the unspoken suggestion is that the opposite of acting Black-that is, acting White-is positive. But to "act White" in the African American community will also present a problem for the agents who do so. In fact, those who do "act White" are commonly referred to by other African Americans as Uncle Toms, Oreos, Sell-outs or House Negroes. This suggests that there are certain identity borders between Black and White Americans which the African American community will penalize its members for crossing.

Acting White may include accusations of talking White, dancing White, or engaging in any manner opposite to that proposed by the African American community to distinguish its identity from White America. Recent ethnographic research suggests that in some African American communities, academic achievement is perceived as acting White; consequently, academic achievement may be rejected by African American youth who perceive it as such (Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, 1997; Will Weissert, 1999). In Signiifying, Loud-Talking and Marking, author Claudia Mitchell-Kernan (1972) made reference to the group's opposition to acting White when she wrote, "Thus, not eating or liking chitlins [sic] may be indicative of assimilationist attitudes, which in turn, imply a rejection of one's Black brothers and sisters" (p. 319).

But the message associated with acting White is more complex than a simple rejection of Black culture. For the African American community, when its members act White, there is a blurring of the identity border, an implied assimilation that threatens the extinction of distinctiveness, and subsequently, existence. In fact, the anxiety associated with the threat of extinction is very real to the African American community, and it is relived when members begin to act White. Law professor Stephen Carter (1993) writes, "Among those who cherish solidarity, the word assimilation often carries a mildly pejorative content, and no wonder, for its many guises included alienation, intermarriage, the possibility of a turning away. And as each face turns, a culture creeps nearer to absorption, a transformation that also means demise" (p. 76).

Thus, there is, in the suggestion that a member of the group is acting White, an underlying concern related to the threat of the extinction of the African American community. This too is a transgenerational transmission of the trauma experienced by African Americans.

Colorism: "Red-bone, high yellow, pecan tan, and black"

When I raise the issue of colorism, African Americans write angry letters, call in to radio shows, or attack me in person . . . asserting I exaggerate the problem, the problem doesn't exist, or conversely, accuse me of airing the race's dirty laundry (Iitabari Njeri, 1993, p. 18).
In the African American community, much attention is given to the color of one's skin. The group has for the most part, completely absorbed the oppressors' messages about the negativity of blackness, especially black skin. This absorption is most apparent in this community's practice of naming the skin shades of its members, and of treating members differently based on the color of their skin. The practice is called colorism, and it is a painful topic of discussion within the African American community. It is also however, another example of the transmission of trauma within the African American community.

The transmission of colorism may take the form of verbal or nonverbal messages about skin color. Like an intra-group racism, colorism affects the group's perception and treatment of its members. Unlike racism however, colorism in this community has a unique duality that threatens to cut like a double-edged sword. In one instance, the lightness of one's skin can mean preferential treatment; in another, it may provoke a type of mistreatment bordering on out-right cruelty. The ambivalence about skin color reflects the African American community's ambivalence about identity. In a recent study, social researcher Lillie Fears (1998) observed, "Historically, colorism has involved light-skinned Blacks' rejection of Blacks who were darker. And in many instances, it has involved dark-skinned Blacks spurning their lighter-skinned counterparts for not being Black enough" (p. 30).

The roots of colorism may be traced to the days of slavery where African women who were raped by White men bore children of "mixed" skin color. The human products of these unions were lauded and loathed by the African slaves, and later the African Americans. To some, they were lauded because their lighter skin color reflected the absence of some of the so-called "negative" traits of blackness which the oppressor credited with so many evils. For many in the group who had absorbed the negative messages about themselves, the "mixed" offspring were thought to be smarter, prettier, and more worthy than those of dark skin color.

On the other hand, as Fears (1998) suggests, these lighter-skinned members of the group were also loathed. For many, their lighter skin color was symbolic of both the victimization perpetrated against African women and the special treatment they received from the White oppressor. A notable finding in a study recently conducted by social researcher J. L. Cunningham (1997) revealed that lighter-skinned African Americans often encounter prejudice from the dominant culture and rejection from the African American community. Njeri (1993) writes, "Understandably, African Americans are loath to acknowledge such disparities, even though we aren't to blame. It undermines the image of ethnic solidarity" (p. 17).

Society exploits the color complex through the mass marketing of products designed to bleach skin, straighten hair and "correct" distinctions (Volkan, 1997). While this is undoubtedly true, it is the African American intra-group transmission of the color complex which most directly affects the psyches of its youth. Professor of Religion C. Eric Lincoln (1993) suggests that "[s]ocieties institutionalize their experiences, individuals internalize them" (p. 201).

Conclusion

The transgenerational transmission of messages about acting Black, acting White and colorism among African Americans suggests the group's on-going struggle with self-acceptance, self-love, and self-esteem. The persistent transmissions also suggest a perennial mourning over a lost identity; an identity usurped by the snare of colonialism and over two centuries of enslavement. Often, it is the duration of a group's trauma, not necessarily the advent of a trauma, which subjects a group to the type of internalized aggression associated with the transgenerational transmission of trauma. Thus, it is the long duration of suffering experienced by the African American which would distinguish this group's reaction from that of others.

Deeply embedded within the transmissions presented in this paper is an apparent conflict about both group and individual identity. There is at once a shame associated with acting Black, a disdain for acting White, and an ambivalence associated with skin color; this suggests the lack of a strong core identity or unified self. As noted earlier, research indicates that when the unified self is conflicted there is a sense of discontentedness and emotional upheaval. Certainly, the statistics and reports herein presented of life for many inner-city African Americans suggest a spirit of communal discontentedness and upheaval.

The group's contempt for "acting Black" reflects to a great extent its absorption of both the oppressors' negative messages about blackness and the pain of Black heritage in America. West (1994) observes that the "uncritical acceptance of self-degrading ideals that call into question Black intelligence, possibility and beauty compounds Black misery" (p. 98).

Where acting White is concerned, there is also contempt; and in this case, it is against those whose behaviors are deemed to be too similar to those of the oppressor. This suggests the group's efforts to repair the trauma to its own racial dignity by overtly rejecting too great an assimilation into the oppressor's culture.

Transmissions reflecting the attitude of colorism are clearly related to social constructs about the dominant culture's values of certain skin colors over others. However, the incongruity with which colorism operates in the African American community implies an internal conflict. English lecturer Kristin Hunter Lattany (1993) proposes that an individual in conflict within himself is only marginally functional.

In addition to the themes of acting Black, acting White, and colorism, there is another frequently transmitted adage within the African American community. It states: "If you don't know where you come from, you won't know where you're going." Inherent in this statement is the idea that the knowledge of the past is critical to the development of a path for the future. In effect, this adage supports the maintenance of a link between the past and present. In considering its past however, author Judy Simmons (1999) writes that Black America still finds that it is shackled to ideas and images of itself that have been originated and filtered by White America (Simmons, 1999). Speech professor Grace Sims Holt (1972) concludes that "[o]nce the physical chains are removed, language becomes the major vehicle for perpetuating the legitimation of the subsequent stages of oppression" (p. 154).

Inherent in this latter adage is also the implication that a letting go of the past will lead one to wander in search of a direction. Consequently, those who profess the adage would argue that the African American is the better for having held onto its shared "memories" (mental representations or images) of a traumatized past, since it is in reality the only past which this community shares. Therefore, it is the only past which holds promise for creating a sense of direction for the group.

For the African American, who represents a race of people despised, degraded, de-culturalized, and exploited from the onset, then forcibly made bi-racial and bi-cultural, and subsequently rejected by its native land and its oppressors, the journey towards a unified, loved self is proving to be a precipitous one. It is a journey further compounded by perpetual transmissions of trauma about group and individual identity.

As the transmissions continue, Simmons (1999) poses this question: "Is it African Americans who implant that reflex in you, who give menace a Black face" (p. 26)? And I answer that the African American community contributes greatly to giving menace a Black face through many of its intra-group transmissions. This is the underlying thesis of the transgenerational transmission of trauma.

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