Bearing Witness to the Cultural Trauma of Slavery
Shortly after the American Civil War, after attempts to reconstruct a more equitable society collapsed, the North and South reunited in an attitude of contempt towards the former enslaved. The difficulty of reconstruction was projected outward from North and South whites onto the minority black population making blacks out to be the villains and the objects of hate — a point on which the North and South could “reconcile”. During this time, the portrayal of slavery in the North changed from one of harm to one of benevolence. Through various mediums the idea that slaves were content and happy were popularized, such as paintings by white artist and popular culture minstrelsy. On top of this, those with the privilege to go without the traumatic experience of slavery, those with the control of resources and the power to form a public memory, made the central trauma of the nation the civil war itself (as opposed to slavery as central trauma). Statues of the North and South’s war heroes were erected, and through all of this, the trauma of slavery became masked, and the black community became both punished and invisible (see Eyarman, Cultural Trauma, Ch. 1).
Ron Eyerman (2001), in Cultural Trauma, writes about the event of slavery as an identity forming experience for the African American community. The event of slavery has deeply shaped African Americans, and since the memory of it has been masked, the reality of its harm has had to be sustained in what Eyerman calls a collective memory. Each generation has returned to the memory of the traumatic event of slavery, forming its own language around it and its own understanding of what it means for them in their given time. This collective memory has allowed African Americans to hold onto the reality of why they’ve come to be who they are. Eyerman writes, “…past becomes present through the embodied reactions of individuals as they carry out their daily lives” (p. 5). The struggle for the African American’s experience to be corroborated by public representation has been ongoing. It wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s that their trauma was recognized to a greater extent in our nation. Today we continue to see this struggle in questions of who really matters in our society.
This all brings up many important questions to be asked, especially if you (such as I) do not identify as African American. Is it possible that I know less about what the African American community is going through than I previously thought? Have I heard the stories of African Americans and have I been open to the possibility that their experience of life in this country is different than mine? Have I considered that the traumatic experience of slavery has been carried from generation to generation through a collective memory and that it has a particular expression today?
Inspiration can be found, for the theologians out there, in Shelly Rambo’s image of the Spirit. In Spirit and Trauma, she describes trauma as that which cannot be integrated; it is a wound that is not closed, but open (p. 7); it is an ongoing pain that persists in the present, which lives on in symptoms of communities and individual bodies (p. 2). It is in this open wound that the Spirit bears witness, and in bearing witness, brings the possibility of new life.
The African American community has continuously struggled for the collective memory of the traumatic event of slavery to be recognized and represented in the larger culture. May we use Shelly Rambo’s image of the Spirit as an invitation to bear witness to that collective memory — to make space for the collective memory of the trauma of slavery to be represented well, so that the possibility of new life can be realized. ❤️
