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As a grandchild of holocaust survivors this rings very true. I’ve always felt I had stress triggers that “didn’t belong to me” so to speak.
by mrsmee89 8y ago
As a grandchild of holocaust survivors this rings very true. I’ve always felt I had stress triggers that “didn’t belong to me” so to speak.
- ataturk 8y agoWouldn't this be true for anyone who survived WWII? In other words, a majority of the people on the planet, centering around Europe and the Far East? But every single Soviet citizen was negatively affected by a war that cost them 27M lives.
- collyw 8y agoGoing back a few generations I am sure the majority of people had some stressful situations in there lives.
- spraak 8y agoI also believe this is what African Americans are still experiencing, while maybe slavery was long ago to have been "worked out" of the genes, it was roughly just two or three generations ago that there was segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynchings etc.
- wycs 8y agoIf this is your explanation for disparate outcomes, it does not strike me as a good one. No population has gone through more stress than post-war Jewish immigrants yet their children were the most successful cohort in America. Chinese immigrants were subjected to horrific racism and yet they are far more successful than gentile whites on average. Whatever the explanation, Lysenkoist propagation of intergenerational trama is unlikely to be correct, though it may prove politically expedient.
- xstartup 8y agoJewish at least had an opportunity to migrate to other places. European atrocities in South Asia, for example, the engineered famine affected 40 million lives and 5 million dead.
- lifeformed 8y agoThe trauma olympics isn't usually a fruitful discussion, but I think it's worth pointing out that Holocaust survivors were from a single generation or two, while slavery in America existed for 240 years, so it might not be a fair comparison. And the level of racism Chinese immigrants faced is still of a much lower intensity than black Americans faced. I mean, even if you don't count the first 240 years of slavery, there's still the next hundred years of weekly extrajudicial executions in public by mobs.
- civilitty 8y agoHell, the whole "hard working" Asians stereotype was a racist attempt to discredit criticisms of racism towards African Americans. "Hey, look! We're not racist! If the blacks were as hard working as the yellows we wouldn't have a problem!" was literally their argument.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago> Hell, the whole "hard working" Asians stereotype was a racist attempt to discredit criticisms of racism towards African Americans. Did you really just attempt to discredit the rather well documented history of industriousness of Asians and Asian-American immigrants in particular in order to further your political narrative?
- jonnybgood 8y agoI think you’re missing their point. People of all races are hard working. That should go without saying. To say a whole race of people are not hard working is nothing more than a form of racism.
- 8y ago
- aphextron 8y ago>while maybe slavery was long ago to have been "worked out" of the genes, it was roughly just two or three generations ago that there was segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynchings etc. Slavery in the US was only two human lifetimes ago. My grandfather has living memory of older relatives who were born slaves. And then white people who's grandparents were homesteaders, farmers, or small business owners wonder why black people today have no wealth.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoIn the 1920s or so, black men were 24% self employed or had their own small business. Now it is a lot less than that. What exactly happened is up for debate but the results are certainly sad.
- adamsea 8y agoDesegregation and no more lynchings (which was prevalent enough it was basically domestic terrorism) is sad?
- lopmotr 8y agoCan you show where that stat came from? 24% seems so high that it must be reflecting some major obvious phenomenon. Was there a big class of jobs that doesn't exist anymore? Were a quarter of white men self employed too? Was discrimination was so great that self-employment was a far better way to get work? Is that 24% of black men or working black men, or working-age black men? The statistic on its own leave so much confusion. Maybe self-employed meant itinerant farm laborer? It might not be so sad for that to stop existing.
- jonnybgood 8y agoI would believe it and I also believe the decline was due to racism. Southern racists didn’t like seeing prosperous black people. Just look at what happened to Rosewood: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre
- graeme 8y agoWas the small business rate more common for all ethnicities back then? Without context this stat doesn't really tell us much. Mass employment as employees is a relatively new phenomenom.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoJim Crow, segregation and lynchings were zero generations ago for a lot of people. It's easy to forget because so many of the leaders of the civil rights movement died early of unnatural causes, but someone who was 18 when the Civil Rights Act was passed is now only 72.
- code_duck 8y agoThe past 50 years have not been so great for African American families either.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoIt's a lot of fun to form beliefs in the absence of data.
- ljf 8y agoInteresting you replied to this and not the parent?
- always_good 8y agoSeems appropriate because it applies up the whole comment chain. And if you're going to try and draw conclusions, then come out and say it instead of noncommittally leaving it up to our imagination.
- spraak 8y agoIt's a lot of fun to assume. /s How do you know I haven't formed this view based on data? You're assuming I don't have any data.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoBecause if you had data you'd be like, "here's the data." If your guess is right, we'd see differences in the effects of Jim Crow depending on what part of the country people lived in. Well, do we? I don't know.
- spraak 8y ago> we'd see differences in the effects of Jim Crow depending on what part of the country people lived in That's one, very obtuse hypothesis.
- lopmotr 8y agoWhen you choose your opinions so that they conform to popular politics, you're at risk of getting contorted into contradictions just to keep having the "right" beliefs. This research says stress causes genetic differences in subsequent generations. So if it's the cause of modern black poverty and violence, it would mean black people are genetically susceptible to being poor and violent. If you consider poverty and violence as inferior qualities, then it says black people are genetically inferior to white people, which is so incompatible with popular culture that you'll be be ostracized for even mentioning the idea!
- spraak 8y agoI think you're reaching too far there
- lopmotr 8y agoSorry for assuming your motivation. Do you agree with my conclusion about blacks being genetically inferior? Is there a mistake in my logic? Perhaps being RNA, not DNA makes it not quite the same thing?
- owebmaster 8y agoIf the main objective of DNA and genes is to spread itself, black people still have some obvious genetics advantage, historically. And it doesn't seem to be changing, much the opposite.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoThe German men and women who are descendants of the raped and tortured German women, victims of the Red Army, which Solzhenitsyn wrote about, as well... I don't write this to be insulting, but to point out that untold millions of people were affected.
- watwut 8y agoPolish displaced people. Russians citizens who seen villages burned in cold winter as German army was doing their "cleaning up for settlements you are not even people" thing. By historical accounts, German army behavior in West was very bad and much worst on Easter front. If you are going to single out Red Army, lets also not forget the other armies in that war. (And yes, people affected by communist persecutions have their trauma too.)
- wirrbel 8y agoAs a german with a severly war-traumatized grandmother (who was a teenager back then and while we don't know in the family, it might have been rape) I first of all would like to note, that you should not point out the Red Army alone. The events were more complex than that. Then I would like to ask every one reading this, to support mental health care for their neighbours, but also for refugees and inhabitants of war-stricken countries. If you live in a democratic country, use your active right to vote to elect candidates promoting free mental health care. If these candidates don't exist, get involved in one of the political parties to push the issue into focus.
- dankohn1 8y agoAnd advocate not to cause massive health problems on children today: http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump-administration-separating-parents-and-children-at-border-1242280003606 http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump-administration-separ...
- slfnflctd 8y agoI couldn't agree more. There huge benefits to society as a whole in making sure everyone has opportunities to receive support in this area-- I wouldn't be surprised if they vastly outweigh whatever it costs to provide them. Everything from homelessness to school shootings could be reduced. There's already a stigma associated with seeking mental health services, and the costs on top of that make it a non-starter for many of the people who need it most.