Generational trauma significantly impacts Black communities, manifesting in health issues and systemic disadvantages that can become cyclical. Continued instances of violence and stress, both lived and witnessed, laws that inordinately affect the quality of life for people of color, and continued systems of White supremacy can create ripples that can be hard to escape.
Chris Burton, director of the Leadership Institute at Union Presbyterian Seminary, and Dartinia Hull, managing editor of the Outlook, discuss hope, faith and resilience, and the promises of God.
Dartinia: Fair warning: Just two days ago, I did a book signing for a collection of essays about violence against Black bodies, and it struck me that more than one woman in that book said, we know this is going to happen again. That’s trauma we live with. It’s exhausting.
Chris: And it’s not a matter of “if,” it’s “when.” I don’t think most Black folks allow themselves to think about how traumatized they are all the time. Like, why can’t I get a job? I don’t understand why I didn’t get into that neighborhood. I’m trying to buy a house, whatever the access point – or the denial point, rather – is, I don’t think we necessarily connect the continuum of trauma that our people have experienced time and time again.
But when you sit back and look at it all, it can be overwhelming. I understand when people just say, I’ve got to leave, because it’s like, no matter what I do here, it’s just not going to pan out.
Dartinia: How do you work with that? “It doesn’t matter what I do.”
Chris: I’m of two minds. One, I feel proud of and inspired by African Americans who remind me, as a Black person of Jamaican descent, that they built this table.
So it’s one thing for me to have the fleeting thought that “my dad still lives in Jamaica … it wouldn’t be that hard to start over there.”
This is versus someone who is several generations from Virginia or North Carolina or South Carolina or Georgia or Alabama and thinking “why should I leave?” All that’s here was built on the backs of my ancestors. Like, why would I leave this? And I think there’s a certain resilience and strength in that and the ability to see this sort of terror and not blink is inspiring.
And I find myself saying this often in sermons: it really is taking the Lord’s prayer seriously, because if we get together every Sunday and say “on earth as it is in heaven,” what do we mean by that? We certainly don’t mean Jim Crow’s on earth, so Jim Crow’s going to be in heaven. We don’t mean that because apartheid is on earth, so apartheid is going to be
in heaven.
It has to mean that the kingdom of God calls us to something beyond the imagination and White supremacy and that it is manifesting itself into earth’s reality and America’s reality.
It doesn’t mean that we have to wait until we’re dead to finally be free of this. We’re going to be free here.
That’s the hope. I recently preached at this colonial church, where I’m in the pulpit and I’m looking across at the balcony that I was told – it’s not just me imagining – I was told that’s where enslaved people sat.
And I had this moment while preaching. I almost messed up my sermon, because I was thinking about the people who sat there, who never imagined, didn’t even pray for me or any of their descendants to be standing in that pulpit.
Maybe someone who was brilliant and smart might have imagined, but most wouldn’t have had the ability to say, “it would be so great one day to be up there.”
It connects to me what Paul talks about in Ephesians — by the power of Christ within us we are able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine. This is how God has delivered us in the past. What more will God deliver in the future? How much more is God going to deliver us, when what seemed impossible is now possible.
That’s what I focus on.
Dartinia: Generational trauma has become recognized as an actual thing. PTSD.
Chris: Yes. So — Prince William’s kids are little, little kids. But there are things that they don’t even have to think about. The expectations are on them as four-year-olds or however old they are.
And it’s just been generation after generation after generation of expectation and resource, expectation and resource. Think about the inverse of this. If you continue to deny people something generation after generation, it also builds.
It wears you out. Look at illnesses that are predominantly in the Black community. These are illnesses associated with wearing yourself out. Hypertension is wearing yourself out.
Diabetes is connected to nutrition. What was given to folks when they were in enslavement? The worst quality food. How does that affect people epigenetically? All these things are connected. It’s not something that’s just like, “oh, we don’t know why Black folks have heart disease, we don’t know why Black folks have diabetes.” You know. “Why do these Black kids have asthma?” You put the houses close to the landfill in your town — what did you think was going to happen?
Dartinia: Why do we have gastro issues? Because of drinking water with lead in it. Because lead pipes were in redlined parts of town, and upgraded infrastructure never got put in.
Chris: Exactly. And if you look at that with the theological lens, you understand why sin is corporate. You understand why sin is systemic. We talk about systemic racism and people sometimes still can’t wrap their minds around that. But we can understand this notion of the sin that we commit that wasn’t “I’m going to go ahead and be disrespectful to you,” but was “I’m participating in a system that was designed to make sure that you never have what you need.”
Dartinia: The Outlook’s September issue was about reparations. We received a letter, which we are not running, that said Black people in America are the most fortunate Black people in the world. Mainly because the income in sub-Saharan Africa is about $420 per year. How do you try to break through that letter writer’s way of thinking? Is it necessary to try?
Chris: I don’t think it’s necessary. I used to really try to meet people where they were with horrific things like that. There were times in seminary when people said “wasn’t slavery ultimately a good thing? Because it introduced Africans to Christianity?” and other lies that people tell themselves.
Dartinia: Like — there weren’t Christians in Africa?
Chris: Who was that eunuch Philip was talking to? Where was he from?
The focus must be on setting the captives free. The focus must be on marginalized people, oppressed people, those who have been “living with their backs against the wall.”
Get folks free.
And if people who are enjoying excess, enjoying power, who think that life is about obtaining as much as we possibly can, you want to have all the advantages without regard of who has a disadvantage, I don’t have time to disabuse you of that.
I pray that you’re disabused of it, and if when we encounter one another, you’ll be encouraged by my words and deeds to disabuse yourself of that. But I am so much more focused on getting folks free than I am on tucking you in at night when you’re already comfortable. There are folks who ain’t got no bed.
The way that White supremacy and empire culture are wired, even as you’re noticing inequities, you’re still appreciating the oppression. Like — “This is not fair, but you know what? I’m just so glad to be here.”
No, you were doing me wrong. And I don’t want to deal with you because you’re doing me wrong. Unless you’re coming to me to say, “I’m sorry for how I’ve dealt with you. Here’s my plan to make things right.” There’s nothing for us to talk about. I’m not interested in being the living example of what gives you comfort.
Or, “I know I can talk to Chris because he’s my friend. But I don’t support any policies that make sure that Chris’s kids are okay. I don’t support any policies that make sure that Chris’s cousins are okay.” Then there’s nothing for us to talk about. You’re actively participating in Chris’s destruction rather than participating in my flourishing. Why would I want to make you feel comfortable in that?
For what?
Dartinia: And people want us to be civil. That seems to cut across many lines.
Chris: We haven’t, as an American culture, dealt with the legacy of how slavery affects our interpersonal skills. There’s still such a deep fear of slave revolts in this country that any time a Black person is demonstrating any sort of freedom or autonomy it is terrifying. It’s like you are supposed to present your protest in the most polite voice, but what’s polite about persecution? Nothing. What’s polite about our kids dying? Nothing.
Dartinia: Where do you start?
Chris: You start with safety. And safety takes time. Building trust takes time. This morning, I heard Simon Sinek in conversation with Trevor Noah, and he said something I thought was so wise: you build trust far better by asking for help rather than offering help. If you’re in a position of power or position of authority and you’re asking “How can I help?” people may be intimidated. They don’t trust you. They’re going to shut down. But there’s something about allowing yourself to demonstrate a Christ-like model of humility. When we talk about being a servant leader, what does it mean to do that? It means to see a space and go towards the need but also to have the vulnerability that says, “I need help too. I’m not perfect, I’m not Superman. There will be moments where I don’t get it right.” And that’s how you inculcate a space of trust.
Dartinia: People are exhausted. Parents are exhausted. Kids are exhausted. You can see it on their faces.
Chris: That makes me think about what I noticed when I went from teaching at a public school to a [private] boarding school. Both schools had sixth graders. The sixth graders at that public school were treated with a sense of “you need to be responsible for this. Where is your metro card? Did you turn that form in? You’re supposed to bring this, don’t come back to school without this.” Like you’re talking to an adult. At the other school, ninth graders were treated like babies, completely handheld. “Oh no, we can’t expose them to how harsh the world can be. Because these are our children.” And they were allowed to be children in a way that the sixth graders at the public school did not get the chance to be because they had so much grown folk responsibility already. I taught high school kids who had to go to work during the school day, and it wasn’t just because they wanted to pay their cell phone bills. Their family told them, “You’re in charge of the light bill. You got to pay. You got to buy the groceries for us.” So they had to work for real. How are we supposed to allow that person to still be a kid when they got grown folks’ responsibility, you know? And then telling them, “oh, just do the PSAT.” They’re like, what? How is college going to help me feed my grandmother? She can’t wait five years for me to graduate and supposedly get a job after that. She’s hungry now.
Dartinia: Is this too big of a boat to turn?
Chris: It has to turn. And it goes back to what I was saying earlier about systemic sin — like we can’t keep doing this and act like God doesn’t exist. If you look all throughout Scripture, and then all through the world’s religious texts, there’s an understanding of our God who demands justice. There’s no way this large boat will continue in this direction, leaving swaths of children behind, leaving them behind generationally, with brokenness to be passed down through generations. There’s no way, if God is truly just, that this boat is continuing in this direction. Even if it means the boat just sinks.
Dartinia: Do you think our boat is sinking?
Chris: We’ve been taking on water, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing — because I do believe in the faithfulness of God. Consider the lens of a person in Jerusalem during the fall of Judah. They saw the temple get destroyed twice. This place where God lives got destroyed twice. You could see that as an end-of-the-world event in their context, and yet still see God’s faithfulness. This is a message of hope. This is a message of resilience. It is a message of God’s faithfulness and mercy towards us.
Dartinia: What’s the balance between hope and action?
Chris: Hope and action should be on the same side. You demonstrate your faithfulness and your belief by putting them into a relationship with each other. I can’t just say I believe things are going to get better. I’m hoping for things because I have hope, right? If there’s no action, then it’s not faith. It’s not enough to just hope and it’s not enough to just act hopelessly. You have to have the two in concert.
There have always been times when people have been persuaded that evil is the better way to go about things; there have always been times when fear is compelling, when hatred seems like the only solution. But there are also times in the midst of that hate and fear when people decide that love is a better way. People decide that peace is a better way. People decide that justice is better. There’s a sense of “no we need to correct this right now. This cannot keep going.” The only way for evil and hatred to persist is if all of us who see wrong decide to do nothing. If we see wrong, step up. I believe that God steps with us.
