Epigenetics and post-traumatic bondage disorder: discovering what Africans already knew
Introduction
Why do many people of all racial/ethnic groups refuse to believe any ‘new’ idea or concept that is presented to them unless it comes from Caucasians, or until it receives confirmation from Caucasians?
Many African people are plagued by a deep-seated inferiority complex that does not allow for the possibility that Africans past or present are capable of developing ideas and concepts, particularly in the field of science and technology, that are unique, innovative and unknown to Caucasians.
I was once again made aware of this point when I watched a television program ‘Horizon’ on BBC2 on Wednesday 2nd November 2005. The program dealt with the subject of epigenetics and the exciting and groundbreaking ‘discoveries’ made by Caucasian scientists.
Traditionally, ‘Western’ science has promoted the idea that the genetic heritage one receives from one’s parents is ‘sealed in’ once the egg is fertilized in the womb. Therefore, if there is a genetic abnormality, for example a chromosomal deletion, it will lead to the same condition, regardless of which parent this abnormality is inherited from.
The history of epigenetics developed in the UK and Sweden. In the UK, a geneticist was searching for an explanation as to why children with the same genetic abnormality (a deletion on the same chromosome) ended up with two very different diseases, Angelman syndrome and Prada Willi syndrome. It turned out that children who inherited the chromosomal deletion from their mothers ended up with Angelman Syndrome, a serious condition in which the child is severely disabled, never develops speech, but appears to be permanently smiling and happy. On the other hand, children who inherited the chromosomal deletion from their father developed Prada Willi syndrome in which there is no intellectual impairment, but in which the child does not have the internal triggers that tell us when we are full and therefore , will eat continuously unless prevented. It usually leads to morbid obesity. The question was, how could the same genetic abnormality give rise to two very different diseases?
At the same time, scientists in Sweden were studying a remote community near the Arctic Circle that presented an excellent study group due to its genetic isolation and excellent records of births, deaths, etc. dating back hundreds of years. Upon investigation, these scientists were surprised to discover that events that affected the grandparents of today’s population, such as famine, seemed to have a direct impact on the health prospects of today’s population. These findings went directly against the contemporary genetic paradigm, as they were not talking about the inheritance of traditional genetic abnormalities through generations, but rather the understanding that experiencing adverse social and environmental conditions could have a direct impact on the health of future generations. I like it.
Due to its location close to the Arctic Circle, people living in that area had experienced fairly frequent famines. By using historical records to track the occurrence of these famines, the scientists were able to show that these events had a direct effect on the life expectancy of the grandchildren of people who actually experienced the famine. More specifically, this effect occurred when the grandmother had been a fetus in the womb and when the male grandfather was going through puberty at the time of the famine. It seemed clear that these were crucial periods because of the times when females develop their ability to produce eggs and males develop their ability to produce sperm.
This work led to the idea of epigenetics which suggests that certain genetic traits or dispositions can be passed down through more than one generation and act like a light switch, that is, they can be turned on or off depending on environmental conditions. . For example, they were able to show that children who were conceived through invitero fertilization were up to four times more likely to develop certain genetic abnormalities and that this was entirely due to the fact that the egg was exposed to environmental changes, i.e. was removed from the womb and placed in a Petri dish or test tube for fertilization by sperm from the future father.
Such findings bring a renewed focus on the importance of the environment in shaping the physical health of current and future generations. It shows us that we are literally shaping the health prospects of our grandchildren and, indeed, great-grandchildren by the things we do and the environment we are exposed to.
The transmission of psychological states or dispositions across generations was also explored during this television program. Psychologists had noted that children of Jewish Holocaust survivors reported high levels of stress and anxiety, and that many attributed this to their parents’ experiences in European concentration camps. Psychologists generally believed that these people manifested these high levels of stress because they had been repeatedly exposed to their parents’ stories of torture and abuse.
To test this thesis, these scientists examined women who had been pregnant and exposed to the events that took place in New York on 9/11. Psychologists found that children whose mothers had been directly exposed to the 9/11 attack and its aftermath while in the womb exhibited much lower levels of cortisol production than other children. Psychologists knew that people with low cortisol levels had been shown to have a higher susceptibility to developing post-traumatic stress disorder than people with average levels of cortisol production.
Thus, it was clear that the mother’s exposure to stress had a direct effect on the biochemistry of her children and made them more likely to experience harmful stress than children who were not similarly exposed.
The title of this essay is ‘Epigentics and Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder
The European ‘discovery’ of what Africans already knew’. He informs the reader that epigenetics is just one example of how ancient African wisdom, which has been passed down through countless generations, is now being ‘discovered’ by European scientists. Speaking personally, it was in the 1990s that I first heard Dr. Patricia Newton speak on the subject of “post-traumatic bondage disorder.” Dr. Newton, who is a psychiatrist as well as trained in African knowledge systems, was explaining how the repeated trauma experienced by Africans during slavery and in the many years of terror and oppression that followed had been passed down from generation to generation. generation and resulted in many of the self-denying and dysfunctional individual and group behavior patterns we see today among African peoples around the world.
Of course, at the time, many acculturated Africans rejected ideas like making excuses and immersing themselves in their victimhood. Now, with European scientists validating the ideas that Dr. Newton has tried to reacquaint us with these Europeanized Africans, he will no doubt take them into account, at least to the extent that he brings them into conflict with his group of European reference.
The first fundamental point I raise in this essay relates to how knowledge is produced and constructed in a world dominated by Caucasians. It is one of those sad truisms that if you are trying to convince the majority of Africans of a point of importance, the most effective route is to present European/’mainstream’ validation for that point.
The second critical point I am making relates to the damage to the individual and collective contemporary African psyche as a result of Mangalize (sometimes misnamed Black Holocaust). Africans are encouraged to minimize and underestimate the effects of hundreds of years of physical and psychological terror, and yet everything we see around us says that Africans are spiritually, emotionally and psychologically dislocated in a way that could only arise of massive trauma.
Dr. Newton will not receive media praise for her work in publicizing the generational transmission of stress and trauma and would certainly stress that she is simply bringing ancient African knowledge to the benefit of her people. Knowledge is not produced in a cultural vacuum and, in fact, is a product of culture. Africans need to learn this and act to produce institutions to (re)create and spread Africa-centric knowledge.
Paul Ifayomi Scholarship
June 2006