So overpowering is this film’s simple, horrible, and almost entirely true story that it’s hard to get enough distance on 12 Years a Slave to poke at its inner workings. Dana Stevens, Slate

In the Steve McQueen-directed 12 Years a Slave, based on the book published in the mid-1850’s, free man Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is kidnapped in the North and sold into slavery in the South. As is well illustrated in the movie, he suddenly and terrifyingly loses all connection to his life as a husband, father, and musician, among other things. He’s forced to take a new name (Platt), has to pretend to be illiterate, and is continually demeaned and brutalized.

Toward the beginning of this nightmare, Northup tells another fellow who’s trying to figure out how to survive, “I don’t want to survive. I want to live.” It’s not long, however, before he realizes survival is his only choice.

I agree with the general sentiments of the film critics, most of whom have highly praised 12 Years. One representative sampling is from Manohla Dargis, New York Times: “The genius of ’12 Years a Slave’ is its insistence on banal evil, and on terror, that seeped into souls, bound bodies and reaped an enduring, terrible price.”

You can see the film trailer below:

Of the questions that haunted me after seeing the film, the one I want to address here: What are the psychological effects of slavery on African Americans to this day?

Dr. Joy DeGruy, a social work researcher and professor, wrote about this in her highly praised Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (2005). She notes that although many in slavery likely experienced PTSD, it’s unlikely that they received appropriate help. Certain adaptive traits were then passed to the next generation, and so on. Moreover, continuing into the present, the African American community has also had to endure newer traumas and their effects.

Her theory in her words is that Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, or P.T.S.S., is:

…a condition that exists as a consequence of multigenerational oppression of Africans and their descendants resulting from centuries of chattel slavery. A form of slavery which was predicated on the belief that African Americans were inherently/genetically inferior to whites. This was then followed by institutionalized racism which continues to perpetuate injury.

Accordingly, individuals frequently suffer from the following:

• Vacant Esteem–includes hopelessness, depression, and a self-destructive outlook.
• Marked Propensity for Anger and Violence–includes extreme feelings of suspicion.
• Racist Socialization and internalized racism–with learned helplessness, literacy deprivation, distorted self-concept; also, antipathy or aversion for members of one’s own cultural/ethnic group, the mores/customs associated with one’s heritage, and physical characteristics of one’s cultural/ethnic group.