Someone in my office called the following item from Fox News to my attention. I am appalled. A lawyer in Oregon is planning, in defense of his client, to introduce an expert witness to testify that the reason that the defendant "whipped and broke his [two year old] son's neck and ribs [is] because he suffers from post-traumatic slave syndrome." Evidently there is some "academic" out there who, in the words of Fox News, "claims that because African Americans never got a chance to heal from slavery and still face racism, oppression and societal inequality, they suffer from multigenerational trauma."
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like a crock of sh*t? Seriously, it seems to me that makes us all prisoners of our ancestral past to the point where each of us can disclaim responsibility for our actions based on some historical slight. No matter how long ago. Hopefully the judge will think this is a crock, too.
Posted by Random Penseur at June 7, 2004 02:06 PM