Speaker 1: If you just tune in a civic cipher. I am
Speaker 1: your host Ramsey's job. Big shout out to my man
Speaker 1: c Ward, who is off in Manila, literally because that's
Speaker 1: what he does. Lucky him. But I'd like to also
Speaker 1: say lucky me, because I am here with the brilliant
Speaker 1: mind that is ya Afo. And I'm also here with
Speaker 1: a good friend of the show and a fellow activist
Speaker 1: once upon a Time, and a fellow do gooder and
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people, Leanna Taylor, and we're having
Speaker 1: a conversation about generational trauma that I feel is very
Speaker 1: important for you to stick around for the second half
Speaker 1: of the show and listen to and learn from the
Speaker 1: conversation that we're having today. That so far it's been
Speaker 1: very informative, and I know we're not going to cover everything,
Speaker 1: but we'll definitely be sure to leave you with some
Speaker 1: connective tissue so you can do some independent studies and
Speaker 1: hopefully create a link with you Yah and the work
Speaker 1: that you're doing. But for now, we have to take
Speaker 1: a pause and teach you a new way to become
Speaker 1: a better ally. Baba Baba and Today's Baba is sponsored
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Speaker 1: I want you to check out his Keelhistorical Trauma dot
Speaker 1: com and you can become a historical trauma specialist with
Speaker 1: a certification and from IAPO. Cultural competence begins with respecting
Speaker 1: generational and trauma. All right. This is the only entity
Speaker 1: offering a comprehensive forty eight hour Historical Trauma Specialist certification program.
Speaker 1: The program is broken into six levels and is built
Speaker 1: on a foundation of bipod cultures and neurobiology. It is
Speaker 1: taught from a multicultural perspective, injecting traditions and ideology from
Speaker 1: various cultures from around the world. This inclusive study relies
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Speaker 1: with coveted knowledge from medicine, women and men, traditional historians,
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Speaker 1: collective and integgenerational trauma, epigenetics, colonization, structural racism, race based
Speaker 1: traumatic stress, anti racist attachment, cultural attachment theory. The list
Speaker 1: goes on. For more information, visit Healhistoricaltrauma dot com and
Speaker 1: get your certification as a historical trauma specialist. And if
Speaker 1: nothing else, again Healhistoricaltrauma dot com. It'll give you some insights,
Speaker 1: some tangible stuff, some sharable stuff that you can use
Speaker 1: outside of radio and outside of the podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: it is you're listening to this content that you can
Speaker 1: take with you or share with other people who might
Speaker 1: benefit from it. All right, back to the lecture at hand.
Speaker 2: To quote, I'm chomping at the bit, yes, Okay, I've
Speaker 2: been waiting to be able to say this. I'm blown
Speaker 2: away that you use I mean, we're aligned in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, Okay, but yeah we are. I'm blown
Speaker 2: away that you use this example of the barrel of laughs.
Speaker 2: Collectivist people, people from collectivist cultures have what some scientists
Speaker 2: call the funny bone gene. Okay, I won't get to
Speaker 2: sciencey because then I'll lose you. Okay, but I'm gonna
Speaker 2: explain it without all the science. But our genetics are different,
Speaker 2: and we have this gene for laughter and for humor.
Speaker 2: So when we are in environments where we're not able
Speaker 2: to laugh and have collective humor, it disturbs our neurological regulation.
Speaker 3: There's parts of the.
Speaker 2: Brain that are designed for us to laugh collectively. Every
Speaker 2: single thing that you mentioned that you said, well, we
Speaker 2: also you were quoting someone and you said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we had these barrel laughs. But then we also bounced
Speaker 2: babies on the knee, and we had interconnected relationships and
Speaker 2: we got together and all of those things, all of
Speaker 2: those things, as human beings.
Speaker 3: Were wired for that.
Speaker 2: So when we have interconnectedness and we have relationships, it
Speaker 2: allows our brain to release the feel goods into our system. Right,
Speaker 2: the dopamine, the serotonin, the oxytocin, the things that make
Speaker 2: us feel good, make us feel joy, pleasure, safety, And
Speaker 2: so when we don't have an opportunity for those things,
Speaker 2: when that is stripped of us, right, this is another
Speaker 2: part of our culture. Right, culture and neurobiology go hand
Speaker 2: in hand. In fact, we have studies. Now you know
Speaker 2: a science known as cultural neurobiology, because we're un understanding
Speaker 2: that culture and neurobiology go together. If we are people
Speaker 2: from a collectivist culture and we're environment and environments where
Speaker 2: we don't dance collectively, where we don't sing collectively, where
Speaker 2: we don't have an opportunity to laugh, it's going to
Speaker 2: disturb our neurobiology. So it doesn't surprise me, right, that
Speaker 2: we weren't allowed to laugh on the plantation. More does
Speaker 2: it surprise me that we were always trying to get
Speaker 2: together to laugh, because the brain is always seeking regulation
Speaker 2: working on the plantation, right, we're neurologically disregulated because we're
Speaker 2: always in fear. And those moments of laughter, those moments
Speaker 2: of connectedness, those moments of babies on our lap, allows
Speaker 2: us to activate the pleasure center of our brain, which
Speaker 2: then allows us to have the dopamine release where we
Speaker 2: can feel joy and pleasure and safety. So it's just
Speaker 2: it's you know, that story is really in alignment with
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. What you mean, these are ways
Speaker 2: that we can heal ourselves. You see, we're looking our
Speaker 2: communities in trouble, right, Our communities need healing, and we
Speaker 2: think that we're going to get that healing from Western medicine.
Speaker 2: We think we're going to get that healing from outside
Speaker 2: providers and outside people. But we have the capacity to
Speaker 2: become self healing communities. We have the capacity. We're wired,
Speaker 2: we have the inate ability to heal ourselves. We just
Speaker 2: have to be reminded because our ancestors knew how to
Speaker 2: manage adversity, but through colonization, we've been stripped of our
Speaker 2: cultural identity and we no longer know how to manage adversity.
Speaker 1: You know, I see what you mean about her, she's
Speaker 1: uh something special especially, Yeah, I think that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a bit of an understatement really, So let's do this, okay.
Speaker 1: I remember you said that you didn't want to get
Speaker 1: to sciencey, but while we have or listeners here, I
Speaker 1: do want to at least touch on a little bit
Speaker 1: of the science here. Because it's one thing to say
Speaker 1: that these are some good ideas, or these are some
Speaker 1: culturally relevant practices, or these are things that this group
Speaker 1: of people likes to do, and then Jewish people like
Speaker 1: to do this, and tel Aviv and you know, on
Speaker 1: and on and on. But if there's a scientific basis
Speaker 1: for it, science is a language that tends to transcend
Speaker 1: a lot of prejudices. So let's take a moment and
Speaker 1: discuss for folks that don't know, what is epigenetics.
Speaker 2: Okay, So epigenetics is the science that deals with how
Speaker 2: our genetics has to adapt to our environment. So we
Speaker 2: have genes, right that we inherit from our family, from
Speaker 2: our parents. That stays solid, right, that's static. We have
Speaker 2: that genetic information no matter what. But and that lives
Speaker 2: in the genome of the DNA. We then have something
Speaker 2: that's on the outside of the genome, which is the epigenome,
Speaker 2: and that contains chemical markers, and those chemical markers determine how, when,
Speaker 2: and if that genetic information gets expressed. Okay, so if
Speaker 2: we have so let's just do an example. If we
Speaker 2: have an ancestor that was on the continent during the
Speaker 2: slave trade. Right, there's an ancestor walking around doing their
Speaker 2: day to day work. They know that there's someone that
Speaker 2: is stealing and enslaving Africans, so they're fearful. Right, somebody
Speaker 2: might get me. I don't know if it's going to
Speaker 2: be somebody from another tribe. I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: going to be somebody, you know, a colonizer, but somebody.
Speaker 3: Might get me. So they're moving around in fear.
Speaker 2: They become hypervigilant because we must become hypervigilant in order
Speaker 2: to right. So suddenly we can see farther than we
Speaker 2: used to be able to see because we have to
Speaker 2: train ourselves. Our body is going to adjust to this
Speaker 2: for survival. We can see farther. Our sense of smell, right,
Speaker 2: we see these silly movies where you know, like either
Speaker 2: a Native American person or an African person, I smell bear, right,
Speaker 2: these things are true. Right, our smell becomes discerning because
Speaker 2: I need to know if I'm in the bush, I
Speaker 2: need to know is that was there a human being
Speaker 2: just here?
Speaker 3: Was that? You know? Did they come from another tribe?
Speaker 3: Are they European? Is it a bear? You know, who's
Speaker 3: in the woods?
Speaker 2: And so our DNA adapts to whatever environment we're in.
Speaker 2: When that adaptation happens, it can be passed. The adaptation
Speaker 2: of let's say, hypervigilance can be passed one generation to
Speaker 2: the next for potentially fourteen generations. We can look at
Speaker 2: the cherry blossom study to have more information about this.
Speaker 2: So during in the cherry blossoms study, what they did
Speaker 2: is they took a bunch of rats and they exposed
Speaker 2: rats to the smell of cherry blossoms. At the time
Speaker 2: that they were exposing those rats, they were giving the
Speaker 2: rats a shock at the same time, So they were
Speaker 2: experiencing pain and smelling cherry blossoms at the same time.
Speaker 2: Fourteen yes, similar, yes, fourteen generations later, those rats who
Speaker 2: have no experience of being shocked when they smell cherry blossom,
Speaker 2: they will have the same amount of stress hormones in
Speaker 2: their system the cortisol nor adrenaline adrenaline as the group
Speaker 2: of rats that initially smelled the cherry blossoms while they
Speaker 2: were getting shocked. So that's why the scientists are starting
Speaker 2: to say, wait a minute, there's a connection here, and
Speaker 2: this can be passed fourteen generations down the road. But
Speaker 2: I have to also say, because I am not a
Speaker 2: doom and gloom, I'm not everything as bad. This is
Speaker 2: wonderful information. This is fantastic to know write as traumatic
Speaker 2: as it is for us that potentially we have all
Speaker 2: this trauma, and trauma's trauma is cumulative, so we have
Speaker 2: the potential of all this accumulated trauma.
Speaker 3: But at the same time we have the potential.
Speaker 2: To pass love and positive experiences and benevolence, all those things.
Speaker 3: Fourteen generations forward. This is healing our communities.
Speaker 1: I love that. I want to man, I wish my
Speaker 1: dad was alive still. He would like to hear you
Speaker 1: say that that was a very special thing. You for
Speaker 1: saying that that was very good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1: To hear that. Okay, fourteen generations. Yes, I believe Leanna
Speaker 1: that once upon a time we either read or had
Speaker 1: a discussion about the Willie Lynch Letters. That's how I'm familiar.
Speaker 1: A long time ago.
Speaker 3: It was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, are you are you're familiar with the
Speaker 1: little Lynch Letter. Okay, so we've talked about the Willie
Speaker 1: Lynch Letter on this show before, but if you missed
Speaker 1: that episode, I have to give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of background information. So there was a letter that was
Speaker 1: reported to have been written by a slaver in the
Speaker 1: Americas who really taught or really established a framework for
Speaker 1: breaking a slave in the way that you would break
Speaker 1: a horse. You would break them from their natural state,
Speaker 1: which is the state of human and you would you
Speaker 1: would cause them to devolve into a subservient lesser state
Speaker 1: of humanity. It was a psychological undertaking that required for
Speaker 1: you to take the entire family. And I have to
Speaker 1: say this because as I need to retain my journalistic
Speaker 1: INCREDI credibility here that whether or not the the the
Speaker 1: letter is a truthful accounting of or or that Willy
Speaker 1: Lynch was was an actual individual who wrote this. Whether
Speaker 1: or not that is true has been up for debate
Speaker 1: for some time, but the Library of Congress has chronicled
Speaker 1: the Willie Lynch Letter nonetheless, and so even if it
Speaker 1: is a work of fiction, it gives insight into actual
Speaker 1: practices that took place during slavery. Now, if you've never
Speaker 1: heard of the Willi Lynch Letter for black people, in
Speaker 1: particular black people in the world of academia, it's it's
Speaker 1: a letter that we use. And for those that listen
Speaker 1: to hip hop like me, you might hear it come
Speaker 1: up in like a talib verse or you know, most
Speaker 1: step those type of people. But read it. It's called
Speaker 1: how to Make a Slave? Okay. The reason I'm referencing
Speaker 1: this right now and giving you such a background on
Speaker 1: it is because a it is a subject of conversations,
Speaker 1: you know, for those of us who are black and
Speaker 1: are trying to combat things that have been levied, leveled,
Speaker 1: sorry against our community initiatives and so forth, the disenfranchisement
Speaker 1: and kind of the psychological state of our people. And
Speaker 1: so this has kind of been I don't want to
Speaker 1: call it a guidepost, but sort of a reference point.
Speaker 1: We'll call it that now. In this letter, toward the end.
Speaker 1: Funnily enough, it uses the word self refueling, which is
Speaker 1: part of why that word is part of why the
Speaker 1: letter is debated because the word refueling wasn't used popularly
Speaker 1: way back when the letter was supposed to have been written.
Speaker 1: But self refueling. I want you to keep that word
Speaker 1: in mind. In the letter, it says, if you implement
Speaker 1: these things the way this letter instructs, if you take
Speaker 1: the black man away from his woman with the children present,
Speaker 1: and you tie them to four horses, and you send
Speaker 1: the four horses in four directions and tear his body apart.
Speaker 1: And you take another black man and you tarn, feather
Speaker 1: him and beat him to the point of death. Do
Speaker 1: this in front of the black woman, and she will
Speaker 1: raise her children in reverse roles. You need to read it.
Speaker 1: But this is the quick and dirty version of it.
Speaker 1: If she raises her children in reverse roles, she will
Speaker 1: be subservient, but she will be the one that negotiates
Speaker 1: with you. Her daughter will be subservient and he will
Speaker 1: negotiate with you. Her son will be paralyzed in fear
Speaker 1: and will eat out of the palm of your hand.
Speaker 1: More or less, this is kind of what is said,
Speaker 1: and this is where you end up getting the black
Speaker 1: Mama trope. Black you ain't going to come over here
Speaker 1: with all that, you know, that sort of attitude, and
Speaker 1: you know what else, angry black woman, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, these things are kind of built off of
Speaker 1: this psychology that's in this letter. The thing is back
Speaker 1: to what I'm saying. It says in the letter. If
Speaker 1: these steps are implemented correctly on your plantation, the slaves
Speaker 1: will exist in a perpetual state of servitude, a self
Speaker 1: refueling cycle that will last up to three hundred years
Speaker 1: is it three hundred? Yeah? Okay, three hundred years, or
Speaker 1: until something resets the natural state of thinking for these people.
Speaker 1: So you have to break the language, You have to
Speaker 1: break everything familiar. Teach them a new peculiar language, a
Speaker 1: new peculiar religion. These are words actually from the document.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm remembering so much. Maybe I am smart,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but well maybe I have a good
Speaker 1: memory all of a sudden. But anyway, so you're talking
Speaker 1: about fourteen generations, and that falls right in line with
Speaker 1: what I believe to be true of the Willie Lynch letter.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you've already made this connection before I have.
Speaker 2: And the thing about the wally you know, well, no,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's part of what I lecture in my course. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know we talk about yes, because we see so
Speaker 2: much of those things still in our communities, in our
Speaker 2: black community, sure, right, And so we're talking about a
Speaker 2: few things there, right, we're talking about what's happening neurobiologically.
Speaker 2: You're living in fear all the time. You're constantly in fear,
Speaker 2: you're seeing violence, you're you know, constantly witnessing violence.
Speaker 3: You're always in fear. It changes your neurobiology.
Speaker 2: If we're always in fight or flight response, right, fight
Speaker 2: or flight. We know what fight or flight is because
Speaker 2: everybody's always talking about it, right, But we're wired for that.
Speaker 2: If we're walking along in the world and we see
Speaker 2: a bear, we're wired so that either we fight the bear,
Speaker 2: we run like we've never run before in our lives,
Speaker 2: or we drop on the ground and play dead before
Speaker 2: we can even think about it, because that's how we're
Speaker 2: wired for survival. If we're fighting the bear, we become very,
Speaker 2: very aggressive, right, because we have cortisol and nor adrenaline
Speaker 2: and adrenaline and all of these a whole cocktail of
Speaker 2: stress hormones in our system that's going to cause us
Speaker 2: to be aggressive, cause us to be hostile, controlling, agitated, violent,
Speaker 2: because we need to survive if we have generations, right,
Speaker 2: and we'll go before the Willie Lynch letter, Right, We're
Speaker 2: going to go all the way from our ancestor that
Speaker 2: was on the continent waiting to be stolen. Right, So
Speaker 2: we have the fear that's there, we have the trauma
Speaker 2: that's there. We have the trauma of once they get caught,
Speaker 2: the trauma of the dungeons that they waited in chain together,
Speaker 2: defecating and urinating on one another, and then all the
Speaker 2: people that died. Then the trauma of walking down that
Speaker 2: last road before they got onto the boat, and then
Speaker 2: the trauma of some of our ancestors drowning themselves in defiance,
Speaker 2: refusing to get on that boat and watching that happen,
Speaker 2: and then surviving the Middle Passage. Right, all of this
Speaker 2: is cumulated trauma. Then we get to the new Land,
Speaker 2: we're put on the auction blocks. We have the trauma
Speaker 2: of that, and anybody that we might have been related to.
Speaker 2: Then we're going to be separated from our loved ones,
Speaker 2: and we have the trauma of that. And then we
Speaker 2: get to the plantation, and then we have the Willy
Speaker 2: Lynch letter and the behaviors described in the Willy Lynch letters. Right,
Speaker 2: this is trauma accumulated over time from various sources. It
Speaker 2: impacts the neurobiology. So we cannot wonder why if we
Speaker 2: go into our communities and we see big behaviors, we
Speaker 2: see aggression, we don't say it's cultural, it's their messed up.
Speaker 2: Genetics is an and environmental. This is an issue of environment.
Speaker 2: We have been put in an environment where we are
Speaker 2: in constant fear over these generations.
Speaker 3: Then we add in.
Speaker 2: All of our brothers and sisters being shot in the
Speaker 2: back by the police. Then we add in incarceration, We
Speaker 2: add in all of those things.
Speaker 3: So what happens.
Speaker 1: Often, what is it? Man? I was going to say
Speaker 1: it black odes, Jim.
Speaker 2: Crow, Jim Crow, absolutely, Jim Crow, all of those things.
Speaker 2: So when you go into our communities, you're going to
Speaker 2: see people who haven't activated threat response system. They're operating
Speaker 2: in the brain. I'm going to get sciencey, but you're
Speaker 2: going to follow me beautifully and you're going to love it.
Speaker 2: But when we activate that fight or flight response, we
Speaker 2: are activating the brain stem and part of our brain,
Speaker 2: the most primitive part of our brain, the part of
Speaker 2: the brain that's intact when we're already born. That's a
Speaker 2: part of the brain for survival. Limic system is part
Speaker 2: of the right So that's a terrific system for survival.
Speaker 2: It's going to control my heart rate, my blood pressure,
Speaker 2: my respiratory rate, all of those things. I need my
Speaker 2: die incephalon to inhibit some of my behaviors. I need
Speaker 2: my cortex in order to learn. The brain is very efficient.
Speaker 2: If the brain says danger, danger, danger, and we need
Speaker 2: to survive, it's going to activate the brain stem. Now
Speaker 2: we're in survival mode. The other parts of the brain
Speaker 2: are going to power off. So I don't have access
Speaker 2: to my dyeing cephalon. I don't have access to my cortex.
Speaker 2: So I can't have empathy, I can't have memory, I
Speaker 2: can't have good self reflection, I can't make good decisions
Speaker 2: because I don't have access to the part of the
Speaker 2: brain that I need in order to do that.
Speaker 1: Well, that just means we're going to have to schedule
Speaker 1: a part two for this because I feel like we
Speaker 1: could talk for I wanted to ask you so much,
Speaker 1: what is it your hope for the outcomes? What is it?
Speaker 1: And we'll table those things for next time. In the
Speaker 1: short run, we please do me a favor and share
Speaker 1: any social media websites anything like that with our listeners
Speaker 1: so that they can I healhistoricaltrauma.
Speaker 2: Dot com is my website. If you're interested in learning
Speaker 2: more about epigenetics, check out the cherry blossom study. It's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Check out the Human Genome Project and you'll get to
Speaker 2: more information about.
Speaker 1: That as well. All right, and Leanna, the Arizona Pet Project.
Speaker 3: Log it, oh yeah, my nonprofit Arizona Pet Project.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Arizona Azypetproject dot org.
Speaker 3: On social media is the Arizona Pet Project.
Speaker 1: Oh right. If you're in the pets, she's the person
Speaker 1: you want to talk too, all right, okay, and you
Speaker 1: can follow us at social on all social media at
Speaker 1: Civic Cipher. I'm ramses John. Until next week, y'all. Peace,