PAST GENERATIONS of people of African descent were traumatised by unprecedented levels of violence and oppression due to the slave trade and colonialism. This traumatisation has been passed into our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. How can trauma from way back in the past still live inside us today? This is the topic of my new book, The Race Conversation.

Intergenerational trauma shaped my relationship with my father. Ancestral trauma was passed on and into me. When I was a boy, my father’s beatings were both a way for him to expel his frustration and an old generational strategy to ensure I repressed any notions of rebellion and freedom.

When any sense of rebellion in me was quelled, it ensured I kept my body safe from the ‘real’ danger ‘out there’ – the threat that was outside of the home. What I later learned was that beatings are a way we have been programmed to survive difficult circumstances. It is a survival programme that continues to run inside most of us from our generational past and a programme that is still very much with us even today. Of course, other programmes run inside us also, for example, between black mothers and children or black men and women. 

‘Love in the family home is not enough’

For all of us, the care and love we need does not just come from our families – but also from wider society. Our social environment plays an essential role in developing our ability to emotionally soothe ourselves and our ability to take charge of our emotional states. In research studies, it has been found that children respond to their primary carers in ways that preserve their carers’ psychological states of mind. This state of mind then become shared between the carer and the child. It is passed on to the next generation.

What keeps this cycle of trauma in place is the added stress of living in a racialised society.

Eugene Ellis

What black people and people of colour have to contend with is that love in the family home is not enough. The way we are seen by society, and the lack of care for our wellbeing sets the stage for our past states of mind to continue generationally. Trauma has its way of passing from one generation to another, but what keeps this cycle of trauma in place is the added stress of living in a racialised society.

‘Fear can be passed through generations’

Worry over the safety of our children is an important concern for black people and people of colour. If we needed further evidence of this, we got it from the killing of George Floyd. The construct of race, which developed when slavery was beginning to be abolished, continues to ensure that worry over our families safety remains a primary concern. The race construct is there to preoccupy us. It also ensures that trauma continues to be triggered inside us.

Epigenetics is an area of research that attempts to explain how the environment communicates with our genes. This research shows how fear and other emotional traits can be transmitted through generations. Neuroepigeneticists believe that our biology may be altered by the environment we live in and then carried on, through reproduction, to future generations.

‘Liberating and revolutionary’

While epigenetic transmission is proven in plants and some mammals, there is scepticism about epigenetic transmission in humans within the scientific community. There is, however, much ongoing research in this area. Even without epigenetics, there are many other mechanisms where fear is transmitted intergenerationally. We need to understand that our past plays a crucial role in our present attitudes and behaviours. Understanding this is an essential part of healing and a path to wellness. 

As a boy, fear seeped into my body and impacted almost every aspect of my life. In my thirties, I had therapy with a black man where, for the first time, I looked at my relationship with my father in a meaningful way. Therapy and my continued writing have allowed me to think and talk about my father in ways that do not rob us of the history and context of what has shaped us. Without reference to our history and our ancestors, I don’t think it would be possible to communicate the hurt of our relationship and bring compassion, forgiveness, and understanding to the moment of ancestral time that my father and I found ourselves in when I was a child. 

Knowing that trauma transmits itself from one generation to the next and understanding how that happens has been liberating and revolutionary for me. Also, knowing that this intergenerational trauma is held in place by everyday microaggressions and the elusiveness of modern racism has allowed me to let go of many things from the past and see who I am in a much larger context than just my individual life. 

Eugene Ellis is the author of The Race Conversation. He is the Director and founder of the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network, the UK’s largest independent organisation to specialise in working therapeutically with Black, Africa, Caribbean and South Asian people. He is also a psychotherapist with a special interest in body-orientated therapies and facilitating a dialogue around race and mental wellbeing through articles, podcasts and blog posts as well as within organisations and psychotherapy training.