Black History is More than Trauma

Photo (c) Deborah Evans

Another Black History Month has come and gone. A most important message is:  know and understand Black history is more than trauma.

The inescapable inequities built into American history, traditions, and common practices tell any objective observer about the extreme trauma experienced by the ancestors of those trapped in American chattel slavery and the legal barriers of state enforced segregation. 

But undeniable is the determination of those who survived the worst things any modern culture has imposed on enslaved people and their descendants. No one survives a life filled with nothing but trauma. Survivors and thrivers have moments and hours and days of love, caring closeness, laughter, connection, goodness, and support -- even small victories are not absent from the survivor's life.

When you examine or attempt to understand Black history, beware of those who would define this history as nothing but a series of traumas. That viewpoint, though possibly sympathetic, rejects the full humanity of those who survived and the divinity and power of the God who empowered many of those survivors with wisdom, courage, cunning, insight, and power.