Hundreds packed The Berkeley Institute Auditorium to hear a US professor speak on 'Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome'.

Dr. Joy DeGruy, an assistant professor at Portland State University, suggests that centuries of slavery followed by systemic racism and oppression have resulted in stress-related issues passed down through the generations.

Her theory is based on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), whereby people witnessing a traumatic event can experience anger, feelings of estrangement, marital problems, difficulties in parenting and in holding down a job.

Dr. DeGruy was the keynote speaker at Friday's Bermuda Race Relations Initiative event and was introduced by Dr. Eva Hodgson, National Association for Reconciliation.

Dr. Hodgson said: "I have spent most of my life challenging white racism but in the past few years I've been far more concerned about black internalised racism and self-hatred. I find that a far more difficult and challenging undertaking because everyone of us can be in denial."

Dr. Hodgson said Dr. DeGruy "makes us acknowledge our own trauma and pathology in this area".

"It must be a collective and community healing, it can't be done alone or individually," she said.

In her keynote speech, Dr. DeGruy argued that despite people of African descent emerging from chattel slavery with great strength and resiliency, it has resulted in centuries of physical, psychological and spiritual injury.

The US professor spoke on the history of slavery and its associated psychology, which she said had produced a "notion of inferiority" over the centuries. She said white Americans involved in slavery dehumanised blacks in order to justify their behaviour, but this psychology has continued through the decades, even up to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Dr. DeGruy gave two picture captions from the US media as an example – a black man seen wading through chest-high waters was described as "looting a grocery store in New Orleans", while a white couple were described as "finding bread and soda from a local grocery store".

These stereotypes have been handed down through the centuries. In the eighteenth century, Carl Von Linnaeus (1707-1778) described 'homo afer' as "black, cunning, lazy, lustful, careless and governed by caprice". His anthropological description of 'homo europaeus' however, was of "white, fickle, sanguine, blue-eyed, gentle and governed by laws".

"Do we not have those very same attributions today?" asked Dr. DeGruy.

She said that slaves who wanted to escape were even told they had a psychiatric illness. In 1851 Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright introduced the mental illness of 'drapetomania' as "the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery".

Dr. DeGruy pointed out the hypocrisy behind the barbarism of lynching, beatings and burning bodies by white churchgoers, saying: "These are the behaviours of people who deem themselves superior and tell you you are inferior".

Speaking on 'Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome', Dr. DeGruy said: "There was never a point in our history when we were never anything but traumatised."

She said blacks had "major issues of shame" and had been denied their true history down the centuries.

"You rob someone of their sense of who they are and they hate the image, and what you see in each other is what you despise. I am who I think you think I am," said Dr. DeGruy.

"We have to look at Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome and look at it closely."

She added: "We have a systemic structural racism and if we don't teach our children to deal with these structures, we are doing them a disservice."