*Beyonce opened up about her family lineage in the Sept. issue of Vogue, telling the publication that she found it quite harrowing to learn that she’s the descendant of a slave owner who “fell in love with and married a slave.”
“I had to process that revelation over time,” Beyonce said. “I questioned what it meant and tried to put it into perspective.”
Leading experts have explained how such trauma can be genetically passed down from generation to generation, such as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
“Many African-Americans have some sort of narrative like this where there’s a relationship, voluntary or involuntary, between a slave owner and an enslaved African,” says Dr. Monica A. Coleman, professor of constructive theology and African-American religions at the Claremont School of Theology. “Whether that’s through sexual violence, kind of consensual but involuntary power relations, to a loving relationship.”
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“Just the legacy of slavery, and all of its weight, both the parts where there’s love, there’s violence, there’s enslavement and there’s cruelty, it’s just very weighty,” she said.
Beyoncé told Vogue she’s hopeful her newfound understanding of her family lineage can lead to positive changes for her family moving forward, NY Daily News reported.
“I now believe it’s why God blessed me with my twins,” the singer said of learning of her lineage. “Male and female energy was able to coexist and grow in my blood for the first time. I pray that I am able to break the generational curses in my family and that my children will have less complicated lives.”
Dr. Joy DeGruy, a prominent trauma expert and social researcher, examined the long-term effects that slavery has on the descendants of slaves in her 2005 book “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.” She cites the “resurgence of racism and white supremacy” in America as an ongoing stressor for Black Americans.
“To also know that we’re still in that struggle, it’s hurtful,” she said. “It’s distressing. You think about your children. When is it going to be over? When is there going to be an acknowledgment that we all deserve the right to be treated with respect and dignity, and that’s not something I need to earn, that’s something I was born deserving? When are my children also going to be the victims of hate crimes that we’re seeing happening?
“Part of the healing is to talk about it, is to understand what they endured,” she said. “So that we can understand our responsibilities now.”
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