I still feel the intimidation of the post-traumatic phenomenon of slavery when, and (almost) every time I exercise my personal authority declaring my identity as an African American-American. Sometimes that intimidation comes from my awareness of those like me who challenge the use of ‘American’ twice...and in immediate succession yet. Sometimes it comes from the awareness of members of my own family members’ discomfort with my ‘doing it’ so blatantly. Sometimes...it comes from my own feeling of vulnerability to public criticism.

But I never deny myself the declaration of my identity. The feeling of impending shame overwhelms the feeling of intimidation.

The intimidation is still there. I wonder how long it will take for that feeling to ‘go away’. I will probably always experience it to some degree. It the embedded in my psyche from the teaching...the sensitizing...of my childhood. My parents implanted the tools of survival they knew was needed for me to have the chance of survival in the hostile society in which I/we have to live.

It became clear that it is important for me to admit that I feel the intimidation of my teaching...that intergenerational disease we, as a people have felt it necessary to pass on to our children. Most of us will deny that we are doing this. We find it beyond our agility to acknowledge that we do this. We do it, but we don’t see it as wrong. We don’t even see it as being ‘a trauma’. Surviving is what we have had to do. To now be told that it is a negative does not register. But it is. Our defensiveness has become a burden to our progress in our society. We have become a primary deterrent to ourselves.

My children will suffer less from this than I have...do. This will be true precisely because I override the intimidation with the declaration of identity that empowers me. I remind myself that my children are who they are precisely because I say who I am...whether they like it, or not. That is the power of identity. The succeeding generation does not have a choice. By the time they have the power of reason, they are already who they are. It is the method of sustaining religion. In fact, my religion addresses this challenge with a passage that says something about ‘teaching a child the way he/she should go’.

It is important to publicly admit to the intimidation. That public admission makes it easier for the next generation to confront their relationship with that trauma. That public admission may even help a contemporary to ‘deal with it better’.

I guess, in the end, it is about responsibility.

It occurs to me that it is indicative of something that this urge to talk directly about the built-in ‘Intimidation Response’ in the historical election year. For 312 years, since 1676, the European Americans have lived by the rule of the agreement of The Rice Rebellion...of Virginia. That agreement promised that no European....no ‘white man’...would be see as lesser to any African...’black man’ no matter the asses and/or attributes of the ‘black man’, and no matter the lack thereof of the ‘white man’.

We are now near 50 days to election day. The Democrat candidate, Senator Batack Obama (D-IL), has been campaigning for nineteen months. He has been examined forwards, backwards, upside down, and nose-to nose, and eye-to-eye, and face-to -face. The claim is still made that they don’t know who he is, who he was, what he is, nor what he represents. This with two books recently prublished dealing with the life of the candidate, and his wife, and family.

In contrast, The Republican Party candidate, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) selected a comparative unknown as his running mate, Governor Palin of the State of Alaska. Within a week, Republicans are offering this Vice-Presidential candidate as being fully vetted, and of such character, competence, and worth as is needed not only for the Office of Vice-President, but the Office of the President of the United States more so than Senator Obama, in fact.

This is the promise of the agreement of The Rice Rebellion of 1676. This declared entitlement is compounded by the fact that Governor Palin is a woman which insists that no ‘black man’ can be President of the United States before a ‘white woman’. This insistence is a continuation of the European American majority that was made evident in The Civil Rights Movement.

Assurance of access to the voting booth...on the basis of ‘race and color’... was denied until the access of women to the voting booth was included in the legislation. This was not found to be need, nor was it demanded by ‘white women’ since given the right to vote in 1920. That legislation contained the same authorization for such legislation as did the 15the Amendment. Notably, the amendment giving women the right to vote was not used. Rather the amendment protecting the access to the vote on the basis of ‘race and color’ was used.

It would be argued that enactng separate legislation (for women) would be, needlessly, more difficult than simply ‘sticking it into’ the legislation for African American-Americans. But no mention would be made of the question of the validity of the legislation regarding women being passed under the authorization of the amendment passed for the protection of others...those addressed for ‘...race, color, or previous condition of servitude’.

Notably, once done for women, other liberties were taken with amending the constitution by including language, for example. There is no authority for such amendment of the constitution. No one has seen fit to challenge the taking of those liberties, nor has anyone chosen to challenge the validity...the legality... of the extension of that authority.

There is no doubt that Congress has the authority to enact law. In the case of amending the constitution, however, there is a procedure specified. I would argue that such procedure (authority) was required of the laws enacted to provide enforcement of the constitution. In those cases where authority was foreseen to be need to enact law for the enforcement of a specific amendment to the constitution, such specific authority was included in the respective amendment. This was true for the 18th Amendment regarding ‘sex’...gender...as it was for the 15th Amendment regarding ‘...race, color, or previous condition of servitude’.

It is noteworthy that violation of the constitution carries no penalties of either time, or money. Corrections of such violations require that wrongs be right, and made whole. A mechanism of law would needed to provide penalties of ‘time and/or money’.


This aggressive legislative action was never imposed on the 13th Amendment which was also a ruling on the authority of the States. It was regarding citizenship. The constitution recognized citizenship to originate with the State of residency of the individual ruling that such citizenship automatically established citizenship in the new republic. Simple residency established citizenship, except for those who were slaves. It is worth further note, however, that there was even an exception to this qualification, because ‘residency’ was assigned to even slaves when it came time to decide on the number of seats a State would be assigned...based on population.

This aggressive legislative action was never imposed on the 14th Amendment which was a ruling to protect the rights of individuals. There was no need to perceived to pass a law even with the authority in place to do so...even ‘on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’.

The ‘Women’s Movement’ insisted on being specifically referenced in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I believe this is an extension of The Rice Rebellion Agreement of 1676. This was a ‘not without me...not before me’ assertion of privilege.

It is intimidating to stand up for yourself, and yours, in the face of such arrogance, but stand up we must...individually...if our children are to ever be free of the inter-generational affliction of the effect defined by Dr. Joy DeGruy-Leary, Post-traumatic Slavery Syndrome. Objection to identity for African American-Americans permeates our society...permeates our ethnicity.

I choose to refer to that definition as ‘The DeGruy-Leary Effect’.

I will continue for fight to overcome the intimidation of this affliction.