“You are not the darkness you endured. You are the light that refused to surrender.” — John Mark Green
We can understand the work of Bryan Stevenson as Bad Therapy. The idea came to me this morning after watching an insightful podcast featuring Abigail Shrier, author of the bestselling book Bad Therapy.
Why do I discern creative associations between the counter productive therapy of many teenage girls today and Stevenson’s use of remembrance as, in my view, therapy, healing to use the popular lingo?
As we discussed yesterday, Stevenson plans to open up a Slave Park on March 27, 2024. I view the endeavor as Bad Social Justice, although it is good to remember slavery but things should be kept in perspective and proportion. We should have monuments and parks to Free Blacks before the Civil War, black congressmen and officeholders in Alabama during Reconstruction, and the 100 Pioneer Black Lawyers for a healthy balance.
I remembered how this Slave Park was not Stevenson’s first rodeo. In 2018, he opened up in Montgomery the Legacy Museum or, more to the point, the Lynching Museum. I felt disaffected at the time:
And so as the recess brought us closer and closer together as a family, I lamented that my wife remained mired in isolation and self-segregation and cultural differences. Consider the recent opening of the Lynching Museum in Alabama. Having read American Slavery As It Is (1839) from cover to cover, I feel I know the depths of racial horror in this country. Been there, done that. There is nothing in the practice of lynching that can hold a candle to American slavery. If you believe lynching represents a lower low for humankind, you don’t know your history, So, I would never care to visit a Lynching Museum. I choose to fill my mind with more uplifting, affirming memories. And so I nearly fell out of my chair when a relative proposed a family trip to tour the new Lynching Museum. This is not my idea of a family trip. I was thunderstruck by the idea and shared the thought with my cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s response suggests Elizabeth and I share the same mental universe:
It is difficult to be rational when strong beliefs and emotion counteract being objective. I will not go to a lynching museum…too gruesome and painful. I would take that pain and carry it to the point of interfering with the here and now. All of us react based on our own experiences. I cannot dwell on a past hurt, a bad experience because it will poison my core. So that is my personal reaction. God’s grace is sufficient.
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The more I listened to author Abigail Shrier, the more I perceived the Lynching Museum as more than Bad Social Justice. The Lynching Museum operated as Bad Therapy. What happens when museums are harming mental health more than helping mental health? What happens when remembrance becomes counter productive?
I want to see the incidents of depression and anxiety go down, not skyrocket.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.13018
Children and teenagers are being flooded with negative messages and images about Blackness; i.e. Blackness is Oppression. Nothing else matters. I first noticed this outrageous notion in my own family on April 21, 2018. The delusion called my hand to jot down the date and time as evidence of racial psychosis.
The Lynching Museum doesn’t seem to be helping mental health. Arguably, there is a rough correlation between birth of the Lynching Museum and rates of depression, especially in our black children and teenagers going way up. I grant you correlation is not causation. Grant me critical dogma and slogan words result in making depression, anxiety and lack of joy worse. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.13018
As I paraphrase Shrier, any remembrance with the capacity to help has the capacity to harm. “This is true for anything from Tylenol to x-rays. It can also harm.” Has Stevenson’s Lynching Museum harmed black mental health of our most vulnerable and impressionable? I pose the question.
What might be the lasting impression on an eight-year-old kid after touring the Lynching Museum? A feeling of less joy in life. Nightmares. “I am limited by this history of slavery and lynching and police brutality. I can’t lead the life I want to live.”
Man, this is 1830s stuff. We should not weaponize remembrance to inflict trauma.
Remembrance at the Lynching Museum might also further alienation between family members. Some strong and mentally resilient members from the 1960s and 1970s will decline to participate in a rape of the mind. Others will think a family outing at the Lynching Museum is a fun idea. We can do a picnic afterwards….
“This isn’t accidental,” Shrier observed in the different context of over therapy for teenage girls. The same applies to the Lynching Museum. What’s your game, Stevenson?
What’s your game?
https://eji.org/projects/community-remembrance-project/
As I’ve written before, my husband is a Jew, and he feels the same way about the Holocaust. He said he gets tired of hearing about. Now of course, it seems like all that memorializing did very little for anyone. I also remember reading something about how it’s not healthy for a population to hang onto past grievances, and that makes sense. It’s not that we want to bury it, but let’s move forward. (I am, however, very disturbed by the amount of antisemitism we are currently seeing.)
This is also reminds me of when I saw a therapist. In fact, I’ve seen several as an adult. My husband actually talked me into trying one, and I do think it helped. But, I can also tell you that I reached a point where I no longer needed to dwell on all the negative things that happened in my past. I will be reminded of something every so often, and it only makes me more grateful for where I am and what I’ve accomplished. Life is good.
Life aLao isn’t easy, and it’s not intended to be. How do we really know our “worth” if we aren’t allowed to make mistakes, and do a little suffering? How do we learn to move on, do better, grow and feel a certain strength when we are always avoiding confrontation, hurt, shame, fear, whatever?
A horrible disservice is being done to young people these days because parents (the government?) want to keep them “safe” from every possible problem. Who is going to lead us in the future? I guess that won’t be my problem, but I hope it’s someone who has learned how to live.
Black trauma porn is defined as experiences that produce psychological injury or pain usually via some sort of media outlet, museum or park. The injury or pain continually broadcasted, shared or displayed caters to an unhealthy voyeuristic, irresistible desire for, or interest in, a particular subject. A lynch museum and slave park fall into the category of black trauma porn. I'll pass on that family trip to the lynch museum.