Epigenetics is the study of how certain genes are turned on or off. It is not an actual change in the sequence of your DNA, but rather changes in the structure of your DNA.
"Specifically, scientists who study epigenetics have found that trauma experienced by parents can impact the DNA and behavior of their offspring for generations to come. One study conducted on worms found the residual effects of trauma lasted for 14 generations. For the Black community, the impact of centuries of unaddressed trauma still manifests today. And while part of that is certainly due to ongoing social injustice, some of the impact might very well be inherited. Basically, being Black in America means living with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused not only by one’s lived experiences, but the experiences of our ancestors. Dr. DeGruy asks, “How does… being Black in America impact your stress level, therefore your body’s ability to operate its own immune system? Once you understand it then you can deal with it.” Source: "Black Families Have Inherited Trauma, but We Can Change That"
The treatment of enslaved Africans in America is shocking and painful. Vanessa M. Wilson writes: "In one account of how to provide treatment for newborn babies of enslaved women who purportedly had lockjaw, a planter and physician W.C. Daniell, “recommended feeding the newborn “on sweet oil and molasses in such portions as to keep the bowels loose” and having “the mothers breast freely drawn and daily emptied of their milk… in anyone of several ways: the midwife, another, and older child, or by a puppy.”* Thus, medical treatment for Africans was less than abysmal. The bodies of enslaved people often became the center of debate for white abolitionist who discussed their physical treatment and often referred to beaten and scared bodies, missing limbs and other maladies steaming from abuse associated with slavery." Source: "Trauma and Hope: Black Bodies in Pain the Historical Narrative" *Margaret Geneva Long, Doctoring Freedom : The Politics of African American Medical Care in Slavery and Emancipation, John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2012], 2012). p. 11.
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