She is currently president and CEO of DeGruy Publications, Inc and Executive Director of the non-profit Be The Healing, Inc. She is mostly known for her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
She participated in a dual enrollment program that allowed her to complete junior college coursework while a student at Crenshaw High School.
[7] In an interview for Essence Magazine, DeGruy summarizes: "research has shown that severe trauma can affect multiple generations ... no one has ever measured the impact that slavery had on us, what it’s meant for us to live for centuries in a hostile environment.
We have been hurt, not just by the obvious physical assaults, but in deep psychological ways..."[8] DeGruy's theorization is based on qualitative and quantitative research conducted by the author in both America and Africa.
In the spirit of full disclosure, Professor Kendi and I are both contributors to a forthcoming AAIHS anthology titled New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition, edited by Keisha N. Blain, Chris Cameron and Ashley D. Farmer.
Yet I also believe that post traumatic slave syndrome (PTSS) can still be reconciled to those critiques and, in the hands of skilled practitioners, advance an anti-racist agenda (even if it is, as Professor Kendi says, a “racist idea”).
In the end, Professor Kendi is right to worry that PTSS will, at the very least, fall into the wrong hands and be used by racist forces as further confirmation of black cultural/psychological/ontological inferiority .