Hard Talks: Epigenetics, Unconscious Bias, Shame ... and, Healing Us

We had a micro "Hard Talk" in my home, today.

Anyone who knows (or has followed me) for long enough knows I am fiercely connected to my Armenian heritage and to teaching genocide awareness to just about anyone who will listen. I'm also Irish, Greek, French-Swiss, and a few other things along the way, but I have a special reason why my own experience with my family, my genetics, and ideological personality have directed me to align with my West Asian side. I also have friends from many ethnic cultures and diverse religious and personal beliefs who are family to me, and who have been family to my children - sometimes in ways our "biological" family were not, and my Husband (and our children) have African, Native American, and Iberian ancestry mixed in with their other bits. My family is literally about as mixed (up) as you can get.

As for my Armenian side, my Grandmother was born with the Armenian name of Haikanoush Najarian, but later changed her name to Helen Crowell. She and my great-Uncle were first abandoned by my great-Grandfather, Dikran (Richard) Najarian, and then abused by their step father, who (as confirmed by her half-sisters), felt embarrassed to have Armenian children in his household. She grew up with an externally instilled sense of self-loathing which she eventually acted upon by changing her name and attempting to erase all parts of herself that were brown. 

To dig a little deeper into this damage she'd felt since childhood, we trace my great-Grandfather's life back to 1904 - only a decade before the actual Armenian Genocide date of April, 24, 1915 - when his parents and a few other family members are known to have boarded a ship from Ankara, Turkey (formerly a part of Armenia) to travel to Providence, RI, USA, where they settled. He later met and married my great-Grandmother and they had two children, Haikanoush and Dikran Jr, before (according to the family) disappearing to the Midwest where he formed a new family, became a successful Executive with Sony, and died - estranged from his former family.

Though my Grandmother was prevented by the second family from speaking to her father on his death bed in the 1980's (we presume for financial reasons - and a family question of whether or not the first marriage officially divorced or not), we know from my great-Aunties and Najarian cousins that that side of the family left Armenia around 1900 as the final pogroms of the Young Ottomans against the Armenians and Greeks began. The initial pogroms called for the identification and arrest of influential and wealthy Armenian men in various villages across Armenia, which eventually led to confiscation of houses and property, separation of families, martial law; and over the next decade a de-volution into forced death marches of women, children, and the elderly who were left behind. Those who were lucky enough to flee with the diaspora of emigrants into the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, took with them the trauma and fear of people who were being exterminated by those who were intolerant of their religion and genetics. Quite a hefty pot of human emotion topped with some personal and never-resolved issues of family ish.  

So, what does this history have to do with the relatively modern family life of many "dysfunctional" American families? Well, in order to understand, we need to turn to a branch of genetic and neuro-scientific research called epigenetics. Coined in the 1940's by Conrad H. Waddington, a scientist who was studying a cross between developmental biology and genetics (1), epigenetics had a resurgence in the 1990's with work in genetic assimilation and how genes can transmit not only physical and neurological characteristics from generation to generation, but how they can also transmit things like trauma and psychological factors that effect people's lives. What this means in layman's terms is that we're discovering that our genes can carry not only eye and hair color, height and weight markers, and our individual taste for things like blue cheese, pomegranates, or kimchee... but can also trigger traumatic triggers from events in our anscestors lives that we never experienced first hand. Sort of like second hand (or third... or fourth) PTSD, we believe that we actually carry with us the /experiences/ of our genetic ancestors. So, even though my great-Grandfather and Grandma had these terrible things happen in their own experiences - the trauma is passed down along with our mutual family love for baklava and desert sunshine.

Now, flash-forward-back to our familial kitchen this afternoon. Our oldest daughter, who is 22, and a fresh University graduate, is home for the summer. She and her 16 year old brother were discussing the current issues in America with U.S. history, asylum, and current immigration laws. What is interesting to side-note is that I have been doing a lot of research and work in the Depression Epidemic facing our society (and, perhaps the world), and am most interested in the effects of our current treatment of children and families in the U.S. - both in education as well as health systems. So, their conversation was getting emotionally heated as my son was espousing support of "illegal aliens knowing what they were getting into when they came here with their kids", and my daughter's counter was "they have no access to the media and education we have in our privileged lives - and they are fleeing from violence in other places in the world". 

That was where I jumped in (mind you, there was a lot more to the discussion - a lot of open ended questions, and a lot of listening and sharing - but this was my end summary). "Children, your own family fled genocide through diaspora they did NOT want, and were lucky enough they got out of Armenia and Turkey at a time that the U.S. was still fairly open to accepting immigrants. If they'd sought asylum into the 1930's and 40's, when many were being turned away and there was a sense of American Pride and Nationalism... that ended up not only denying Jews and other political and ethnic refugees from the beginning of World War II, but also influenced the Japanese Internment Camps, increased racial tensions that led to the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 60s (which continues today), divided gender and sexual rights equity, and fizzled real Native American reparations... you might not be here, and you might be on the other side, looking in to the hope that comes with the idea of a Free Nation - and you'd likely be illegally doing it because we can't seem to reconcile what Free means, anymore."

Now, I love my son dearly - I love all my children with a fierceness that is primal and deeper than any DNA can ever show. However, he is a product of a society of privilege and unconscious bias. He is also a product of a generation who have inherited the results of sins of our fathers - but have also inherited the resilience and deeper empathy that is needed to change. Privilege and bias are tetchy subjects, but they exist - and they show themselves every time someone tries to apply their own life experiences of "everything is fine" ideology and "THEY are the reason we can't have nice things" memes. For my Generation X, they are a signature of what we were given and fought against with our angsty and revolutionary music, our argumentative attitudes with our extreme clothing and cultural icons, and our increasing irritation with older and younger generations who we blame for our inability to get ahead. They, however, are a Generation Z, who show less expressed bias towards colours, creeds, religion, sexuality, and other markers of our mixed heritage - but they are also a generation who have inherited a crap ton of psychological and physical problems and have a ton of inherited cultural unconscious biases they are not even aware of ... the worst of all: all of our SHAME. This is what I believe has created and fermented our desperate sense of depression and anger in our culture, but we need some hard talks to get through it.

Therefore, he is not wrong. Neither is my daughter, and neither am I... and neither is most of America. After the fact, I sat here writing in the semi-darkness of the kitchen the others left to go do their assorted things, and I really thought about how our talk went from a place of postures, real emotional history (our own, and that of our DNA), and political ideological rhetoric  - to a place of learning and growth. Shame is a product of guilt and causes us to shut down and retaliate - but it can also be a place of healing if we become open to learning through the pain. Dr. Brene Brown, Author and Lecturer, discusses the concept of shame as something we can move into and grow from, rather than letting it overwhelm and destroy us. (Watch her 2012 TED Talk on Listening to Shame, here)

We can also learn from the process of understanding more about ourselves. DNA testing, talking to our living relatives, delving into our family stories, and truly listening to our friends and family can turn up amazing wonders we never knew about them - and, maybe, about ourselves. Learning more about mental illness and physical health, practicing cooking and eating foods from places not familiar to us, reading authors from other cultures than our own, and watching and listening to music and videos by people who are unique to our own point of view, can open our minds to perspectives we might be closed to. Being curious about the world around us and (for God's sake!) TRAVEL! Meet people you would never meet in your neighborhood, and have conversations that don't end in defensive posturing. Likely, you WILL be challenged. Likely, you WILL be uncomfortable. Likely, you WILL feel strong emotions... but, in the end, you WILL likely live. I believe, in this way, through having Hard Talks, we can make changes in how our society works and pass on a new set of epigenetic markers to our future generations. 

<3, Jonni Khat