Truck driver Omar Thornton kills 8 in Connecticut, rants about racism to mom before taking own life

Why did this happen?

POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME, as theorized by Dr. Joy Degruy.

Here she explains part of her theory:

Throughout your book, you emphasize that an acute, social denial of both historical and present-day racism has taken on pathological dimensions. You write that this country is “sick with the issue of race.”

The root of this denial for the dominant culture is fear, and fear mutates into all kinds of things: psychological projection, distorted and sensationalized representations in the media, and the manipulation of science to justify the legal rights and treatment of people. That’s why it’s become so hard to unravel.

Unfortunately, many European Americans have a very hard time even hearing a person of color express their experiences. The prevailing psychological mechanism is the idea, “I’ve not experienced it, so it cannot be happening for you.”

Truly, how can anyone tell me what I have and have not experienced? This is a very paternalistic manifestation of white supremacy, the idea that African Americans and other people of color can be told, with great authority, what their ancestor’s lives were like and even what their own, present-day lives are like. The result for those on the receiving end of this kind of distortion is an aspect of PTSS. People begin to doubt themselves, their experiences, and their worth in society because they have been so invalidated their whole lives, in so many ways...(emphasis added by Vox)

...When a person walks around with that sense of shame and self-hatred, they are likely to function poorly in society, no matter who they are. Add the extra layer of racist socialization, of being devalued, and what it means to be just human in America, and all those things just makes the shame worse. We as African Americans don’t get a pass on all the problems that humans have to deal with in life: finances, career choices, personal crises, relationships, and so forth. But when we add that to this intergenerational trauma in the context of a society that is in denial about its racism, people’s lives can become overwhelmed,...(emphasis added by Vox).

If you aren't familiar with Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, become familiar with it. I highly recommend Dr. Degruy's book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing