Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
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CATEGORY: CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND IDEAS  James T. Allegretto, Executive Director, Youth of North Carolina Source: WHQR public media Read time: 2.2 minutes This Happened On August 22, 2024, a one-day summit was held in Wilmington, North Carolina to educate staff of youth-serving organizations about ways to minimize or cope with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). Who Did This? Youth of North Carolina, a non-profit organization, sponsored the summit. Their executive director, James Allegretto, joined the organization in 2022. The Premise The Youth Resilience Summit was advertised as “an exciting and informative day to discover how you can better minimize adverse childhood experiences and build resilience for our children.” The keynote speaker was retired basketball star Kenny Anderson. Speakers included the chief judge of the local court district (Independent) and the local district attorney (Democrat), referring to themselves as Batman and Robin while fighting for justice together for over 25 years. Also among the fifteen speakers was the current Democrat nominee for governor Josh Stein. Eleven presentations were offered on topics including:
The chief judge told a reporter that too many people cling to an old ‘tough-on-crime’ philosophy, whereas his aim is to identify the root causes of criminal behavior, which include adverse childhood experiences. Analysis No matter how you slice these types of events promoting ACEs, whether it’s negatively focused on the alleged harms or, like this one, positively focused on resilience, the foundational message is the same: Human minds are incredibly fragile to environmental psychological insults. The message is based on the belief that ACE research has established an incontrovertible fact that adverse experiences in childhood cause permanent harm in the forms of adult mental problems and physical illnesses. The problem is that none of it is true. Adverse childhood experiences are associated with adult illnesses, but it is because bad things tend to travel together in life due to other shared factors. Childhood experiences do not cause these catastrophic outcomes. While well-intentioned on humanitarian goals to help children, ACE programs are destined to fail. Trauma Dispatch documented some of the pushback against the ACE ideology and ACE screening here. As the negative ACE message of catastrophic harms has grown a bit stale, the movement has been shifting to focus on resilience. Both messages are counterproductive for children. The harm message teaches children that they are incredibly fragile, and the resilience message teaches them that they are not naturally resilient.
Why Is This Happening? Allegretto was quoted as saying, “It almost feels like a movement, right? But the reality is that we discovered how adverse childhood experiences impact people two decades ago, and we're just now getting on board and making a difference.” The movement is based on the moral foundation of progressive liberals that care for the disadvantaged trumps other moral concerns and that human nature is almost completely molded by life experiences. Events like this promoting ACEs have been happening for the past fifteen years around the United States every week in the form of conferences, workshops, and professional development trainings. Trauma Dispatch has documented some of their content here, here, and here. It’s an attractive ideology to believe in because researchers have used slippery language to conflate association with causation, and because it appeals to the compassionate impulse to help the disadvantaged. Like Trauma Dispatch? You can subscribe here to a weekly email notice of new posts. Comments are closed.
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