racial memory

American  

noun

Psychology.

1. feelings, patterns of thought, and fragments of experience that have been transmitted from generation to generation in all humans and have deeply influenced the mind and behavior.

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Example Sentences

That essay still feels remarkably fresh in the reprint, even though Katz’s observations occasionally gleam with a faith in the assumption of the continued worth of monuments that may turn out to be “discredited,” “outmoded” or ironically apposite, as when he says of their power, “Something like racial memory is at work.”

From New York Times

The implicitly “Jungian” nature of Warburg’s later work—with its call to shared cultural spirits, to archetypes in the sky and engrams in the brain—bore for him too close a resemblance to ideas of blood and racial memory.

From The New Yorker

A racial memory, inset against the forest scenery, flashed suddenly through the depths laid bare.

From Project Gutenberg

Not even buried in the dim racial memory had there ever been one who took more than his share, for this would be like the fingers of one hand stealing blood from the fingers of the other.

From Project Gutenberg

Wolves roam through our racial memory, howling beyond the firelight, scaring the hell out of us.

From Time Magazine Archive