As an anti-racist practitioner and campaigner I work with and support people who have experienced racism and have suffered a psychological injury as a result.
Not everyone who has experienced racist abuse or racial stereotyping or discrimination in the may forms it is perpetrated will have an opportunity to reflect on the impact of this experience on sense of self, sense of safety or the physical impact of being in flight or fight and the psychological toll of daily exposure to the threat of racism. Many Black people will recognise some of the examples of experiences I have included here. There are many more that could be added
-being followed around a shop by security staff,
-being stopped by the police,
-being ignored in shops while waiting to be served,
-people slamming the change down on counters and refusing to put in your hand,
-people touching your hair without permission,
-seeing loved ones abused or ignored,
-people walking past in busy areas pulling their handbags closer to them as they see you approaching,
-wrongful arrests,
-police stop and searches
-being call ‘you people’
-the pain and hurt being ignored or dismissed after experiencing a crime,
-being overlooked at work again and again for promotion,
-keeping strong opinions or feelings in check so as not to appear as the angry Black stereotype
-being marginalised and under-represented in most areas of work,
-being the nurse who gets the most physically demanding jobs or difficult patients,
-being told how good your English is when its the only language you speak!
All of these experiences and many more over a life time weather our psychological capacity and our physical wellbeing to look after ourselves well. Self care is so important.
In the words of Audre Lorde – a Black, civil rights activist, writer, lesbian and feminist who was especially prominent between the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, encapsulate an early notion of self-care that will be alien to many today, especially when compared to the current, Whitewashed and highly commercialised interpretation.
For Lorde, self-care wasn’t buying a candle, a new herbal tea, or any other form of consumerism, self-care was both the sustenance that sustained her ability to enact change and was in itself a radical act.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
As Black people we face the appalling over representation: in maternal deaths, school exclusions, stop and search, mental health diagnosis of psychosis or ‘schizophrenia’, poorer health outcomes etc etc
When we go and seek help for distress the picture is not much better and few therapists or doctors will ever ask about the impact of racism on our health or wellbeing. These experiences and the lack of psychological support for working with this kind of distress has become more apparent since the Black Lives Matter Movement and the collective trauma we all experienced at the exposure to yet another killing of unarmed Black man.
It is from these experiences that I wanted to write about the lack of opportunity for Black people to get the appropriate support to recover from and build supportive networks to heal from racialized trauma. My article https://etq.emdrassociation.org.uk/2023/10/16/is-emdr-an-anti-racist-therapy/ is a call to action from the whole of the profession working with people who have faced and will continue to face racism in the home, the workplace and in community spaces.
Please do take time to consider the question – Is the therapy you provide anti-racist?
Akoma Healing H`Arts 