Black Lives Matter - Statement on Opposition to Racism
It is a time of global climate change, medical calamity, economic depression and spiralling social fragmentation. It is our view the latter is morphing in still more dangerously nationalist, xenophobic and racist ways.
We have all been made aware of police and GS4 violence against people of colour [1] with losses of life in the US and UK [2]. The impact of COVID-19 upon black and brown lives compounds our grief.
Darkness of skin and race are parts of still larger questions relating to the economics of justice and of power.
So we express solidarity with Black Lives Matter. It is clear its adherents do not mean only black lives matter. They know all lives matter. Their point remains that lives of dark-skinned people in the West have in particular faced, and increasingly face, the dangers of systemic racism.
We ask what in this area a psychoanalytic approach offers. One option relates to the need to ask questions with arguably fuller and franker intentions to listen and speak to what is living in events and experiences we may not be used to hearing.
Our hope is that this will, in time, add something new and good to events and experiences. We also grasp that to include what is living in events and experiences we may not be used to hearing will be hard and painful to stay with.
It is our view the dark-skinned are at best still not granted the luxury of being ordinary citizens. Their worst experiences are of having had to endure gross injustices and humiliations, across generations, in order to survive or get some way on.
Questions we may ask are: Why is “colour-blindness”, not seeing racial difference, damaging? What do whiteness and darkness of skin mean to each of us? What does it mean to be the clinician of particular race and colour in relation to clients or colleagues of similar or other race and colour? Moreover what do race and skin colour mean to each in respectively diverse, white or dark-skinned group interactions for training, supervisory and experiential purposes.
Areas of concern coming to our minds are multigenerational traumata. These include educational and training experiences.
This work is the responsibility of us all, not solely members, applicants and candidates of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic heritage. We consider it the responsibility of our white colleagues throughout analytic communities to respect, listen to and learn from BAME colleagues’ and clients’ lived experiences of racism.
So the IPSS Race and Culture Group wholly endorses the UKCP statement on racial injustice. You can read this at: https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/news/ukcp-statement-racial-injustice
The IPSS’ Equalities and Diversity Policy dovetails with, and contains The UKCP’s Diversity and Equalities Statement:
https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/media/njfnds0g/diversity-and-equalities-statement.pdf
It is IPSS’ aim to better the journeys in IPSS of BAME candidates, members and not least clients.
Meanwhile, whether you are a member, candidate or other co-worker, we would value your contribution to developments. If you have concerns or require support, the administrator can put you in touch with members who have current roles as to issues of race and culture:
Dharma Paul, Manshant Rani Kaur and Elisabeth Auer
[1] We use the term ‘person of colour’ for anyone, be s/he or they black, brown or yellow, neither considered nor passing as white in these isles. The term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the US, inclusive of Asian, Hispanic and Indigenous Americans; but since the 2010s has been adopted elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
[2] Christopher Alder, Dalian Atkinson, Sheku Bayoh, Jordan Begley, Leon Briggs, Kingsley Burrell, Rashan Charles, Edson Da Costa, Jean Charles de Menezes,
Mark Duggan, David Victor Emmanuel, Henry Foley, Joy Gardner, Cherry Groce, Mohamud Mohammed Hassan, Cynthia Jarrett, Oluwashijibomi Lapite, Olaseni Lewis, Leroy Junior Medford, Jimmy Mubenga, Leon Patterson, Sean Rigg, Ibrahim Sey, Roger Sylvester and Liddle Towers.
