Imagine you have shares in a multinational company. These shares have been handed down to you and, though you don’t give it much thought, they are part of your inheritance. The income from these shares is small but it allows you to work four days a week instead of five, which gives you time to gather your thoughts and enjoy the finer things in life, and allows you space to think about things other than what is directly in front of you.
Every once in a while, you think about the company you own shares in, and what the company does. Occasionally the company is highlighted in the news, and you don’t like what you hear, but the shares are so much a part of your life that it’s difficult to give them up. You feel a bit embarrassed at times and maybe even ashamed, but the feelings soon pass, and it’s business as usual.
You meet someone on your travels and they start talking to you about the company you are associated with. They don’t know you own shares but of course you know. You feel uncomfortable but what can you do? You would much rather talk about another subject and tactfully move the conversation to safer ground. In a candid moment you might speak to someone about the position you are in, and about how, when you think about the company, you feel bad and you don’t know what to do. You think perhaps you can give up the shares, but then you hear, through a shareholder’s letter, that the company is trying really hard to be a good company, an ethical company, although you are doubtful. You say to yourself that if unethical companies around the world were to lose their shareholders, the whole economic system would collapse and then where would we be? You hear from an economic analyst on the news that the capitalist economy is not a perfect system but what are the alternatives?
The company itself says that it wants to do better but is beholden to its shareholders, who expect more profits every year.
Those arguments make you feel a little bit better, but you are still uncomfortable. After a while that uncomfortable feeling goes away, but you know that at some point it’s going to come back, unannounced and unwelcome, out of the blue. To avoid these unwelcome intrusions into your mind you place yourself in spaces that give you the comfortable arguments you are used to about why things should remain the same, how you are only one person and you couldn’t possibly make a difference. You wonder, even if you did take your shares out of this unethical company and put them in a more ethical one, this wouldn’t change anything on the big scale would it?
You wake up one morning to find that the company you own shares in is on the news again for grossly unethical behaviour. The uncomfortable feelings that you were grappling with before come back to the fore and take over your world as the news story plays out. You start to read about other companies that do the same things as the company that you have investments with. Your horror at what you find brings up the type of fear that leads you to feel that the world is somehow infected by evil, and you despair. As you continue to explore and speak to other people you discover that rather than there being evil in the world, there are only decisions that look evil. You decide to put yourself into the types of arenas that allow those uncomfortable, complicit feelings to be seen and responded to because you feel in your bones that there’s something, other than denial, that can be done. It’s a massive leap of faith but you’re on a journey now. The genie is out of its bottle and there is no putting it back.
The moment of change
This imagined story illustrates a lifting of the veil and the shift that I feel is possible when we are relationally resourced. A decision to not perpetuate racism is more often than not a non-verbal sense of ‘getting it’. It’s akin to lifting a veil to reveal a previously explored aspect of the world as if seen for the first time. Temporarily set aside is the daunting weight of racism with its unforgiving history, to be replaced by an internal sense of something more compelling, more purposeful. This crucial part of the process then allows other aspects of you to become more fully energised. With coherent narratives ‘in the mind’ alongside what is essentially a body/heart decision not to perpetuate racism, the journey towards a sense of healing can begin – healing not just for personal gain but also for the communities we live in, and especially for our young people.
On the following pages are extracts from two race conversations that I hope will bring to life what the process of making a decision in your gut looks like and feels like, at least as it does for these two individuals. The first is a conversation I had with a white male psychotherapist, Andy,* and the second a Sikh male psychotherapist, Raj.*
Andy is a white psychotherapist who is passionate about psychotherapy and politics
Prior to this part of our conversation I guided Andy through a mindfulness exercise that encouraged him to explore his cognition, emotions and sensations at the thought of having a conversation about race. I was interested in bringing to his awareness the initial moments of discomfort, which are usually the optimal place to catch ourselves in the moments before we become dysregulated.
Eugene: What was uppermost [in your mind during the mindfulness exercise], and what were you aware of?
Andy: I have been sitting on something from the forum [a forum for therapists that invites a deepening of the race conversation] which took me by surprise. It was a moment where I changed. Someone mentioned something to me, and it changed my world view, it was just a comment. I don’t really know where I am with it yet; I haven’t settled and since then other little things have happened that I might have noticed but not ‘felt’. I’m left with some unknowns that impact how I see the world and myself in it.
Eugene: It feels important, perhaps we need to just get straight to it?
Andy: Well, I might go a bit red. I thought and felt that I was really quite comfortable with that [the race conversation]. At times in therapy I could bring up the topic. I might often introduce it. I might ask what it’s like working with a middle-class white guy from Surrey for somebody who’s from Africa who’s got a very different world outlook and probably comes from a country that my ancestors might have colonised. I could encapsulate that. I had some kind of minimal awareness of these issues, but I’ve been wondering for some years now... It’s not a bad reaction I get, or a non-reaction. The conversation quite often doesn’t go anywhere. So that has been sitting in the background.
Eugene: So, you bring it up, you’re curious, but it doesn’t take you into places where you might want to go.
Andy: Ah, well, I thought I did! So here’s the rub – here is the body thing, I can feel it, the little hairs on the back of my neck; be careful what you wish for.
Eugene: So, what was the overall experience about the comment that was made to you in the forum?
Andy: I was speaking to one of the facilitators. I mentioned the race conversation, or somehow that was in the room, and he said something along the lines of, ‘But if someone really brought that topic to you, their experience, could you cope?’
Eugene: Hmmm.
Andy: And I think not. Because actually until that moment I thought ‘yes’, I believed yes, I mean I really believed. And in that moment it started to dawn on me. Could I?
The moment that Andy describes, of the world suddenly changing, is something that I have heard on many occasions. It often comes after an initial, sometimes extensive process of curiosity and exploration. This exploration is typically driven by a particular personal hurt and through communion with other hurt souls. This journey then transforms into a decision to work towards no longer perpetuating race hurt.
Raj is a psychotherapist of Sikh heritage
Our conversation began with Raj talking about his explorations of his culture and his culture’s relationship to him as a Sikh man in the UK. It was shortly after he attended a Black, African and Asian Therapy Network conference.
Raj: I think there’s something, I want to call it special or different, about Sikhs. I’ve gone back in my family history. We were branded the ‘martial race’ by the British. We were recruited to fight; a big proportion of the Indian army were Sikhs. So, we were special, or maybe more aggressive, I’m not sure. It’s all been put into me, at some level. I’m supposed to be a certain way. Now I feel like...
Eugene: Now you’re a counsellor!
Raj: I’m vulnerable... Someone called me a traitor, someone in my family. Being a Sikh and Sikhism is very important to me, so I felt disappointed by that. If I go anywhere or challenge anything in my culture it will be seen as anarchic rather than adding something. It’s a sadness when I speak about that as well.
Eugene: It’s like many journeys of healing. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of reading, a lot of research, a lot of thinking, a lot of trying to process and trying to make sense. Raj: Healing is a good word.
Eugene: What was it like to have done all of that?
Raj: [Exhalation of breath]. Like I said, I was doing something different, away from the culture, it’s threatening – for me internally, and I guess for others. People always say ‘an Asian male counsellor’. What? It’s like, what?
Eugene: Oh right, yeah
Raj: They wanna know what you’re about, what you are doing. ‘Do you still deal with Asians?’ There are presumptions and assumptions, I find. The healing journey has been difficult.
Eugene: How did you come to this healing journey? I know you’re a counsellor, so that might have given you a little professional impetus.
Raj: I think it was more than that; it was a redirection. I didn’t have therapy until I started my training [as a counsellor], so there was something else going on. Maybe it was personal history, family, collective culture. It felt enlightening actually while I was doing it, and still there’s never an end, I don’t think. Still learning things about myself all the time but the cultural part I think needed to be addressed first. One of the first layers I think.
Eugene: Say more about that?
Raj: Yeah, the caste thing, Sikhism and where we stand, where we’re supposed to stand.
Eugene: You were trying to work out your place in relation to where you were supposed to be?
Raj: In the family business, arranged marriage – it was all for somebody else. I never realised why. It’s almost for an ideal that didn’t exist, the norm. Break the mould comes to mind. The actual process, I will be honest with you, has been very difficult at times. I almost felt like I was giving up and conforming but no, I didn’t think that was useful. I feel I’ve been honest culturally. I feel I’m near the end of the cultural stuff. Not at the end of it, but I understand a lot of it.
Eugene: And what did you gain from this painful process of exploration?
Raj: I feel much more solid. I went to the conference, I found a few Asian guys that could talk to me about this. It was really important actually. I can empathise with it and be willing to talk about this stuff. I needed to be understood, and I needed to understand myself. The rational part is understanding the history. The ‘actual’ part is understanding how all this affects me on a basic level, what bits do I need to keep. I will mention my daughters. They had a huge impact on me when they were born. And some of the practices towards them were quite... I found quite oppressive. So, there is that gender thing as well that goes on.
Eugene: Hmmm.
Raj: One word I’m looking for is liberation – that’s what comes up.
Eugene: It’s a word that often comes up for people.
Raj: Yeah, it makes me emotional, that makes me feel something when I say that.
Eugene: Yeah.
Raj: It’s an ongoing process, me feeling stuff. I name it now – in safe places. There is a bit of me thinking; I hope this helps.
Eugene: Oh no, it all helps, absolutely.
For Raj, it seems making a decision not to perpetuate racism and other oppressions was very much tied up with being a victim within his own culture. Trying to live a more authentic and ethical life can often make people within your own race and culture experience a sense of betrayal for ‘crossing over to the white side’, as it is sometimes seen. The rejection for that betrayal is extremely painful. Raj also demonstrates having the kind of support that is needed, from like-minded individuals, in order to go through a journey of ‘being yourself’ and ‘being your culture’ at the same time.
It’s almost impossible to attend to race harm as an individual. Race trauma is formed through relationship and must be healed in relationship. Within the backdrop of the race construct, healing takes place through the coming together of like-minded individuals – together they can orient their efforts towards attending to the hurt with positive regard, curiosity and compassion.
* The stories are included with permission but names and identifiable details have been changed.
Extracted and edited with permission from Transforming Race Conversations: a healing guide for us all by Eugene Ellis, recently republished by Norton. Use code WN149 to order a copy at 30% discount from Norton Mental Health.