What is racism? Is it part of human nature, or something that must be taught?
We who live in the United States or any other country with a history of colonialism have never known a time when racism did not permeate our culture. In the U.S., we can trace the roots of racism back only a few generations to the time when Europeans devised the scheme of traveling to West Africa, abducting people and taking them to a remote country to be sold to landowners who were free to use them however they wished. While we can identify the specific historical conditions that gave rise to the racialized society in which we now live, it is not as easy to explain why we as a species developed racism in the first place and why we find it so difficult to let it go.
London-based psychoanalyst
M. Fakhry Davids sees at the root of racism a power dynamic that makes it seductive to both perpetrator and victim. According to his theory of "internal racism," the force that sustains racism is the very shame and guilt those who perpetrate it feel about their own racist impulses. To understand how revulsion towards racism actually keeps it alive requires a familiarity with a psychoanalytic concept known as
projective identification.
Next: Projective identification
posted by Lisa #
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