Race Reflections

Some words to ponder upon from the backtalking event a few months back…

A few words on the decolonial group on racial trauma Yesterday’s decolonial group on racial trauma went ahead, slightly off schedule. We welcomed some new voices and people into the space, following the open invitation that I’ve made. Today, I want to share some of the themes that transpired yesterday, and in particular the idea that so many people shared about confrontation, the real confrontation, the facing of racism and anti-Blackness in today’s world. What does it mean for us as parents to see our children experience some of the struggles that we went through and thought, or hoped, were done and dusted? At the same time, what does it mean for our children to support us through experiences of discrimination, of institutional violence, experiences that they may have had before, or are likely to encounter in the future? And so I wanted to speak again to that circularity issue of racial trauma within the family, and the intergenerational component of racial traumatization, particularly in the context of witnessing for parents and children’s suffering. One thing that we discussed was the reality that children sometimes will not speak to their parents about the experiences of racism that they have, because they want to protect their parents. Certainly, I remember doing that as a child, at times. But there is also the reality that parents want to protect their children from racism, and sometimes they keep things quiet for that purpose so they may not name the racism they themselves experience. Sometimes they may inadvertently minimize or silence. And even though the impulse to preserve the child’s innocence is understandable, it can cause more damage in the long term when the child is not prepared, when the child is not offered the space to process and the words to speak to what they are encountering. And so yesterday, we dwelt on this issue within the family, and it was quite moving, if I’m honest, because you see people who are pioneers, people who are established in their fields, in their scholarship, in their anti-racism and justice work, and they come to the humbling realization that actually, there is no escaping this stuff, even at home. And so it was a session where we were connected to grief and to loss then someone asked about pain…What do we do with the pain? It has crystallising effect. And I want to say that there were people from different countries so this question of how we manage the pain of racial injustice, of violence or othering echoed across continent, across diasporas. It is something that I want to leave you with. And it remains unresolved, of course. Of course, we can look after ourselves, we can practise self-care, we can resist alongside the pain. And I’m always conflicted, because I do think that there is sometimes some artificiality or pressure in trying to remain “positive” in the face of injustice, brutality and violence that can be unrelenting. But I am always conflicted about that, about whether I am imposing a superficial positivity when perhaps the mood or state is one of grief and mourning and pain which should be honoured. Thank you to those who always bless me with their experience, with their thoughts, with their understanding, and also with their vulnerability. I take those offerings very seriously and receive them with gratitude. They continue to make me think and grow as well. So today the reflective direction was more intimate, more personal in some sense, more affectively engaged. And this is part of the dance when engaging with racial trauma, the movement between the personal and the professional, or the sociopolitical, and the psychic, the individual, and the Group. We still welcome members so feel free to reach out if you are interested. racereflections.co.uk/new-re…

I remember one thing, to help people understand how it felt behind the wheel when I was driving without understanding rationally how to drive, it felt as though I was following the rhythm, in flow…and coordinating with this flow, this is how it felt. Like I could anticipate change in gear/movement based on the patterns of a tempo. It is vague that is all I can say to describe the experience.

My good people, Re: Complimentary invitation We are holding a session this evening on (de) coloniality and racial trauma. It sits slightly outside our published schedule, which is why I’m reaching out specially. I’d like to warmly invite you to join us — whether you’ve been hesitating, considering, or simply curious. Come and see how we engage with critical theory, and what it means to hold systems to account especially around white norms and colonial formations of traumatisation, how we reflect on change and the impact of doing this work. Tonight at 6:30pm London time. If you’d like to come, please DM me directly or send me an email ([email protected]) A small group is already gathering, and we would absolutely welcome newcomers, fresh voices, and anyone whose heart is still undecided so please don’t hesitate to reach out. I hope to see some of you on Zoom this evening. xitter.gq/racereflections/status…

In particular I want to bring your attention to one of the questions I have been asked to think about; How do you heal a wound that was inherited and not your own? Who carries it, and who is allowed to put it down? There are a lot of Eurocentric faulty *thought* lines or assumptions in this question, which I look forward to speak on. I am hoping that I have shared enough about Afroanalytics that you can anticipate the sources of the problematics.

Healing in the Circle of Life An International Conference on African-Centred Wellbeing & Psychology Portsmouth, Dominica 13th - 16*h April 2027 Call for conference contributions. We are living through a convergence of crises that conventional health systems were not designed to address. Globally, mental health conditions now affect one in eight people, and rates of anxiety, depression, and trauma continue to rise — accelerated by climate anxiety, social dislocation, and the psychological weight of persistent inequality. For Black, indigenous, and diaspora communities in particular, these pressures are compounded by the unresolved legacies of colonialism: the fracturing of cultural identity, the erasure of ancestral knowledge systems, and the long-term psychosocial harm of structural exclusion. Community fragmentation — the severing of intergenerational bonds that once sustained wellbeing; - has left many people without the roots and relational networks that sustain mental and spiritual health. Yet across these same communities, something is stirring. There is a powerful and growing global movement returning to indigenous knowledge — not as nostalgia, but as a living, rigorous, and deeply relevant framework for healing. HEALING IN THE CIRCLE OF LIFE | Call for Submissions Dates 13"'-16" April 2027 • African-centred psychology is emerging as a respected and expanding international field, challenging Eurocentric models and offering community-rooted, culturally congruent approaches to wellness. This conference answers that moment. It brings together the wisdom keepers, the researchers, the practitioners, and the communities who are not waiting for permission to heal - and creates the platform for that knowledge to be honoured, shared, and amplified. I shall deliver one of the keynotes…perhaps I will be joined by some of you? drive.google.com/file/d/1kaN…

My good people, The Black Leader Power Matrix™ I have spend much time thinking about scholarly things, thesis things, metaphysics and all the rest, as I walk these last few steps to the finish line but I do not forget we exist within material and structural realities. I want to remind you that we are here still in the real world, still operating in the clinical space, and still supporting the workplace. To that end, I want to introduce to you to The Black Leader Power Matrix™ A programme designed to address some of racially specific experiences and challenges Black leaders navigate and the racialised structural dynamics that shape their workplace experiences and influence: - Does your leadership programme addresses widespread resistance to Black authority/expertise and associated sabotage or envy? - Does it recognise the ways group processes such as horizontal violence can lead to Black (and Brown) employees marginalising and being hostile to leaders who look like them? - Does it speak to the impact of code switching and assimilation pressures on Black health and wellbeing? - Does it make visible intergenerational stories around wealth, power & associated conflicts around community loyalty/ betrayal? These are just a few of the issues a targeted Black Leadership Programme needs to delve into but which are still not mainstream and yet can influence career trajectories and workplace engagement. Drawing on the RACE Matrix™, the Black Leadership Programme equips participants with greater clarity, confidence and practical strategies to lead effectively while Black within complex organisational systems. Ultimately, the programme aims to support Black leaders in strengthening their leadership, expanding their influence and safeguarding their wellbeing, while creating the conditions for sustainable professional growth. We’ll be planning an open day later in the week. You can already read more about the programme here; racereflections.co.uk/the-bl…

Reflections on Embodiment, Memory Bearers & recognition Just met a man — likely Arab — who stopped me to say: “Any husband of mine should thank God every day he has me, for he can tell I am ‘special’.” He added: “You may think I’m crazy, but I can feel things. Protect your heart, as people will take advantage.” Then he walked away. Remember the man who stopped me in the middle of Paris to say he could see a blue light all around me, stuttering as he tried to speak to me? Just two months ago, another stranger aggressively pursued me on public transport because “he could tell” I was gifted. Whatever is at work, it demands some attention? Even if we take the view that this is all projection, then still: why do I ‘attract’ these kinds of projections? Projections, even in the classic psychoanalytic sense, do not happen in a psychic or intersubjective vacuum. For context, these encounters began when I was in my mid-to-late teens, and they almost always come from people who want nothing from me, know nothing about me, and have no obvious reason to communicate this to me or think I would be interested. For me, this line of thinking leads back to the Congo, and my spiritual understanding of the body as an archive. It also brings to mind that unsettling experience at the art market with Congolese art dealers — for those who have followed my work — where I wrote about a moment of mutual recognition. I was offered the sculpture Dancing Woman — a gesture I understood to mean: we see you; we are keeping things gentle; you have nothing to fear. I was undeniably shaken — by the weight of their gaze and the biographical relevance of their offering. When I frame this through Congolese metaphysics, it points toward a kind of energy that certain people are able to sense, perceive, and connect with. In my framework of Afroanalytics, those who carry this kind of sensitivity are what I frame as memory bearers. I’m taking some theoretical shortcuts here, but the core idea is: memory bearers, and who I see as community knots, tend to hold this heightened perceptual capacity. This is where it becomes fascinating intersubjectively: memory bearers and community witnesses can recognise each other perhaps through energetic attunement, a shared sensitivity to the unseen and the immaterial. It turned out that the man who saw that blue light was a central figure in his community, I discovered, after I started interrogating the experience. He occupied that role in a material sense. It seems he possessed that ability to perceive some things in the realm of the immaterial, something not visible to the naked eye, and indeed to all eyes. This is what Kongolese spirituality would invite us to conclude. These ancient African conceptions we can find in the work of Carl Jung and Analytic Psychology — a connection I discovered earlier this year. Though it is not attributed to Africa, sometimes to indigenous belief systems. There is of course a point about extraction and sanitisation, which I also raised at the time. Jung did not articulate things exactly as I do, but there is a resonance in the idea that some people have a distinct, differentiated perceptual capacity to engage with the immaterial, unseen world. So though I am not the first analytic thinker to engage with these phenomena, I may be the first to trace their genealogy through Kongolese metaphysics, and from there, to consider their function from a distinctly communal perspective — as something with a community purpose. This thinking forms a core part of the argument I developed in my thesis, working toward a decolonial reformulation of how we understand (racial) traumatisation, inheritance and embodiment. Returning to the source, and taking seriously indigenous and indeed African, in this case Kongolese ways of understanding the world; arguably the most decolonial and radical form of knowledge production or I should say KNOWLEDGE RECLAMATION.

Intuition, transmission, and Afroanalytics This morning, I reflected that I had not done much cultural exploration since being in Paris, so I planned to go and see some art. My heart I wrote, was pulling me towards Africa — which brought to mind my Afroanalytic methodology. I recalled my visit to the Musée des Cercles Africains in Pointe Noire, Congo. I presented part of that experience during a talk at the University of Liverpool a year or two ago. On my way to the museum, I had miscalculated the time, arrived only an hour before closing. I was having palpitations, frustrated by my own mistake and the thought I wouldn’t ‘have time’. I knew I needed to ground myself, so I closed my eyes and told myself: calm down, then let your heart guide you. I opened my eyes and walked straight to Thinking Man — I felt magnetically attracted to the piece of art that would become central to my thinking. It embodies the idea that the heart is the centre of intelligence and ethical reasoning in the Kongo. I unpack the significance of this discovery in my thesis. A point of note… I wrote art instead of heart at first, as I am still grappling with the relationship between art and the heart from an epistemological perspective. The discovery of Thinking Man was the moment that marked the beginning of my understanding that this thesis is about transmission. There is a fundamental challenge to dualism (which I elaborate on in the thesis) but there is also a call to take intuition seriously. The figure of Thinking Man has a head shaped like a heart, with a hand resting over his chest. Uncanny, right? Not only because of the circumstances of the discovery…when I had just told myself to follow my heart but because years earlier, in my writing The world does not need more intelligent men, I argued that the real test for intelligence is ethical and moral courage. In a nutshell I had already been writing about ancient Kongolese epistemology, without knowing I was writing about ancient Kongolese epistemology. I wrote that piece nearly two years before that museum visit, long before I had deeply engaged with African metaphysics. That moment was a turning point. Things started to fall into place, and this is also when the forest as epistemology started to be illuminated. I am no longer a huge fan of the language of “illumination” due to its colonial and modernist connotations but when I was lost in the forest repeatedly, it was dark. Almost pitch black. I could just make out the outline of trees. And each time I felt the urge to run away. Because I could not explain especially in supervision what was happening, I had no language or reference points. My morning reflection led me to make another important link (I will need to include in my final draft) to confronting the mass, the framework I created to describe the affective reality of decolonial work as mourning work starting from the confrontation of indistinguishable bodies at sea forming a mass. The forest, and the indistinguishable trees in the darkness, echo the shapelessness of the mass of bodies floating at sea, but also that urge to run, the projection of terror, are analogous. And it is precisely what I argue in confronting the mass in my reformulation of mourning and melancholia. It is the shapelessness of the object — not necessarily that the object is obscured by the ego or repressed — that creates internal disturbances. That internal disturbances arise because of the violence of the archive and the obscuring of the lost object, resulting in that mass becoming phobogenic and attracting projections of terror. In the same way I intuited that I needed to see, smell, kiss, feel, touch the body of my dead mother in order to let her go. The Afroanalytic methodology strives to capture and legitimise: the associative, embodied, non-linear, spontaneous ways significant knowledge comes into being. I offer this an Illustration Afroanalytics in action.