Racism and “Mental Health” Oppression
The following is a report on a topic group held at the February “Mental Health” Liberation for All Workshop for Scotland, Wales, England, and Cornwall. Nine white people met—led by me.
This was my introduction:
Our white minds have been saturated with ideas of what is “normal,” and we grew up in a society that viewed racism as “normal.” We were trained not to even notice that racism existed. We were “taught” that everything about whiteness (and being heterosexual, Protestant, middle class, and able bodied) was “normal” and anything outside of that was “other” and not “normal.” The separation of Black and white people was “just the way things are.” The people we loved and most depended on acted as if racism was “normal.” This was a big hurt and caused some of us to feel like we were “going mad [‘crazy’].”
The truth is that racism is not normal or natural, and our inherent sense of social justice knew that. As white children, we wanted to be close to and were curious about everyone.
We need to take responsibility for finding out the truth. Those of us who grew up in Scotland, Wales, England, and Cornwall have been lied to all our lives. In particular, we’ve been lied to about British colonial history and black- and brown-skinned people.
English colonialists made up [created] lies to try to justify the transatlantic slave trade and the stealing of people and resources from Africa. One such lie was that African brains were smaller than European ones.
We were made terrified of Black people, particularly African-heritage men. We need to discharge on our earliest memories of seeing and hearing about Black men in our neighbourhoods, in books, on television, in films. Some 1950s newsreels showed Kenyan Mau Mau forces fighting the British for the liberation of Kenya. The newsreel reports did not reveal the atrocities of the British army—up to a million Kikuyu people were placed into concentration camps where they were tortured and many murdered. This is just one example of how we have been denied information and lied to.
The pressure to look “normal” has tended to keep us quiet and not showing our outrage and anger about injustice. We need to discharge our fear of speaking out about the truth and take action to end racism.
People in the group made the following points:
- I remember knowing and loving Black people and being in their lives when I was young. I have feelings that I can’t face racism, that I can’t face myself.
- The “mental health” system says to psychiatric inmates and others that you’re a nobody, that your opinions don’t matter, that you don’t have a mind. People of the Global Majority (PGM) are treated similarly. Both “mental health” system inmates and PGM can be treated as if they are “nothing.”
- Where I grew up, racism was the norm [what was considered normal], and you accepted it. If you spoke out against it, you were seen as “crazy.”
- Disconnection and racism systematically dehumanize both white people and PGM. We can’t be aware of racism, because if we were, we would not cooperate with the oppressive system. We have to be disconnected to keep the oppressive system running.
- When disconnection from PGM, fear, and misinformation combine, they are complex, confusing, and overwhelming.
- This is hard to think about. Albert Einstein was right when he said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” A shift in thinking is required, and discharge will accomplish that.
- Racism is entirely unnatural. We don’t need to go along with [cooperate with] it. We should challenge it. One way “mental health” oppression can impact us is to make us gloss over issues by making everything neat and tidy. Perhaps things need to get messy to interrupt the racist way things are.
- Racism is the wallpaper, the air we breathe, the water we swim in.
- I have always had to pretend that everything is okay when it obviously is not. That is hard. So much pretense can make you feel as if you are “going mad.”
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of “mental health” liberation
(Present Time 204, July 2021)