Rebel Without A Pause: Has George Floyd aWOKEn Us?
May 2021 Blog
30th May 2020: It’s late afternoon and I’m out by Arlington Reservoir having a rest after a hellish 24 hours. The riots in the USA, after the killing of a black man by police, and my engagement with it all on the news, Twitter, Facebook etc, was so painful and rageful for me. I wrote about it to get this pain out of my system (the blog will be published tomorrow). As for me, I need a rest. I need time away from the horrors of racism and the easy silences of anti-blackness from supposed allies.
The 25th May 2021 is the first anniversary of the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA. His murder sparked numerous protests worldwide and encouraged the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Riots took place, statues were toppled, and companies and individuals were shamed into recognising their own complicity in the oppression of millions of people worldwide. Yet in relation to this also came the performative whiteness of the oasis of allyship. Black squares were placed upon social media pages by companies who then had no intention of making any firm systemic changes. Knees were taken by football teams who did nothing to punish those flying All Lives Matter banners over their stadiums.
The attempts to water down the narratives were always going to take place, in my view. The narcissistic fragility of so many individuals and groups wanting to be seen to do the right thing one moment, whilst reneging upon promises presented to supplicate the racial masses fed up with their constant need to take advantage of said minorities spoke more of their need to maintain a kind of racialised status quo.
The impact upon the racial other, though, was that even though they now saw that the pressures of the adaptations placed upon them by so many individuals, institutions and systems, they were still not free. To say a bit about adaptation; for Freire (1970), adaptation was presented as the usual experience of non-whites in South America and elsewhere, an adaptation meant to aid survival in worlds not our own. We would be defined from without, and said definition, said adaptation, also meant the dehumanisation of us as the racial other.
The years immediately before Floyd’s murder, the years of Trump and Brexit, were a stark reminder that black humanity was still, as is has been for so long, defined in accordance with the whims and Machiavellian charity of patriarchal, capitalist, white supremacy. Multiple, ever-narrowing lenses through which we were deconstructed only in order to be defined as Afro-Whatever and then redefined as BAME, a repackaging presented to us like gift, but in reality nothing more than the homogenised dehumanisation of millions of people.
This 3/5ths of humanity afforded us has for so long been tied to the whole humanity of our captors, our enslavers, our colonisers. Within this we were, in fact we still are, told where to live and who to date, where to eat and where to work, so we don’t sully the foggy utopia of the upper class whiteness. We’re told that we should not have too nice a car or house, or that we should not rise too high in our station, so that we do not evoke the envy of patriarchal whiteness. We’re told that we should not speak out otherwise we will be sent back home, or that we should not fight for the rights of disadvantaged children to have a decent meal during a pandemic, that we should ultimately know our place so that we don’t embarrass whiteness.
With it though came all of the pain of the insults, the beatings, the supposed micro-aggressions, of the racial trauma we had endured over the past years of our individual and collective existences. That we were tired of our oppressions and of watching this lynching repeated as part of the 24hr news cycle would become more obvious. Yet with that came the realisation that there was a chance for many of us to become unadapted, to actually wake up, that freedom from our adaptation also involved a return to our humanity.
Don’t forget, it is extremely rare for a policeman to be prosecuted for the murder of a suspect both in the USA and in the UK.
13th September 2020: [A] Dream where I am trapped on a large ship in a shipyard with a white woman. I try to escape with her even though my arms are initially bound. I rush a black jumper-wearing, white man so I can get away. I fly over the edge of the ship into the harbour even as I am being shot at, the bullet passing me into the water. I swim away from the ship going to the right and I end up on a beach, exiting the water. A white man tries to help me, but I knock him over and then run along the beach. I set fires to help me escape.
Individuation is a strange term in some ways. A term originally coined by Carl Jung (1990), the idea that we enter life and adapt to its rules, structures and regulations, it meant for him that much of our potential was forced into the shadow. Then, throughout life as we separate out from family, friends, culture, and maybe even religion, we individuate, where we become more of that which we were meant to be and are driven to follow the divine script originally laid out for us before birth.
For black peoples, existing in a white, patriarchal, capitalist environment adds a different layer. Where adaptation is enforced upon one by racialised means, the process of individuation therefore becomes a return of all of the racialised aspects of the self deemed too black, too angry, too stupid, too aggressive, too whatever, by the internalised racialised superego. The return of this material is not easy. Like any process of individuation, even Jung realised that to walk this path involved staggering through the alchemical pain of these adaptations.
My own words spoke of the need to access the pain of these experiences, recognising how important they were, where I stated, ‘when we speak, when we write, when we compose songs, when we create art from that very real well-spring of anger, from that passion, then we connect,’ (Jackson & Turner, 2021, p. 26). Although this was referring to connection, the thing that most strikes me about this moment was that it returned our humanity to us. This was a process that would mean the excruciatingly painful re-experiencing of all that we had denied in order to fit in, to be a part of, to find safety within.
So, whilst George Floyd’s murder made us wake up to our humanity, it also made us wake to our own trauma and pain. The murder made us wake up to our tears of anger and regret for the times when we had been stereotyped, stopped by the police, where women had crossed the road, where men had racially abused us in public, where we had been racially gaslit, micro-aggressed against or had our experiences denied or downgraded to just another (racial) joke and banter. We woke up to the fear for our lives, that daily, moment-to-moment, constant experience of being black, where we steel ourselves to leave the castle-like safety of our 20th floor flat to endure the glances and turned backs of those who really don’t want to see us. We woke up to the losses of our brothers and sisters, our uncles and aunts, our parents made ancestors, who were either murdered, sectioned, imprisoned or now newly deported under a system which marked us out as outsiders and deemed that we needed to be destroyed, contained, or simply gotten rid of.
Don’t forget, crowdfunders and donors paid the $1,000,000 bail set for Chauvin allowing him to go free on licence before his trial.
28th December 2020: [A] Dream where I am at a work outing. I have organised myself so I get to visit a swimming pool and I get to swim lengths with beagle dogs. There are lots of them in the pool and they play with me as their guide. A young white woman follows behind us. Time and again the dogs follow us, swooping in and around me to play and nuzzle me. At one point, my colleague Erin joins us in the pool with a male friend. She tells me she took time off to have fun of her own. I look to the side and see some teenage girls playfight until one of the bossy girls pushes another girl into the pool. They all seem to be being mean to each other so I go back to swimming with the dogs in the pool.
The brilliance of individuation is not only the growing return of one’s humanity but also the rediscovery of the rights to self-respect and to self-define oneself. The recognition of the power of the internalised whiteness embedded within the racialised aspect of the superego, together with the conformity of the instinctual, is replaced by an interaction between the ego and the instinctual whereby the superego is now in service to the ego, not the other way around. There is play here, there is a relationship, there is a respect between an egoic sense of racialised self and the instinctual which serves both and doesn’t demand supplication.
This is where the idea of self-respect becomes hugely important. As Holberg (2017) discusses, autonomy and its link to respect dovetail, and you cannot have one without the other. This is a link also posited by Wawrytko (1982) in his discussion on the link between Eastern philosophical perspectives on respect and how these differ and dovetail with those from the West, where they are more relational to the self. Whereas within the feminist cannon of literature the idea that respect is given by the centre, for those who are oppressed the idea of respect becomes more complex, or more conditional at least.
This last perspective is most important, as it echoes DeGruy (2005) who argued that being disrespected was one of the cornerstones of the black experience. From being talked down to as an 8 year old by a much older woman, simply because you don’t have the right change to buy a canned drink, to being called a stupid N word, just because you dropped the rugby ball meters from the try line, to having someone klansplain why their hunch is so much more relevant to the ideas of intersectionality, privilege and otherness; the lack of respect given to black people far outweighs that given to any other race. Respect is, therefore, embedded within the cloak of privilege, be it race, class, or gender, and is portioned outwards from the centre like processed food in a poor shelter.
To be woke is to wake up to the disrespect meted out by the police, by the politicians, by the racial centre, the gendered centre, by heterosexuals, by the able-bodied, by the upper classes and the monied. Waking up from this pre-Floyd sleep involves recognising that the only respect one ever needs is a form of racial self-respect where one’s boundaries are set by oneself, where one’s identity is set by oneself, where one is more than just the puffed up balloon of grandiose superiority constructed to avoid the impact of being disrespected. It’s where one builds from the inside the scaffolding, the brick-and-mortar building, the neighbourhood, the family, the friends, the internalised loving relationships with the self that make one so much more substantial, and so much more respectable and respected.
Self-respect is, therefore, a form of self-love, so maybe Radio Raheem was right when he said love always does defeat hate (Lee, 1989).
Don’t forget the other policemen involved in Floyd’s murder have not yet come to trial.
14th May 2021: Scene from a dream where I am in a restaurant seated around all kinds of people. I am talking to some people next to me, when a white man across the table starts making disparaging remarks about me. His disrespect bothers me, so I get up to leave. However, as I exit a white woman enters with a turkey on a lead and wearing a fur coat. As she walks in the other diners watch her. She smiles enigmatically.
Notes: My first reaction to this dream is that I am not afforded the same respect as this white woman with the turkey on a lead. Whereas she is considered eccentric in the dream, she is also seen as desirable and worthy of attention, not ridicule. A privilege not afforded to one like myself. At least I get up and leave the table though. That much I do right.
Don’t forget that Chauvin still has the right to appeal.
To mark the sad anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Stillpoint Spaces are holding an online event with Dr Dwight Turner during which we will look at what we have learned about ourselves as therapists, counsellors, and individuals in light of this racial trauma. This event will take place on Saturday 12th June 2021, and will be part presentation and part experiential exploration of either the racial trauma we still have, or the racialised learning that is still endemic in our culture.
Dr Dwight Turner is Senior Lecturer within the School of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, lecturing on their PG Dip and MSc courses in Counselling and Psychotherapy, a PhD Supervisor at their Doctoral College and a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice.
His latest book, Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy, was released in February 2021 and is published by Routledge. Dr Turner is an activist, writer, and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality in counselling and psychotherapy.
You can buy the book here.
Learn more about Dr Turner on his website and follow him on Twitter.
References
DeGruy, J. (2005). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Joy Degruy Publications.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Books Limited.
Holberg, E. A. (2017). Kant, Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 55(3), 285–305. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12242
Jackson, C., & Turner, D. (2021). The Big Interview. Therapy Today, May.
Jung, C. G. (1990). The Undiscovered Self. Princeton University Press.
Lee, S. (1989). Do The Right Thing. Universal Pictures.
Wawrytko, S. A. (1982). Confucius and Kant : The Ethics of Respect. Philosophy East & West, 32(3), 237–257.
