In this paper I explore programmes of work undertaken to address institutional racism within two institutions providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy training and services. The paper suggests that training institutions of this kind may be paradoxically positioned. The same features that we might expect to facilitate reflection and change in favour of increased tolerance and diversity may act as points of organizational resistance to change. The paper draws on a range of theoretical resources that may be helpful in understanding the acute anxieties that are often mobilized when institutional racism is named and identified as something the organization has decided to tackle. The account is interwoven with various personal reflections on the experience of this work, and some autobiographical observations that may illuminate the stories presented.