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Being invited to respond to Anne Aiyegbusi's talk at the thirtieth anniversary conference of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy in London, May 2022, needs to be prefaced by an acknowledgement of the work Anne has been doing. For over two decades, she has been raising the impact of institutional and systemic racism within our forensic practice. And what is racism, if not an act of violence onto another, based on the amount of melanin in their skin? Anne's talk raises the level of reflective consciousness within forensic psychotherapy on race, racism, and forensic psychotherapy. I hope this response does Anne's work, and that of others, justice.
I raise attention to this to acknowledge the burden that is carried by Anne and others from minoritised communities. This is the burden to hold the split between one's own experiences and the emotional labour this work requires to stimulate thought and practice changes.
The last three years have been a curious experience for many minoritised groups, following the murder of George Floyd in the US. Antiracism has become the zeitgeist, and Anne rightfully asks (and I paraphrase), “Whose minds are requiring humanising?”
Dionne R. Powell (2012) writes about the African American experience in that:
issues about race run deep and rarely rise to the level of reflective consciousness; nevertheless they inform and impact our individual and collective psyche in terms of our cultural beliefs, our communications and what we perceive about what is ‘true’ about the other and ourselves. On the surface, our current dialogue is infused with post-racial and race-fatigue language. (p. 79)
This is no truer today than when it was written. As a society and a profession we clamour to proclaim our antiracist status, whilst simultaneously splitting off the part of ourselves that is complicit in institutionally racist violence. For example, at a meeting to discuss how we could reduce ethnic inequalities with community partners from Blac