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In recent years the question of how an understanding of racism might be located within an analytic frame has gradually crept into the margins of our theorizing. The slowness of this progress is surprising - possibly even shocking - given the multicultural context in which we and our patients live and work. Davids' book, firmly rooted in clinical work, is a significant step forward as it takes us beyond the usual reliance on the concepts of splitting and projective identification and provides a more sophisticated framework for understanding how racism operates in the ordinary mind.
Davids knows from personal experience the sharp stab of the racist attack, especially one from an unexpected source such as unaware white liberal friends. Examples from his own life and others clearly convey the ‘agony’ (his word) when a casual remark from a white individual cuts through his assumption of being just an ‘ordinary’ friend, colleague or citizen, to reveal how he is being responded to as the ‘racial other’. He vividly illustrates how a casual remark can rupture the sense of being for the black