A Psychology of Liberation and Peace

For the Greater Good

Chalmer E. F. Thompson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030135973
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Sozialpsychologie

This book addresses the need to radically transform societies plagued by racism. It places prominence on persistent racialized violence in the lives of Black Americans as influential in how Black people in the U.S. and abroad perceive themselves as Black in juxtaposition to their perceptions of White people and other People of Color. An absence of understanding of the often-masked role of violence in the lives of Black people increases the likelihood of reproducing it. The author offers a reformulation of racial identity theory to examine the construction of Manichaeism in people and societies, and how meaningful engagement that confronts the violence is vital to psychological development, though this engagement also is not without dire risks.

© The Author(s) 2019

C. E. F. ThompsonA Psychology of Liberation and PeacePan-African Psychologieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13597-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Chalmer E. F. Thompson¹

(1)

Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA

Chalmer E. F. Thompson

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

To theorist Sigmund Freud, the practice of skillfully “working through” the problems that adversely affected the lives of his patients constituted successful psychoanalytic treatment. Working through meant probing beneath the surface of the problems buried deeply in the patient’s unconscious mind because certain life realities had become too painful to bear. By surfacing the roots of the patient’s dysfunction and bringing them into conscious awareness, the analyst would accomplish the task of helping the patient cope constructively with these realities. I loosely borrow this concept of working through to propose that the problems that are deeply inherent in racism cannot be fully resolved without working through the well-tilled roots of the violence that lies at its base. Moreover, and unlike Freud I propose that this working through must extend far beyond individual interventions and family-of-origin issues; the objective in working through the violence that underlines racism is to help liberate people from the terror of violence that has characterized racialized societies like the United States and therefore, heal both individuals and the racialized societies in which we live. The focus in this book is on the working through process and its relevance to Black people’s survival and healing.

Anthropologist Audrey Smedley (1993) wrote that race “conveys the meaning of nontranscendable social distance… [that is] conditioned into most individuals early in their lives [and] becomes bonded to emotions nurtured in childhood” (p. 21). The means for ensuring that the distance between racial groups is not transcended is through violence. White people used physical violence in the transatlantic slave trade to capture, control, and reinforce the non-transcendable distance and in the colonizing of African people and the taking over of African land and natural resources. Physical violence coincided with and morphed into more pervasive forms of injury and killing and contributed to racist ideologies—ideas about human superiority over others that served to justify differential life experiences. The phenomenon of race-as-intricately-associated with racism also has spawnled divisions among racial groups as it simultaneously has crafted fictive perceptions about White people as the rightful occupants of the top rung of the racial hierarchy. Racism became embedded in the socialization of people in societies like North America, which Smedley wrote about, insofar as it became a means of conditioning children at young ages.

Smedley continued to refer especially to the foreboding and pervasive nature of race and its impact on everyday lives:

Race is expressed in all kinds of situations and encounters with peoples… It is structured into the social system through residential separation, differential education , training, and incomes, and informal restrictions against socializing, intermarriage, and common membership in various organizations including, most visibly, the church. It is reflected in virtually all media representations of American society and in institutional aspects of culture such as music, the arts, scientific research, educational institutions, politics and political forums, businesses, the theater, television, music, and film industries, and recreational activities. It provides the unspoken guidelines for daily interaction among persons defined as different races , especially black and white. It sets the standards and rules for conduct, even though individuals may not always be conscious of that fact. (p. 21)

I use the term racialized violence to refer to the acts, processes, and structures that lead to the deaths of Black people as well as other people of color because of their racial group membership. It also refers to the conditions that increase the likelihood of premature death of people of color based on their racial group membership. Racialized violence emerges as a phenomenon that unfolds from a continual dynamic of interaction between the powerful and unpowerful, with the powerful—White people, wielding influence over institutions in all spheres of social, political, and economic life in affected societies and across the world. It hampers the ability of society members to behave justly and humanely, and it dampens and leaves hopeless the spirit of outrage and shock at the prevalence and enormity of violence against Black people during the course of over four generations of subjugation and mayhem. Racialized violence can also diminish Black people’s association with other Black people, a quasi-annihilation of Blackness symbolically, and this disassociation occurs when there are wholesale beliefs about the veracity or deservedness of White people and/or White institutions. Finally, racialized violence can spawn the violence that is committed by Black people toward other Black people in this cycle of quasi-annihilation.

This attention to racialized violence has relevance to liberation as well as peace psychology. Liberation and peace psychology scholars both have addressed how violence encompasses not merely direct acts of violence by one or more perpetrators, but also processes that curtail healthy, growth-promoting lives. With liberation, the act to fight against racialized violence is to recognize the significance of a willed people to create disruptions to their oppression. Racialized violence did not begin with Black people. It is not the onus of Black people to end the violence. It is primarily the onus of Whites. However, the oppression will not cease without forceful opposition to racialized violence by all people within these societies.

I draw on Montero and Sonn’s (2009) definition of liberation psychology which includes the importance of identity, a key concept I use in this book. The authors define liberation psychology as

a process entailing a social rupture in the sense of transforming both the conditions of inequality and oppression and the institutions and practices producing them. It has a collective nature, but its effects also transform the individuals participating who, while carrying out material changes, are empowered and develop new forms of identity. It is also a political process in the sense that its point of departure is the conscientization of the participants, who become aware of their rights and duties within their society, developing their citizenship and critical capacities, while strengthening democracy and civil society. (p. 2)

Essential to Montero and Sonn’s definition is the element of praxis in liberation psychology . It is the ultimate “working through” in that there is recognition of the historical and contextual forces that shape people’s lives—that which is deeply embedded and often buried in our psyches and in our societies—and that require the attention of practitioners like liberation-oriented psychologists.

Peace studies founder Galtung (1969) refers to negative peace as efforts to reduce violent episodes, whereas positive peace refers to “the promotion of social arrangements that reduce social, racial, gender, economic, and ecological injustices as barriers to peace” (Galtung in Christie, Tint, Wagner, & Winter, 2008). Citing the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) definition, Daniel et al. elaborate more on both types of peace , especially that which is associated with structural , pervasive violence :

There can be no genuine peace when the most elementary human rights are violated, or while situations of injustice continue to exist; conversely, human rights for all cannot take root and achieve full growth while latent or open conflicts are rife. … Peace is incompatible with malnutrition, extreme poverty and the refusal of the rights of peoples to self-determination. Disregard for the rights of individuals and peoples, the persistence of inequitable international economic structures, interference in the internal affairs of other states, foreign occupation and apartheid are always real or potential sources of armed conflict and international crisis. The only lasting peace is a just peace based on respect for human rights. (UNESCO, 1983, pp. 259, 261 in Christie et al., 2008, pp. 543–544)

In the section below, I describe a series of events leading to and in the aftermath of the tragic killing of a Black man named Aaron Bailey of Indianapolis, Indiana by two local police officers. In the example I attempt to demonstrate how racialized violence operates. My effort is to show how the killing of Aaron Bailey, an act of physical violence, is surrounded by a host of conditions that influence people’s perception of the act, and shape a community’s notions about racism and its ways to resolve racialized violence. Examinations of what information is publicly shared and not shared, who shares it, and how “agreed” knowledge by the most powerful, can reveal important insights about how racism manifestations are distorted and ultimately, how these structures promulgate racism . The Aaron Bailey killing received considerable news coverage in the local newspaper and in the television news. It also was talked about in a variety of circles, and the reactions as told from some of the comments from online news reports offer glimpses of the reactions from Black and White people in the city and outside of Indianapolis. The purpose of this illustration is to reveal how “latent or open conflicts are rife” in the local community of Indianapolis and in U.S. society where police shooting and harassment of Black men and women have become more prominent in the media owing to the trends in extrajudicial deaths and public outcry. I continue to refer to the killing of Aaron Bailey throughout the book.

A Case Illustration of Racialized Violence

On June 29, 2017 at about 2 o’clock a.m., two Indianapolis, Indiana police officers stopped Aaron Bailey for reasons that have yet to be revealed officially (as of October 29, 2018). Bailey was driving with a female friend, Shiwanda Ward, in the passenger seat of the vehicle, both of them Black. The two officers, one White and the other biracial (presumably Black and White) and appears White, reported that they stopped Bailey because they ran a query on his license plate and discovered that he had a suspended license. The officers also reported that an argument erupted in which Bailey, 45 years old, refused to exit the car at the officers’ request. Apparently not wanting to continue the exchange, Bailey put his car into drive and sped off and a police chase ensued for about one minute. Bailey eventually crashed his car into a tree (Buckley & Ryckaert, July 11, 2017).

From the perspectives of the two officers and Bailey’s companion based on the series of written and visual media news reports, there are conflicting stories about what occurred next. According to the officers’ report, Bailey was seen reaching into the center console following the crash for what they believed to be a weapon as they approached his vehicle from behind. The officers reported that Baily did not comply with their warning to show his hands, although Bailey’s companion had raised hers. According to Bailey’s companion, the officers expressed no command to Bailey before shooting 11 bullets into the car at Bailey, striking him four times in his back. Bailey later died after he was transported to a nearby hospital. The officers and other investigative personnel found no firearm in the car or on the person of either Bailey or his companion. The officers were placed on administrative duty with pay, presumably by the police chief.

A press conference by the chief of police, Bryan Roach, who is White, with an initial reporting of the details of the shooting was arranged later that morning and only hours following the shooting (McKinney, Cox, & Sanchez, June 29, 2017). Fairly new to the city, Roach stated that the tragic shooting would likely serve as a “test” for the police department and the community, and that he had already worked toward improving these relationships. He went on to explain that his commitment was to continue to improve these relationships. He did not refer specifically to what he meant by “the community.” For example, he had consulted with a number of Black pastors in the community and attended meetings at Black churches. He mentioned these consultancies as he spoke about “the communit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Violence and Racialized Lives
• 3. How Racial Identity Theory Is Relevant to Liberation and Peace Psychology
• 4. Waging Liberation and Peace
• 5. The World Stage: Engaging in Transnational Liberation and Peace Work
• Back Matter