Do Black Lives Matter? A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Racism and American Resistance to Reparations

Abstract

Psychoanalysts assert that when wrongs have been done to others the impulse to apologize and forgive is natural, although in reality efforts toward interpersonal and social repair are often frustrated. This article assesses current debates on reparations for African Americans, applying psychoanalytic ideas to account for American resistance to engage in a process of reconciliation. Contemporary authors claim that racial repair requires a moral and ethical acknowledgment of and responsibility for harms committed to African Americans. This article demonstrates, in addition, reparations as a psychological necessity. Racism, however, emphasizing the reality of racial difference, continues, as always, to serve as a powerful defense thwarting the reparative impulse. The result has been the securing of physical separation between Whites and Blacks and the persistence of psychic enmeshment. Absent the implementation of a politics of reparations, African Americans will never achieve externality, or independence, from the White mind.