Internalized Racism & the “Sunken Place.”
By: Ted Neill
Tags: Racial Equity, Racial Justice, Racism, Anti Racism, White Supremacy

Internalized Racism & the “Sunken Place.”

Photo by Melany Rochester on Unsplash

Once, while I was conducting a workshop on racial justice for a mostly white Christian group of men, the group bifurcated into two subgroups:

· One that believed racism was a problem and . . .

· One that didn’t.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the groups were clearly divided along generational lines. The older men, mostly Boomers, were on the side of “racism isn’t a problem.” The GenXers and millennials (GenZ) were firmly on the side of “Yes, racism is a thing and it’s a problem.”

That didn’t surprise me. What did catch me off guard was the moment when one of the Black men in the room (we’ll call him Carl, who was thirty something) stood up and announced that he didn’t see the point of the entire exercise since “there is no such thing as racism among Christians.” Carl then proceeded to circle around the room in order to hug all the older white men who insisted that “racism is not a problem.” These men, in turn, aimed some very smug stares my way. They certainly felt as if they had just been granted their “get out of racist-jail free card.”

A mentor had once told me to always plan for a wild card, the unexpected, the “crazy Ivan,” in every workshop.

Well, Carl sure had provided it.

Honestly, I was pretty stuck. The optics of a white facilitator taking on a well-respected Black man (at least well respected by half the room after his announcement) were hopeless. Even trying to create space in the discussion at that moment for some of the other men of color in the room to challenge Carl would have been problematic. I didn’t want to place them in a position of attacking their brother in front of a mostly white crowd.

I took the least-worst option and tried to move the conversation forward without lingering on Carl’s comments.

Even if I chose not to engage Carl on the topic, you can believe his Black brothers definitely did at the break. They knew what was going on. When they confronted Carl during the coffee break the two terms they used with him were “internalized racism” and (the more colloquial) “the sunken place.”

These are two phrases it is helpful to know the definitions of when stepping into this work. So here are some starting places:

This is the definition from the Society for Health Psychology[1] for internalized racism:

Internalized Racism: the acceptance, by marginalized racial populations, of the negative societal beliefs and stereotypes about themselves.[2] Individuals may or may not be aware of their own acceptance of these negative beliefs. Internalized racism can also be expressed via a rejection of the cultural practices of one’s own ethnic or racial group.

Components that have been considered part of racial identity, including racial self-hatred, may also be considered part of the construct of internalized racism.[3] When the negative stereotypes are absorbed into the self-concept of a stigmatized individual, the process is referred to as self-stereotyping.[4]

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

There likely was a strong element of this going on with Carl. Especially with his internalized notion that there was “no such thing as racism among Christians.” Honestly, we almost exclusively hear this from racist white people, because denying racism exists pretty much only serves the interest of white people. For Carl to adopt this belief, it meant an active rejection of the perspectives of the majority of Black people he had ever met. To what extent this had developed into a level of self-hate, or self-stereotyping, within Carl’s psyche, I wasn’t in a place to determine.

Carl also might have been motivated by another reflex that had become so second nature to him that he was no longer even conscious of it: his impulse to make white people feel comfortable. This “caretaking” can be a survival mechanism for any Black person or person of color living in a world dominated by white supremacy.

Many of my Black friends have disclosed to me that part of their own journey to “decolonize” their minds included confronting their own tendency to do this. Many identified it as a tendency they had picked up and devoted a great degree of energy to throughout their lives without ever intending to. They had never even questioned it. It was automatic, like looking both ways before you cross the street. Only upon reflection did they recognize the extent to which they had put effort into this. That realization would lead to reflection, sometimes with bitterness, of why they had taken on such a burden in the first place.

Making white people “comfortable” comes from an understandable impulse on the part of Black Americans: you do it to survive. After all, the anger of white America has long carved a bloody path through Black bodies.

But I am not sure if making white people comfortable will motivate them to change.

And that was the point of the workshop that day. Comfort was going to get in the way of these white men questioning their own assumptions, their perspectives, and learning about how they benefited from white supremacy culture. The defiant stares they shot me over Carl’s shoulder as he embraced them, reinforced to me the extent to which Carl had just (inadvertently or not) thrown up further barriers to the work and even contributed to his own oppression (perhaps if only to preserve his own comfort for the duration of the workshop).

But I have to give Carl grace, he was just trying to survive in a world that is constantly assaulting his humanity.

As I left the “work” of confronting Carl to his Black brothers, the second term that kept coming up in those private side conversations was, the “sunken place.”

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels

The sunken place was a term popularized in Jordan Peele’s groundbreaking 2017 film Get Out (a film Carl had not seen). The sunken place is a metaphor for the mental/emotional space African Americans find themselves in when they become complicit in their own oppression (consciously or not). The expression has become shorthand for that type of internalized racism. As a result, it has also become a meme with some real staying power. It is one of the (many) cultural legacies from Peele’s incredible film.

The final lesson I came away with from that day is one that may already be implicit. It still merits emphasis. It was the bind I found myself in as a white and privileged facilitator (presumedly on the side of the oppressed) who found myself at odds with a Black man who, along with the older white men in the workshop, was challenging me and the notion that racism exists at all.

In the work we do to dismantle racism, historical precedents hover over us like menacing specters. I was well aware of the long, and unfortunate, history of white people telling BIPOC that their perceptions of reality were “wrong” (see gaslighting). It is a fact that white men in a position of authority have done great damage to BIPOC by undermining their confidence in this way. While I liked to consider myself on the “right” side of history, I felt out of my depth in that moment of Carl absolving the white Christians of racism (side note: we don’t deserve it, the church has been and still is complicit in too many ways). The task of taking on Carl in a public way was fraught with potential pitfalls which could side track the whole workshop. As I said above, the optics of me “correcting” Carl presented a no-win situation.

But it would be falling into the trap of “white-centeredness,” even the unpalatable role of “white savior,” if I had assumed (1) I, Ted Neill, had all the answers or (2) that I alone could fix this problem. This was one of those times when I took comfort in the truth that not all the world’s problems have a sign on them that says, “Ted Neill is supposed to fix this.”

Thank goodness.

One thing I’ve learned from Daniel Hill (another one of my mentors and role models in this work) is that any of us from a background of privilege who engage in this work do so at the invitation of the communities we are working to support. We have to constantly defer to them on whether or not what we have to offer has any merit. In this case, I knew my quiver was empty. So, I side stepped the issue, strategically waiting for the break when I was confident that some of the BIPOC in the room would call Carl in.

They did, and I’m pretty sure Carl has seen Get Out now.

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Footnotes:

[1] https://societyforhealthpsychology.org/resources/research-advocacy/diversity-racism/

[2] Williams & Williams-Morris, 2000, p. 255; Taylor & Grundy, 1996 (as quoted in societyforhealhpsychology.org)

[3] Cross & Vandiver, 2001; Wester, Vogel, Wei, & McLain, 2006 (as quoted in societyforhealhpsychology.org)

[4] Hogg & Turner, 1987; Simon & Hamilton, 1994 (as quoted in societyforhealhpsychology.org)

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Ted Neill, MPH, is a writer based in Seattle. He has written extensively on HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Greatest Generation. His recent novel, Reaper Moon, examines the intersection of faith, politics, and racism during a global viral pandemic. His YA novel, Zombies, Frat Boys, Monster Flash Mobs does the same . . . except with zombies, frat boys, nerds, and ninjas — something for everyone, right?