Silencing, power and racial trauma in groups

Abstract

As a black woman I have found myself in various settings where as the only person of colour, speaking of my experience of the world has led to hostility, occasionally to violence, and, more frequently to disorientating silencing attempts. As a therapist working specifically with people of colour, clients have approached me, ashamed, often terrified, describing these familiar walls of impenetrable defensiveness bolstered by gagging manoeuvers their voices meet, when attempting to articulate racism within all social structures. This collective experience of silencing, as illustrated by Eddo-Lodge’s words, is of critical significance for group processes and social dynamics and thus group work practice. This article aims to illuminate the functions of racism related silencing in groups and to offer some formulations of the same in the hope of supporting the profession to make space for those whose voices and perspectives it is still by and large to integrate. This article will present my reflections on silence, silencing and power in groups, primarily from a black perspective. It will mainly engage with formulations and theoretical explorations of racialized dynamics personally experienced, witnessed or reported to me. It will argue that silencing is a mechanism that protects the white psychic equilibrium and the racially stratified social order. It will be further posited that acts of racial silencing as remnants of intergenerational trauma, reproduce and are borne out of power relations and, that they may be enacted within group analytic therapy.