Abstract
This is my second article about a form of group mirroring I have called the white mirror. The previous article focused on underpinning theory. This article is practice oriented. I argue that the white mirror is a defensive structure, primarily functioning to prevent white group members, including the conductor(s) from coming face to face with the reality of racism. It mirrors projections in the form of racist stereotypes for black members to internalize in their position as the location of disturbance. I highlight present and historical black victimization which I feel requires elucidation given its position in the shadows of psychotherapy. I am mindful of the intersecting nature of identities and touch on this through a clinical example. I suggest how group analysts might work with the ubiquity of racism, engaging ethnically-diverse members at a level of full and mutual humanity.
Keywords
Introduction
This is my second article about a form of racialized group mirroring I call the white mirror. In my previous article (Aiyegbusi, 2021) I introduced the underpinning theory informed by trauma perspectives, group analytic, psychoanalytic and anti-racist literature, my own experiences and observations in a variety of group roles, and clinical discussions with colleagues. I presented my belief that the white mirror is an unconscious group trauma response mobilized by multiple white and white identified people when black people speak of racism. True to the imperialist past, it serves to provide comfort and protection at the expense of black people. It ensures specular abasements emanating from personal and / or ancestral racism remain embodied by black people. I suggest the overarching function of the white mirror is to prevent white group members including the conductor(s) from coming face to face with the traumatic reality of racism. This typically leaves minority black members alone to bear racialized distress when others including the conductor(s) cannot. Repeating the trauma of historical racist atrocity, black group members can be expected to bear sometimes overwhelmingly painful affect and ‘simply suffer’ in cultures of white dominion. This article is concerned with practice implications for group analysts. Through a detailed clinical example, I describe the white mirror unfolding in a group. I then make some suggestions as to what may be required for group conductors to work more effectively with the ubiquity of racism, engaging ethnically-diverse group members at a level of full and mutual humanity.
A sharp focus?
I am mindful my emphasis inclines towards black people as victims. I am a forensic psychotherapist and well informed about and committed to principles of ‘victims within perpetrators’ and ‘perpetrators within victims’. As a black woman I live and breathe the institutionalized criminalization of black people within our world. I witness how the blind rush to criminalize and convict black people in reality and symbolically serves to occlude types of vulnerabilities and victim histories that are concomitant with blackness. It is in order to bring this account to light from its enduring location in the shadows of psychotherapy that I turn a spotlight onto racist victimization.
In my previous article (Aiyegbusi, 2021), I purposely described historical socio-political contexts whereby black people were terrorized within state sanctioned white racist regimes. I identified the psychic manoeuvres employed by perpetrators to defend against coming face to face with the reality of their terrorism. It consistently required ‘inhuman’ actions, morals and mentality to be dissociated from and located with black victims. This process included racialized mirroring whereby black people were forced to contend with dehumanized, degraded reflections of themselves as, for example, savage, amoral, guilty, inferior and incapable of thriving without white salvation. Interlocking systems of power throughout societies complemented and enforced this distorted position which participants internalized. Violent dominion ensured that if black recipients valued their lives, they put up no direct opposition. I argued that such traumatic conditions have been generationally transmitted, entering the foundation matrix of analytic groups through the racialized social unconscious (Dalal, 2002) of its members and conductor(s). During group relating, associated historic dynamics emerge as racist scenes (Keval, 2016) between ethnically-diverse members.
I argue black victim perspectives are part of a human story of phenomenologically complex shared trauma which requires to be understood as thoroughly as any other. Furthermore, I believe this story must be taken account of and integrated into the theory and practice of group analysis in a fundamental way if ethnically-diverse members are to relate at a level of full and mutual humanity. From this basic principle, personalized, group and social narratives may be explored and formulated. While I do sharpen the focus on ‘race’, through a clinical example, I also attempt to reference its intersection with other identities vulnerable to oppression.
White mirror mobilization
The act of mobilizing the white mirror will involve a number of white bodies overwhelming a minority black body attempting to give voice to experiences of racism. It will involve white members erasing the black member’s narrative as a representation of their humanity, forcing the black person to suffer alone and in silence, carrying racist projections for the comfort of more empowered white group members. People of colour who identify with whiteness may be party to white mirror mobilization as a conscious or unconscious strategy to try to regulate racist trauma, its impacts and consequences in their lives.
Instrumental to white mirror mobilization is the role of the group conductor(s). The conductor(s) may be actively implicated for their own defensive reasons. Or as Kinouani (2020b) has observed, they might be recruited to punish black group members for giving voice to the unwelcome subject of racism. I suggest the role of the conductor(s) in such circumstances can be firmly felt as ‘bringing the black into line’. As a black group conductor I too have faced tremendous pressure to shut down, punish and / or eject black group members who have resisted attempts to erase their humanity. Of particular import is that where there is habitual mobilization of the white mirror the efficacy of some of Foulkes’ group specific therapeutic factors and principles (Foulkes, 1983, 1990; Foulkes and Anthony, 1984) are brought into question. Instead the characteristics of segregated social structures may be reproduced, offering a home to white members but marginalization, othering and suffering to black members (Aiyegbusi, 2021; Blackwell, 2020b; Kinouani, 2020b; Stevenson, 2020).
Racialized social unconscious
The kind of unconscious racism I have experienced and heard about in groups seems typically and routinely practised by people who strongly identify as not racist. This may suggest the heart is in the right place but the racialized unconscious (Knight, 2013) remains unexamined. As one might expect in the amplified field of analytic groups, each member’s racialized social unconscious will surface (Dalal, 2002). When the membership is of mixed ethnicity, there is an inevitability to the way personal and ancestral histories of racialized trauma whether as victim or perpetrator will (and must) enter into the group narrative in conflictual ways. As Garland (2010) suggests, an advantage of groups is that they enable the raw material of the internal world to be laid bare within them. Included is that which is generational and racialized. Combining all these principles with the three dimensions of psychotherapy (Schlapobersky, 2016), unconscious racialized dynamics will emerge during group relating between ethnically-diverse members, including the conductor(s), as racist scenes. These racialized enactments potentially offer opportunities for reflection and reparation within groups.
Attachment anxiety and racist scenes
In keeping with Keval’s (2016) thesis, I have also observed the emergence of racist scenes at times when groups, large and small, are experiencing significant attachment events. Examples are; before planned holidays, after unexpected or unusual breaks, when members are joining and leaving and at times of major socio-political change or trauma in the external world. Perhaps this suggests attachment is integral to ‘race’ with increased anxiety unmasking the fragility of inter-racial bonds, thus offering conditions for paranoid-schizoid functioning. Attachment anxiety can be extremely high in large groups at the beginning of international conferences when vast numbers of strangers meet for the first time. A racist scene may occur at this point if black people are present as an extreme minority. As such, it might function to deflect from unconscious anxiety about the proximity of current and generational victims and perpetrators of the many atrocities committed between white ethnic groups that are yet to be brought to the surface for reflection and reparation.
Examples of racist scenes
Examples of racist scenes within groups have been described in the group analytic literature. Some examples demonstrate white mirror phenomena in response to black people speaking about racism. Others describe contextual attachment and other group anxieties. In terms of white mirror phenomena, silencing and gagging manoeuvres by white members have been elucidated (Kinouani, 2020b). White members may react as if they are being personally accused of perpetrating the racism (Einhorn, 2007) and minimize, deny or register disinterest regarding the significance of racism in black members’ lives (Blackwell,1994). In terms of attachment and other group anxieties, Kinouani (2020a) describes a racist scene involving a fellow group member who seemed to express her anxiety about forthcoming exams by communicating degraded imagery of Africanness, apparently attempting to project worries about falling intellectually short onto Kinouani. Maher (2012) describes racism by a group member whose racist expressions occurred at the start of their relationship and re-emerged when his time in the group was brought to an unexpected end due to changes in the wider service.
Stevenson (2020) describes a racist scene which includes white mirror phenomena and occurs in the aftermath of a widely reported mass murder of Muslim worshippers. Triggered by this social trauma, a group member of colour spoke with anguish about his own experiences of racist hatred and violence. Other group members spoke over him, changing the subject. When he challenged this, it was suggested he might prefer a blacks only group which Stevenson (2020) considers to be synonymous with the person of colour being offered a ghetto in which to work through their distress. This is a version of the ubiquitous; ‘If you don’t like it go back to where you come from’, response to people of colour describing racism in Britain, regardless of where we were born or indeed where the speaker was born.
The white mirror can operate both in the context of and as a racist scene. The first time I felt surrounded and overwhelmed by white people erasing my accounts of racism within a large group space, along with considerable visceral responses, my mind produced an automatic and unthought image of an avalanche engulfing me. On another occasion the reaction of a sub-group felt more threatening as I (the only person of colour in a large group of about 100 delegates) was objecting to an egregious racist scene. Having already experienced what I can only describe as cardiac defibrillation in the racist moment, a further shock was in store. In reaction to the sub-group shifting forward in their seats while we were in heated exchange, I associated the fear I felt with those seconds before a body is confiscated for lynching. Kinouani (2020a) and Blackwell (2020a) have since articulated the way whiteness operationalizes as an impenetrable wall effectively smothering (or strangling) and neutralizing authentic expressions of blackness in the group matrix.
Dependency and intimacy
Bennis and Shepard (1956) identify two main tasks faced by group members. Firstly, to manage their dependency in relation to the conductor and secondly to successfully negotiate intimacy with each other. How then can a milieu organized for white occupancy (Browne, 2015), complete with differentials of power and privilege provide an effective treatment experience for ethnically mixed groups? Surely opening up spaces to support group members of different ethnicities to engage at a level of full and mutual humanity and respect must be a core task of group analysis? How else might sufficient security be promulgated to explore dependency needs and establish intimacy required to embark upon the emotional labour required for what Schlapobersky (2016) posits as accessing and repairing the painful, shameful and traumatic inner injury beneath personal defensive structures? In particular, those serious matters affecting black and other people of colour such as how racialized trauma impacts attachments or how internalized racism might manifest in relationships, including with the self, in families, at work and the wider social world (Alleyne, 2007; De Gruy, 2017; Fletchman Smith, 2000; Souljah, 1994).
Clinical example
Firstly I will describe a racist scene within a group with diverse membership. I will then identify racist enactments including white mirror phenomena. After that I will provide details of the racial and ethnic backgrounds of a sub-group including the conductor. More effective group analytic approaches will then be explored.
Sade at the train station
The private slow-open group has been running for two years in London. Of seven members, only Sade (pronounced Shar-day) has black African heritage. Sade is 48 and a nursing professor. She has repeatedly expressed feelings of isolation within the group. She joined six months ago after her parents died within months of one another. She is a single parent with three grown up children. In the last session before a long break, Sade, appearing shaken, told the group she had come from a train station where the lift from platform to concourse was broken. She noticed a white woman struggling to pull a heavy twin pram up steep steps while also trying to soothe a crying toddler. Sade recalled similar struggles with her own three children and asked the woman whether she could help her. She described to the group a look of terror in the woman’s eyes after she turned around and saw Sade’s face. Sade said she could see herself through the woman’s eyes as frightening and about to inflict damage. Sade said ‘she definitely didn’t want me near her or her children!’ And yet Sade has enjoyed a successful career in children’s nursing and midwifery. She repeated several times that the mother ‘didn’t see me!’
Three other group members responded swiftly to what Sade had said. Simon, a 60 year old white man who identifies as British asked Sade why she felt she needed to help, were there not any men around? Sade asked what he meant by men, did he think the mother would have appreciated help from a black man? Simon said she was making it a ‘race’ thing when it might not have been. It might have been about being female and short. Cora is a 53 year old white woman who grew up in an African country. She said she was surprised to hear what Sade had described because she associates black women with warm kindness and reminisced fondly about being brought up by her black nanny and various family maids while her successful lawyer parents were busy working.
Kamal is a 45 year old man of Asian heritage who is a successful property developer. He pointed to Sade’s hair which was styled in braids. He nonchalantly suggested Sade’s ‘dreadlocks’ might have had a lot to do with the woman’s reaction. He said certain black women are seen as surly and aggressive while others, like his cleaner, are viewed as happy and helpful. Sade asked why people start talking about their jolly black servants when she speaks about herself? The group conductor, a white man about Sade’s age who immigrated to Britain from Australasia intervened sounding annoyed. He said he felt the group was trying to understand and offer Sade support. To her ears he sounded irritated and bored with her. She told him this and he responded angrily asking what Sade was looking for from ‘us’. Stunned and hurt, she said through a crackling voice that she would like the group to hear her and understand her life. Sade said she had hoped the group might support her to bear the racism she lives with but instead she ends up feeling worse and painful situations become unbearable.
The conductor asked whether Sade was actually trying to say how abandoned and burdened she feels with the grief of losing her parents, having three children and a demanding job? Perhaps it will be like dragging an impossible load uphill during the forthcoming break? But maybe she treats the group like the mother at the station treated her? Sade said she could see how there might be a grain of truth in what he had said but her feelings about the racist encounter are justified. She said she finds it difficult to be vulnerable enough to talk about her daily practical struggles in a group that can neither understand nor support her as a black woman. Sade said one reason why it would be difficult now is because she is livid, furious with the group for erasing a distressing event and calling it something else. Simon said that perhaps the mother had picked up on her underlying rage explaining why she recoiled. In tears and shaking her head, Sade picked up her bag and walked out of the room.
Clinical discussion—perspectives on the racist scene
Attachment anxiety before the break
In my experience racist scenes often emerge at times of heightened group attachment anxiety. In addition to her recent losses and newness to the group, Sade’s ethnicity may also have contributed to her valency for being the location for group anxiety about being abandoned to a misunderstanding and hostile world during the break. While it may be important to explore this from a whole group perspective, doing so immediately after Sade described a racialized incident would negate the seriousness of it, including its impact on her. It would also ignore how and why the white mirror was mobilized within and by the group to overwhelm and silence Sade. As such, the trauma response as a defensive structure for individuals, the sub-group and the group as a whole would be missed, redoubling the hurt Sade felt while leaving her isolated to bear a suffering, possibly so the group and its conductor would not have to. Moving straight to such an interpretation would disregard the racist connotations of the incident and numerous examples in subsequent group responses.
Racism and the intersection of ‘race-gender’ stereotyping
Myriad examples of racism were evident within this clinical example. As a black woman, Sade shared with the group an example of what she has to contend with. It is impossible to know what was in the mind of the mother at the station. But Sade’s account of epidermalization (Fanon, 1952) including being mirrored back to herself in a form that was shocking in its criminalizing and ostensibly demoting nature is in keeping with the racist gaze and the ways black people are routinely related to by white people (Dalal,1993, 2002; Fanon, 1952; Wekker, 2016; Yancy, 2017). The encounter had the hallmarks of a particular stereotype black women have been burdened with, that of the ‘bad mother’ (Washington, 2008). Painfully, Sade experienced herself in relation to the woman in terms of ‘mother to mother’. What was mirrored back to her though was something different, more akin to ‘white mother to black alien threat’. Sade shared her distress with the group in the hope of receiving support. She got none. Instead the white mirror was immediately mobilized to silence her, erasing Sade’s account of racism and further isolating her within the group. Both Kinouani (2020b) and Stevenson (2020) describe such manoeuvres as forms of psychic violence towards black group members.
In terms of intersectional ‘race-gender’ stereotyping, Sade had just recalled a situation where she was subjected to an upsetting form of demoting and criminalizing racism by a white woman with whom she had momentarily identified. At the transference domain of communication, the scenario can also be considered consistent with how she experienced being in the group. The scenario was nevertheless then paralleled and escalated within it. Cora and Kamal unconsciously subjected Sade to images of an historically propagandized racist trope in the form of ‘Mammy’, identifying her according to the simplistic but cruel contents of the racist gaze and imaginary as reflected in happy, all giving, bonded black female servitude. There is an implicit suggestion that this is a definitive role for black women, one Sade might be ‘happier’ assuming. Introduced as a preferred hierarchy, this is an all too predictable way of bringing educated and professionally successful black women down. By confiscating Sade’s hard earned credentials, her status was scaled down to something more psychically congruent for the group. Similarly, Kamal adjusted Sade’s physical appearance, mirroring back to her a more aggressive and stereotypically criminalized (surly and aggressive) reflection. This exposes the polarized expectations of black women. If not amenable to proprietary as ‘good’, jolly, smiling help then punished with conceptualizations of ‘bad’ surly, aggressive ‘Sapphires’ or ‘angry black women’.
When Sade stood her ground after an exhausting sequence of white mirroring and reflected back the group’s racism, the conductor intervened and became actively involved in further white mirror mobilization. Perhaps he was ‘unconsciously enlisted to punish the transgressive person of colour’ (Kinouani, 2020b: 156). In so far as the conductor introduced aversive consequences following Sade’s attempts to stand up for herself, punishment was indeed issued. It was communicated in his anger, irritation and boredom and in his othering of her by referring to himself and the rest of the group as ‘us’. He dismissed the relevance of her experience of racism at the station, effectively turned a deaf ear to accumulative racist responses by other members and rushed to an interpretation. The interpretation also echoed the ‘angry black woman’ trope. He issued supplementary demotion by belittlement, indicating that she should be grateful to the group for what they had offered her and recognize it as supportive. Thus, the conductor’s message reinforced the racist fantasy of Sade occupying a lower status. Resonating to the conductor’s role modelling, Simon escalated the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype to Sade’s breaking point.
Conspicuously no group member responded to Sade with empathy or genuine curiosity about her experience. There was no respect shown for her empirical knowledge gained during a life lived as a black woman whereby, for example, she would be fully aware of the oppressions behind the jollity of black domestic staff. Importantly, the conductor did nothing to address Sade’s isolation and alienation within the group.
Simon, Cora and Kamal
Simon, Cora and Kamal were the group members who responded to Sade’s account of a racist encounter by mobilizing the white mirror. Further details of their racialized histories might reveal a valency for sub-grouping to co-ordinate this defensive manoeuvre.
Simon
Identifying as British, Simon originates from Northern Ireland and grew up during the height of The Troubles. Being of Protestant faith he had privileges the Catholic community did not share. One such privilege was a career pathway into a government position. Tragically, his older brother, a senior police officer was killed by a paramilitary car bomb when Simon was in his early 30s. He relocated to England, concealing his heritage and background. He experiences debilitating trauma symptoms including severe numbing with hypervigilance about his safety. He finds it unbearable to hear Sade talk about racism. It triggers fear and rage in him about losing his brother to sectarian violence. He unconsciously converted Sade’s account into something else to avoid feeling overwhelmed by his own unmetabolized ethnic trauma sequelae.
Cora
Cora is training to be a group analyst. She has had a chequered employment history, finds it difficult to maintain relationships with anybody and has perpetrated domestic violence on female partners in the past. She idealizes her relationships with the African nanny and maids of her childhood because the reality feels too painful for her to bear. As a lonely, emotionally neglected but materially indulged child of largely absent parents, Cora depended on African women for love and comfort. But there were times when she was cruel to the women. Even as a child she knew their smiles and kindnesses were due to a system of oppression where they had to take whatever was thrown at them in order for their families to survive. She knew they had children of their own and believed it was for them, not her, that they withstood her ‘bad’ behaviour. Cora does not know how to begin looking at the depth of guilt and shame she feels. She finds it difficult to look Sade in the eye when she thinks about her relationships with women, especially black African women so she converts the circumstances into something else, for her, idealizing a horror story.
Kamal
Kamal was born in Britain to impoverished immigrant parents from Pakistan. He has made a financial success of his life through exceptional entrepreneurialism. As a result he has a privileged lifestyle in an exclusive enclave. He feels much of his motivation to succeed originates from experiences of racism as a child, especially the numerous occasions he witnessed his parents and other adults from their community being racially abused. He witnessed them being on the receiving end of fists, feet, phlegm and vicious racist words. He saw at close quarters, the murderous rage, disgust and contempt in the eyes of those stranger assailants. From his position as a terrified, powerless child and ever since, Kamal has been driven to escape such a fate. His financial success means that he has largely achieved this goal for himself and his family. Only, while recently dining out in an expensive restaurant with wealthy white friends, a customer clicked her fingers at him, mistaking him for a waiter. Kamal hates how triggered he feels by such incidents which can leave him ruminating for days. Unconsciously he distances himself from Sade’s hurt because it is too close to home for him. He commenced therapy emotionally exhausted and near burn out, struggling with depression, anxiety and insomnia. He has not yet been able to find the words to describe to the group what he experienced in his childhood.
More effective approaches?
As Einhorn (2007) observes, London is a metropolitan city and group members come from many nations with histories of different wars and traumas. This suggests it is important to develop a way to work with ethnic diversity and the racialized social unconscious in groups. Nitsun (2015) describes the different waves of immigration into London over time and the resulting complexity brought to the practice of group analysis. Educational, theoretical and practice frameworks appear not to have taken account of this additional complexity though.
How could racism in this group have been worked with more effectively? ‘Race’ as a product of racism applies to everyone not just people of colour. Therefore, the capacity to work with it as it arises in groups would have been dependent on proactive investment in and of the conductor throughout his training, primarily in regard to his use of self. Through his analysis and in other group spaces there would have been opportunities to explore and gain awareness of his racialized unconscious and how it emerges in groups of people with different histories. His training would have included opportunities to learn about intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) and its clinical application (Nayak, 2020; Stevenson, 2020). The conductor would consequently pay considerable attention to the racialized unconscious and its relevance to the matrix of this group, including the associated domains and types of communication, formulating the group accordingly. This would have entailed attending to each group member’s personal and generational ethnic background during assessment, including histories of racism and racist trauma whether as victim and/or perpetrator. While preparing members to enter the group, he would have communicated the relevance of their ethnic backgrounds and histories to their therapy. Being cognisant of the group formulation including the location of his own racialized social unconscious within it, the conductor would not have been surprised that Sade spoke about racist experiences or that the sub-group of Simon, Cora and Kamal found it difficult to bear, responding defensively.
A number of authors have stressed the importance of group conductors being able to grasp the metaphoric racist nettle (Blackwell, 1994; Kinouani, 2020b; Stevenson, 2020). In this racist scene involving the white mirror, the informed conductor would have known there were two immediate priorities. One was containment of the group, avoiding escalation through paranoid-schizoid anxiety rapidly organizing around a racially traumatizing victim / perpetrator split. The other was to reduce Sade’s isolation by validating her experiences and feelings while sensitively including other group members in the exchange.
The conductor’s racialized unconscious was shaped by family migration from a deprived British working class community as a child, to a life of relative luxury within a colonized and extremely racist Australasian country. If he had gained awareness of the implications of this during his group analytic training, he may have been emotionally in touch with a truth of racism in the fact slaughtering, stripping, ghettoizing and subordinating indigenous people had enabled his privilege. Before his immigration back to Britain where he completed group analytic training, he was a community health worker and saw at close quarters the devastating impact of generational and recent racist trauma on the health of indigenous people. If he had processed that, the conductor might have functioned as a compassionate mirror able to gently but firmly ask the group: ‘Can Sade’s ordeal be heard?’ This might have grounded the group from its state of white racialized dissociation (Knight, 2013) as located with the sub-group. Doing so might have offered containment while facilitating group connectivity to Sade with the sense of a shared and uniting imperative.
Legacy of racism
If the conductor had consistently held the racialized social unconscious of the group in mind as core clinical material it might have contributed to collective reflectivity around a shared theme; the legacy of racism, be it as victim or as perpetrator. It might have offered a way for other group members to connect at a deeper level of humanity around a co-produced and shared group narrative in order to begin to heal from wounds arising from racist experiences. Wounds directly related to current suffering. If this had happened, the unconscious motivation for mobilizing the white mirror might have been regularly reflected on in the group with this prior attention serving to mitigate the escalation witnessed in the clinical example.
Concluding remarks
As is suggested in the clinical discussion, racist scenes can be better understood when the racialized unconscious of group members are taken account of. This supports a view that as a psychosocial factor, racism requires to be worked with proactively through the training of group analysts, reflected in therapy, theory, clinical practice and supervision. More than 25 years ago Blackwell (1994) suggested psychotherapists were comfortable considering universal constructs such as oedipal configurations or sibling rivalry but less comfortable addressing important power differentials such as those reflective of internalized racial hierarchies. I suggest it is crucial that group analysts, who as a discipline privilege the socio-political as well as the individual, recognize the ubiquity of racialized trauma and the racialized social unconscious. This will enter the foundation matrix, manifesting in the dynamic matrix as racist scenes during interpersonal relating within the group, especially during times of heightened group anxiety. It is to be expected and in the absence of clear theory and practice frameworks, racist scenes can seem to emerge in sudden and unexpected ways, precipitating explosive conflict and exclusion by premature exits. Through mobilization of the white mirror, these scenes usually end up scapegoating and retraumatizing black group members.
I have employed a representative clinical example to demonstrate how the white mirror can unfold in a group. It is a collective defence mobilized by white people and those identifying with whiteness when black people recount racist experiences. I have argued that this defence is a generationally transmitted trauma response. It functions to prevent white and white identified group members, including the conductor(s) from coming face to face with recent and / or ancestral racist trauma sequelae. As in the clinical example I have provided, the white mirror can deflect from trauma arising from conflicts between different white ethnic groups. It can also serve to comfort people of colour by appearing to regulate personal racist trauma sequelae. This latter point raises the issue of pairing people of colour in groups. Careful reflection needs to accompany decision making. Importantly, whether the conductor is using a person with, for example, strong internalized oppression to silence someone who will stand their ground in the face of racism. Without considerable proactive work, the vocal black person becomes the location of disturbance, scapegoated into bearing racialized hurt alone. Add to that an onslaught of projected white racist stereotypes and a person can reach breaking point. In Sade’s case, projections also included gendered and complicating class components, highlighting the importance of integrating intersectional models into group analysis. The white mirror, as I have described it, hopefully offers a conceptualization to support such future developments within the profession.
