White Dreamers and Black Madonnas

In support of conscious efforts to combat racism and embrace diversity, this essay identifies how white privilege expresses itself in contemporary Jungian dream literature, challenges our habitual identification of dark-skinned dream figures, and calls for an end to an unspoken convention that defaults to whiteness as the norm.This essay is addressed to white readers with gratitude for people of color who join the conversation.At a recent conference hosted by the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies (JSSS), a draft diversity statement was circulated among the membership, stating in part:We acknowledge that Jungian psychology has roots in a white, colonial, patriarchal worldview that . . .produces areas of cultural blindness.While this history does not negate the value of Jungian psychology, it does require conscientious efforts by Jungians to understand . . .and to confront the damaging practice of other-ing.(JSSS, 2022) Because toxic patriarchy is embedded and integrated within psyche, those conscientious efforts must begin within our own selves-a task that is not always easy. A Challenging ProcessDespite having presented some of the following ideas at the JSSS conference, I encountered considerable inner resistance to writing this essay.It's one thing to speak in person, making eye contact, reading the room; it's another thing entirely to send controversial ideas about race and privilege into today's politically-charged atmosphere.Inner exploration revealed a feeling deep in my body that could best be described as terror-a fear of attack.The unconscious terror that kept me from writing is an expression of my own white fragility, defined by Robin DiAngelo (2016) as:A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves . . .such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation [emphasis added].These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial comfort and status quo.(pp.355-356).I moved past my fear by recognizing that a similar kind of embodied terror probably lives in many if not most Black people every day.My whiteness shields me from having to live with such fear.People of color have no such shield

Chemistry · History · Race, History, and American Society

• What Does It Mean to Be White

  Robin DiAngelo, Robin J DiAngelo•What does it mean to be white?•2016

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