White Minds

It is widely understood that race is a social fact with profound implications for life chances, group identity, collective representation and the social order. ‘Whiteness’, the source of race-based inequality and injustice, is perpetuated through power, violence and an array of complex processes which help protect the status quo.

While there has been much focus on the psychological harm of racism on people of colour, less attention has been paid to the role of psychological functioning of white groups in maintaining unequal social configurations.

In this much-needed book, Guilaine Kinouani, a leading thinker and commentator on race, deftly cuts to the heart of the problem, arguing that whiteness is a historically and socially located psychosocial phenomenon as much as one which evades time and space locations. She examines how the psychological and psychic factors involved in the reproduction of whiteness intersect with macro structures, shedding light on everyday race dynamics, race inequality and racial violence. This book will be of interest to all who seek to understand the impact of ‘whiteness’ so they can be more effective anti-racists.

Guilaine Kinouani is a psychologist and group analyst. She is the director and founder of Race Reflections, which is dedicated to tackling inequality, injustice and oppression.

She previously taught critical psychology and black studies at Syracuse University in London and her long-standing involvement in anti-racism has deeply influenced her scholarship and thinking.

Her award-winning work and writing have been featured in the media and her first book Living While Black (Ebury: Penguin Random House) exposed the impact of lived experiences of racism on black minds and bodies.