Learning to embrace discomfort: Accepting our historical responsibility and implication in systemic racism.

Abstract

The article considers what it means to be implicated in histories of racial violence and systems of injustice that we may not have had a hand in creating, but nevertheless have a responsibility to address. Using a series of examples from psychological settings in present-day Germany and the United States, the author analyzes defensive reactions that result when members of the majority are asked to confront the effects of genocide or the experiential realities of racism. Parallels are drawn between reactions among psychologists in Germany, when confronted with their historical responsibility for the Holocaust, especially as it relates to their own families, and psychologists in the United States, when asked to consider their implication in systemic racism and other forms of oppression. The author draws on first-hand experience, and on his work as a psychologist and historian who researches and writes about the moral obligations of memory in the face of past and present injustice. Public Significance StatementThis article suggests that in order to engage constructively with histories of genocide, or with their implication in systemic racism, psychologists who are members of past and present perpetrator groups need to learn how to embrace their discomfort, rather than react defensively against it.