Beyond Stereotypes: Internalised Racism and the Pressure to “Be Black or Brown Enough”

Bell Hooks wrote powerfully about the mechanisms of unconscious bias, particularly the seemingly neutral, but still harmful tendency for white people to assume that a black or brown person who does not match their stereotypical template must be “special” or “different,” essentially “not like the others.” To paraphrase, she argued that this reflex reveals how strongly people defend, rather than redefine or expand, their prejudices when faced with contradictory information (Hooks, 1992).

What I don’t hear us openly discussing is how much a similar mechanism can happen within our own black and brown communities, and can show up in the attitudes we hold towards ourselves and one another. I have noticed how many of us who identify and or are racialised as black and brown, can feel pressured, explicitly or implicitly, to maintain certain standards of blackness or brownness in order to feel accepted and valued.

In my work and personal relationships, I notice these standards may span appearance, grooming, behaviour, mannerisms, attitudes, interests, hobbies, and even mental and physical wellbeing needs and preferences, relationships and careers. Reflecting on these experiences, I have wondered if we sometimes subconsciously limit ourselves and others to using variations of the same stereotypical templates that white people have historically (and often still do) apply to us? Outside of the positive and nourishing influences of culture, religion and tradition, I have noticed that many of us express how heavy narrow expectations about who we should be can feel.

Think of the familiar iterations of tropes such as strong, nurturing, hardworking, sexy, exotic, uppity, god-fearing, meek, token, urban, hustling or angry black or brown men and women, and far outside these. How many of us have been accused pejoratively of such roles, when our intentions have been misread? yet, have subconsciously expected ourselves or one another to fit them in certain situations? How many of us thought-up or verbalised a psychological or behavioural limit for ourselves or others ‘because black or brown people don’t do this or that’ ?

If this is the case, this could be a form of internalised racism in one of its most subtle yet insidious forms: the “second arrow” of prejudice and othering that comes not from outside our families and communities but from within, directed towards ourselves and each other. Its fuel –  disavowed fear and shame, making acceptance conditional only on meeting certain standards.

As a Cognitive Analytic Therapist (CAT), I can’t help seeing this as a completely understandable product, of learning from ongoing systemic racism, rooted in colonialism and in systems that laid the foundations for colourism and racism as we know them today, and in CAT terms they form systemically racist reciprocal roles that still operate societally now.

Reciprocal Roles(RRs) are relational templates that connect our present-day responses to the ways we were treated in the past. (Ryle & Kerr, 2020). They act as a symbol of a repeated interpersonal experience we internalised. Their comprising words can capture the essence of a relational trauma. A simple, positive RR might look like caring → cared for. But when naming the experience of being racialised, discriminated against, or othered, mine look more like excluding → excluded, rubbished or judging, typecasting → judged, typecast/unseen. CAT describes that this progression mirrors how we naturally learn through experience: we witness or experience, we internalise, and eventually we re-enact the pattern socially – towards ourselves, then sometimes towards others -unwittingly perpetuating the unmanageable feelings these experiences set-off.

I’m very aware of the power implications of using a Eurocentric therapy model to make sense of such a complex, layered, trauma-based response to an unjust world. And yet, I also believe that CAT offers a uniquely neat way to describe the progression from being oppressed to unintentionally enacting that same oppression onto oneself.

I am a cisgender, dual-heritage woman (Filipino and Bajan), born and raised in the UK, who is also neurodivergent. Throughout my life, I’ve often been racialised by others as black, yet also often felt out of place within my cultures and communities. I’ve come to accept that part of this is a common multiple-heritage experience, especially when we don’t neatly display the visible or behavioural markers that others associate with belonging.

Some of it also resonates with what the literature describes as the double-empathy problem in cross-neurotype communication (Milton, 2012). However a significant part of this experience comprises of not meeting other people’s expectations, of what a black or brown woman ‘should’ be, beyond skin colour. Then, how I came to feel about myself due to this.

Throughout my life my accent, others or I have unfairly framed my interests, the way I dress, even my love of animals and nature and my profession have at times – as “trying to be white.” Meanwhile, I’ve also been positioned by some people, as “not really black or brown,” or on the other hand seen and treated as though my skin colour automatically grants me authority on “blackness or brownness”,” regardless of my own and others unique lived experiences or cultural background.

When these assumptions come from black and brown communities, they can feel particularly painful. From my own perspective, they risk shrinking us to fit a narrow template or stereotype to conform to in order to be accepted, alongside the harmful impact of othering already experienced in white-majority spaces.

I’m writing this because I want to gently challenge that. I want us, as black and brown people, to resist stifling ourselves or each other according to ideas of blackness and brownness that may never have been created by us in the first place.

We are allowed to have interests, identities, ambitions and ways of being that both align with, and stretch beyond stereotype, tradition, culture or the limits that oppression once imposed on us. Our diversity in personality, interests, expression, lived experiences and thought, is part of what makes us creative, complex, beautiful and multifaceted humans.

I hope we can allow and encourage in ourselves, and one another, the acceptance and freedom to simply be, especially when the current socio-political climate continues create further social division and exacerbate real-life limits that are difficult to navigate without support and solidarity with kin. I also hope this inspires us to think differently about encouraging authenticity and supporting identity development in our young people too.

Lorraine Welch, Cognitive Analytic Therapist

https://acuriousroute.co.uk/

References

Hooks, B. (1992) Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.

Milton, D. (2012) ‘On the ontological status of autism: the “double empathy problem”’, Disability & Society, 27(6), pp. 883–887.

Ryle, A. and Kerr, I. (2020) Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy: Principles and Practice. 2nd edn. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.