In November 2020 the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, in partnership with the British Psychotherapy Foundation and British Psychoanalytic Council, ran a two-hour seminar entitled “Whiteness – A Problem for Our Time.”
The policy seminar was billed as “examining white privilege and white fragility from a psychoanalytic perspective.” It is impossible not to notice the wording on the invite below. “Don’t shoot” “Stop killing us” “No to Silence” “Black Lives Matter”. Clearly this is what Whiteness means to the organisers.
The NHS Trust, which states it is an “antiracist organisation” reran this event on the 14th January 2021. The general public could sign up for the event, though numbers were limited.
A recording of the seminar is posted on the Tavistock’s YouTube channel and the University of Edinburgh School of Health In social science website.
A full recording of the original two-hour seminar in November 2020 is posted below.
Despite the Chair of the seminar calling the seminar inclusive, comments on their YouTube page are disabled denying the general public the right to express their views.
As part of the initial 45-minute presentation the speaker, Helen Morgan, talks about White Privilege and White Fragility. She uses a four year old White child as the focus. One scenario used to reveal how this child has internalised White Privilege is from a nursery. Morgan narrates the ‘story’ of a little Asian child trying to pull a wagon, the White child Renee stops her, saying “No, No you can’t pull this wagon, only White Americans can pull this wagon.” Really?
Morgan explains that the child knows of her privilege and knows of the power of her race. Then we move on to image below of a White woman, surrounded by dead black birds. The woman is holding a dead black bird in her hands, displaying its lifeless wing. The speaker continues to talk about the little four year old White girl explaining what she does “in order to satisfy my [her] desires, my [her] omnipotence and my [her] narcissistic sense of entitlement.” A reminder to our readers, Morgan is referring to a four year old White child here.
Extracts from a write-up of the seminar published on the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust website are posted below . Entitled “The baby who is born pink learns to become white” it pushes the message that White children internalise ‘White privilege’ by the time they are three or four. This, Morgan says, leads them to shut down their concern for social fairness.
The seminar write-up refers to images used in the presentation. They “helped by creating moments of realization”; They are “a silent work in the background” are among the comments made. The images below are intended to give a powerful message. About a four year old White child:
The extracts also tell us that Whiteness simply means White people. A more truthful title would be “White people – A Problem for Our Time.”
The issues with this seminar are many and serious:
- It uses destructive imagery which works at a subconscious, and therefore powerful, level connecting young White children with malevolence.
- It uses dishonest wording to protect itself from the criticism it deserves. No one has adequately described a White person devoid of Whiteness because there is no such thing. The honest title for this seminar is “White People a Problem for Our Time”
- It denies our individuality, saying we “must recognise we are part of a white collective with a shared ideology which affords us privilege”.
- It incites hatred against a protected group by portraying White people as uniquely privileged, uncaring of others and a problem. No White (not even a four year old child) can escape their accusation of Whiteness. If you are White you are a problem.
- It targets the most innocent and vulnerable of our people – our defenseless White children as young as three and four.
Word On the Wire’s response to the Tavistock and Portman seminar presentation, given through a series of videos, is presented here:
Tavistock and Portman NHS narrative on slavery:
Based on audio extracts from Thomas Sowell’s essay ‘The Real History of Slavery‘ published in ‘Black Rednecks and White Liberals‘ we expose how the Tavistock and Portman NHS have used a narrow and distorted view of slavery to justify the extreme antiwhite narrative of the seminar’s presentation. Photos and pictures have been added to Thomas Sowell’s words.
Shorter extracts of this video, all of a suitable length (except 8/ Darkness at the heart of whiteness) for posting on twitter, have also been created:
Published 16 January 2021