Appearing on TV to talk to white audiences about why you don’t need to explain yourself to white audiences is one of the strangest things you can do. I’ve been there, more than once in the company of Kehinde Andrews, the professor of Black studies whose new book explores this and many other contradictions inherent in critiquing whiteness.
Andrews’s new book, The Psychosis of Whiteness, is as provocative as his frequent TV clashes with Piers Morgan – a man with whom, it seems, Andrews quite enjoys sparring. He is so at home with provocation that the first few pages of the book are devoted to simply defending its title. Psychosis is a condition from which black people are disproportionately likely to suffer, including Andrews’s own grandfather, he reveals. So using psychosis as a metaphor for “whiteness”, something harmful – is less than ideal for the many activists and patients who have worked to remove its stigma.
