Can We Stay Home Long Enough to Confront and Dismantle the Truth — That All Humans Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has forced us to stay home, but have we been home long enough to tackle the way it has exacerbated the reality that some humans remain more equal than others? I wonder if we can dismantle this white privilege and if so, how? I describe a traumatizing experience faced by the homeowners in an affluent almost exclusively white and historically privileged inner-city area of Cape Town. An overwhelming influx of equally but differently traumatized homeless people – predominantly of color – into these neighborhoods has transformed them into unsanitary and dangerous spaces. The economic value of the properties has fallen. Angry responses on neighborhood WhatsApp groups reveal two dominant discourses. My emotional positioning in both, at different times for different reasons, highlights the contradictory and shameful struggle involved. It reveals the complexity of finding a way through an “us”-and- “them” traumatized way of thinking into one of engaging differently with the dilemma. I suggest that a mutually respectful dialogue, resembling a twinship/alter-ego selfobject experience, is required for all humans to become more equally human. This requires a safe-enough space for the authentic expression of both similarities and differences that have been hidden but exist within and between people.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• double comfort
• episodic amnesia
• systemic racism
• trauma and alienation
• twinship/alter-ego selfobject experience
• white privilege

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Suzi Naiburg, Cathy Aaron, and Noleen Seris for reading and responding to earlier drafts of my article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ According to Ellen Lewinberg (personal communication) in Toronto many of the homeless are white. This takes us into the significant issue of class that is an important topic for a different paper.

² I use this term to reflect a set of emotionally laden attitudes, meanings, and beliefs that play a part in influencing the way in which individuals behave in a range of contexts. Discourses therefore make available varied behavior, or discursive practices, which, in turn, shape subjectivity. This is achieved by foregrounding some areas of experience or knowledge and by creating gaps or silences in others (Davies & Harre, in Kottler & Swartz, 1995, p. 184).

³ This term refers to a credit rating of below investment grade according to three major credit rating agencies, Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P.

⁴ This process is not unlike the 1652 Dutch invasion and illegal appropriation of the First Nations land in the Cape where this influx is happening. But Dutch colonizers used weapons to take the property that was not theirs. The homeless I am referring to do not have access to this kind of power.

⁵ Some posing as “officials” are given entry to the property and sometimes using violence manage to leave with valuables they can sell to get by in their world. These occurrences are generating an increasing sense of general mistrust of the “other.” Expensive security cameras, electric fences, alarm systems, and street cameras are the order of the day for most homes in these areas.

⁶ Systemic racism / apartheid could be understood as an example of an Intersubjective Taboo in which an essential and shared aspect of traumatization remains unspoken. This protects the vulnerability of the participants and creates a bond between them, but also a division of “your pain” and “my pain” (Togashi, 2020).

Additional information

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Amanda Kottler

Amanda Kottler, M.A. (Clin. Psych.), a clinical psychologist, practices as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a founding member of the Cape Town Psychoanalytic Self Psychology Group and an Emeritus Council Member of the International Association of Psychanalytic Self Psychology. Previously a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town, she now works full time in private practice. She has published on issues of difference, marginalization, and the twinship/alter-ego selfobject experience. She has coedited two books and is the coauthor of Kohut’s Twinship across Cultures: The Psychology of Being Human, published by Routledge in 2015.