Whiteness Anonymous

August 21, 2019

In therapy, “the thing” is, traditionally, what’s not discussed, that which both therapist and patient avoid. “You only know it,” writes clinical psychologist Natasha Stovall, “by the silence and illogic that surrounds it, and the extremes to which the patient will go to erase any sign of it in their own mind, and in their therapist’s, too.” In her essay for Longreads, Stovall asks: “What if whiteness is the thing?” How do we treat whiteness?

Image Credit: Pxhere.

is a staff writer for The Millions. Born and raised in New York, she now lives in the Midwest, where she is a PhD student in American literature.