1.
On February 15, 2024, Georgia’s Fulton County African American District Attorney Fani Willis gave a testimony that some in media reports continue to label fiery and defiant. As the various legal events surrounding the 2020 election gather force and move towards some kind of conclusion as to whether election interference occurred, we have been able to view a portion of politics and the legal system at work in a Georgia courthouse. The psychological raciality of this politics is also on display.
The history of African American women in the United States begs the question why women in this cultural group would not be fiery, defiant and at times with justifiable anger. I will say these are of course not our only emotional attributes. I will add that these adjectives can and should be easily applied to any human being, who is willing to carry them, as a part of their developed psychological personality. However, the appearance of a Black woman who can display aspects of her personality, with gumption, can still be surprising to many Americans. Why can’t Africanist women show their emotions without being castigated or accused of being full of defiance. Against what? And if defiant, why not? Is taking a stand for oneself always to be labeled “defiant” when the woman taking that stand is Black?
Fiery. In service of what? Perhaps, claiming the power to meet fire with fire. Is this still not “permissible” for an Africanist woman? Is it not psychologically a part of our human nature to rise to what becomes evoked in us by another?
Prior to Ms. Willis taking the stand in the Georgia courtroom, it had been presumed by the legal team and their defendants, individuals who had brought the case to disqualify District Attorney Willis from prosecuting them for their alleged 2020 election interference, that she would not appear at the hearing. The defendants included a former president of the United States.
Is it possible that Ms. Willis could be called courageous, intentional, for her willingness to take the stand? Her legal accusers said she should be disqualified because she had an intimate relationship with a special prosecutor in her office, and this somehow would cause Ms. Willis to be biased against the 2020 “stolen” election defendants and have a conflict of interest. Why can’t she be considered a woman of integrity in her role as district attorney?
Let’s remember: several of the individuals who Ms. Willis has brought her Rico case against have already pleaded guilty to election interference, several months ago. One of the main defendants in this Georgia case, has already been convicted of sexual assault and fraud, in New York City court cases.
When Ms. Willis, during her testimony said: I am not on trial. They are on trial, pointing her finger for emphasis at the 2020 “stolen” election defendants, it reminded us, the courtroom and television viewers, of those individuals who are actually on trial. It reiterates this fact.
This continues to be the point and Ms. Willis strongly makes her point.
Africanist people are always on trial in America—whether in a courtroom, standing on a line in a store or walking down the aisle in a drugstore. This is related to an unconscious racism that continues to find us guilty way before we have been convicted of any crime. There can be a devaluation of Black people held in that place of the Unconscious that reflects American raciality and our racial cultural complexes. It was not a mistake that the initial focus of the accusation against District Attorney Willis was regarding an “illicit” affair with a married man.
Sex and slander.
This is an aspect of the psychological warfare waged against Black women since we first arrived in America. The acts of violence were actually against African women on slave ships and inevitably their plantation-bound descendants—for generations. This is a part of our cultural group psychological intergenerational trauma. The highlighting of Black women and their “hypersexuality”, is a psychological projection onto Black women, that can appear in many collective forms. The legal attempt to portray Ms. Willis as somehow a “salacious” woman, was one of the threads that played to projective raciality in the defendant’s case against her. This is not new. It brings back echoes of Anita Hill and her “trial” decades ago. It is the mythological story of Jezebel.
Africanist women seemingly are not allowed to be intelligent, forthright, and yes, defiant in their own defense. Some expressed surprise when Ms. Willis appeared in the courtroom on February 15th. She said she came because the defendant’s lawyers were “lying” about her and she was there to set the record straight. This is her right and she asserted this right.
2.
Black people cannot afford to separate politics from psychology. The two are bound together in a manner that culturally requires their ever-strengthening alignment.
The instinctive continuous engagement for the implementation of social justice for BIPOC individuals and groups, must take precedence over any psychological theory that says the field of psychology, psychological theories and patient care have no place with any consideration of politics. This would be an enormous failure for the development of psychological theories pertaining to Africanist people. This failure would not consider centuries of cultural intergenerational trauma that appears as anxiety, depression and archetypal grief effecting Black people.
When Black women like District Attorney Willis appear in a courtroom, even if they are the judge (she was at one juncture of her career, reminding the current Judge Scott McAfee that she trained him), I do not believe that we cannot see, feel, intuit, the psychological presence of blackness—as it is an aspect of our American cultural complexes. Africanist people have fought in courtrooms for political, social and I would say, psychological justice. We cannot separate our psychological suffering from the racialized politics that brought us to America as slaves, and against which we have fought for generations. So, when District Attorney Willis says I am not on trial, she is showing the power, the defiance, and the fire—the gumption, of a cultural ancestral lineage that has withstood centuries of racism. She shows a determination that dares to push back against a political system that can intentionally use racialized psychological principles to present her as the criminal, because she is a Black woman.
3.
The legal trial, to disqualify District Attorney Willis for her role in prosecuting defendants accused of Georgia’s 2020 election interference, ended on March 1st. The fight for the rights of Africanist people to be strong in the struggle against racialized politics continues. Black cultural group understanding includes an acknowledgement of our psychological suffering and continuous personal and group attempts at healing centuries-old trauma. District Attorney Willis represents the best of us in her personal, professional and cultural group presence. We are fortunate to have her fiery flame burning so bright at this time in America.
Thank you so much for writing this. It’s wonderful to see Pacifica nurturing political engagement from a depth-psychological point of view. This was not, to say the least, a perspective much cultivated during my years in the foundational depth program there. As an Atlanta resident, I was shocked by the outraged response to DA Willis’ gutsy and sometimes funny reactions to her examiners’ shallow grilling.