As a white man, I can’t fully appreciate or speak to what it’s like to be Black in this country, although I’m trying to learn. But as the developer of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, I can offer some thoughts about helping people navigate their inner worlds to release the extreme beliefs and emotions they absorbed from our culture, including internalized racism.

Over the past several years, our country seems to have been reaching a critical point of reckoning with its legacy of racism. After seeing how the Trump regime has worked to legitimize white supremacy, after witnessing the way the pandemic has highlighted racial disparities in public health, after repeatedly seeing videos of the brutal spectacle of unarmed Black people being murdered by police, many white people have finally arrived at a tipping point in facing how deeply racism is woven into the fabric of our society and of ourselves.

So what are we to do with that awareness? While the Black Lives Matter movement has increased the country’s understanding of the pernicious impact of racism in all aspects of our national life, how do we do the internal work of recognizing and grappling with racist thoughts? Some recommend that, after becoming aware of them, we should confront, challenge, and expel them. But this head-on approach can have the…