Notes from Tunisia: De-Somatising the Black body free from White Supremacy

Not being violent enough could cost me my body.
Being too violent could cost me my body.
We could not get out.’
(Coates, 2015)

There was an incident at school when I was 14.  I was being bullied regularly at this point in my secondary school, but I had learnt to put a lid on my emotions, suppress
them so that I didn’t react to the provocations of my peers.  This worked for the most part.  Except for one time.  ‘N£”$%&!’ one other 14-year-old boy
called me during lunchtime.  I lashed out, pushed him over, and he cracked his head on the skirting board.  The other boys took him away.  I was mortified.  Shocked with myself.  When the headmaster called us both to his study and asked us what happened, we both told him the story.  He got one lash of the cane.  I got two. 
My black body punished for reacting to racial abuse. 

I want to begin with two stories.

Firstly, when I travelled to Tanzania some twenty year ago now, one of the most interesting things i notice during my time there was how different my body felt whilst walking the streets of Dar Es Salaam. My then therapist  even remarked how much more relaxed and embodied i looked and felt to her when I next had therapy with her on my return.   

Secondly, whilst on a break from the horrors I endured at the hands of my ex-wife, I was visiting Dakar, in Senegal. On arrival at my hotel I was told that I couldn’t have my room because a pregnant white woman was in it giving
birth. The owner on seeing I was a black man (as he later told me) said I could
stay at his home instead. So I did so for a few days. We had lunch together and
talked life, football and colonialism. It was the best part of that holiday and
I felt so incredibly relaxed.

On both of these trips I felt I could breathe. I felt I could exhale and let my shoulders drop. I wasn’t seen as a threat, as a rapist of white women (see the current treatment if migrants), as a troublemaker (see our treatment under stop and search), or as a an uppity negro who needed to be shot down from some exalted position in academic (work that one out for yourselves). I also wasnt seen as entitled or as arrogant and drunk with privilege. I wasnt feared cos I might get drunk and wreck the place on a stag do. On both occasions I was just another Black man, a brother travelling home to where he belonged.

This is the reason why I am writing this whilst i am on a trip to Tunisia. I strongly believe that for black peoples when we leave the Global North our bodies often have the chance to reset in a way that is way more necessary and needed than we at first might realise.  We live with an embodied tension because of the fear of microaggressions, or the regular need to code switch or the emotionally abusive gaslighting aspects of actual racism. It is for this reason that we somatise so much of our experience of racism in order to successfully live within the environment of white systemic supremacy.

This blog is therefore written outside of the Global North for a reason. It is written on a mobile phone by hand using just the keyboard on my phone so that I can truly feel and experience the words ending up on this blogs page.  There might be mistakes, but I kind of don’t care, as this makes it all the more authentic more real. As this comes from the body, my body, our body.

‘The more I feel the need, the more I realise, even two loving parents and a prized education couldn’t offer me this or protect me from the dominant narratives that have such a violent effect on tender young bodies and minds.’
(Hirsch, 2026, pp. 15–16)

’You’re a stupid N%$”&%!’ shouted the Sargent in the
team bus.  We were in Berlin on our way to a rugby game against one of the American stations. He was under the impression that I had grassed him up for something.  I hadn’t, but what had happened was a Corporal had lied about me and thrown me under the bus.  So the Sargeant went for me.  I wanted to hit him, but the other team members pulled us apart.  ‘Take it out on the other team!’ I remember someone shouting. 
So I did.  I scored two tries, won man of the match, and limped into the Rugby club for a drink later all batteredand bruised.

My Black body beaten up as I suppressed the racist abuse on the bus.

The fear of the Black Body has been an aspect of racism which
dates back to slavery and colonalism.  From the dehumanisation of Black Bodies the very moment slavery began, to the savage sexual violence meted out to Black women during this period, the abuses of our bodies have been with us down many generations.

The objectification of Black bodies, because we are so sexy, so round and plump, so muscular and hench, is something which it is hard for Black people not to internalise. In our racialised performativity there is an embodied component as well as we change how we walk, how we dress, and how we appear, so as to not seem to aggressive, too clever, to big a presence.  Even fatphobia has a tie to the racialised Black body, with white supremacy and its desires for thinness being tied in opposition to a detestation of Blackness (Strings, 2019).

That we experience so much of the world through the body is nothing
new to therapy and psychology. From recognising that our gut instincts move us to
feeling the vibe of a piece of music when its played for us, this knowledge is nothing new. Even in the world of Somatic Experiencing the knowledge that trauma is not just a neurological experience but an embodied one means that any effort to heal has to take a Mind and Body approach (and yea, the spirit and soul are included as well, before someone asks 😉) (Kuhfuß et al., 2021).

‘A Black Woman’s
body was never hers alone.’

Fannie Lou Hamer

During the court case to win access to my daughter, my
ex-wife made up some horrific stories, and made sure she had the control of the
court so that I was not allowed to tell anyone. 
At one point I was so distressed that I decided I didn’t want to live anymore.  I was in so much pain, and missed my daughter so much, that I planned on visiting Beachy Head that Easter, and thought about how I would jump.  It was a chance call by my mother which stopped me, which told me to stay on the path and trust a court system I had no reason to believe in.  I did so, and I won.
That call saving me from destroying my Black body, and myself, because
of the abuses of my ex-wife. 

Internalised white supremacy is what drives so much of the hatred
we have against ourselves as well. When we bleach our skin, or when we put down others from our culture from not being black/brown/whatever enough so much of this is driven by the deep internal voice which reminds us we are hated and which wants to crush us back into compliance. The somatic result of so much of this is we get sick. We get sick from racism, we get sick from the self hatred, we get sick from living in a world which hates, fears and yet also envies us (Makendren, 2021).

Racial somatisation is therefore something I encourage all Somatic
Experiencing practitioners to consider when working with clients of colour (irrespective of their racialised background). We hold so much racialised Trauma, so much out of the experiences of white supremacy that any any work we undertake toward individuation and a growing self hood (and therefore a return to the collective) has to do not only with the decolonising of the Black Body but a rebalancing and reconnecting with its messaging as well (Lapierre, 2023).

This is the same for all of us, myself included. Being amongst good people (and I always get something from visiting parts of Africa), is important for not only my mind but my body. It’s a reminder of my worth, a resetting of my body (and therefore soul) driven purpose, and a gift to me to give to my family, my clients and to you the reader. And although oftentimes it is extremely painful this reset, and although like the dream below, internalised white supremacy will still try to dominate, I do it as a part of my self care as it works for me.

I encourage you to do your own as well.

‘Dream Entry 7th:
Odd scene where I’m at the start line for a 100-meter sprint race outdoors but
the person to my left, an old white man, suddenly realises this is the wrong
race and leans right over me squashing me as he wants to tell and correct
something on the woman to my rights table. I have to clamber out from
underneath him before I can prepare to race myself.’


References

Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the world and me.
The Text Publishing Company.

Hirsch, A. (2026). De-Colonising My Body: On
ancestry, tradition and cultural reinvention. Vintage Books.

Kuhfuß, M., Maldei, T., Hetmanek, A., & Baumann,
N. (2021). Somatic experiencing–effectiveness and key factors of a
body-oriented trauma therapy: a scoping literature review. European Journal
of Psychotraumatology, 12(1).
https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2021.1929023

Lapierre, A. (2023). Racialized Socialization and
Trauma from a Somatic Perspective. 22(1), 8–11.

Makendren, M. “Yemura.” (2021). Dismantling the
Master’s Tools: A Somatic Approach to Interrogating White Supremacy in Social
R&D and Beyond.

Strings, S. (2019). Fearing the Black Body: Racial
origins of fat phobia. New York University Press.