Reviewing: Emotional Justice by Esther Armah
Emotional Justice aims to present a new love language for racial healing, one that de-centers whiteness and requires different forms of engagement for Black folks and for white folks with an attention to global context. The book encapsulates author Esther Armah’s work in this area over several decades as a journalist and founder of the Emotional Justice Institute, and it walks readers through a roadmap of four key changes Armah suggests to end systemic inequity. The framework centers Black women and incorporates Armah’s personal observations from living in Ghana, the UK, and the US, speaking to some of the nuances of how the language of whiteness plays out differently in these regions.
I think in some ways the forewords to this book actually did it a bit of a disservice, as they prepared me for something truly groundbreaking, while a lot of the content of the book engages ideas I’ve encountered before—albeit spread out a bit between different works, talks, and conversations. My sense is that Armah’s four-point framework probably was in fact something quite unheard of ten years ago, and very well may have influenced the other sources I’ve encountered. However, by the time of publication the importance of this personal and relational emotional work, grappling with how the language of whiteness influences our everyday lives, has become much more entrenched in discussions around race.
That said, I do think readers who haven’t already spent a lot of time engaging with these topics and primarily approach race at an ideological level can get a lot out of this work, while those with more experience may still appreciate Armah’s unique lens. Some of the most thought-provoking content for me was actually the chapter where Armah details the experiences and observations that led her to the framework, including her journalistic work but also her personal background as the daughter of a Ghanian politician who was exiled and imprisoned following a military coup. Armah’s perspective on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, for example, was illuminating for me as someone who was educated in the 90s and early 2000s and learned of TRC as an effective healing force to be lauded, rather than a racist mechanism designed to protect and appease white supremacy.
The four pieces of Armah’s framework are split into two directives for white folks and two for Black folks, and the four topics they combine cover a lot of ground that doesn’t normally appear together. For white folks, Armah focuses on how white women protect white men, and on learning to stay with discomfort when challenged. For Black folks she addresses the gendered and raced nature of grind culture, as well as the uneasy relationship between Black Africa and Black America. Each section could be read as a standalone, and I’d imagine some readers will prefer to skip the chapters that aren’t addressed to them—particularly Black readers who are already plenty familiar with the points Armah is making about white failings.
I did find it a little jarring that Armah addresses the material in the introductory sections to white, Black, Brown, and in some places indigenous readers, but then flips to a very Black vs. white perspective for the majority of the book. The content is specific enough to these two races that it would be hard in some cases to adapt, although it would certainly be possible for non-Black folks to address anti-Blackness or the impact of the language of whiteness on their own communities in a similar way.
I also found the treatment of gender a bit perplexing, as there seems to be an assumption that the reader is either male or female and likely heterosexual. This was extra strange to me given that seeing gender as a binary and sexuality as a monolith is itself such a part of the language of whiteness. Again, this isn’t an insurmountable challenge, and I don’t want to dismiss the value of the content just because I don’t fit into its gender framework, but I would’ve appreciated some broader application. For those of us who don’t have close male-female relationships in our lives, and specifically within the same racial group, some of the ideas presented become more theoretical.
I actually found myself wondering whether Armah is assuming that all of her readers are women, and especially that no white men would read this book. Although the two sections that most directly engage gender are addressed to “white men and women” and “Black men and women,” there is far greater coverage of women’s responsibilities—how white women need to stop coddling and excusing the white men in their lives, and how Black women need to stop performing emotional labor for the men in theirs. Granted, for Black women the directive to engage in radical rest is a healing act, and perhaps the idea is that Black women’s rest will have a trickle-down effect on some of the challenges of Black masculinity Armah outlines. On the white side of the coin, though, it seems a little strange to note the importance of white men giving up leadership and then not to address what this looks like at all, instead only covering how white men tend to resist this call and become violent.
I wouldn’t expect Armah to personally do the labor of directing white men, but I do wonder why this section is addressed in part to them, as it comes across in some ways as if white women are being asked to suck it up and ignore any trauma they’ve experienced in relationships with white men, because the only way to get through to white men is through white women taking on the full burden of confronting them. While I understand how dangerous the centering of white women’s feelings can be, I also find myself wondering whether there might be a place for compassion (not forgiveness) in asking women to do this work—perhaps guiding the reader through an assessment of harm to better be able to evaluate the difference between pushing through discomfort and privilege to stop making excuses for the men in their lives and a situation where confronting a man may legitimately lead to violence.
Given that disconnection is such a fundamental feature of white culture, I wonder how this relational approach is possible without simultaneously nurturing healthier relationships. It is up to white people, not Armah, to figure out what that looks like. But without a call to include relationality or seeking healthy supports alongside these tough conversations with men, presumably including decisions in some cases to leave romantic partners and racist employers without a social safety net, I imagine some white readers will read Armah’s advice as excluding these steps, or even shame themselves for seeking supports. While it’s not appropriate to center ease and comfort, as Armah warns in a criticism of white anti-racists looking to include joy in their work, I do wonder if there might be space for some acknowledgement of where human needs and tough work intersect, as a sustainable approach to the continued engagement with trauma that Armah recommends.
Similarly, even if the central goal for Black folks is to center Black women’s rest, I wonder how Black men might be specifically encouraged to support this and break reliance on their emotional labor, while also struggling with some of the challenges of masculinity, race, and power that Armah describes. Part of the challenge is that while Armah does offer a general three-part process to applying emotional justice, it’s somewhat vague and might be difficult for someone to apply if they’re encountering this information for the first time.
Armah’s outlining of the four branches of the language of whiteness and how it shows up is clear and necessary, and especially strong on highlighting broad cultural problems. She gives powerful examples of how this language shows up—describing, for example, how an American looking to host Africans in need of housing for an event felt disappointed that Armah was not the “wretched” African he expected to support. These examples hit hard and clearly elucidate the problem. In order to go further with the four love languages as antidotes, though, I think most readers will need more support than the recommendation or two provided at the end of each section.
For example, in the section I described above there’s a strong recommendation that white women create accountability circles to process their work. This is no doubt an effective tactic, but it does presuppose access to white women friends, at least a couple of whom are who are willing to do this work. It also assumes the women involved will have the skills to succeed. Readers without these resources might wonder if there are any other ways to engage, or how they can actually create such a group without reifying racism. I can see how this work could be absolutely transformational in a workshop setting, where there’s space to offer multiple recommendations and a more nuanced coverage of what “doing the work” actually looks like, but the book feels like more of a starting point where the readers who would most benefit from the information provided might also be the least likely to have the know-how to apply it.
The interviews included at the end of each part of the four-part framework are perhaps the most helpful tool pointing the reader in the direction of where they might go next. I really appreciated the way Armah used these conversations as case studies in how her theoretical framework can be applied. Sometimes the discussion did feel a bit leading, though, and I wish there had been a little more freedom of space to let the conversation unfold naturally.
For example, when Courtney Martin talks about white people’s disconnection from our bodies and Armah says that’s not true, I felt like an opportunity was lost. Armah argues that white folks are in fact embodied, and that the problem is that we assume our feelings are always correct. As a white person, though, when I think of times where I assumed my “feelings” to be right it was generally not based on information coming from my body, but rather the dominance of logic in a brain conditioned by white culture. Perhaps my perspective is somewhat skewed as an autistic person, but I would still identify bodily disconnection as a huge contributor to the failure to stay with discomfort. It would have been interesting, I think, for Martin to share more about this experience of disconnection and for Armah to have a chance to respond from an emotional justice lens. Despite the limited space for dialogue to play out, though, the interviews do offer a value glimpse into how these dynamics play out.
While I’ve been somewhat critical in this review, I do want to acknowledge the power of the work itself, even if the book was an imperfect vehicle to communicate it. Armah’s choice to center Black women (and not only Black US American women) in her theorizing around the language of whiteness is of critical importance. It is clear that an emotional and cultural focus is more important than a policy-based one in really understanding racism, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy, and that this focus must Black women’s (and, I would add, Black femmes’ and queer folks’) perspectives in order to really get at the heart of the problem. It’s also clear that white folks have a responsibility to take on the emotional labor that typically gets passed on to Black women, to personally interrogate our relationships to race and power, and to do so through a gendered lens.
While I didn’t find the love languages as practical as I expected in application, I can certainly see how the content presented here might be used to formulate important questions that would stress-test any given approach to unlearning the language of whiteness. We might ask ourselves, for example, whether our approaches are responsive to gender, whether they explicitly or implicitly shift labor onto Black women, whether they center white feelings and comfort, and whether they have a global relevance that considers how Blackness plays out in different national contexts.
ARC provided through Edelweiss. Purchases using the above link support me, as well as local bookstores!