Introduction

Abstract

The chapter begins with a personal story and goes on to describe how the author’s interest in the cultural diversity of British society led him to discover the important part played by the notion of ‘race’ in determining the experiences of people seen as the ‘Other’ in Western societies, and to also discover the effects of racism in his own professional life as a psychiatrist, albeit a critical one. By outlining the content of the next eight chapters, this chapter provides an overview of the book as a whole. While Chap. 2 describes how the stage was set historically for the notion of ‘race’ and the white supremacist ideology of racism to permeate psychology and psychiatry, the subsequent seven chapters are concerned with exploring and describing issues subsumed in general under the umbrella of ‘institutional racism’ and the backgrounds in which they occurred; considering, illustrated by real-life situations, how racism has interfered with human rights and the peaceful coexistence of culturally diverse humanity for over 400 years, and the effect of racism in the disciplines of psychiatry and clinical psychology. The final chapter, written during the politically fraught socially unstable spring of 2017, discusses the possibility of a new era of unashamed racism and speculates on what the future may hold.