THE psychologist who confessed to fantasizing about shooting white people during a talk at Yale has defended her comments.
Dr. Aruna Khilanani says her words were taken out of context to “control the narrative" after it was reported she had discussed her "fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person".
In an email to The New York Times Khilanani said: "My work is important. And, I stand by it. We need to heal in this country.”
She added: "Too much of the discourse on race is a dry, bland regurgitation of new vocabulary words with no work in the unconscious.
"And, if you want to hit the unconscious, you will have to feel real negative feelings.
"My speaking metaphorically about my own anger was a method for people to reflect on negative feelings. To normalize negative feelings. Because if you don’t, it will turn into a violent action."
Khilanani added: "Something is emotionally dangerous about opening up a conversation about race.
"No one wants to look at their actions or face their own negative feelings about what they are doing. The best way to control the narrative is to focus on me, and make me the problem, which is what I stated occurs in the dynamic of racism.”
Khilanani is not affiliated with Yale but she said the Ivy League "knew the topic, they knew the title, they knew the speaker".
Khilanani said in April: "I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a f***ing favor."
Her comments resurfaced Friday after audio of the talk was posted on the substack of former New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss.
Since then her private practice has received one star reviews.
Khilanani's comments had been presented at Yale's Child Study Center on April 6, where she apparently also said white people "make my blood boil" and "are out of their minds and have been for a long time."
Weiss also shared a poster of the talk online, showing the lecture's title to be "The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind."
The lecture was to talk about certain "learning objectives" like the "set up white people’s absence of empathy towards black rage as a problem" and how to "understand how white people are psychologically dependent on black rage."
"I’m gonna say a lot of things, and it will probably provoke a lot of responses, and I want you to just maybe observe them in yourself," Khilanani opened her talk.
She entered the talk discussing the "intense rage and futility" people of color felt when talking to white people about racism.
"We are calm, we are giving, too giving, and then when we get angry, they use our responses as confirmation that we’re crazy or have emotional problems," she said.
"It always ends that way, happens every time. Like a goddamn timer, you can count it down," she went on.
"Nothing makes me angrier than a white person who tells me not to be angry, because they have not seen real anger yet," she added.
The psych said she "systematically" distanced herself from her white friends "around five years ago.
She said talking about race issues with whites was "useless because they are at the wrong level of conversation."
"White people are out of their minds, and they have been for a long time," she went on. "White people feel that we are bullying them when we bring up race."
"They feel that we should be thanking them for all that they have done for us. They are confused, and so are we."
"We keep forgetting that directly talking about race is a waste of our breath," Khilanani continued. "We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero to accept responsibility. It ain’t gonna happen."
"They have five holes in their brain. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall."
The Yale School of Medicine said in a statement that leaders there "found the tone and content antithetical to the values of the school".
They added a disclaimer to the video – available only to those at the talk – which read in part: "This video contains profanity and imagery of violence. Yale School of Medicine does not condone imagery of violence or racism against any group.”
Khilanani has posted a series of TikToks claiming the decision to keep her talk "unnamed and untitled" is "like the privilege it protects".
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