TITLE:
Facts Are Stubborn: A Critical Commentary on Kehinde Andrews’ Work on the Psychosis of Whiteness
AUTHORS:
Bayo Ayodeji
KEYWORDS:
Whiteness, Psychosis, Racism, Race, Class, Capitalist System
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.6,
June
16,
2026
ABSTRACT: This paper offers a critical assessment of The Psychosis of Whiteness by Kehinde Andrews, arguing that the text fails to adequately engage with the structural conditions in which whiteness is experienced, enacted, and reproduced in the contemporary global context. Andrews contends that racism in modern Western societies operates through a form of collective delusion, whereby its realities are denied or distorted to preserve existing power relations and sustain inequality. By framing racism as both systemic and psychological rather than merely individual or moral, it is suggested that dominant groups reshape social reality through mechanisms such as denial, projection, and selective memory at a societal level. However, this paper argues that such a framework contains significant theoretical gaps, which revolve around a neglect of class analysis and sidestepping the role of capitalism in the reproduction of racism. These omissions raise questions about the usefulness of concepts such as irrationality and delusion in explaining racial dynamics, as well as about the adequacy of “whiteness” as a primary explanatory category. The analysis also critiques the tendency toward sweeping generalisations, particularly the portrayal of white people as collectively subject to forms of delusion, alongside the insufficient attention given to the classed nature of whiteness. Finally, by challenging the conceptual foundations of “white psychosis”, the paper argues that the proposed solution, which is rooted in critical pedagogy and the deconstruction of whiteness, risks proving ineffective. Without addressing the structural dimensions of racism, especially those tied to capitalism and class relations, critical pedagogy is unlikely to deliver meaningful progress toward social justice.