UK Doctor: Addiction to Racial Ideology Ruined My Relationships

Dr. Joel Brown speaks to NTD's British Thought Leaders programme. NTD

“I just became consumed by my race,” a Jamaican-born GP and self-professed race-aholic has revealed.

Speaking to NTD’s British Thought Leaders programme, Dr. Joel Brown said his addiction to critical race theory, which culminated in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, has made him feel the loss of “joy in life” and left his relationships lying “in ruin.”

The self-styled “common-sense crusader” said he now wishes to tell those who still feel “trapped” in the “victimhood” mentality, “you don’t have to stay there.”

Recalling his arrival in the UK 22 years ago, Dr. Brown said he had felt a sense of pride and excitement about becoming part of the UK and about the prospect of a good education and career.

“I felt like I could do some good in the world,” he said.

As an immigrant and a young man, Dr. Brown had some “internal identity issues.” At the same time, he found himself becoming increasingly “race conscious” during his university years, to the point of getting “quite addicted to this idea of fitting in or ... my race determining my outlook in life,” he said.

“There was a sense in which I just became consumed by my race and hyper-aware of what race should mean as it relates to how one navigates the world, how one interacts with it with each other.”

Hypercritical and Very Jaded

The fixation with race eventually eroded his personal relationships following the killing of black man George Floyd in the United States by white police officer Derek Chauvin.

After the incident, which led to widespread Black Lives Matter protests around the world and violent riots in the United States, Dr. Brown became more “vocal” on Facebook about race relations and began to “chastise” those around him, including his friends and family.

It “eroded relationships very, very terribly,” he said. “And I just became a person that was just not very pleasant to be around and just hypercritical and very jaded about the world.”

And the weight of the resentment has left him “quite depressed.”

“ ... if you want to believe the world is utterly racist, and totally oppressive, you will look for the things that confirms that reality,” Dr. Brown said.

“It started to become clear to me, even with the way that I interacted with my own children, I could only see them as almost like objects that I needed to save from this crushingly racist world,” he said. 

The time had also been difficult for his wife and parents, who remained “loving and supportive.”

After realising he had pushed away people who loved him, Dr. Brown began to repair his relationships.

“I’ve had to go through a process of real grief about this, and penitence, he said. ”It’s not been easy, of course, for those people who endured that kind of hostility from me, but also for me to kind of reconcile that,” Dr. Brown said.

He went back to people whom he felt he had hurt, “... particularly friends, white friends who couldn’t understand fully what was going on with me,” he said.

“Because it felt like, as if I had sort of adopted this view of the world in which they could be nothing but enemies, despite the fact that we had beautiful relationships prior to this.

“It’s like the lens through which I now viewed the world and viewed relationships with these people are so distorted that I couldn’t distinguish my own ideological presumptions from reality anymore.”

“... the burden of carrying that kind of resentment destroys you as a person,” Dr. Brown said.

Following a process of self-examination, therapy, and rekindling his Christian faith, he said, “I’m just grateful to just be in a place where I feel much more whole, rather than feeling like my entire identity is summed up in some political ideology that’s rooted in my ‘race.’”

Victimhood Mentality ‘The Greatest Obstacle’ To Maximising Human Potential

Acknowledged that hardships such as experiences of violence or unfair treatment are “hard to navigate' emotionally, Dr. Brown said, ”but then there comes a point where one can self identify with those experiences to the point that ... there is hopelessness, and there is this inability to move forward with one’s life. And that’s victimhood.”

He described victimhood as “the greatest” and “most toxic” obstacle to maximizing human potential, and encouraged those who feel “stuck” to start healing.

“What I would say to someone who’s trapped there is you don’t have to stay there,” he said.

“ ... my hope, my prayer and my encouragement to them is to take the first steps to heal from whatever it is that you might be going through that has perhaps made you vulnerable to accepting that ... view of the world, and try and engage in a journey towards the support that you need.”