Please forgive me if this is an uncomfortable subject to read about but it is the repeated and unsolicited focus of much of my professional growth these days.  As such, I write about it only from my perspective, but certainly with the fervent belief that it should be a more explicit part of our dialog with one another as professionals.

Last fall there were a couple of ethnically charged hate crimes on the Columbia campus (one toward a Black professor and one toward a Jewish professor - both women), both in the psychology department.  One was far more publicized than the other, though the two clearly built off of each other in regards to the pain and discouragement they radiated through the department and through the school... and through my life. 

As an Black (Caribbean/American) woman going through years and years of education in New England, the notion of race has become more and more prevalent for me.  Frankly, more than I would like to acknowledge since I enjoy robust friendships and professional relationships almost entirely with people who are not of my cultural background.  As I get older, my sentiment about all of this is rapidly shifted from first gear - 'what's the big deal'?'- to third gear - 'why aren't we doing more to address this obvious shortcoming in ourselves and our profession - to  stall - 'oh my goodness I don't want to deal with this angst anymore!'  The issue of my racial difference has come up professionally and personally this year in ways that seem beyond what I can hold within myself.  The responses I get when I talk about it then with my peers- either complete unawareness, rationalizations, or complete helpless at what any of us can do about it - have been no less discouraging.  The problem is systemic, pervasive, and so under our radars that it is easy to doubt even our own personal experiences if we are not being alert to how we have been socialized to ignore it.

For most of my life, these issues have fit into two categories - personal frustration and sociological musing.  I have not imagined that this level of consideration would be a large part of my work as an individual psychotherapist.  Of course I expected that in working with clients of various cultural backgrounds, the issue of culture might come up.  But I did not pause to think about the ways that culture would not ever be mentioned but still permeate every aspect of the discussion.  Nor had I considered how the legacy of social systems in the country might also impact the very tools we use as psychologists to connect with and understand our patients and ourselves.

Here are some examples (again, there may be an uncomfortable feeling reading further):
1) I have had two Caucasian clients each tell me that I should understand where they are coming from (both in conversations where they were chastising me for not giving them what they felt they needed) 'because you are Black and should get what it's like to feel persecuted.'  One said so in a room of other people in a comment that equated my skin color to a physical disability.

2) I have had someone I very deeply trust in a community I very deeply trust, reach out before receiving permission to feel a burn scar I've recently gotten because 'I have never seen a burn on African-American skin before.'

3) I have worked in all White staffs and had supervisors sigh relief and say that they were grateful that I was there when minorities have come to assess our site, because they were having a hard time explaining the racial homogeneity of the workplace.

4) I have had conversations in class about the merits of racially diverse cards for projective tests.  Actually, this conversation was very robust and valid points were made all around.  But, I was surprised by the number of people who felt, out of hand, that cards that 'look like you' may be relevant in assessing social acclimation but not is determining emotional development.  I think an argument can be made for this, but the idea that many people believed it without argument gave me pause.

5) I have led psychotherapy groups in which Black and other minority clients were deemed 'awkward', 'inappropriate', 'rebel-rousers' purely on the basis of the mannerisms with which they speak and present themselves - by both staff and patients.

6) As I previously insinuated, I have observed the impact on intellectual safety of friends at Columbia in the wake of these hate-crimes.  This has been particularly true if their research was on topics of diversity or if they had come to feel that such contempt only occurred in back allies perpetrated by the 'unenlightened.'

Interestingly, I have no particular answer or animosity about any of these examples.  I do have a lot of pain about it.  Personally I feel like a lot of my history of racial pain will be carried mostly in isolation.  But as a profession, I also wonder at the impact of these sorts of situations on the guardedness, assumptions, and interpersonal foibles of our clients and ourselves, throughout any given therapeutic relationship.  I mean, what were the changes, if any, in my care of the two patients mentioned above when they made their statements about my race, both of which made me very angry, defensive, and placid in the moment.  For that matter, what is the general impact on my empathy of the fact that I think most people will not understand the experiences I am trying to articulate?  I wonder about women who have dealt with trauma and are tentatively pondering interpersonal trust - how do they feel to then be subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) ostracized by the group of women in which they are meant to receive healing?  I wonder how much research is stifled by fear of retaliation like that at Columbia.  I wonder how many test subjects are somehow misrepresented because of homogeneous batteries that subconsciously trigger defensiveness (think of stereotype threat) rather than resiliency. 

I imagine I could go on and on about this. 

The school is doing what is required by APA regulations, and even more, to confront these issues.  Cross Cultural Counseling is taught by a woman with a humbling passion for equality and education across racial, SES, gender spectrum, and sexual orientation lines.  The few minority professors in the school speak about their lives and experiences unapologetically and with insight whenever appropriate; they are generally well received by students, faculty, and administrators in this vulnerable assertiveness.  They inspire others of us to timidly begin to do the same in regards to our respective minority experiences.  The international film series, the Spanish discussion table, the doctoral projects of students... All of these begin the discussion. 

Yet, when I fill out course evaluations, for most I write that 'addresses issues of diversity in the field' is either below average or N/A.  Further, I find that we stumble and then back down many times as we try to find language for these issues in impromptu conversations about testing, therapeutic rapport, personality disorder diagnostics, and so on.  Perhaps I should not speak for others.  I will just say that sometimes I back down.  And I do so because it is exhausting to be on the same soapbox all the time.  It is lonely.  It is vulnerable.  (I can say with confidence that my discomfort at writing points 1 and 2 above is at least as much as what it might be to read them.  So much so that I did not feel I could mention them in a fairly close-knit cohort when they were directly applicable to class discussion.) And it is paranoia-making.  (Did that seriously happen the way I remember it?)  I am a fairly outspoken person so when I notice myself backing away from a discussion, I wonder how many others are as well.

What I really think about the whole topic at this moment in my life is somewhat fatalistic.  I won't indulge it here.  What I will say instead is that this realm of interpersonal nuance that I had once thought only important on a societal and sociological level, is vital to our one-on-one work as therapists.  It is a part of our training that classes could probably insist on more, especially in the more subtle forms that I named above.  But, for that to happen, professors and students need to be more comfortable being awkward with each other as we stumble through such conversations.  Additionally, I feel more and more that this is a level of our training that happens only when we force ourselves to open our eyes wider than our comfort zones in our clinical work and begin to ask questions of those interactions to which we believe we already have the answers.  This requires, also, supervisors who can challenge us in that way without assuming that they can teach us anything other than how to be humble and vulnerable as we walk around in this murky water.  Frankly, I think it requires a higher proportion of minorities (of all types, not just racial) in the building so that people don't feel like they are standing alone or that they run the risk of unintentionally insulting someone who has no understanding ally with whom to process. 

All of this (and here my fatalism rears its ugly head) takes time, courage, diligence, and grace on the part of everyone from students to staff, faculty, and administrators as we attempt to build the perpetually elusive community strong and sensitive enough to make the mistakes that promote progress.  I wonder if we have it in us.

I don't always feel strong enough to do it.  I really never feel knowledgeable enough to do it.  But perhaps as we write, read, and reflect together, we will begin to develop more curiosity and more skill - I sincerely hope for our school community and I fervently pray so for our profession.

Peace,
adwoa