Highlights from Readings from the McGoldrick and Hardy (MH) book

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RE-VISIONING FAMILY THERAPY

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Ethnicity and Family Therapy, Third Edition Edited by Monica McGoldrick, Joe Giordano,

and Nydia Garcia-Preto

Teens Who Hurt: Clinical Interventions to Break the Cycle of Adolescent Violence

Kenneth V. Hardy and Tracey A. Laszloffy

RE-VISIONING FAMILY

THERAPY Addressing Diversity in Clinical Practice

T H I R D E D I T I O N

edited by

Monica McGoldrick Kenneth V. Hardy

THE GUILFORD PRESS New York London

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

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Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The authors have checked with sources believed to be reliable in their efforts to provide information that is complete and generally in accord with the standards of practice that are accepted at the time of publication. However, in view of the possibility of human error or changes in behavioral, mental health, or medical sciences, neither the authors, nor the editors and publisher, nor any other party who has been involved in the preparation or publication of this work warrants that the information contained herein is in every respect accurate or complete, and they are not responsible for any errors or omissions or the results obtained from the use of such information. Readers are encouraged to confirm the information contained in this book with other sources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4625-3193-6 (hardcover)

We dedicate this new edition to the next generation. May they find the courage not to accept constraints

that impede our systemic understanding and practice, but most of all may they find the courage to dare— to work in ways that respect all the complexities of history and identity and potential that our clients bring to the clinical situation. May they refuse to

make molehills out of mountains but rather insist on expanding our efforts to think out of the box.

—M. M. and K. V. H.

To Margaret Pfeiffer Bush and Aunt Mamie Cahalane and all those like them, whose invisibility

was a hidden shame and who bravely transformed the constraints of their lives into a love that inspires

and carries us through life.

—M. M.

To my family—both those with whom I share blood and ancestry as well as those with whom

I share only a common ancestry—for teaching me the life-transcending lessons of survival, humility,

and perseverance. Your quiet dignity, sacrifice, and grace have been a source of strength and have provided clarity of vision and purpose to my life.

—K. V. H.

Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD (h.c.), is Director of the Multicultural Fam- ily Institute in Highland Park, New Jersey, and Adjunct Associate Profes- sor of Clinical Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Her videos on clinical work with diverse families are among the most widely respected in the field. Her numerous books include Ethnicity and Family Therapy, Third Edition. Ms. McGoldrick is a recipient of the Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy Theory and Practice Award from the Ameri- can Family Therapy Academy. An internationally known author, she has lec- tured around the world on such topics as culture, class, gender, the family life cycle, and loss.

Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, is Professor of Family Therapy at Drexel University in Philadelphia and Director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in New York City. He is also President and Founder of the Eikenberg Academy for Social Justice. Dr. Hardy is a recipient of honors including the Distin- guished Contribution to Marriage and Family Counseling Award from the International Association for Marriage and Family Counselors and the Dis- tinguished Contribution to Social Justice Award from the American Family Therapy Academy. He maintains a private practice in New York City special- izing in family therapy.

About the Editors

vii

N. Norma Akamatsu, MSW, private practice, Northampton, Massachusetts

Kiran Shahreen Kaur Arora, PhD, School of Education, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York

Deidre Ashton, MSSW, private practice; The Therapy Center of Philadelphia; The Race Institute for K–12 Educators; and Widener University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Christiana I. Awosan, MFT, PhD, Department of Professional Psychology and Family Therapy, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey

Saliha Bava, LMFT, PhD, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, New York; Taos Institute, Chagrin Falls, Ohio; Houston Galveston Institute, Houston, Texas

Joanne Bowen, PhD, Anthropology Department, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

Nollaig Byrne, MD, Department of Child and Family Psychiatry, Mater Misericordia Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

Fernando Colón-López, PhD, Ann Arbor Center for the Family, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Donna Dallal-Ferne, LMFT, private practice, Syracuse, New York

Sarita Kaya Davis, PhD, MSW, Department of African American Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia

Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, LMFT, SPHR, GreenGate Leadership, LLC, Palmer, Massachusetts

Contributors

viii Contributors

Ken Epstein, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, and Department of Public Health, San Francisco, California

Celia Jaes Falicov, PhD, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California

Linda Stone Fish, PhD, Department of Marriage and Family Therapy, Falk College, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

John D. Folwarski, MSW, Raritan Bay Mental Health Center, Perth Amboy, New Jersey

Nydia Garcia Preto, LCSW, Multicultural Family Institute, Highland Park, New Jersey

Robert-Jay Green, PhD, Rockway Institute, California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco, California

MaryAnna Domokos-Cheng Ham, EdD, LCP, LMFT, College of Education and Human Development, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, Eikenberg Institute for Relationships, New York, New York; Department of Family Therapy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Ana M. Hernandez, PhD, LMFT, Rising Ground, Inc., Yonkers, New York; Seton Hall University, East Orange, New Jersey

Paulette Moore Hines, PhD, private practice, training, and consultation; Center for Healthy Schools, Families, and Communities, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Department of Psychiatry, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, New Jersey

Evan Imber-Black, PhD, Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, New York; Center for Families and Health, Ackerman Institute for the Family, New York, New York

Christian Jordal, PhD, LMFT, CST, Department of Counseling and Family Therapy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Hugo Kamya, PhD, School of Social Work, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts

Jodie Kliman, PhD, Clinical Psychology Department, William James College, Newton, Massachusetts; Boston Institute for Culturally Affirming Practices, Boston, Massachusetts

Imelda Colgan McCarthy, MSW, PhD, private practice, Dublin, Ireland

Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD (h.c.), Multicultural Family Institute, Highland Park, New Jersey; Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, New Jersey

Peggy McIntosh, PhD, Wellesley College Centers for Research on Women, Wellesley, Massachusetts

Marsha Pravder Mirkin, PhD, School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Education, Lasell College, Newton, Massachusetts

Contributors ix

Matthew R. Mock, PhD, Counseling Psychology Program, John F. Kennedy University, San Jose, California; private practice, Berkeley, California

Elijah C. Nealy, PhD, MDiv, LCSW, Department of Social Work and Equitable Community Practice, University of St. Joseph, West Hartford, Connecticut

Elaine Pinderhughes, MSW, Boston College School of Social Work, Boston, Massachusetts

Salome Raheim, PhD, ACSW, School of Social Welfare, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York

Rockey Robbins, PhD, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

Sharla Robbins, PhD, private practice, Norman, Oklahoma

Robert Shelby, LMFT, Men’s Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy, Berkeley, California

Tazuko Shibusawa, PhD, LCSW, Silver School of Social Work, New York University, New York, New York

Walter Howard Smith, Jr., PhD, Department of Human Services, Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

David Trimble, PhD, Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts

Froma Walsh, MSW, PhD, Chicago Center for Family Health; and School of Social Service Administration and Department of Psychiatry, Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Marlene F. Watson, PhD, Department of Counseling and Family Therapy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Hinda Winawer, MSW, LCSW, private practice; Princeton Family Institute, Princeton, New Jersey; The Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice, Princeton, New Jersey; Faculty Emerita, Ackerman Institute for the Family, New York, New York

The goal of this book is to transform the focus of our work beyond the inte- rior of the family, offering an opportunity and invitation for our readers to see how our clients’ lives are constrained by larger societal structures and to develop new ways of working based on a more contextual understanding of ourselves, our society, our history, and our clients’ lives.

We have long struggled to envision systemic theory and practice in ways that transform our field to see our clients and ourselves more clearly and thus more complexly and to provide services that are more trauma-informed and healing. We have espoused approaches that take account of our connection to each other and to all that has gone before and all that will come in the future. Striving to build a sense of belonging for all who seek our help seems the only way to pursue our work. Our original companion volume, Ethnicity and Fam- ily Therapy, began with the lens of ethnicity in its exploration of culture; Re- Visioning Family Therapy, Third Edition: Addressing Diversity in Clinical Practice explores the intersections of multiple cultural perspectives (ethnicity, social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion), attempting to view families and family therapy from more inclusive cultural perspectives.

The aim of this book has been to provide in one relatively short, accessible volume a broad range of brief contributions by many of those who have been working to “re-vision” the family therapy field through a cultural lens. The chapters in this volume are reflective of the authors’ efforts to make a truly paradigmatic shift toward systemic thinking and practice, which we believe is sorely needed in our field and in our world. We have worked assiduously to include chapters that expand our definition of knowledge from an exclusive reliance on evidence-based, scientifically tested practice to one that validates also the “evidence” of subjective knowledge, creating space for the inclusion of personal stories of suffering, subjugation, and strife born out of experiences

Preface

Preface xi

with oppression, which honor a different kind of knowledge. There is great wisdom in learning from the experiences of those relegated to the margins of our society. This book includes many personal stories, a few of them known over the years to some of us, but here available for a wider audience, which help us pay attention to those who have been hidden from history. Creating a space for personal stories and experiences enriches our work as therapists and is central to our view of re-visioning family therapy. We have also included chapters that expand the systemic perspective to larger systems in terms of both conceptualization and intervention. We hope that these perspectives will inspire future therapists to think as broadly as possible about the contextual aspects of our work and our lives.

This new edition is appearing at a time when our world seems fraught with polarities, discontinuities, and regression in the development of social justice. Our search continues to strive toward finding ways to contain oppo- sites, contradictions, and ambiguities—not oversimplifying the issues and at the same time not obfuscating the prejudices and oppression that are increas- ingly defining and destroying our world and us.

Each author was given frustratingly little space and asked to present a few key ideas of clinical and theoretical relevance in a reader-friendly format to contextualize the oppressions that are their work’s focus and to suggest re-visions for our clinical work. We applaud the authors for their courage to contend with these difficult issues and rejoice that they are our collaborators, going through life with us, knowing we are not yet clear about how these power dimensions operate on us, but striving with each other’s help to see the road more clearly.

Re-Visioning Family Therapy is intended to be exciting and suggestive rather than comprehensive in its articulation of where we need to go in our work. Most of the material is intentionally personal. We want to make clear how hidden aspects of our history have influenced our need to change the future. Our ideas have evolved from our frustrations with the traditional boundaries of clinical practice and our wish to expand our vision to see more clearly where we must go to create a better world for everyone. This book has been an opportu- nity to push our own and each other’s boundaries in hopes of helping to trans- form clinical practice toward more contextual and systemic work with clients. We trust readers will give us the benefit of the doubt, realizing that many of these ideas are still in progress, awaiting the leavening of future conversations to better see the issues. We know we have inadvertently left out or marginalized some in this book and will continue to push ourselves to learn from our “sins of omission” in the future. We hope, as we have expressed before, that this edition will soon be out of date again, as the ideas expressed here become commonplace and accepted practice. When this re-visioning occurs, we hope we will be in the fortunate position of trying once again to reformulate the ideas to accom- modate our evolving understanding and insights about change and healing and that others will follow us to expand this endeavor. We hope this book will pro- vide a small window into new possibilities.

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PART I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Like the other institutions of our society, family therapy has been structured in ways to support the dominant value system. And, again like the other insti- tutions of our society, our field has evolved many conceptualizations and practices that keep invisible certain hidden organizing principles of our lives, including social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. This book aims to unpack some of these issues in hopes that they become easier to hold in our minds and in our hearts so that we can better go about our work.

The chapters on theoretical perspectives, and, indeed, the book as a whole, evolved out of the work many are doing to uncover those dimensions of “home” and “family” that have been kept hidden and to transform our definitions of home and family so that all families may feel safe and included. These chapters offer a framework for the possibilities of re-visioning family therapy toward a more contextual perspective.

In Chapter 1, we have tried to locate this re-visioning in the history of the family therapy field in general. Following the path established by Peggy McIntosh in the field of education, we try to contextualize the history and possible future of our field. McIntosh’s framework has provided a practical tool for assessing where our field is, as well as where we need to get to in this re-visioning process. We have expanded our overview on issues of social class, spirituality and religion, poverty, gender, and power, with new chapters by Walsh, Hardy, and Ashton and Jordal to expand therapists’ awareness of the centrality of these issues.

Froma Walsh and I (KVH), in our respective chapters (Chapters 3 and 4), provide provocative discussions of these most poignant, volatile, and sensitive issues that are integral to the process of re-visioning related to social class. In Chapter 3, Walsh thoughtfully lays out the dimensions of class, one of the essential and, until now, one of the most invisible elements of re-visioning family therapy from a cultural perspective. It goes unacknowledged that many groups in society are not represented in our institutions and do not have the same entitlements to participate even in our world of family therapy. It goes unsaid that where you come from does matter; that you cannot shed your past, become whatever you want, or move up in class just through hard work and desire. Walsh addresses directly the therapeutic implications of class relations and invites us as therapists to consider the ways in which our work is shaped by the nuances of class. In Chapter 4, I (KVH) discuss poverty as sociocul- tural trauma, illustrating how the limitation of resources organizes the lives of those in need, and the psychological fallout of the assaults of poverty on dignity, the learned voicelessness, shame, stigma, secrecy, and silence that fol- low. This chapter offers suggestions on ways of transforming this fallout and empowering clients through our acknowledgment, countering the devaluation that typically accompanies poverty and encouraging clients to lean in toward transformative possibilities of their survivorship and their voices.

Deidre Ashton and Christian Jordal (Chapter 2) take on some of the aspects of gender and gender nonconformance as they play out in our own

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lives and in the lives of our clients and the intersectionality of race and sexual orientation, offering helpful insights into the hidden dimensions of power as they affect our views of gender. They both remind and caution us that we have outgrown the traditional binary constructions of gender that leave so many clients, therapists, family members, and other loved ones sentenced to a life sentence of invisibility.

Religion and spirituality also play a powerfully influential role in virtu- ally all areas of family life. Yet having a critical discussion about religion is not only difficult to do, but it is often considered inappropriate, sacrilegious, and taboo. Although seldom acknowledged overtly, religion is a major organizing principle in our society. Chapter 5 by Walsh is a firm but gentle reminder of the role that religion and spirituality play in our everyday lives. Race, like religion, is also an important factor that must be placed at the forefront of the agenda for re-visioning family therapy. We believe religion is a salient vari- able because it influences many of the more controversial issues that we, as a society, seem to grapple with passionately on a daily basis. Family-related issues such as same-gender marriages, abortion, masturbation, premarital sex, mother employment, and child-rearing practices ignite strong feelings, even seemingly irreconcilable acrimony, because they are all connected to reli- gion. Former President Barack Obama was forced to claim and reclaim his Christian identity amid numerous allegations that he was really both foreign and a Muslim. In a society that exalts “freedom of religion,” whether he was Muslim, Christian, or Sikh should not have mattered, but it did, because reli- gion matters. By denying its significance, we give its hidden power even more significance.

PART II. SOCIOCULTURAL TRAUMA AND HOMELESSNESS

The authors in this section have given voice to experiences that have also gen- erally been marginalized in the main cultural stories of our society. In a sense, this section is devoted to all of our respective journeys to find home—that is, a place of belonging and acceptance of our multiple identities. In so doing, we share our triumphs and our tribulations. The process of finding home involves each of us, as a fundamental part of the existential search, identifying and claiming disavowed parts of ourselves that we have to make peace with as part of the journey.

In a world that is often divided into the haves and have nots, the valued and devalued, finding a sense of home can be a relentless and often futile endeavor. The chapters in this section highlight how home, homelessness, and trauma are intricately interwoven. As we pulled together our ideas for this book, issues of immigration dominated the national news and raised an array of thorny clinical issues regarding family therapy with populations who are increasingly non–U.S. born, non–English speaking, non-white,1 and from countries often considered “Third World” or whose citizenry is believed to have little to offer this country. We have also been ever more conscious of the

xiv Preface

sense of anomie of those pushed to the margins of our society because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, poverty, disability, and other disadvan- tages. I (MM) have told aspects of my own story (Chapter 6), trying to sepa- rate out some of the threads of privilege from those of oppression in my jour- ney trying to dissect the complexities of racial and class privilege in relation to a history of gender and ethnic oppression. This section includes a rich and thoughtful chapter (Chapter 7) by Celia Jaes Falicov on issues of culture and cultural identity in relation to migration and the complexities of transnational families, including issues of loss, adaptation, and network reconstruction. The ideas discussed by Falicov will be enormously helpful to all who work with immigrant families, both documented and nondocumented.

Even though Obama made concerted efforts to avoid mentioning race, it was still an integral part of our nation’s discourse and reality, sometimes overtly but mostly by innuendo and the use of code words. Race is a prime definer of all interactions in our society, with sharp differences that often exist between the racially based perceptions of whites and African Americans. In Chapter 9, I (KVH) remind us that race and other manifestations of oppres- sion are always, at every moment, influencing our perceptions and ultimately our relationships, both in and outside of the family.

In Chapter 8, Paulette Moore Hines discusses hope as a critical tool of assessment and intervention. She examines issues of transcendence, spiritual- ity, hope, and resilience, which have long been eschewed in our theory and practice. For thousands of years such ideas have been the primary resources for people in emotional distress. It is high time we reintegrate this dimension into our conceptual formulations. The belief in something beyond our indi- viduality and our personal self-interest is our only hope to have a future. We trust that in the future this area will begin to receive the attention it deserves, as more therapy incorporates transcendent ideas into our clinical assessment of families under stress and in our approaches to healing.

PART III. RACIAL IDENTITY

Typically, discussions of culture and racism focus on the marginalized group as the “other.” Whiteness, and the multitudinous ways in which it shapes interac- tions, both inside and outside of families, almost always remains invisible. Re- visioning our field requires that we explore most carefully and explicitly those who see themselves as the norm and those who have established the norms. The chapters included in this section are attempts to deconstruct race both for those who have been historically subjugated and for the dominant group.

Rockey and Sharla Robbins’s discussion of Native American families and culture is an eye-opening perspective on trauma, healing, and the meaning of belonging and home. Their chapter (Chapter 10) reminds us how easy it is to “for- get” and define people by their DSM numbers rather than by whom they belong to. Instead, we should all be dedicated to remembering, and “re-membering,”

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shattered communities and bearing witness. Their illustrations offer invaluable suggestions on possibilities for working with Native American families.

Peggy McIntosh’s classic challenge to our “invisible knapsack of white privilege” is part of her crucial series of articles that have helped us to begin re-visioning race as well as gender in the field of education. In Chapter 15, McIntosh takes the lofty, virtually abstract concept of white privilege and makes its impact visible through the most mundane everyday experiences. Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio (Chapter 16) offers a critique of white male domi- nance and considers what must change so that white men can be collaborative partners with everyone else in families and communities in the 21st century. In Chapter 17, Jodie Kliman, Hinda Winawer, and David Trimble examine “the inevitable whiteness of being (white)” in family therapy training. These authors make the pervasive invisibility of whiteness visible.

Nydia Garcia Preto, in Chapter 11, explores her own and her family’s complex and multiple identities as they evolved over time and through the life cycle. She illustrates, with her broad and inclusive perspective, a profound openness to the complexity of building bridges to hold the sense of belonging to what came before and building connections to what lies ahead of us, which highlights a significant facet in the transformation of family therapy.

Marlene F. Watson (Chapter 14), Ana M. Hernandez (Chapter 13), and MaryAnna Domokos- Cheng Ham (Chapter 12), each in her unique way, discuss the powerful connections that exist between race and identity devel- opment. Watson provides a gripping and heartfelt account of what it means to grow up as an African American female in an oppressive society where societal messages regarding race, class, and gender often collide. Ham offers a critical and insightful examination of the life experiences of a multiracial person searching for a sense of belonging. In a society that is obsessed with binary notions of race, this chapter brings much-needed attention to the chal- lenges of what it means to be a person of mixed-race heritage. Kiran Shahreen Kaur Arora (Chapter 18) also asserts the importance of thinking about race beyond the Black–white binary and how the experiences of those who identify as Brown can be deemed not to belong.

The collective work and wisdom of the authors in this section remind us how the toxic messages that emanate from racism can leave indelible scars on the psyches and souls of people of color through the unconscious internaliza- tion of debilitating negative racial messages.

PART IV. CULTURAL LEGACIES AND STORIES: THERAPISTS’ EXPERIENCES

Personal narratives are a major part of our attempt to shift our paradigm to re-vision families and family therapy. From Murray Bowen’s first account of his own family at a 1967 research meeting, which stunned the field by break- ing the rules of academic and professional discourse, we have gradually been stretching and transforming the boundaries of our dialogues to create more

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inclusive ways of thinking about our work. The individualistic models of “sci- entific” discourse have proven inadequate to the realm of healing and therapy. These linear models are of limited relevance in a world where our lives are so profoundly interconnected. It is often through personal narratives that we learn most about those aspects of our experience that do not fit into our theo- retical and clinical models. These stories may be key to liberating us toward new visions of our work.

Elaine Pinderhughes’s classic chapter (Chapter 19) describing her research on her own family explores the silenced history of white exploitation and internalized racism in her Black and white ancestors. Her story is a remark- able unpacking of the multigenerational traumatic impact of racism on a fam- ily. Fernando Colón-López’s narrative in Chapter 21 about his search for his past and his identity in his lost mother’s story is a remarkable example of the hidden oppressions of colonized groups and of the power of uncovering the submerged cultural dimensions of one’s history. It is also a striking example of the interface of racial and cultural oppression and mental illness.

John D. Folwarski’s personal recollection (Chapter 22) of a childhood in a Polish orphanage is a profound reflection of the effects of Polish subordina- tion in European history, as well as a story of the impact of immigrant cultural disruption. Folwarski’s narrative is also an indirect testimonial to other salient themes that are replete in many of the stories told in this volume: stories of belonging and disconnection, stories of home and homelessness, and stories of suffering and survival.

The other authors in this section—Linda Stone Fish, Donna Dallal- Ferne, Saliha Bava, Robert Shelby, and Elijah C. Nealy—all share stories of cultural legacies and of their recurring efforts to integrate the frayed threads of their histories into their contemporary lives. Shelby’s pathway to finding home (Chapter 20) required him to come to terms with the white privilege, pathological shame and guilt, and the perversion of morality often associated with whiteness. Acknowledging and claiming this ugly part of his past was in many ways a necessary precursor to the modern-day clarity that he brings to his antiracism work. His story, along with other authors’ accounts of what it meant to grow up in a racist family, should provide inspiration to other white and majority-group therapists regarding how the process of embracing disavowed parts of our cultural legacies can liberate and motivate us to be advocates for social justice.

Linda Stone Fish, a gifted teacher and therapist, provides an in-depth look at how issues associated with her Jewish identity and that of a Palestinian graduate student, Donna Dallal-Ferne, managed to creep into the sacred space of the classroom and graduate education. Their chapter (Chapter 24) provides a poignant discussion of the importance of being able to see the world through the eyes of those we consider “other.”

Elijah Nealy, in Chapter 25, examines the complexity of identity transi- tions and transformations across the life cycle with a provocatively insightful and transformative discussion.

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All of the chapters in Part IV center the cultural experiences and legacies of therapists who challenge the dominant narrative that suggests that their stories are insignificant. Through the telling of their personal stories and hon- oring the ways in which they are embedded in cultural legacies, the authors help to shift the core values of our field away from “objectivity” and “profes- sional distance” to values that acknowledge the role and significance of the self-of-the-therapist.

PART V. IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

The chapters in this section focus on specific clinical issues for particular cultural groups. They are meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive, indicating the subtlety and complexity of our cases when considered through a cultural filter. Each of the chapters in this section offers a re-visioning per- spective by moving the subject under consideration “from margin to center,” in bell hooks’s phrase. They use the group’s own frame of reference for assess- ment and intervention, challenging our field’s dominant notions of clinical practice. We believe the process of locating oneself and using one’s personal story as a frame of reference for our clinical work is essential to the re-vision- ing process.

In Chapter 26, Elijah C. Nealy examines the much-neglected area of les- bian and gay family life and the need for therapists to understand the par- ticular challenges facing those who live within a novel or marginalized family configuration. Nealy invites the reader to see how critical it is for us as a field and for society to rethink our traditional notions of family with questions of who is included in such definitions and who remains invisible and mar- ginalized. Robert-Jay Green, in Chapter 27 on gay and lesbian couples, also provides a great deal of practical information that will be helpful for working more effectively with lesbian and gay couples.

Chapter 28, by Hugo Kamya and Marsha Pravder Mirkin, addresses the profound disruptions of migration when families belong to more than one cul- ture, as most families in the United States do. They suggest some of the larger implications of the complexity of biculturality, difference, and acculturation. They can help all of us rethink the very nature of our identity. Instead of mea- suring immigrants as “others,” we can use Kamya and Mirkin’s discussion to re-vision our very notions of assessment and intervention.

We must also develop transformative intervention models based on a re- visioning of families from a contextual perspective. Imelda Colgan McCarthy and Nollaig Byrne have been developing their Fifth Province model for many years. In Chapter 30, they illustrate their model and the creativity of their thinking and work with a complex and tragic case example.

Tazuko Shibusawa’s chapter (Chapter 32), along with several others in this section, encourage us to think more broadly about race as an integral part of the re-visioning process. Her examination of biracial couples moves

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the discussion of race beyond the normal binary notions of Black and white and provides an in-depth discussion of the salient factors to consider and to challenge when providing couple treatment across racial boundaries. Her discussion of biracial couples of Asian descent sheds light on a group that is often invisible in conversations regarding race. She also raises important issues about couple therapy in general, bringing light to the invisible, which has to be a hallmark of the re-visioning of family therapy.

Salome Raheim, Christiana Awosan, and I (KVH) focus our attention on the experiences of African Americans. Raheim (Chapter 31) delves into the rich African American history with music to provide a poignant look at the power of song as an instrument for promoting healing, hope, and justice. Awosan and I (Chapter 29) examine the invisible wounds of racial trauma that often underpins the day-to-day interactions of Black heterosexual couples, offering an array of hands-on, step-by-step strategies that couple therapists can employ with Black couples to enhance their clinical effectiveness.

PART VI. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING

The chapters in this section are devoted to providing cutting-edge ideas for what graduate programs and training institutes must do to prepare the next generation of family therapists, with an eye toward cultural competency. The re-visioning of family therapy requires programs, faculty, and supervisors to reject long-practiced training that has been ostensibly color blind, gender free, classless, and oblivious to sexual orientation.

Evan Imber-Black, a masterful clinical educator and supervisor, exam- ines the challenges, changes, certainties, and uncertainties that confront train- ing family therapists in the 21st century in Chapter 36.

The chapters by N. Norma Akamatsu (Chapter 35) and Matthew R. Mock (Chapter 34) both provide state-of-the-art strategies to invite trainees to think critically about issues of social justice, power, and multiculturalism.

Our chapter in this section (Chapter 33) provides an overview of the program and institutional domains that must be considered if we are going to incorporate understanding of contextual issues and overcome the current biases of our field. If our vision for the field is ever to be actualized, the train- ing of the next generation of family therapists will be crucial.

In many respects, this book represents our concerted effort to practice what we preach. Critical to the re-visioning process we envision is paying acute attention to who is included and who isn’t. We appeal to our better selves to be mindful and respectful of who is at the metaphorical table and what is needed to keep us all actively engaged once we are there. Both our hope and our renewed vision for the field rest on our optimism that each of us will actively resist the “business as usual” mentality that has too often been guiding the thinking and practice of our field. This book is very much about such resistance. It is dedicated to recognition of our unique, culturally based stories of suffering and survival, as well as our common humanity and the

Preface xix

systemic connection of all human beings to each other and to our planet. We hope you will share our belief that re-visioning of family therapy is ultimately about the true inclusion of everyone in the definitions of “family,” “home,” and the healing possibilities of therapy. We hope that you will read, reflect, and heed our call to join us in the struggle to re-vision family therapy.

PART VII. IMPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

The chapters in this section expand notions of what constitutes good research. The authors encourage new ways of thinking about research that challenge the dominant order. Sarita Kaya Davis, in Chapter 37, tackles the taboo topic of cultural bias in research and describes a number of pitfalls to avoid when using research to inform clinical practice. Ken Epstein’s chapter (Chapter 38) integrates principles of relational healing and a trauma-informed paradigm to conduct a critical examination of organizational change in the era of evidence- based practices.

PART VIII. LARGER SYSTEMS WORK: HOW TO BUILD BRIDGES ACROSS THE DIVIDE

The chapters in this section highlight our belief regarding the inextricable connection between our psychology (individually oriented human system) and ecology, how the number of larger systems within which we are embedded profoundly shape our lives. Joanne Bowen (Chapter 39) encourages us to con- sider our human connection with the environment. We believe the re-visioning of family therapy requires all of us to be concerned about the environment and our relationship to each other within the context of our connection to the earth and to nature around us. In Chapter 40, Walter Howard Smith, Jr., an experienced and gifted therapist and systems thinker, applies microlevel and macrolevel family systems theory to a large, bureaucratic child welfare system as an act of activism and transformation. Each of the authors in this section reinforce our fundamental belief that the healing and transformation of the human spirit cannot be achieved unless the lenses we use to understand com- plex human problems are universally broad and systemic. Our vision, scope, and reach must move well beyond the limits of our offices or of any individual to include history, the societal and local context of our current world, and our hopes for the future of our children and our universe.

NOTE

1. We have capitalized “Black” and lowercased “white,” in spite of the convention to do the reverse, because it seems to us that “Black” is a word which at least to some extent was chosen by African Americans to refer to themselves, while “white” does not deserve the “specialness” of capitalization as an honor to the distinction.

My deepest thanks go to my coeditor and coauthor, Ken Hardy, for his wis- dom, dedication, creativity, and humor in working on this book. We have been having deeply meaningful conversations for more than 35 years. Our collaboration on this book for the past two editions has given us the chance to push our thinking forward in ways I hope we can keep expanding. His ideas and moral compass have been a profound inspiration to me. I thank him for wonderful times we have had (not as many as I had hoped!) working through the ideas and details and laughing together over the problems along the way and at times arguing fiercely, as we are both strong-minded and do not give up our positions lightly. I am in awe of his brilliance, creativity, and deep com- mitment to the endeavor of re-visioning family therapy.

I am also in awe of the contributors to this volume who have found the courage to write about their most painful life experiences and the wisdom of their deepest ideas with trust that the readers will bring empathy to their reading. For the pain and courage of so many whose experiences are acknowl- edged in this book, I am profoundly grateful.

I thank also my mentor and companion Scott Joplin, whose music saw me through the work on this book and through so many other endeavors in my life. His magnificent music and the effort of his life to voice his intuitions, love, and hope in his compositions have been an ongoing inspiration to me for many years.

At The Guilford Press, Seymour Weingarten supported this book from its first inception, Jim Nageotte offered good counsel and support throughout the development of the last two editions, and Jeannie Tang has been a most gracious, prompt, conscientious, and thoughtful production editor.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments xxi

I thank my life-mates: Nydia Garcia Preto, Paulette Moore Hines, Jayne Mahboubi, Nollaig and Henry Byrne, Imelda McCarthy, Roberto Font, John Folwarski, Fernando Colón-López, Robert-Jay Green, Froma Walsh, Elaine Pinderhughes, Barbara Petkov, Charlee and Alex Sutton, Sueli Petry, Eliana Gil, Nancy Boyd-Franklin, and A. J. Franklin have all offered help and inspi- ration when needed. Their support is an ongoing richness to me every day. And to my dearest colleagues and friends who have gone before, but who live on always in my heart: Betty Carter, Carol Anderson, Evelyn Lee, and Michael White.

My sisters, Morna Livingston and Neale McGoldrick, have been through- out my life a major source of support and inspiration, both creative teachers and authors in their own right. I feel I am never alone when I connect with their belief in me and their efforts to promote the same kinds of cultural trans- formation in their own lives and work.

My husband, another creative teacher and writer, supports me every day in more ways than he realizes (and surely more ways than I fully real- ize myself!). I am very grateful. I thank him for the many wonderful days we worked in parallel on our books and for all that he has given me for so many years. And I thank my son, John, for doing his thing and for expanding our family with his wonderful and creative wife, Anna, their magnificent son, Owen, and our creative and dedicated in-laws, Renee and Bill De Palma, who have also pursued creativity and education in their own careers. I hope that John, Anna, and Owen will have many life endeavors as gratifying as I have had. My nephews, Guy and Hugh Livingston, have also inspired me with their efforts to build cultural bridges in their music and artistic creativity, and I thank them for their support and for what they are doing along similar lines in their worlds to promote cultural understanding and transformation. I am also grateful for my talented niece-in-law, Maria Sperling, whose work embraces a similar effort to build cultural bridges. And I thank my grandnephew, Renzo Robert Livingston, for having become such a wonderful part of my life for the past 8 years.

Thanks also to Dan Morin for his creativity and dedication to develop- ing genograms, including in this edition. Ken and I were committed to having genograms included wherever possible in the text to illustrate our basic idea that mapping out the cultural context, best done with genograms, is essential for the work we believe in.

I thank my parents, Margaret Bush, and my Aunt Mamie Cahalane for giving me the courage to face truths about our family and about myself, which their strength helped me to acknowledge. They live in my heart and make me stronger every day. They have made this book possible. Finally, I want to thank my students and clients, who challenge and inspire me every day.

—Monica McGoldrick

xxii Acknowledgments

My involvement in this important body of work would not have been possible without the generosity, commitment, and dedication of my beloved friend, colleague, and soul sister Monica McGoldrick. Whether on the streets of Amsterdam, New York City, or Anaheim, I have appreciated immensely the intense, vein-protruding conversations that we have had over the years about matters of human indignities and social justice. As we both are well aware, we have not always agreed with each other’s positions, yet we have always genuinely respected each other. Thank you in the most heartfelt way for invit- ing me to work with you on the third edition of Re-Visioning Family Therapy. Our many conversations, collaborations, and brainstorming sessions regard- ing this issue have been inspirational and life transforming. Thank you for believing in me and for your foresight in using the collaborative spirit of our relationship to demonstrate that working across vast cultural divides is pos- sible.

I would like to thank Jim Nageotte of The Guilford Press for his guid- ance, support, and sage advice throughout every phase of this project. I would also like to thank Dhara Mehta-Desai for the tireless and dedicated assistance she provided to this project throughout the entire process from start to finish. A special thanks is also extended to our many friends, colleagues, and broth- ers and sisters of the struggle who have contributed to the book. We thank you for your tireless efforts, patience with short turnaround times, and willingness to “go there with and for us” in the telling of your stories for the book. Obvi- ously, without your contributions we have no book.

And, finally but not insignificantly, I would like to thank my family for their unrelenting support and for being a tremendous source of inspiration, motivation, and resolve in my life. I am so painfully aware virtually every day of my life that every single accomplishment, accolade, and particle of privilege that I enjoy has been achieved by standing firmly on your tired, weary, but omnipresent shoulders. Please know that it is permanently etched in the walls of my psyche and soul that your individual and collective sacrifices and suf- fering have provided the pathway to my opportunities. I will never forget . . . and I am eternally grateful. One of the reasons why this book has been so important to me personally is because of the possibility that it promises for the emergence of a new world order—an invitation for us to think differently about each other, and because we think differently, to be able to act differ- ently with each other. It is my hope and desire that the next generation of Hardys and McGoldricks, as well as the descendants of the many others who have contributed to this book, will inherit a different world where skin color, the shape of one’s eyes, whom one loves romantically, or where one’s ances- tral roots are buried will not determine access to opportunity, dignity, and respect. This is the re-visioning that we envision with this book.

—Kenneth V. hardy

xxiii

I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

1. The Power of Naming 3 Monica McGoldrick and Kenneth V. Hardy

2. Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power: Equity, Accountability, 28 and Refusing to Silo Deidre Ashton and Christian Jordal

3. Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 37 Froma Walsh

4. The Sociocultural Trauma of Poverty: Theoretical and Clinical Considerations 57 for Working with Poor Families Kenneth V. Hardy

5. Spirituality, Suffering, and Resilience 73 Froma Walsh

II. SOCIOCULTURAL TRAUMA AND HOMELESSNESS

6. Homelessness and the Spiritual Meaning of Home 93 Monica McGoldrick

7. Transnational Journeys 108 Celia Jaes Falicov

8. Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain: Hope, Culture, and Therapy 123 Paulette Moore Hines

Contents

xxiv Contents

9. Toward a Psychology of the Oppressed: 133 Understanding the Invisible Wounds of Trauma Kenneth V. Hardy

III. RACIAL IDENTITY

10. Native American Identity Transformation: 151 Integrating a Naming Ceremony with Family Therapy Rockey Robbins and Sharla Robbins

11. Letting My Spirits Guide Me: Multicultural and Multiracial Legacies 168 Nydia Garcia Preto

12. Moving toward Multiracial Legitimacy: A Personal Reflection 176 MaryAnna Domokos‑Cheng Ham

13. On Being a Black Dominican 191 Ana M. Hernandez

14. Facing the Black Shadow: Power from the Inside Out 200 Marlene F. Watson

15. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming 215 to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies Peggy McIntosh

16. Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy 226 Ken Dolan‑Del Vecchio

17. The Inevitable Whiteness of Being (White): Whiteness and Intersectionality 236 in Family Therapy Practice and Training Jodie Kliman, Hinda Winawer, and David Trimble

18. Brown in America: Living with Racial and Religious Bias 251 Kiran Shahreen Kaur Arora

IV. CULTURAL LEGACIES AND STORIES: THERAPISTS’ EXPERIENCES

19. Black Genealogy Revisited: Restorying an African American Family 261 Elaine Pinderhughes

20. White Privilege, Pathological Shame and Guilt, 283 and the Perversion of Morality Robert Shelby

21. The Discovery of My Multicultural Identity 298 Fernando Colón‑López

22. Going Home: One Orphan’s Journey from Chicago to Poland and Back 308 John D. Folwarski

Contents xxv

23. Hyperlinked Identity: A Generative Resource in a Divisive World 318 Saliha Bava

24. The Semitism Schism, Revisited: Jewish–Palestinian Legacies 336 in a Family Therapy Training Context Linda Stone Fish and Donna Dallal‑Ferne

25. No Single‑Issue Lives: Identity Transitions and Transformations 348 across the Life Cycle Elijah C. Nealy

V. IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

26. Working with LGBT Families 363 Elijah C. Nealy

27. Same‑Sex Couples: Successful Coping with Minority Stress 388 Robert‑Jay Green

28. Working with Immigrant and Refugee Families 403 Hugo Kamya and Marsha Pravder Mirkin

29. Therapy with Heterosexual Black Couples through a Racial Lens 419 Kenneth V. Hardy and Christiana I. Awosan

30. A Fifth‑Province Approach to Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context: 433 Marginal Illuminations Imelda Colgan McCarthy and Nollaig Byrne

31. The Power of Song to Promote Healing, Hope, and Justice: 449 Lessons from the African American Experience Salome Raheim

32. Interracial Asian Couples: Beyond Black and White 464 Tazuko Shibusawa

VI. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING

33. Re‑Visioning Family Therapy Training 477 Kenneth V. Hardy and Monica McGoldrick

34. Social Justice in Family Therapy Training: The Power of Personal 496 and Family Narratives Matthew R. Mock

35. Teaching about Racism and the Implications for Practice 512 N. Norma Akamatsu

36. A Letter to Family Therapists in the 21st Century 526 Evan Imber‑Black

xxvi Contents

VII. IMPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

37. Ways of Knowing: Cultural Bias Pitfalls to Avoid 539 When Using Research to Inform Practice Sarita Kaya Davis

38. Relational Healing and Organizational Change in the Time of Evidence 553 Ken Epstein

VIII. LARGER SYSTEMS WORK: HOW TO BUILD BRIDGES ACROSS THE DIVIDE

39. Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes 569 through Historic Ethnography: An Anthropological Exploration of the Human Connection with the Environment Joanne Bowen

40. An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare 588 Walter Howard Smith, Jr.

Index 597

P A R T I

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

We have recently received the shock of major backlash (or should we use Van Jones’s term and call it “whitelash”) to what had just begun to seem like an emerging appreciation of our nation’s diversity. The dramatic increase of immigrants in the United States and of nonwhite1, non- European citizens altogether, has been forcing us to come to terms with our multiculturality. We have always been a nation of immigrants, but never before, despite previ- ous waves of immigration and increasing rates of cultural intermarriage, has our nation been as diverse as it is today. Our diversity is expanding expo- nentially, although the change is much more apparent on the coasts and the southern border of the United States than in the large but less populated areas of the interior of the country. The population changes of the past 50 years, along with the communication revolution with the Internet and social media, have been changing our nation dramatically and forcing us to challenge our unquestioned assumptions about who we are and what our values should be.

C H A P T E R 1

The Power of Naming

Monica McGoldrick Kenneth V. Hardy

Treasure the approaches and ways of thinking that you have learned more than the facts you have accumulated. . . . Facts will be presented in such a way as to veil the ways of thinking embedded in them. And so to reveal these hidden ways of thinking, to suggest alternate frameworks, to imagine better ways of living in evolving worlds, to imagine new human relations that are freed from persisting hierarchies, whether they be racial or sexual or geopolitical— yes, I think this is the work of educated human beings. I might then ask you to think about education as the practice of freedom.

—AngelA DAvis, Grinnell College Graduation (2007, p. 34)

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? —lin- MAnuel MirAnDA, Hamilton (2016, p. 180)

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open.

—Thich nhAT hAnh, “Please Call Me by My True Names” (1991, pp. 123–124)

4 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

The true multicultural richness and complexity of our nation offer us the greatest possibilities for re- visioning who we are and who we can be. Our diversity can become our greatest strength. On the other hand, when we fear our diversity, our prejudices and rigidities as a nation are highlighted, and our systemic appreciation and potential to lead the way toward a future for our planet disappear. Our fears can bring out a pernicious ability to exclude and dehumanize those who are considered not to belong. Ultimately, this dehu- manization would mean death to our civilization. As Bryan Stevenson (2015) so touchingly puts it:

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn our- selves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarcera- tion and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it is necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and— perhaps— we all need some measure of unmerited grace. (p. 18)

Those who are not of the dominant culture have always tended to experi- ence our society from a multicultural perspective, which more easily appreci- ates the need for mercy and compassion. But the dominant culture, from the inception of our nation, has tended to deny and mystify our multiculturalism, articulating the magnificent promise of “liberty and justice for all” only for a very strict minority— white men—and obscuring at every level the insidious hidden misrepresentations of whom “all” would include.

But a multicultural lens can be the model for the ideals our forefathers set out, the model for the cultural flexibility we require as systemic therapists in this, the most culturally diverse society that has ever existed, for times when vindictiveness and cutoff are increasingly coming to the fore and trampling the ideals of democracy.

Appreciating our diversity as a nation transforms our awareness of what it means to be American. Except for Native Americans who immigrated here thousands of years before the thoughts of our nation began, the rest of us are all relatively recent immigrants. But the ideology put forth by all our govern- mental institutions has generally included a denial of our more complex heri- tage of injustice to those not part of the dominant group. To appreciate who we really are requires expanding our awareness of the truths of our heritage. As Sanford Ungar (1995) wrote about becoming conscious of the meaning of his family’s migration for him, a third- generation grandchild of Eastern European Jewish immigrant ancestors, “I was no less American than ever before, of course, but now, in middle age, I had discovered my own immi- grant consciousness. Indeed, in that sense, I could now feel more authentically American” (p. 18).

Only by attending to the multiplicitous voices that have until now been silenced in the dominant story of who we are as a nation can we become

The Power of Naming 5

“more authentically American.” Although African Americans, Hmong refu- gees, and recent immigrants from Sri Lanka or Syria have their own cultures of origin and particular experiences of migration and dislocation, they need equally to feel themselves included in the definition of “American.”

But our clinical models, training, and practice have ignored this multi- cultural dimension of our society. We have developed theories and conducted research to define working models for intervention without accounting for their cultural limitations. We have done research on the absurd assumption that we could manualize intervention and apply it to any clients, no matter what their history or context, on the assumption that everyone should be able to fit into the universalized category of middle- class white people (primarily men) in the United States. That is the standard by which we measure all oth- ers and usually find them failing. We have not even noticed that families from many cultural groups rarely come to our therapy and that, if they do, they do not find our techniques helpful. It is we who must change and expand to include them, not they who must learn to fit into our schemas.

The failure of our society to embrace and respect diversity is the great- est single threat to the survival of our civilization. We must break the con- straints of our traditional monocular vision of families as white, heterosex- ual, and middle class. The boundaries of our field must be redefined to take into account our country’s ever- expanding diversity and the way that societal oppression has silenced the voices and constrained the lives of individuals, families, and whole communities since our nation was founded. Racist, sex- ist, ethnocentric, classist, and heterosexist power hierarchies constrain our clients’ lives and determine what gets defined as a problem and what services our society will support in response.

Systemic practice, like any set of ideas and practices, is always evolving, but it originally developed mostly in reaction to Freudian psychology, which had focused primarily on intrapsychic processes as the core of human psy- chology. Systemic theory and practice provided a kind of corrective perspec- tive, focusing attention on interpersonal processes among family members as central to understanding psychological functioning. Although some family therapists eschewed any other level of analysis than the interpersonal/fam- ily level, most came to think in terms of multiple systemic levels, from the biological to the familial to the cultural and societal. However, it has been difficult to shift our thinking about therapy beyond the family to consider the therapeutic implications of the cultural context in which families are embed- ded, given that our dominant ideology about who defines the parameters of conversation in our society has not been seriously open to challenge or revi- sion.

This third edition of this book continues our attempt to re- vision the dominant discourses within family therapy. We must examine the ways in which we have organized our theory and practice and analyze how they rep- licate the dominant value systems of our society. Such re- visioning will be a slow and difficult evolution and will not take place without a backlash.

6 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

In this introductory chapter, we want to map out a series of phases that describe both the past and the possible future of family therapy, a framework we hope will contribute to the transformation of theory and practice.

Our society is still organized to accommodate a type of family struc- ture that represents a very small percentage of U.S. households— nuclear family units with employed fathers and homemaker mothers who devote themselves to the care of husbands and children. Family therapy, like our dominant social ideology in general, has tended toward a view of families as self- sufficient, nuclear units. However, our definition that two parents are critical for child development has always been a euphemism for a mother who is perpetually on call for everyone emotionally and physically and a distant, money- providing father. Families with such a structure cannot help being problematic.

Although poor families are the only ones seen as deficient, because of their obvious and critical dependence on systems beyond themselves for their survival, the reality is that all families are dependent for their survival on sys- tems beyond themselves.

But those of us who are of the dominant groups fail to realize this because of the unseen ways the government and others support us. Our needs are met and taken for granted and thus rendered invisible to us (Coontz, 2016). Schools, courts, the police, and all other institutions of the society operate for the protection and benefit of the dominant groups. Thus those of us who make the rules and definitions are kept blind to our privilege (see McIntosh, Chapter 15, this volume) and to our dependence on those who take care of us. The problem is not the dependence of certain people on the society, but the delusion of autonomy of the rest of us.

The dominant groups are using up the world’s resources with no aware- ness or accountability (Worldwatch Institute, 2017). The economic system, the prison system, the drug rehabilitation industry, the gun industry, and the legal and governmental systems make money for the dominant groups of our society on the backs of the poor and the disenfranchised, who serve us in our homes and factories, making our clothing and supplies, while we remain blind to our connection to them, not seeing our exploitation or the bias in our behavior. We seldom recognize the invisible workforce of the poor toil- ing tirelessly for our comfort. They come at night to hospitals, hotels, and the halls of academia. They are commissioned essentially to be our caretakers and to “keep America clean.” We never even notice that they, like us, are par- ents, grandparents, beloved children, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews; they remain objectified, invisible, and known only by the services that they provide for us, such as “the janitor” or “the maid.”

Paradoxically, the ideals stated, but not meant, in our Constitution could be the foundation of a truly egalitarian society, perhaps the first in human history, but only if we acknowledge the pernicious, unspoken exclusions on which it was founded. To do this, we must admit that our founders built slavery and the disenfranchisement of people of color and women into the

The Power of Naming 7

system and that these inequities remain in place today. Our history books still brag about the foundation of our nation, minimizing the slaughter, slav- ery, and forced invisibility of more than two- thirds of the population. This is hard to see, because what we espouse overtly mystifies the underlying facts of exclusion. Our society makes it difficult to notice the intersection between the spoken and the unspoken. So we continue to invest in the ideal that we are “the land of the free,” even though some of us are and have always been free on the backs of others. We continue to believe that escaping the walls of pov- erty is simply a matter of personal will and hard work, denying that wealth and class are well- elaborated systems that negate the individual efforts of the poor while inflating the opportunities of the structurally, economically, and racially privileged.

We therapists need to revise our books to take into account the unspoken structures, the cultural, racial, and class- and gender- biased hierarchies that limit the lives of many of our potential or real clients and are the underpin- nings of our society. It goes unacknowledged that African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other racially oppressed people do not have the same entitlements to participate in our institutions, including in our world of family therapy. Just as our history books have told primarily the history of heterosexual white men, our family therapy models have been researched and developed by and for therapy primarily addressed to families of the dominant groups. Thera- pists must begin to think of families in terms of the communities they live in. We have ignored community, focusing on the interior of the nuclear family, while ignoring the larger context, as well as all the history of social exclu- sion of whole groups from participation in our institutions. It is impossible to understand or treat poor families without a comprehensive understanding of how stigma and limited access to resources affect their symptoms and pre- sentation. We continually turn a blind eye to the pervasive impact of oppres- sion on the poor, the racially subjugated, and other marginalized groups who behave in predictable ways, not because of who they are but because they have been forced to live in a context of ongoing devaluation and discrimina- tion. Delivering more culturally competent services will require our field to consider the broader ecology in which families are embedded. Widening our lenses to take history, context, and community into account will require us to reconsider many of our assumptions.

Children need more than one or even two adults to raise them, and adults need more than one or two close relationships to get them through life. As therapists, we need to encourage our clients to go beyond the dominant cul- ture’s definitions of family, to pay attention to relationships with siblings, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, aunts, and uncles. And beyond this we must attend to friendships and to the health and safety of neighborhoods and community contexts in which families live. We need to consider the role of caretakers, housekeepers, maids, and nannies, as well as godparents, teachers, and other mentors, in the rearing of children and the care of the disabled and the elderly.

8 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

THE PROBLEMS OF NAMING

In family therapy, we get paid by the names we give to the problems our clients present to us. The politics and economics of naming are powerful. Names mean money, and they mean status. Naming has become also big busi- ness. Robert Spitzer, one of the senior developers of the DSM-III (the diag- nostic manual that contains the numbers by which we in mental health get paid), is among many who have criticized the most recent DSM-5 for having forced those who worked on the document to sign a nondisclosure agreement; this meant that the entire process of developing the manual was conducted in secret. Seventy percent of the task force members reported having direct industry ties (Cosgrove, Bursztajn, & Krimsky, 2009; Cosgrove & Krimsky, 2012)! Another major figure in the world of psychiatry, Allen Frances (2014), formerly head of the DSM-IV Task Force, has written a stiff critique of our diagnostic system in Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of- Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life. He has also written, “The work on DSM-5 has displayed the most unhappy combination of soaring ambition and weak methodology” (Frances, 2009, p. 1). He also has great concern about the incredibly secretive process of its development.

Clearly, the “evidence” of the DSM is driven by finances and race, social class, and gender privilege. DSM-5, which runs 900 pages, devotes about 20 pages to cultural issues in diagnosis and 1 page to gender differences. Perhaps this is not surprising, given the gender and cultural backgrounds of those who created the DSM. We are, for example, much more likely to diagnose the victims of abuse than the perpetrators. The perpetrators of violence against others go virtually unnamed in the DSM. Psychologists define with elaborated jargon practically the whole life course of those who have experienced trauma but leave out of their descriptions and nomenclature those who traumatize others, just as we do not consider issues such as racial or gender oppression or poverty in our discussion of diagnosis, even though we know well that these are major factors in psychopathology.

In the era of slavery, two mental disorders were described as prevalent among slaves (Tavris, 1992; DeGruy Leary, 2005):

1. Drapetomania, characterized by a single symptom: the uncontrolla- ble urge to escape slavery. This disorder was literally called a “flight- from-home mania.”

2. Dysathesia aethiopia, for which many symptoms were described: destroying property on the plantation, being disobedient, talking back, fighting with their masters, and refusing to work.

These diagnoses turned the desire for liberty into a sickness that was the problem of the slave, not the slave owner. There was, not surprisingly, no corresponding disorder characterized by the irresistible urge to possess slaves

The Power of Naming 9

or to mistreat them. The brutal acts of inhumanity that slavery involved were never considered reflections of mental illness. The diagnostic gaze focused instead on the so- called mental disorders of the slave for wanting to escape slavery. Such “disorders” were, incidentally, considered almost completely treatable by whipping or amputation of toes. The slave owner remained com- pletely invisible in this nomenclature and thus as needing no treatment him- self. Even today, racism is not only not a diagnosis, it is not even listed in the index of the DSM-5.

Using labels as a means of control is a long story in this country. As another example, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the so- called “scientifically based” DSM, until it was voted out of existence in 1973. As with other oppressed groups, those who promote hatred and violence against homosexuals received no labeling then and still receive no labeling today. Even when homosexuality was finally removed from the DSM as a mental disorder, the decision masqueraded as a scientific decision (Spiegel, 2002; Tomm, 1990; Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004; Kutchins & Kirk, 1997). Robert Spitzer, the chief architect of the DSM for many years, played a key role in removing homosexuality from the category of mental illness, but he did not want to give it the stamp of “normalcy,” viewing it as “suboptimal” behav- ior. His argument was that if DSM were to include suboptimal behaviors as “mental disorders,” other phenomena, such as “celibacy, religious fanaticism, racism, vegetarianism, and male chauvinism,” would have to be included as diagnostic categories (Kutchins & Kirk, 1997, p. 76). The organization went along with his wishes.

We as a society further obscure who does what to whom by labels, such as “alcoholic family,” as if the whole family has the disorder, and “domestic violence” or “violent family,” terms that obscure who are the agents and who are the victims of abuse.

Since a significant part of the supposed “scientific evidence” on which the DSM claims that its naming is based has been funded by drug companies (Cosgrove et al., 2009), the voting process of American Psychiatric Associa- tion committees is thus disguised as science.

Dominic Murphy (2015), who has been examining the attitudes toward culture in DSM-5, suggests that the problem of how culture is thought about begins with the problem that “Americans are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). If western, educated, industrialized, rich democratic people are the norm, cultural variation must refer to ways of being mentally ill that depart from the expectations of western medical schools” (Murphy, 2015, p. 98), what Hughes (1985) referred to as “deviant deviance” (p. 3).

To give just one more example, the latest DSM includes a diagnosis called “dependent personality disorder” for the person who is overly submissive and desires to be cared for, such that he or she fears separation and clings to oth- ers. However, the entire manual offers absolutely no way to assess how real- istic that person’s fears might be! Meanwhile, the DSM has no comparable

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diagnosis for those who use their power to control and intimidate others. There is no diagnosis for those who are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, who have a need for sexual conquests, or who are emotionally or physically abusive. Indeed, it is not sufficient, according to the DSM, to have been physi- cally or sexually violent to receive a diagnosis of conduct disorder or antiso- cial personality disorder. The latter diagnosis is only given if the person has had symptoms of a conduct disorder before the age of 15! And this lack of acknowledgment exists in a society in which a woman is beaten on the aver- age every 18 seconds and in which physical abuse is the most common cause of injury for women, more widespread than breast cancer or car accidents (“DSM V codes,” 2015).

Similarly, families of color, families of the poor, and immigrant families, whose norms and values are different from those of the dominant norms, remain marginalized, invalidated, and pathologized as deficient, dysfunc- tional, or, worse, invisible within the DSM naming system.

I (KVH) have suggested, only partly in jest (Hardy, 2007b), the develop- ment of a DSM-M (marginalization version) that would bring attention to the role that the oppressor plays in the life of the oppressed. The DSM-M would, for example, contain diagnostic categories such as:

1. Addiction to domination disorder (ADD). This category would be reserved for those who cannot resist subjugating others through use of force, domination, and a reliance on the establishment of rigid hierar- chical boundaries.

2. Privilege disorder. This category would be for those who enjoy the unearned benefits afforded to them by virtue of living in a patriar- chal, sexist, heterosexist, racist, Christian- oriented society. One of the major features of this disorder is to have privilege but claim not to know or feel it.

3. Oppositional cop disorder (OCD). This would be reserved for police and other individuals or groups who use excessive force, particularly toward the disadvantaged, without discernible provocation. A gener- alized, overly aggressive demeanor toward people of color, gays, Mus- lims, or the poor often characterizes the disorder.

4. Clinical oppression disorder (COD). This condition is often mani- fested in marginalized people who have lived their lives in the midst of sociocultural oppression. The major symptoms associated with COD are learned voicelessness, learned helplessness, suppressed anger and rage, and a generalized sense of suspicion, with ideas of persecu- tion.

Years ago, but maybe even more relevant today, Karl Tomm (1990) sug- gested another diagnosis, “DSM Syndrome,” characterized by a compulsive desire to objectify and label people according to predetermined psychiatric categories. Such satirical nosologies highlight the invisibility of the power of

The Power of Naming 11

systems of domination and oppression that have power to name and label peo- ple in ways that wreak havoc on the lives of oppressed people while remaining invisible under the guise of being based on scientific evidence.

LABELS: MAKING ROOM FOR BOTH GROUP CONNECTIONS AND UNIQUENESS

Labels can be both reassuring and dangerous. They define boundaries— who is in and who is out. Labels of self- definition may be reassuring when we use them to specify a group to which we belong, thus overcoming our sense of isolation. But they also define the limits of that belonging. Coming to define myself (MM) as Irish American, for example, was an affirmation at the deep- est level of my identity. It gave me a profound sense that neither I nor my family were alone in our ways of experiencing the world. I realized that much of what I thought was strange or eccentric made sense in the light of Irish his- tory. At a certain point, however, when I define myself as “Irish American” or by any other fixed group identity, the boundary becomes exclusionary and distances me from others who are not in that group. I may be better served by emphasizing other identities to support my connections to them.

To receive a diagnosis, whether attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, bipolar disorder, or something else, may provide reas- surance that a person’s experience of something being “wrong” has a name. There may also be some treatment that is useful, and it can be a relief to have a name for something we have struggled with. But the diagnosis can also easily become one’s self- identity, and it may become difficult to get free of the label. Once people have been given a label of having a disability, for example, it may become a challenge to view themselves as “normal.” Such labeling can be pejorative. The new discussion of whether grief is a disease is another case in point. If grief is a disease, one can have medication for depression reimbursed. But it also means that going through a normal grieving process becomes path- ological.

As a society, we need to transform the way we think about sameness and difference and increase the flexibility of our thinking to include systemic perspectives that are more nuanced. The dichotomous definitions of “normal” and “pathological” should not be our only ways of thinking about mental health. If we take race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, ethnicity, and the life cycle into account, for example, we may expand our thinking depend- ing on what each person’s position is at a given moment in the life cycle and in his or her cultural context. Our survival as human beings depends on whether we can remove the blinders of denial that prevent our seeing past our differ- ences to our human connectedness and, at the same time, make more room for tolerance of these differences.

If we look carefully enough, each of us is a hodgepodge. Developing “cultural competence” requires us to go beyond labels and the dominant val- ues and explore the complexity of culture and cultural identity— not without

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values and judgments about what is adaptive, healthy, or “normal,” but with- out accepting unquestioningly our society’s definitions of these culturally determined categories. We need to develop a perspective on our identities that allows for at least three levels:

1. Our uniqueness as individuals. 2. Our various group identities that give us a sense of “home”—of defin-

ing our relatedness to others. 3. Our common partnership with every other human being, without a

sense of which we human beings will surely perish.

The goal is to create a world in which everyone can feel at home, a place in which everyone has a voice, in which our flowing sense of group identities gives us more a sense of boundaries that include than of divisions that exclude. The notion of culture is almost a mystical sense of connection with all the threads of which our human community is woven.

Dealing with the subject of cultural diversity is, therefore, a matter of balance between acknowledging and validating the differences among us and appreciating the forces of our common humanity. Group boundaries may make it difficult for people to define themselves in all their complexity. Mem- bers of a group may be pressed to emphasize exclusion of others over affili- ation as part of their group definition. This negative way of defining group boundaries usually also incorporates covert power hierarchies— focusing on the power of “insiders” versus the powerlessness of “outsiders.” The unac- knowledged aspect of power can be especially harmful, as when ethnic differ- ences are described in such a way that the status differences between groups go unnamed. As family therapists, we need to help our clients develop multiple dimensional group identities, which increase the flexibility of their lives, to help them adapt to ever- evolving circumstances. To do this we must expand our psychological theories of development to describe our identities with all their multiplicity (McGoldrick, Garcia Preto, & Carter, 2016; McGoldrick, 2016).

Our assessment and clinical work must help clients understand their cul- tural selves as fluid, ever- changing aspects of who they are. The narrator, Viv- ian Twostar, in The Crown of Columbus (Dorris & Erdrich, 1991), described brilliantly the complexity of her multicultural identity:

I belong to the lost tribe of mixed bloods, that hodgepodge amalgam of hue and cry that defies easy placement. When the DNA of my various ancestors— Irish and Coeur d’Alene and Spanish and Navajo and God knows what else— combined to form me, the result was not some genteel indecipherable puree that comes from a Cuisinart. You know what they say on the side of the Bisquick box? . . . Mix with fork. Leave lumps. That was me. (p. 123)

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Her amusing analogy to Bisquick is apt, because our cultural identities do not involve some clearly measured and thoroughly blended parts but rather an ever- changing mixture of identities, some of which may have particular prom- inence in a given context, whereas a different aspect may come to the fore under other circumstances. The narrator articulates the way we may identify ourselves in different contexts and the advantages of a multilayered identity:

There are advantages to not being this or that. You have a million stories, one for every occasion, and in a way they’re all lies and in another way they’re all true. When Indians say to me, “What are you?” I know exactly what they’re asking, and answer “Coeur d’Alene.” I don’t add, “Between a quarter and a half,” because that’s information they don’t require, first off— though it may come later if I screw up and they’re looking for reasons why. If one of my Dartmouth colleagues wonders, “Where did you study?” I pick the best place, the hardest one to get into, in order to establish that I belong. If a stranger on the street questions where [my daughter] gets her light brown hair and dark skin, I say “the Olde Sodde” and let them figure it out. (pp. 123–124)

This example beautifully illustrates the complexity of how a person han- dles the various “lumps” in his or her complex identities in different social contexts. She goes on to describe the special perspective of people at the margins, which is a primary insight regarding the re- visioning of our field— valuing the perspectives of those at the margins. They can see things people at the center do not see:

My roots spread in every direction, and if I water one set of them more often than others, it’s because they need it more. . . . I’ve read anthropo- logical papers written about people like me. We’re called marginal, as if we exist anywhere but on the center of the page. . . . But there are bonuses to peripheral vision. Out beyond the normal bounds, you at least know where you’re not. You escape the claustrophobia of belonging, and what you lack in security you gain by realizing— as those insiders never do—that security is an illusion. . . . “Caught between two worlds,” is the way we’re often characterized, but I’d put it differently. We are the catch. (p. 124)

This brilliant illustration of our multifaceted cultural identities, com- posed of complex heritages, highlights the impact of one’s social location and the need to underline one or another aspect of culture in a given context in response to others’ projections. Barack Obama was a bit ahead of the curve in the complexities of his identity, but perhaps not by that much:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was

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overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who car- ries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners— an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins of every race and every hue. Scattered across three con- tinents and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. (Obama, 2008)

Acknowledging our multiple identities is essential in helping us con- nect with different groups. We must, as family therapists who are necessarily always crossing cultural borders, amplify our understanding of these different cultural territories between and among people.

Clinically, we must find ways of working that hold each person account- able for his or her behavior, including intentional or unintentional sexism, racism, or other unjust behavior, at the same time that we must convey a message of respect, care, belonging, and empathy for the painful history that has involved all of us in both trauma and denial. This requires that we move beyond our denial that we are all connected to each other, the abuser, the vic- tim of abuse, and the one who stands by in silence.

SOCIAL CLASS

Whatever we keep secret about class—about how much or how little money we have, about class contempt and class elitism, about the pain of unacknowl- edged social class distance from our family members— costs us. It keeps us from being free and from learning about the experiences of those from differ- ent classes than our own. We should dare to put our prejudices on the table, to examine them, and to determine what they cost us. We believe we must radically change our family therapy training to help trainees have the courage to discuss these issues, as well as those pertaining to race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. A first step is to acknowledge our prejudices and to know that we will make mistakes. We will blurt out comments that are indicators of our prejudice without realizing it. If we are lucky, someone will draw this to our attention, and we will move along in overcoming our silences about class privilege and oppression.

BACKLASH WITHIN FAMILY THERAPY

In family therapy, as in every other structure of our society, we see repeated efforts to silence the marginalized voices that would speak up. For years the field stayed in a reactive stance to the feminist critique of the 1980s. Many men withdrew from professional meetings. More recently, as the issues of cul- ture and race have begun to be asserted, people say that we must go slowly or

The Power of Naming 15

whites will retreat from our organizations. But we will not have a future if we have only a white future.

One aspect of the backlash is the accusation that those who advocate attention to oppression, culture, and diversity are stultifying us with a strait- jacket of “political correctness” (Takaki, 1994) or the “fragility” of white peo- ple, focusing our attention on the discomfort of the privileged rather than on the pain of the oppressed (Diangelo, 2018). White people tend to be oblivious to the pervasive ways white supremacy operates at every level of our society. We (MM) get reactive when anyone tries to discuss our oppressive behaviors, saying the person is making us uncomfortable— thereby blocking discussion of our privilege. Those who draw our attention to such social phenomena as the absence of people of color in our professional organizations or inequities in the status of women or minorities in salary, power, and visibility in our institutions do make us white people uncomfortable. Asserting that we do not feel “safe” in an atmosphere that values “political correctness” is an expression of the privilege of feeling safe. Those who are marginalized are never safe.

Tamasese and Waldegrave (1994) have described how claims of injus- tice are often overtly acknowledged in “liberal therapeutic environments” but then subtly avoided. They describe three techniques by which accountability for injustice is undermined. People become so paralyzed by their own pain that, fearing the possibility that they might offend again, they feel impotent and do nothing. A response of overwhelming guilt can end up entrenching the status quo. Others respond in a patronizing way, taking on the issues of the oppressed to the extent that they inappropriately become self- appointed spokespeople for them. A third response is individualizing, through which a person denies the relevance of group norms and behaviors, making it impos- sible to discuss issues of power, privilege, and accountability:

[This] cleverly sidesteps the institutional and collective reality of discrimina- tion. It is the collective of men and the history of patriarchy, which has cre- ated the environment that privileges the decisions and actions of men over women. No matter how committed to women a man may be, he may still continue to benefit at every level in a patriarchal society, at their expense. (Tamasese & Waldegrave, 1994, p. 32)

Denial that one belongs to the category of privilege, such as denying that one is “white,” for example, keeps one from having to be accountable for the privileges of whiteness and makes discussion of the problems of racism, sex- ism, and other discrimination impossible.

There are many signs of backlash within our organizations. People of color are often blamed for not wanting to join our associations. Faculty mem- bers may say, “We would love to hire a faculty person of color but we can’t find any” or “We invited so-and-so, but she is a prima donna and didn’t respond.” Most do not question their standards for defining a “senior family therapist.” Requirements such as having the “right” credentials, being in the field for

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a long time, or having trained with the field’s leaders set up a conundrum, because the very problem to be solved is that family therapy, like the society at large, has excluded and marginalized people of color from the beginning so they are unlikely to have the “right” credentials for centrality in the field. In the rare instances in which a person of color is recruited, it is often difficult for him or her to feel included and fully appreciated. Many institutions are oblivious to the subtle but persistent pressures that they apply to people of color to fit into the prevailing racial norms of the setting. Too often people of color are required to relinquish who they are racially to be “mainstreamed,” which often translates into suppressing their identity as a person of color. To survive and be fully accepted within the field, many therapists of color have to become what I (KVH) have referred to as GEMMs (good, effective, main- stream, minority family therapists; see Hardy, 2007a).

It is not surprising that many clinicians of color have not defined them- selves as family therapists, because they have not felt at home in our context. We have not realized that we have to change both our context and our require- ments in order to welcome them. Dominant- culture therapists may say they would gladly mentor someone of color, but they fail to consider the reasons that a person from a marginalized group might not want to join with us. Our institutions themselves have to change. Would a white person feel comfortable as the only white person included in a group, expected to represent all others of his or her race? Probably not.

Some members of the dominant group make subtly disqualifying com- ments: “These issues just aren’t relevant to my work. This topic doesn’t inter- est me. I think we need to talk about trauma and evidence- based practice instead.” Or they may say, “We did cultural diversity last year; we need some- thing new this year.” These attitudes assume that we can continue our old routines and business as usual, failing to analyze the systems of oppression built into our institutional structures that hold our dominant group in place.

THE EVOLUTION OF FAMILY THERAPY

Peggy McIntosh (1983, 1990) described five phases of educational and per- sonal “re- vision” with regard to both gender and race. Using these different lenses, we might broaden our perspective as family therapists to include the categories of culture, class, race, and gender in our thinking.

Starting with Phase 1, in which women and minorities were absent from academic discussions, McIntosh described several evolutionary stages of re- visioning curricula to include a shifting consciousness of these dimensions. For example, exploring the discipline of history: In Phase 1, history may be thought of as about ordering of events of privileged white men’s achievement, accomplishment, and success; wars, rulers, and so forth. An English course might be organized around “Man’s Quest for Knowledge.”

The Power of Naming 17

As notions of history first expand (Phase 2), the lens may be widened to include some women and minorities in the discussion of history by broadening our focus to include some “second stringers” who have also had an impact on history, science, or the arts— Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Cassatt, Freder- ick Douglass, Clara Barton, and Sacagawea might be included, but the focus of interest remains the same—a chronological ordering of events and accom- plishments of certain individuals.

As consciousness evolves (Phase 3), there begins to be a rethinking of the place of women and minorities in society. History courses may begin to focus on them as “a problem,” discussing how women struggled to get the vote, the history of the antislavery movement, and so forth. In this phase there is a con- sciousness that prior curricula have ignored them. The question is asked, for example, “Did women have a Renaissance?” The answer is: “No, and neither did people of color, at least not during the Renaissance.” Efforts to modify the exclusion of women or people of color now focus on social forces that have kept them invisible.

In Phase 4, conceptions of history undergo a more radical transforma- tion. The historian is now included in the notion of history. Instead of being an “objective” ordering of the “facts” of the past, history becomes an inter- active process, in which the historian influences the stories and there is an interactive fluidity in perspectives about history.

In Phase 5, a phase that McIntosh says she herself cannot clearly envision, history will itself be reconceived to include us all.

Following McIntosh, we propose several perspectives through which we might imagine the field of family therapy could evolve.

Traditional Universalist Perspective

This was the primary perspective in family therapy in the 1960s and 1970s and continues in some quarters into the 21st century. The primary definers of families and family therapy in this era were such people as Bowen, Minuchin, Ackerman, Whitaker, Jackson, Watzlawick, Weakland, Bateson, Framo, Boszormenyi- Nagy, Lidz, Fleck, and Haley. There was one prominent woman in the field in this early era, Virginia Satir, who played a major role until a qua- drennial meeting of the Family Process Advisory Editors in 1972, which set up a confrontation entitled “Is Virginia Satir Dangerous for Family Therapy?” In this meeting, Satir and her “second,” Kitty LaPerriere, were pitted against Salvador Minuchin and his “second,” Frank Pittman. The very idea of setting up a discussion of ideas as a duel with seconds obviously comes from an either/ or worldview. Beyond that, if we add acknowledgment of the long history of patriarchy, it is hard to conceive that the field would have tolerated a plenary titled “Is Murray Bowen Dangerous for Family Therapy?” or “Is Sal Minuchin Dangerous for Family Therapy?” Satir never attended another major family therapy meeting and devoted more and more time after that to working abroad.

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Within its traditional framework, family therapy was white male family therapy— invented by white men, whose theories implicitly defined “family” to mean intact, middle- class, heterosexual, white families, organized with the man as head of the household and the woman as primary caretaker of all family relationships. The theoretical focus was on family members inter- acting as systemic units, with no acknowledgment of their unequal power to influence interactions. Common concepts taught about the understanding of family relationships concerned complementarity, homeostasis, triangles, pursuer– distancer, recursive feedback loops, cognitive behavioral exchanges, enmeshment and disengagement, and over- and underfunctioning. One prime theoretician, Bowen, emphasized a scale of “differentiation” as the measure of human maturity, according to which those who define themselves primar- ily by the standards of others would be lower on the scale. The fact that this has been required of women and people of color was not mentioned, and therefore differentiation would be much harder to achieve for them than for heterosexual white men. Similarly, the structural approach, another leading approach to family therapy in this era, tended to hold women responsible for family problems without reference to their unequal power within the family and to explicitly promote men to take the role of “head” of the family. Men were expected to control their families, and women were expected to take care of the needs of all family members.

Within this traditionalist lens, neither racism nor sexism was considered as relevant to the understanding of systems. Problems were formulated and assessed according to unquestioned white male definitions, which were dis- cussed as universal truths (as per the DSM categories). No reference was made to race, gender, or sexual orientation as categories requiring specific attention in the family therapy field. No one pointed out that there were no people of color in the field as either leaders or followers. Groups and individuals fitting into this perspective might include Ackerman, Boszormenyi- Nagy, Bowen, Haley, the Mental Research Institute– Palo Alto group (Jackson, Watzlawick, Weakland, Fisch); the Milan group; Whitaker, Bateson, Erickson, deShazer, and O’Hanlon. The structural group did train many people of color and focused a lot of their work around families of color, including several cre- ative second- generation men of color, including Harry Aponte and Braulio Montalvo, but their training was one of the most conservative in advocating patriarchal gender arrangements.

Gender Perspective

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a new gender perspective emerged, spurred by articles by Rachel Hare- Mustin (1978) and by Kerrie James and Deborah McIntyre (1983) in Australia and by the establishment in 1977 of the Women’s Project (Marianne Walters, Betty Carter, Peggy Papp, and Olga Silverstein). Women began to notice that the field was defined primarily or exclusively

The Power of Naming 19

by men. A few women had risen to prominence before the feminist critique of the field: Virginia Satir, Peggy Papp, Mara Selvini, Kitty LaPerriere, and a few others. However, the majority of presenters at conferences were white men, the leading texts were authored by white men, and the primary research in the field was led by white men, who still assumed that a family was white, middle class, and intact unless otherwise noted. Individuals’ or families’ cul- tural backgrounds did not need to be mentioned in theoretical, research, or clinical publications. Women’s lack of power in families was still overlooked.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the journals and professional organizations had a predominance of white heterosexual men at the helm. Family Process had only one woman on its board, and only 10% of its advisory editors were women. Almost all presenters at every quadrennial meeting were men. By the 1982 meeting, “Epistemology, Efficacy, and Ethics,” a few “junior” women had become advisory editors, but the program was still very much in the hands of the men who ran the organization. One woman, Olga Silverstein, was invited by these men to critique Mara Selvini’s ideas, and Selvini responded hotly. This conflict between the only two women on the program seemed to be constructed into it. The discussants for all the male presenters at the event were colleagues who were their supporters. Bell (1993) and others have written of how those without a voice in our society are pitted against each other in order to keep invisible the role of the dominant group in maintaining the status quo.

Although the ratio of male to female presenters was still about 14:1 at the next Family Process meeting in 1986, a panel of all women was arranged on gender issues, scheduled on the last morning of the conference— a Sunday. One person of color presented at the meeting— an African American epidemi- ologist, who was not a family therapist. “Women’s issues” were still seen as a domain exclusive to women and separated from “regular” family theory and practice. There was almost no notice taken that all the participants remained white, so the feminist critique, without being acknowledged as such, was white-only feminist critique.

Two pivotal networking meetings of women family therapists in 1984 and 1986, called “Stonehenge,” solidified a collaboration among women therapists that had been missing until then. A third international meeting of women family therapists in 1991 in Denmark expanded the networking of women family therapists with those in other countries. The consciousness raising of women’s networking related initially more to gender than to race and culture, which took almost 10 more years to get on the table. A critique of the organization of the field began to evolve. But the primary ideas and read- ings in most family training programs were still those of white heterosexual men. In 1990, Family Process, under pressure from junior advisory editors, committed itself to having at least one-third women and 10% (!) people of color on its advisory editorial board.

As the Women’s Project and others began to write about and to present on feminist family therapy, the absence of women and minorities in many

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discussions was increasingly recognized as a problem. New areas of research emerged, bringing into focus the inequality of gender roles in families, the oppression of women, violence against women in families, and mother blam- ing in family therapy theorizing and other professional writing. Still, the first- ever plenary presentation on male violence, which laid out the most basic dimensions of the problem in society and called for the development of thera- peutic models to address them, was criticized as an appallingly unjust, unbal- anced attack on men because the issue of women’s violence was not addressed. This issue has still not become a topic of mention by mainstream men in our field.

By the late 1980s, the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA) for the first time had a predominance of white women in leadership positions. At the annual conference, the majority of presenters were women. White male lead- ers reacted with outrage. They had not noticed that during the first decades of family therapy most presentations had been made by and virtually all the key awards had been given to white men. In the mid-1980s, four women (the Women’s Project) had to share one award, and the awards committee pro- posed that two others (Goldner and Hare- Mustin) share another, because nei- ther had “quite done enough” to deserve a full award for her contributions to the field. By the 1990s, AFTA had a president and a vice president who were both women. The organization’s programs dealt with cultural diversity for 3 years in a row, but its leadership worried that the emphasis on the concerns of women and culture were causing men to leave the organization. By the mid- 1990s, some of the major texts began to include sections on feminist family therapy but still made no reference to gender inequities in couples or families. It was not until this time that there was any public acknowledgment of the het- erosexist bias of the field, and books and articles began to appear then about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender families.

Cultural Perspectives

During the later 1980s, an expanded cultural perspective emerged, although one strong thread had developed from the 1960s with the work of a small minority of theoreticians and clinicians whose work focused on the poor. This group included the authors of Families of the Slums (Minuchin, Mon- talvo, Guerney, Jr., Rosman, & Schumer, 1967) and others, including Dick Auerswald, Harry Aponte, Braulio Montalvo, Carlos Sluzki; a very few oth- ers spoke and wrote about multiproblem, poor minority families. Others, such as Nancy Boyd- Franklin and Elaine Pinderhughes, wrote about African American families, racism, and the poor, but these were seen as special topics, not pertaining to family therapy itself. Similarly, writers on couple therapy, child abuse, the family life cycle, and other issues pertinent to family therapy continued to use white families as the norm, including myself (MM), and neglected to consider cultural differences and social inequalities. As time went

The Power of Naming 21

on, family therapy conferences began to include one or two presenters of color to present on issues of “minority families” as opposed to “families.” By 1985 AFTA had given about 75 awards, but not one had gone to a man or woman of color. The two most well-known men of color in the early family therapy movement, Harry Aponte and Braulio Montalvo, did not receive awards until the 1990s.

The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), while claiming to represent family therapists throughout the United States and Canada, was as remiss as AFTA in its recognition of women and people of color. Although founded in 1942, the AAMFT did not elect its first woman president until the 1990s, and the first president of color was not elected until the 2000s. The organization moved from California to Washington, D.C., but did not have a person of color on its national staff until 1982, despite its loca- tion in two of the most culturally diverse regions in the country. The AAMFT guidelines and standards for practice did not mention a single word about “cul- ture” or “diversity” until the early 1990s. Fortunately, from that time on, there was a gradual shift toward an emerging cultural perspective in family therapy.

However, notions of culture and class were still applied primarily to people of color, immigrants, or those with specific diagnoses. One could still discuss “couples,” “child- focused families,” “genograms,” or “the fam- ily life cycle” without specific mention of gender, class, culture, or race. The term “family,” unless otherwise qualified, still generally meant intact, once- married, heterosexual, white, middle- class couples and their children. Even a family’s third generation was often referred to as an “extended family,” as if “family” included only those living together in the present.

The emerging cultural perspectives did expand the ways in which families and family therapy were thought about to include the dimensions of gender and culture, although these dimensions were for a long time viewed as “spe- cial” features of certain families rather than as basic dimensions for under- standing all families. Gradually, perspectives began to expand beyond just asking that more minorities be included in leadership positions. Some family institutes offered workshops, usually by visiting presenters of color, on poor Black families, although, again, these discussions were still generally margin- alized rather than integrated into the main body of family therapy.

Gradually, beginning in the 1990s, cultural diversity workshops became more common at major family therapy meetings. African Americans appeared on panels, and more books and articles began to appear on Black families and other cultural minorities; there was some acknowledgement that research- ers had ignored the experience of families of color. Accepted definitions in the field of family therapy now began to be questioned. These definitions had labeled both people of color and women as deficient— undifferentiated, enmeshed, or having high expressed emotionality.

A few institutions, to encourage change in the balance of white thera- pists, awarded a small number of minority scholarships in modest amounts.

22 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

However, when minorities did not sign up for family therapy training, it was seen as their problem. By the early 1990s the AAMFT, with much fanfare, gave out a mere $5,000 in minority scholarships.

The annual AFTA meeting had a plenary on culture, in which it was intended that people of privilege would begin to take some responsibility for their own part in cultural problems. Three white therapists presented three white cases and had a panel of discussants, including one African American (myself, KVH). I said that if I had been the therapist in these cases, race would have been an issue, because I rarely have the luxury of working with a case in which race is not an issue. This issue was not picked up by the other discus- sants, who moved on to other issues of more interest.

Transforming Our Vision

A fourth perspective, requiring second- order change, began developing later in the 1990s. From this perspective, all families, not just “minorities,” are seen as embedded in and bounded by class, culture, gender, and race. Using this perspective, how a society defines gender, race, culture, and class relation- ships is critical to understanding how all family processes are structured.

This phase of family therapy, which has not yet become mainstream, aims to meet the needs of people of all cultural backgrounds. Courses on couple therapy use theory developed on families beyond European American couples. These included Black1 couples, Chinese couples, interracial couples, and gay couples, not just occasionally but as a core of the course. Theorists whose work has developed primarily in a context of work with non- dominant- culture families became core faculty in training programs. The faculty and students of training programs become more culturally diverse. It will require second- order change for the leaders of the field to make room for the inclusion of knowledge and teaching other than that of the dominant groups. Faculties of training programs will need to be reconstituted to reflect diversity, and subject matter will need to be rethought from more inclusive perspectives. Emphasis will need to shift from the teachings of a few highly valued leaders to experiential and reciprocal learning. The wisdom and strengths of Ameri- can Indian, African American, and other nondominant cultures will become an integral component of family therapy theories.

Student training will need to expand to include home visits and stud- ies of the cultural values and healing customs of Muslim, Asian Indian, and Latino families. Students should be encouraged to collaborate with indigenous cultural leaders in the community to help families. Questions about how fami- lies are located in their communities will need to become a routine aspect of assessment. Training should involve exploration of the assumptions of the theorists in the field, as well as of faculty, students, and clients. The field will expand to include study of healing in cultures around the world. Spiritual, physical, psychological, and biological solutions to problems will be increas- ingly employed in an integrated way.

The Power of Naming 23

FAMILY THERAPY REDEFINED AND RECONSTRUCTED TO INCLUDE US ALL

This final phase is hard to envision, just as it has been for Peggy McIntosh in the field of education. Its description must await our learning to see around the next corner. Surely in this phase family intervention must occur in more flexible contexts with a more diverse array of helpers and a more flexibly defined “family.” Intervention strategies need to draw from cultural healing the world over. Family therapy training will need to focus on how we under- stand those who are different from ourselves. It is so difficult even to picture a world not divided by our current hierarchical structures that it is hard to imagine what healthy families or therapy may come to look like. One thing seems sure: As we expand the boundaries of our field, we open up enormous possibilities for helping families in multiple contexts and with a great variety of healing tools, from music, meditation, prayer, and poetry to community meetings and empowerment.

CODA: TAKING THE BROADEST POSSIBLE SYSTEMIC VIEW

We want to offer a coda or postscript to this introduction, hoping to inspire you, our readers, to keep thinking systems no matter how much the pressure becomes against it. We want to encourage you to keep paying attention to your own values and definitions of health and meaning in life as well as of evil and pathology in all our relationships— with each other and with the world around us.

We want to end this introductory chapter with a story that comes out of work done by Joanna Macy, a trainer and activist who worked with and was inspired by Gregory Bateson and other systemic therapists and whose work has inspired also the Virginia Satir Global Network to tell the story and encourage people to think systemically about the earth and about each other. Macy has trained groups and communities all over the globe in systemic perspectives. She had occasion to go to Russia to work with communities in their efforts to find ways forward after the horrendous nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl in 1986. Macy and her husband, who had led the Peace Corps work in Russia for years, worked with many communities, but their pivotal experience was in the town of Novozybkov, a town of 50,000 people. As the nuclear cloud moved away from Chernobyl in the direction of Moscow, the government had decided to stop the radiation cloud by making it fall on the town of Novozybkov instead of on the large city of Moscow. No one was told what was being done, so when the ash began raining down, the people had no idea that the catastrophe was being turned on them. It was months before they learned the truth of what had happened, months of people mysteriously begin- ning to get sick and die. They were so traumatized by the effects of the nuclear disaster that even 6 years later they refused to discuss it. They referred to it as the “event,” but refused to even say the words “Chernobyl” or “nuclear” or

24 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

“radiation.” They knew they would be dealing with the horrendous effects for the rest of their lives and for generations to come—the cancers, the deaths, the people missing and dying early in their community. As Macy and the other trainers worked with a group of 50 who were participating in their workshop, they tried, as creatively as they could to think of, to strengthen the community.

Macy had been thinking that just as the radiation attacks the body, it assaults also society, eroding people’s sense of community and wholeness. She thought they needed to remember who they were and where they had come from. She taught them a Latvian song and dance she had learned from a German colleague that had become a major song of resistance, revolution, and freedom when the Latvians were struggling against the Russians. The song, “Ka man Klages” or “The Elm Dance” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8E1hOma_ Ag), was about strengthening the elms from the elm disease that was destroying elms around the globe. It was also a song and dance of intention, about spring and the trees blooming; and the swaying of the dance was symbolic of the community moving together somehow. The song had a special resonance for the people of Novozybkov, because the radiation stays in wood for genera- tions more than anywhere else. And the people of the town had always loved the woods and saw it as a place of recreation, refuge, and home. But now they were forced to teach their children that the woods was a dangerous forbidden place.

Macy taught them the simple circle dance, and the group wanted to sing and dance to the music again and again.

Then Macy invited them to do an exercise where they would spiritually connect with their ancestors and draw from their strengths, moving forward in time as they moved toward the center of the circle and talking about the gifts they had received from each generation of ancestors. The group par- ticipated, sharing the gifts they had received from their ancestors, until they got to 1986. At that point they refused to speak or move any further. First they were silent, but then finally the horror of what they had lived through exploded.

The leaders also had the group draw pictures of the gifts they had received from their ancestors, but when they got to 1986 they just drew large X’s. When asked to explain, they conveyed their rage that nothing could move them forward. One woman turned her rage on Macy, blaming her for trying to make them face this horror. Silence followed. Finally, Macy spoke, saying: “I have no wisdom with which to meet your grief. But I can share this with you: After the war which almost destroyed their country, the German people determined that they would do anything to spare their children the suffering they had known. They worked hard to provide them a safe, rich life. They created an economic miracle. They gave their children everything, except for one thing. They did not give them their broken hearts. And their children have never forgiven them.”

The next morning the group began again with the Elm Dance. The pic- tures they had drawn the previous days were still on the walls around the

The Power of Naming 25

room. When Macy asked how they were doing, one woman who had been most enraged the day before, whose daughters had cancer, said she had hardly slept. But, she said, she felt her heart was breaking open and though perhaps that would keep happening, she felt somehow it was right, because it con- nected her to everyone as if they were all branches of the same tree. Others spoke of feeling somehow cleansed and connected. Macy then made them a promise that she would tell their story and do the dance because she knew they felt the outside world had forgotten them. She knew that their woods, which was always their home, held the radioactivity and that they could never go there. But, she said, by sharing their story she would try to help connect them more broadly to others. Through their story and the Elm Dance, Macy would spread connections to others around the world to think about protect- ing each other and sharing their intention to hold on to each other. The song itself, like many African American spirituals, had a double meaning— to hide people’s connection and to inspire and share their hope. This seems a power- ful intervention, and we hope you will draw from this and many more such inspiring systemic suggestions throughout this book to help you creatively support your clients to find hope and healing in their lives.

NOTE

1. In this chapter we have capitalized “Black” and lowercased “white,” in spite of the convention to do the reverse, because it seems to us that “Black” is a word which at least to some extent was chosen by African Americans to refer to themselves, while “white” does not deserve the “specialness” of capitalization as an honor to the distinction.

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EXPANDING DEFINITIONS OF GENDER?

“Gender is a language, a system of meanings and symbols, along with the rules, privileges, and punishments pertaining to their use—for power and sexuality . . . ” (Wilchins, 2004, p. 35). It is a powerful organizing principle that creates a hierarchy of power and places higher value on cisgender, White, heterosexual men. Gender is also at the center of multiple intersecting systems of oppression— sexism, cisgenderism, and heterosexism— and is further com- plicated by race and class.

Historically, gender has been constructed as binary and biologically determined, but only based on observation of the external genitalia at birth. Among contemporary scholars (Nealy, 2008), gender is understood as being composed of three elements: (1) biological sex, (2) gender role, and (3) gen- der identity. Biological sex consists of external genitalia, internal reproductive organs, hormonal levels, and chromosomal markers, creating a rich diversity in biological sex that transcends binary categories. Gender role is the socially constructed set of behaviors and expectations that is taught and imposed based on the biological sex assigned at birth. Gender identity is one’s internal sense of self, how one conceptualizes one’s own gender. Phillips and Stewart (2010) conceptualize gender not as a noun representing an aspect of identity, but as a fluid evolving verb that makes space for infinite ways of doing gender that change across time and context.

The purpose of this chapter is daunting: to move family therapy beyond recognizing the overt and covert power inequities to challenging insidious

C H A P T E R 2

Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power Equity, Accountability, and Refusing to Silo

Deidre Ashton Christian Jordal

Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power 29

notions of therapeutic neutrality and relational equality, in an attempt to revise how to address gender in clinical practice. The challenge, in light of zeitgeist, contemporary reclaiming of gender expansiveness, has never been more vital. In this chapter, we strive to deconstruct and give consideration to the way race and other aspects of social location inform gender and the ways in which the curious exploration of gender in clinical practice can make space for relational healing, empowerment, and fulfillment. For family therapists, identifying and understanding the intersections of their own identities and their associated marginalizations and privileges, in preparation for doing the same with clients, is vital (Greenspan, 1986; Simi & Mahalik, 1997; Watts- Jones, 2010). We name our perspectives about gender as informed by our lived experiences as mental health professionals of varying social locations. I (DA) am an African American, Black, married, lesbian, middle- class, ciswoman, and licensed clinical social worker/therapist. I (CJ) am a White, European American, partnered, gay, upper- middle- class, cisman, and licensed couple and family therapist, as well as a full-time academic. Naming our social loca- tions is a way to actively consider their associated privilege and marginaliza- tion, present and historic, and its implications on the process.

HISTORY OF GENDER IN FAMILY THERAPY

During the early years of family therapy, gender was invisible, implicitly binary, sexist, and racist, as White cismen were made the measure of all oth- ers. In this era, healthy families were seen as White, middle- class, cisgender, and heterosexual. Family therapists only acknowledged generation as a funda- mental principle of family organization (Goldner, 1988). Gender- based power differentials were frequently unnamed, unexamined, and taken for granted (Knudson- Martin & Laughlin, 2005). Cismen were seen as the natural leaders of the family, charged with the instrumental tasks of providing for the family. Ciswomen, despite generational equality, were assumed to be subservient to men and expected to take full responsibility for the emotional and domestic spheres of family life. Gender was weaponized, and women continue to be pathologized as the source of most family problems.

Beginning in the late 1970s, family therapy was re- visioned through a (White) feminist lens. (White) gender was made visible, from a binary perspec- tive, and named as a fundamental organizing principle in White heterosexual family life (Goldner, 1988). The impact of patriarchy and sexism on family life and the discipline’s approach to working with families was examined, without regard for race, class, or ethnicity. Inequality in family relationships was recognized and understood as being organized solely along gender lines. Because men held more power, it became impossible to view women as the sole source of family problems, or the sole source of resolution (Knudson- Martin & Laughlin, 2005). Following the feminist revision of family ther- apy, other dimensions of identity/social location, including race, class, sexual

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orientation, and culture, became more visible, but each dimension was viewed acontextually and marginally. For example, gender was discussed without ref- erence to class or race. White middle- class cisgender heterosexual families remained central, and the standard by which all other families were assessed. As we entered the 21st century, Knudson- Martin and Laughlin (2005) pro- posed that we take a postmodern approach to gender and developed a model of couple and family therapy (CFT) that focuses on the exploration and pur- suit of gender equality. However, this approach upholds ideas of gender as a binary and biologically determined. Family therapy is stuck in re- visioning relationships, families, and communities along the intersections of race and gender (McIntosh, 1990).

Family therapists working with trans/gender- nonconforming/nonbinary/ gender- expansive individuals, couples, and families invite individualized con- structions of gender that may be fluid and flexible, that include both binary and conventional ideas of gender and expansive ideas that are greater than two (Lev, 2004; Malpas, 2006; Giammattei, 2015). Individuals seeking therapy inform how they construct gender— for example, binary, nonbinary, expansive— and the affirming clinicians follow their lead (Malpas, 2006). This approach is also instructive for family therapists working with cisgender individuals of varying racial and cultural backgrounds, as it makes space for them to tell us who they are and what is the best way they can do gender in the world, their communities, and relationships in the context of other intersect- ing social locations.

CFT has broadened its definitions of relationships and families, from White, cisgender, and heteronormative, over the decades since its inception, to include blended families and same-sex partnerships, among other relational systems, in keeping with sociocultural change. Sociocultural change has fur- ther assisted CFT in moving beyond absolute, fixed identity constructs, such as race, sexuality, or gender, to consider fluidity and intersectionality and, more importantly, to view identities as being imbued with both places of privi- lege and subjugation that profoundly shape individual and group experience. CFT scholars have highlighted the relational power inequities associated with gender, the influence on romantic and familial relationships, as well as larger societies, and the need for greater consideration of effective, clinical inter- vention strategies (Dickerson, 2013; Knudson- Martin, 2015). New, effective clinical strategies for addressing gender inequities have not manifested them- selves. CFT, despite a shift in language among some professionals, remains gendered, a prisoner of its defining institution: marriage.

GENDER AND RACE

People of color represent a range of racial/ethnic/cultural groups sharing some common values and beliefs regarding gender. With the exception of some indigenous peoples in the United States, the binary construction of gender,

Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power 31

and the belief in power of men over women, are common themes, consistent with White, Eurocentric gender beliefs.

Racism imposes significant physical and mental health care risks for people of color (Karlsen & Nazroo, 2002; Williams, Neighbors, & Jackson, 2008). Further, racial dehumanization of people of color constrains and inter- feres with the process of performing gender, fulfilling conventional gender roles, and accessing gender affirmation. The additional marginalizing and oppressing forces that result in the intersections of race and cisgender are underexamined (Silverstein, 2006). Those who hold marginalized racial/cul- tural identities may experience a higher need for racial and gender affirmation that is not met, as partners may find gender expansiveness threatening to the sense of self. Black hetero (cis)women partners may privilege male power within the home, restraining female use of power, due to the intense devalua- tion experienced by Black cismen outside of the home (Cowdry et al., 2009). (Cis)women of color continue to experience more gender sexism (Beale, 1970; Chiang & Low, 2008; Sesko & Biernat, 2010), as compared with their White peers. Racism may serve as partial explanation for cisgenderism within some communities of color. It has been suggested that rather than being a static aspect of identity, gender expression and role, for people of color, may be performance that shifts and evolves depending on context (Cowdry et al., 2009; Phillips & Stewart, 2010). However, racism constrains gender in ways that are not always easy to overcome and may result in personal and relational distress and stricter adherence to binary, cisnormative ideas of gender. Gender expression beyond cisgenderism is inherently challenging. The opportunities for gender affirmation and the achievement of satisfaction in gender expres- sion, in light of social pressure and racism, are less available to people of color.

“Labels can be reinforcing and dangerous” (McGoldrick & Hardy, 2008, p. 10). While resilient people of color have found creative ways of reclaiming their humanity, asserting their genders, and fulfilling gender roles in ways that promote survival and cultural resonance, gender nonconformance can put people of color in grave danger. Transpeople of color, specifically trans- women, experience the highest rates of violence and health disparities (Seve- lius, 2013). Transgender persons of color further suffer the exponential effects of racism, sexism, and transphobia, as evidenced by higher rates of unem- ployment, poverty, and health problems, than their White counterparts and the larger U.S. population (James et al., 2016). Gender differences in script- ing, values, and experience pervade, and they require nuanced assessment and consideration in addressing gender inequity clinically.

GUIDELINES FOR EXPLORING GENDER IN CLINICAL PRACTICE

We considered existing models, as well as our own clinical experience, in developing the following recommended guidelines for exploring gender in clinical practice:

32 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

1. Self-of-the- therapist. Family therapists, supervisors, and educa- tors need to explore their own understanding of gender, their gender story over time, self- designations, relational designations, gender role beliefs and assumptions, and the ways they participate in upholding cisgenderism (Mal- pas, 2006; Blumer, Ansara, & Watson, 2013). Gender exploration is to be done in the context of other social locations, with attention to the impact of other systems of oppression.

2. Locating the self. Family therapists should initiate the process of locating self with clients (Watts-Jones, 2010). The process of locating self may unfold over the course of the therapeutic relationship.

3. Locating the client. Support the clients in engaging in the process of thinking about and naming their social locations. The process may begin dur- ing the initial stages of therapy and continue throughout the therapeutic pro- cess.

4. Unpacking gender stories in context. Explore the clients’ understand- ing of gender, their gender stories over time, self- designations, relational des- ignations, gender role beliefs and assumptions, and the ways they participate in upholding cisgenderism. The exploration of gender is carried out in the context of other social locations and systems of oppression, with attention to how oppression constricts and how these locations may be sources of resil- ience.

5. Examining the use of power. Support the client (couple, family) to examine the ways in which power operates in relationships by exploring ques- tions such as whose needs and desires are attended to or are prioritized under what circumstances. How are decisions made? How did these processes come to be? Is the partner with more social power privileged in the relationship (Knudson- Martin & Laughlin, 2005)?

6. Seeking affirmation. Support clients in examining how the way they are doing gender fits/does not fit with family/community/cultural norms and values, identifying supports that are validating, and determining how they will negotiate relationships that are invalidating.

7. Reclaiming self and relationships. Support clients to identify and reclaim aspects of self and their relationships that have struggled to survive under the weight of patriarchy, sexism, cisgenderism, and other systems of oppression.

We apply these guidelines to the case study below, as a demonstration.

CASE EXAMPLE

Nasira and Charisse, an African American, Black, middle- class, cisgender, lesbian couple in young adulthood, entered therapy with me (DA) to address

Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power 33

communication issues that resulted in cycles of conflict, physical separation (not relational), apology, and reunion. Charisse, a musician who suffered from depression, attributed some of their conflicts to Nasira’s tendency to “act like a man.” She defined acting like a man as Nasira’s ability to lead and to make decisions in a logical, emotionally detached, business- like manner and lack of responsivity to some of Charisse’s needs. Nasira saw herself as holding the capacity to lead and to be emotionally present. In fact, she complained that Charisse’s emotional needs took up most of the space in the relation- ship, leaving little room for her needs. Together, we explored each partner’s understanding of ciswomanhood and what that meant for how they should be and act in the world and in relationship to each other. It became appar- ent that Charisse’s ideas about gender were informed by her upbringing in a hetero/cis-led household with parents who were conservatively religious and enacted conventional gender roles in which her father led the family through provision of material support and spiritual guidance and her mother provided domestic care and emotional support. Charisse associated Nasira’s behavior with her father and believed that Nasira held more power in the relationship. As a Black feminist, Nasira believed in the agency of women, rejecting the notion that leadership, logic, and decisiveness were the domain of men. In exploring her understanding of gender, Nasira believes that biology does not confer a set of attributes or abilities to individuals. She understands her story of becoming a leader as being rooted in her experiences of oppression as a Black ciswoman lesbian, rejected by her family of origin when she came out during adolescence; she tapped into her capacity to lead in order to survive. As a student, she sought out/was drawn to Black women educators and peers who acted as role models, exposed her to Black feminist ideology, and shaped her gender story. Nasira learned to embrace and celebrate the leader part of herself that served her well, that she valued, and enjoyed. Expanding Nasira’s gender story helped Charisse expand her idea of gender and to see the ways in which patriarchy and binary gender socialization limited her capacity to value and appreciate her partner and aspects of her own abilities that she had pre- viously disavowed as “mannish.” As she reclaimed these disavowed parts of herself, she felt more empowered. We further explored how the couple could make space for the emotional needs of both partners and how they could be more responsive to one another. It became apparent that what seemed to be a lack of space for Nasira’s needs was related to Nasira’s inability to express her needs, as her upbringing taught her that she could not rely on others. Some of Nasira’s work focused on stating her needs, giving Charisse the opportunity to respond, and learning to trust that Charisse would respond. The couple continued in therapy addressing other issues related to their respective attach- ment needs.

•• Guideline 1. Self-of-the- therapist. Through ongoing self- reflection and collegial consultation, I explored how I understand myself and my experiences as a Black, African American, ciswoman, lesbian. As we focused on gender, I

34 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

specifically reflected on what I have learned, experienced, and believe about gender and race and how my thoughts and beliefs were shaping how I under- stood and related to the clients.

•• Guideline 2. Locating the self. In the first meeting with Nasira and Charisse, as part of the overview of therapy and contracting process, I named my social location, specifically race, gender, sexual orientation, and spiritual- ity. During the course of therapy, I disclosed more of my story regarding these locations and how my stories inform my thinking.

•• Guideline 3. Locating the client. During initial meetings, I used the cultural genogram (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995) to elicit and support the client’s reflection on social location.

•• Guideline 4. Unpacking gender stories in context. We explored how Charisse came to understand Nasira’s behavior as “mannish” and how this “mannish” behavior affected her. We explored how Nasira understood her behaviors that Charisse named as mannish. We explored (cis)womanhood, what they learned about gender, the source of the learning, and their beliefs. We made the ways in which race informed their gender stories explicit. We questioned the ways that these gender narratives were limiting and liberating.

•• Guideline 5. Examining the use of power in the relationship. We dis- covered how Charisse’s description of Nasira’s behavior as “mannish” was code for saying that she thought Nasira was in charge. We discovered how Nasira experienced Charisse as being in charge of the relationship because of the emotional space taken by Charisse.

•• Guideline 6. Seeking affirmation. Conversations regarding validation came up as we discussed gender in context. The couple saw themselves as transgressive in larger society and among segments of their cultural communi- ties because they were a same-sex couple. They named the Black queer com- munity as a key source of affirmation and validation regarding their race, gender, and sexual orientation. Nasira also identified parts of her extended kin network as a source of gender affirmation. To manage the invalidation she experienced from her immediate family, she limited her contact with them, but when she did have contact it was in full authenticity. Charisse named her professional community as a place that offered gender validation. She named her family of origin as an unintentional source of invalidation, and we strug- gled to develop coping strategies that she found useable.

•• Guideline 7. Reclaiming self and relationships. Each partner reclaimed disavowed parts of herself and expanded how she understood the other in relationship. They were able to move forward in their relationship and address other issues.

The aim of the aforementioned clinical example is to bring to life the application of the guidelines we suggested. However, it should be noted that

Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power 35

the process of exploring gender, and its implications, is not summative. It requires continual self- evaluation and work with clients. The literature review and case example highlight the continued vitality of exploring gender in clini- cal work. Alternately, the manner in which it is done requires intentionality, to avoid microaggressions toward clients or reinforcing cisgenderism that can have implications in the therapeutic relationship and beyond (Blumer et al., 2013).

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Blumer, M., Ansara, Y., & Watson, M. (2013). Cisgenderism in family therapy: How everyday practices can delegitimize people’s gender self- designations. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 24, 267–285.

Chiang, F., & Low, A. (2008, June). Managing racism and sexism: The intersections of class, race, ethnicity, and gender among Asian immigrant women entrepre- neurs in Canada and Australia. Paper presented at the International Council for Small Business World Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Cowdry, R., Scarborough, N., Knudson- Martin, C., Seshadri, M., Lewis, M. E., & Mahoney, A. R. (2009). Gendered power in cultural contexts: Part II. Middle class African American heterosexual couples with young children. Family Pro- cess, 48, 25–39.

Dickerson, V. C. (2013). Patriarchy, power, and privilege: A narrative poststructural view of work with couples. Family Process, 52, 102–114.

Giammattei, S. V. (2015). Beyond the binary: Trans- negotiations in couple and family therapy. Family Process, 54, 418–434.

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Greenspan, M. (1986). Should therapists be personal?: Self- disclosure and therapeutic distance in feminist therapy. Women and Therapy, 5, 5–17.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (1995). The cultural genogram: Key to training cul- turally competent family therapists. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21, 227–237.

James, S. E., Herman, J. L., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Anafi, M. (2016). Executive summary of the report of the 2015 U.S. transgender survey. Wash- ington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality. Retrieved from https:// transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/USTS-Full- Report- FINAL.PDF.

Karlsen, S., & Nazroo, J. Y. (2002). Relation between racial discrimination, social class, and health among ethnic minority groups. American Journal of Public Health, 92, 624–631.

Knudson- Martin, C. (2015). When therapy challenges patriarchy: Undoing gendered power in heterosexual couple relationships. In C. Knudson- Martin, M. A. Wells, & S. K. Samman (Eds.), Socio- emotional relationship therapy: Bridging emo- tion, societal context, and couple interaction (pp. 15–26). New York: American Family Therapy Academy.

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Knudson- Martin, C., & Laughlin, M. J. (2005). Gender and sexual orientation in family therapy: Toward a postgender approach. Family Relations, 54, 101–115.

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Malpas, J. (2006). From otherness to alliance: Transgender couples in therapy. Jour- nal of GLBT Family Studies, 2, 183–206.

McGoldrick, M., & Hardy, K. V. (Eds.). (2008). Re- visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

McIntosh, P. (1990). Interactive phases of curricular and personal re- vision with regard to race (Working Paper #219). Wellesley, MA: Center for Research on Women.

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Phillips, L., & Stewart, M. R. (2010). Nontraditional, noncomforming, and transgres- sive gender expression and relationship modalities in Black communities. In J. Battle & S. L. Barnes (Eds.), Black sexualities: Probing powers, passions, prac- tices, and policies (pp. 17–36). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Sesko, A. K., & Biernat, M. (2010). Prototypes of race and gender: The invisibility of Black women. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 356–360.

Sevelius, J. (2013). Gender affirmation: A framework for conceptualizing risk behav- iors among transgender women of color. Sex Roles, 68, 675–689.

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Simi, N., & Mahalik, J. (1997). Comparison of feminist versus psychodynamic/ dynamic and other therapists on self disclosure. Psychology of Women Quar- terly, 21, 465–483.

Watts-Jones, T. D. (2010). Location of self: Opening the door to dialogue on intersec- tionality in the therapy process. Family Process, 49, 405–420.

Wilchins, R. (2004). Queer theory, gender theory: An instant primer. Los Angeles: Alyson Books.

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I was born and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a thriving factory town in mid-20th- century America, home of American Motors, Simmons Mat- tresses, and Jockey Underwear. We lived on the working- class side of town, settled largely by Italian and Eastern European immigrants, who found plentiful jobs with good wages and benefits. In the booming post- World War II economy, most men were the family breadwinners, with one paycheck supporting families; their wives were full-time homemak- ers, raising their children and caring for elders.

My family struggled financially, barely making ends meet. My dad had a small gas station, where he worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week. Occasionally taking off Sunday for a family drive, he put up a sign: “Open every day but not today.” My mother, a gifted musician, taught piano lessons to supplement his meager earnings. When they lost every- thing in a fire in our building, we were homeless for several months but were taken in by good- hearted neighbors. I grew up wearing secondhand clothes, yet there was always food on the table. We had a close, support- ive extended family network and enjoyed a vibrant sense of community with other hardworking families. I could ride my bike all over town; if I got lost, I knocked on a door and a friendly stranger would direct me home. Although strapped for cash, my parents, like our neighbors, were generous and looked out for others. To build our own small house, my dad traded services with a neighboring carpenter, plumber, and electri- cian. That’s how working- class communities forged resilience.

When a recession hit hard in the late 1950s, my parents moved to California, seeking a better life “out west,” just as struggling families had done for over a century. The San Fernando Valley, where we settled,

C H A P T E R 3

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream

Froma Walsh

38 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

was the Technicolor vision of the American Dream. The postwar building boom created suburban developments with gleaming new ranch houses, the latest appliances, and swimming pools in backyards. For me, as a teenager, it seemed like paradise! It took a year for my dad to land a job, and we lived in a modest duplex, but we were no longer poor. Like others around us, we thought of ourselves as more-or-less middle class. Good public schools and an affordable state university system provided quality education and pathways to successful futures.

Fast forward 50 years: In the early 2000s, I returned to Kenosha for a reunion. It had become a ghost town, as had many places in the indus- trial heartland. The huge auto plant and smaller factories had closed; the few remaining employers had cut back on workers. In my old neighbor- hood, houses were run down; my dad’s small gas station was now a bait- and- tackle shop for catching perch at the nearby lakefront pier. The city’s core had imploded. Driving down the once- thriving main street, I found most stores closed and boarded up and the movie theater shuttered. The once-grand historic hotel (famous for their coconut ice cream bombe) now was a residence for the chronically mentally ill—the few people I saw strolling around the deserted downtown. In 2017, the city decided to bulldoze many empty buildings in hopes of new development, yet with no clear plans or funding.

Between 2000 and 2013, Wisconsin lost more than 90,000 factory jobs and experienced the largest decline in the country in the percentage of households making a middle- class income. Politically, Kenosha had been solidly Democratic since the New Deal—my dad, like neighbors, was a champion for “the little guy.” In 2016, most voted for Trump, angry and pessimistic about future prospects. Many blamed their downslide on the “elites” and the influx of Blacks and Latinos— who had come from inner cities for better jobs, safer neighborhoods, and good schools for their children. Yet they, too, struggle and worry about the future.

What happened to the American Dream?

SOCIAL CLASS AND WIDENING DIVIDES

“Social class” is an ambiguous and contentious term in American culture. Most scholars distinguish class status based on socioeconomic variables— mainly income, wealth, education, and occupation. Age cohort makes a dif- ference, as does region and urban, suburban, or rural residence. Although our society is clearly divided along class lines, the myth that we are a class- less society persists, and most people like to think of themselves as more or less middle class. At the core of our cultural ethos is the American Dream of the good life and equal opportunity for upward mobility. However, widen- ing divides between the very wealthy and everyone else over recent decades has betrayed that dream for most low- income and middle- class families. It’s important to understand their experience and to address their challenges in clinical practice.

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 39

THE AMERICAN DREAM: MYTHS AND REALITIES

The American Dream has been a powerful guiding mythology of our society from its early days (Samuel, 2012). The nation’s founders recognized that eco- nomic inequality had led to constant strife in societies since ancient times— the rich tyrannized the poor, who would then revolt. Rooted in our funda- mental values of freedom and independence, our society would be based on a meritocracy, with the opportunity to achieve prosperity and success through talent and hard work.

Immigrants flocked to the Land of Opportunity, fleeing aristocracies and dictators, war and famine, or political oppression that limited life chances. In principle, without privileged hierarchies, every citizen could succeed with effort and determination, regardless of social class or circumstances of birth and without restrictions of class, caste, religion, or ethnicity.

A fundamental aspect of the American Dream is equal opportunity for a richer, fuller life with upward mobility for one’s family and children. For the lower and middle classes, the expectation that the next generation could rise above their parents has been at the heart of the dream. The prospect of “bet- terment” is scripted in the social narrative: “Work hard, save a little, take pride in your children who do better than you did, and then retire comfortably.” Thus it focuses on the pursuit and fuels strivings, with pressure to succeed. In its ideals, it’s a progressive, utopian dream of freedom, equal opportunity, and future possibilities. It animates rising expectations to reinvent ourselves. Our creeds of hope and change, the entrepreneurial spirit, the sacredness of home, and the allure of consumer goods and wealth are all embedded in the dream. It is woven into the fabric of the shared American ideal, as portrayed in iconic paintings of the good life by Norman Rockwell: the White, middle- class family around the bountiful dinner table in their comfortable home and community.

The dream continues to play a vital role in everyday life, influencing both individual and collective identity and aspirations. Broad and amorphous, it accommodates a wide range of visions. Although its meaning differs with peo- ple’s circumstances, at the core is achieving personal happiness, respect, and a sense of dignity, pride, and fulfillment. The dream has also served as a pillar of our great social and civil rights movements. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., saw economic justice as fundamental to this dream. Although it holds potential as a unifying ideology in our increasingly diverse society, the reality for most people’s lives belies the dream.

Meritocracy and the Myth of the Rugged Individual

Our society, from its beginning, has had two opposing strains. One, based on principles of individual merit and the survival of the fittest, advocates as little government regulation or interference as possible. The other, based on the

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principles of liberty and justice for all, regards education, health care, equal opportunity, and provision of a safety net as essential entitlements.

Inherent in the American Dream is the faulty presumption that all citi- zens enjoy equal personal agency to develop to their fullest potential unham- pered by social barriers. In our meritocracy, everyone is considered respon- sible for earning his or her own success; those who don’t succeed are seen as lacking motivation, talent, and grit. The dream encompasses key attributes that we associate with our cultural myth of “the rugged individual”: self- reliant, resourceful, opportunistic, entrepreneurial, inventive, pragmatic, and resilient.

However, the emphasis on individual merit fails to account for the rela- tional connections, class- related resources, and institutional supports for achievement and resilience in surmounting life challenges (Walsh, 2016). It also fails to acknowledge racial, ethnic, gender, and other forms of dis- crimination. Social historians have documented the many ways in which class structures and unequal opportunity have blocked social class fluidity and undermined expectations of upward mobility (Samuel, 2012).

Racial Disparities

Racial disparities in social status and economic opportunity throughout our history continue to hamper the life chances of people of color. The ethos of individual merit and denial of persistent discrimination support assumptions that struggling minorities are at fault for their difficult life circumstances. In many ways, racial disparities have been institutionalized in social policy. For instance, in drafting the New Deal for recovery from the Great Depression, Congress blocked African Americans and other minorities from accessing vital ladders of opportunity. Farm work, housekeeping, and other jobs staffed predominantly by minorities were omitted from programs such as Social Security and unemployment insurance. After racial minorities had served with honor in World War II, the G.I. Bill maintained racial exclusions. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, fear by many Whites that advancement of Blacks and other minorities would come at their expense has fueled ongoing racial tension and resentment.

Overall, the economic gap between White and non-White Americans has persisted, and is widening on some dimensions, as in lower wages and higher unemployment rates, especially among young men (Wilson & Rogers, 2016). The policy of mass incarceration has robbed life chances for all too many youth of color. Child poverty rates are gradually declining for Whites, but not for African Americans, undermining their future prospects.

Yet caution is required not to conflate race and class. While remaining cognizant that racial minorities are disproportionally represented in lower socioeconomic strata, it is also important to recognize that a sizeable number are highly educated and successful in their lives.

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 41

Home Ownership: Bedrock of the American Dream

The popular expression “My home is my castle” harks back to aristocratic societies over the centuries, with the ownership of property distinguishing the wealthy class from the commoners and “landlords” from renters. In our society, home ownership came to symbolize the attainment of the American Dream.

In the late 1800s, the overcrowding of Eastern cities with factory work- ers, the poor, and the surge of immigrants led to the government’s Homestead Acts, encouraging any American, including freed slaves, to claim up to 160 free acres of federal land— including vast territories confiscated from Native Americans. Perilous frontier life contributed to values of rugged individual- ism, self- reliance, and wariness of “outsiders,” attitudes that persist today in rural areas.

By the mid-20th century, home ownership became widespread for middle- and working- class families through government subsidy, with tax- deductible mortgage interest. However, the explicitly racist policy of redlining by the Federal Housing Administration from 1934 to 1968 made homeownership virtually impossible for African Americans residing in poor neighborhoods. They were unable to borrow money or to gain approval for a mortgage, insur- ance, or other financial services. Differences in home ownership rates remain a prime factor in the racial wealth gap. Today, most White families own their homes; most Black and Latino families are renters. Inequality is reinforced through the acquisition of assets for homeowners. Those with larger incomes could afford bigger houses in better neighborhoods with higher mortgage and tax benefits. Over recent years, the construction of McMansions by the super- rich symbolize their status, and gated communities insulate the affluent from contact with everyday people. Most neighborhoods and suburbs are economi- cally and racially segregated.

For those with insecure income, missing rental or mortgage payments too often leads to homelessness. With urban gentrification, decent affordable housing for displaced low- income residents— most often the elderly and racial minorities— is rarely made available. Public housing over the past decades concentrated the urban poor in high-rise projects. Underfunded and poorly managed, the towers became vertical ghettoes, with dilapidated buildings and unsafe conditions, isolated from the wider community and basic resources. Many projects, such as Cabrini- Green in Chicago, have been demolished and replaced with luxury condos despite vows to resettle residents in integrated, mixed- income, low-rise housing (Austen, 2018).

SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATIONS AND RISING INEQUALITY

The mid-20th century was an era of unprecedented prosperity in the United States. The 1950s–1970s were booming times in manufacturing. Blue- collar

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workers took pride in making high- quality products, and union jobs ensured good pay, generous benefits, and secure employment to retirement. Social and economic barriers were at their lowest in over a century. Educational expan- sion and income equality rose; class barriers to social interaction and inter- marriage declined; and opportunities improved for children to advance. Yet not everyone prospered. The hard lives of those in lower socioeconomic strata, largely invisible, were documented in seminal research (Sennett & Cobb, 1972) and in Studs Terkel’s (1972) poignant interviews with the working poor.

Over recent decades, societies worldwide have been undergoing disrup- tive transformations, with workforce dislocations influenced by globaliza- tion, automation, and technology. In “trickle down” economic policies and an overriding profit incentive, corporations have increasingly prioritized executive and shareholder benefits over employee livelihoods and community well-being. Unions have lost power, leaving workers without representation. Across the country, steel mills, mines, and manufacturing plants have auto- mated, downsized, and closed. Many have relocated or outsourced jobs where nonunionized or foreign workers can be paid much less. In rural areas, strug- gling family farms have gone under, or forcibly sold to large agribusiness.

With growing income inequality, the top 1% of Americans now earn more than the other 99%, and the top one-fifth are prospering while the vast majority lags behind. Three of four workers live paycheck to paycheck. Tax breaks go to the wealthy while public education and health care are undercut. Gaps are growing on many dimensions, including wealth, education, family structure, lifestyle, and geography, with increasing health care disparities and segregation of communities. The clustering of disadvantages at the lower end amplifies the effects of poverty. Low- income neighborhoods have higher risks of health impact by harmful environmental exposures in industrial work, pol- lution in air and water, and proximity to toxic waste. Community disasters impact the poor more severely; even when the rich are affected, as in a hur- ricane, they are more likely to have adequate assets and insurance coverage to repair and rebuild in the aftermath (Ahern & Galea, 2006). The 2008 Great Recession devastated those least protected and hollowed out communities with foreclosures and unemployment. Current threats to health care cover- age, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid all would further undermine life chances for most.

Declining Prospects, Downward Mobility, and Shattered Dreams

The expectation of upward mobility is so ingrained in our cultural narrative that people feel all the more betrayed when they work harder just to stay in place, or, despite all efforts, lose ground (Ehrenreich, 2001/2011). With dein- dustrialization and company downsizing, workers who don’t lose their jobs are expected to “pick up the slack.” Many skilled workers who are let go must train their lower paid replacements, deepening outrage at injustice. For those seeking new employment in the changing economy, most jobs pay much less

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 43

than prior earnings. Increasingly, workers cobble together two or more part- time jobs in the new “gig” economy, without benefits or stable income. With housing, transportation, and health care expenses skyrocketing, many can’t keep up with basic expenses.

Widespread home foreclosures in the recent recession plunged many fam- ilies into homelessness and sparked a deep sense of betrayal at having the very foundation of their dream seized from them.

Upward mobility is increasingly unlikely for younger generations in middle and lower strata (Vespa, 2017; Chetty, Friedman, Hendren, Jones, & Porter, 2018). Nearly two- thirds have less wealth than their parents had at the same age. College graduates, saddled with crushing debt and facing an uncertain job market, worry about establishing their lives and relationship commitments. Most young adults without college face bleak future prospects. For older workers, the loss of jobs and financial security for later years is cruel, fueling nostalgia for the past. Feeling powerless, many lower- income Whites blame the “elites” who don’t seem to care about them and resent the progress made by women and minorities and competition from new immigrants. Many don’t see how the government has helped them. A pro- found sense of injustice has led to a loss of faith in society and in themselves (Hochs child, 2016).

Self‑Worth, Dignity, and Respect

Feelings of status anxiety heighten in periods of rapid social change, as in our current times. People commonly assess where they belong by looking above, at those they envy and resent, and below, at those they look down upon with contempt. Historically, many lower- income Whites, lacking material wealth and considered inferior by the rich, sought to maintain their status above Blacks and other minorities.

From our early colonial era, White menial workers and the poor were marginalized and looked down on by the affluent. They were considered lazy and dimwitted, cursed with inferior “breeding,” and called “clay eaters,” “crackers,” “hillbillies,” and “white trash” (Isenberg, 2016). In the myth of self- generated success, low- income Whites have continued to face condescend- ing attitudes by the affluent (Hochschild, 2016; Shipler, 2016): “The elites call us deplorables”; “Oh, liberals think that Bible- believing Southerners are igno- rant, backward, rednecks, losers. They think we’re all racist, sexist, homo- phobic, and maybe fat.” Some internalize shame and blame from demeaning comments: “If you’re rich it’s because you deserve it, and if you’re poor it’s because you deserve it.” As one client told me, “When I hear more fortunate people say they are blessed, it makes me feel worthless— what’s wrong with me that God didn’t bless me?”

The stigma of poverty and dependency is made worse when people turn to government programs intended as safety nets. Ta- Nehisi Coates (2017) writes of his own experience seeking unemployment compensation after losing his

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third job in 7 years. He attended a required seminar on work, responsibility, and the need to “stay off the dole”:

“The dole” was small, time- limited, and humiliating to access. How any- one could enjoy or accustom themselves to it was beyond me. But the ghost of welfare reform past was strong and haunted the halls of unemployment offices everywhere. There in a classroom, amid a cohort of presumed losers and layabouts, I took my lessons in the great sin of idleness. (Coates, 2017, p. 5)

In our society, people’s identities and their worth are commonly defined by their job status. The importance of skilled and menial workers has been devalued. Many look down on the plumbers, repair technicians, and mechan- ics they rely on; on workers who clean their homes and offices and collect their trash; on farmworkers and urban laborers. Blue- collar workers commonly have felt pride through identifying with the company they work for and the services they provide. Factories anchored lives, providing not only good pay and job security but also a sense of value and connection. A recent in-depth report in one midwestern town decimated by a manufacturing plant closure focused on the experience of one longtime worker, Shannon, who had been let go (Stockman, 2017). She had always been proud of her job. When she ran into old high school friends, she told them she worked at Link-Belt. Her uncle had worked at the factory since before she was born. Her sense of self-worth was tied to the brand and the quality of the bearings she made. Losing her job, she felt unsure about who she’d become. “I still care . . . I don’t know why. It becomes an identity— a part of you.”

Growing Disparities with Education

Social and economic fortunes are increasingly different depending on educa- tion. Higher education is associated with greater occupational prestige and autonomy, as well as job quality and security. Those lacking college degrees and pathways to wealth and privilege make up the vast majority in our mili- tary, fighting our wars, suffering grave injuries, and losing their lives.

Mortality rates are climbing for middle- aged White Americans with no more than a high school education— attributed largely to the rise in suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol- related deaths (Case & Deaton, 2015). The opioid crisis is intertwined with social and economic declines: The highest volume of opioid and heroin use and highest prescription rates are found among those with depressed labor force participation. Concurrent declines in self- reported health, mental health, and ability to work, increased reports of chronic pain, and deteriorating measures of liver function all point to increasing midlife dis- tress. Cumulative disadvantages from one birth cohort to the next—in the labor market, marriage and child outcomes, and health— are triggered by worsening job opportunities at the time of entry for Whites with low levels of education.

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 45

Intersections with Gender

Men and women have experienced socioeconomic disparities in distinct ways. Culturally, masculine identity and self-worth have been tied to job and financial success (Kimmel, 2013). White working- class men who have lost livelihoods and status have tended to feel particularly aggrieved. They faced greater competition for fewer jobs as growing numbers of women and minori- ties entered and advanced in the workforce. Increasingly, their jobs were mov- ing away or being taken by immigrants at lower wages. Many feel like their best days were behind them. As one client related, “It’s depressing, reminded every day that you ain’t got a future.”

Current job growth is mainly in the service sector of the economy, tra- ditionally defined as “women’s work.” Service- oriented jobs held mainly by women and ethnic minorities, as in child care, nursing facilities, and home health care, are poorly compensated. Women who have advanced in higher education attainment have increasingly entered higher earning fields tradi- tionally filled by men. Yet, while gains have been made toward gender parity in earnings, White women earn just 80 cents to the dollar of what White men earn for comparable work; women of color earn even less compared with White men. With a “glass ceiling” in career advancement, women face barriers in gaining promotions to leadership positions and are less able to invest for their futures. With misogynist attitudes still widespread, women with the most financial need and least power in the workplace, such as wait- resses, domestic and field workers, and factory workers, are subjected to sexual harassment and abuse by male coworkers and bosses, despite protec- tive laws.

IMPACT FOR MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

Many look back nostalgically at family life a half century ago, as our coun- try’s postwar prosperity surged over 30 years. The average wage enabled many working- class families to enjoy a comfortable middle- class life. Sup- ported by government benefits and strong unions, it was the only time in our history that large numbers of blue- collar families could rely almost solely on the husband’s income. With job stability and economic security, young adults married and had children early. The divorce rate, after rising earlier in the century, was unusually stable. But it was also a time of rigidly gendered spheres of work and family life governed by traditional patriarchal values. The normative nuclear family structure was headed by the male breadwin- ner, with women’s supportive role in homemaking, child rearing, and elder care (Coontz, 1992). In low- income families, women commonly contributed to family income on top of their gendered responsibilities.

Over recent decades, the majority of wives and mothers, out of necessity and seeking wider horizons, have come into the workforce. For most families,

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two incomes have become essential to maintain a modest standard of living. Single parents struggle to keep afloat, as Ehrenreich (2001/2011) found in her study of low-wage women workers. Widening inequality between the rich and working- class families leaves most precariously on the edge of poverty (Edin & Kissane, 2010).

Gap in Marriage and Divorce by Education

A “marriage gap” has increasingly aligned with the growing income gap, in striking racial, socioeconomic, and educational differentials (Cherlin, 2014). The disparities by education are striking. Young university- educated women and men have increasingly constructed more egalitarian, dual- earner mar- riages, with a substantially lower probability of divorce. Those with only high school educations or less and bleak earnings prospects are less likely to get married and more likely to divorce. Longitudinal research has found that in university- educated married couples, only 30% divorced, in contrast to 48% of those with a high school degree and 58% of those with less than high school. Adults with less education increasingly have children in short-term cohabiting relationships, with household instability, multiple partnerships, and complex family networks. Persistent financial duress, unemployment, and recurring job transitions heighten risks for substance abuse, family conflict and violence, homelessness, and breakup, driving an increase in poor, single- parent households.

Impact of Socioeconomic Disadvantages on Children and Families

Socioeconomic strains overload family functioning (Conger, Conger, & Mar- tin, 2010). Financial and workplace stresses spill over into family life, generat- ing ongoing tensions. More affluent families are better able to buffer disrup- tions by tapping relational and community resources. With vast economic, social, and racial disparities, low- income, disadvantaged families confront relentless stresses from unemployment, substandard housing, discrimination, and inadequate medical care.

Harsh economic conditions and job dislocation undermine their stability and well-being. Temporary or part-time jobs, distant commuting, or irregular shift work make it hard to structure family life. When families live close to the edge, a job loss or medical expenses can plunge them into a financial abyss. In a cruel paradox, crisis and disruption may be a constant in their lives.

Financially strained parents struggle to provide their children with basic essentials of food, clothing, shelter, and education. Children’s life chances are worsened by chronic conditions of poverty, discrimination, poor schools, and lack of opportunity. In families surrounded by neighborhood blight, crime, violence, and drugs, parents worry constantly about their children’s safety. Intertwined family and environmental stresses contribute to school dropout,

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 47

teen pregnancy, and drug, gang, and criminal activity. In contrast, children raised in resource- rich families and communities are more likely to benefit from a stimulating environment, maternal and child health, early childhood enrichment, and computer literacy for advantageous pathways in life.

From a Deficit to a Resource Perspective

Yet we must be mindful that there are also differences in family functioning within every social class, rich or poor. Pejorative stereotypes are common, presuming that poor families are dysfunctional, uncaring about their children, and unmotivated for therapy. Single- parent families are called “broken,” with single mothers seen as inherently deficient and nonresidential fathers assumed to be “deadbeat.” Too often they are blamed for their children’s problems without an understanding of how multiple stressors over time take a cumula- tive toll, heightening family vulnerability (Walsh, 2015).

The label “multiproblem families” conveys the assumption that highly vulnerable families are at fault for their situation; instead, the term “multi- stressed families” better conveys the relentless stresses in their lives, many not of their own making and beyond their control (Walsh, 2016). Rather than dismissing them as deficient, we need to understand how they are overbur- dened and underresourced. Cascade effects of job loss and recurrent crises, trauma, and dislocations can overwhelm coping efforts and disrupt family life. The combined psychological, social, and economic burdens of poverty and discrimination place them at greater risk for multiple problems. Recent immigrants face additional barriers of cultural and language differences.

Yet it is a mistake to equate poor families with problem families. National survey data for more than 100,000 families reveal that, although families in poverty experience socioeconomic disadvantages, they have many strengths, such as the closeness of relationships and shared activities and spiritual prac- tices (Valladares & Moore, 2009). Strong extended- family supports foster resilience in low- income families, especially in African American and immi- grant families that have struggled to overcome persistent conditions of pov- erty and discrimination (Boyd- Franklin & Karger, 2015; Falicov, 2014). One highly successful African American man proudly shared that the first thing he bought with his big paycheck was a house for his single- parent mother, in gratitude for raising him with love and determination to overcome life chal- lenges.

Even in troubled families, potential resources can often be drawn on in extended relational networks (Walsh, 2016). In his powerful memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance (2016) describes growing up in the midst of the devastation of livelihoods and communities in the “rust belt” and rural Appalachia. Vance straddled two worlds, with two sets of mores and social pressures. His mother and their neighbors were consumerist, isolated, angry, and distrustful. As her drinking became problematic and she moved in and out of several marital and

48 T h e o r e T i c a l P e r s P e c T i v e s

cohabiting households, family life was increasingly fragmented and chaotic. In contrast, his grandparents, quietly faithful, self- reliant, and hardworking, provided a loving and stable home and nurtured his life ambitions.

Yet, we must be cautious not to blame those who falter for their plight, reflecting the myth of self- reliance. Many problems in families involve adap- tational difficulties with the social and economic upheavals of recent decades and the unresponsiveness of larger community and societal institutions. Other nations offer examples in developing new models to sustain families and cush- ion disruptions through social policies that safeguard family well-being, child and elder care, and expanding roles for men and women in the workplace and in family life (Cherlin, 2016). Families everywhere require a national commit- ment to affordable, high- quality child and elder care, universal health care, affordable housing, and more flexible job structures and schedules for both men and women to enable families to thrive (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2019). It is not enough to help those who are disadvantaged to “overcome the odds”—we also must change the odds.

TOWARD A DYNAMIC PROCESS VIEW OF SOCIAL CLASS

The concept of class, traditionally approached in terms of contrasting capital- ist and socialist– Marxist systems, has focused on the social divisions based on economic location. Social theorists expanded the view of class as crosscut by other kinds of status distinctions and social groupings and by linking class with “culture.” At times, this led some to castigate presumed bad habits of the poor that supposedly keep them down, as earlier “culture of poverty” stereo- types suggested. More recent perspectives explore the centrality of meaning in human lives, including how those within particular classes make cultural sense of the world (Walley, 2013). Culture is seen in terms of the beliefs that people draw upon in order to make meaningful lives—as the American Dream animates life pursuits— and the dynamic, changing, power-laden resources that facilitate or constrain possibilities.

The concept of class must be multifaceted to do justice to the complex realities of our lives. Socioeconomic status is a powerful form of inequality intertwined with race and gender and other forms of inequity to define who we are, our advantages, and our place in the world (Walley, 2013). Rather than construing class as a rigidly defined group of people or even a predeter- mined social position within an economic order, class is better understood in terms of dynamic processes. In this view, class concerns the trajectories of our lives— individually and collectively— that often play out in ways that we cannot influence, but also in some ways that we can. Class is also about our experiences of who we are in relation to influential others and is bound up with both the economic and the cultural. Our lives exist and take on meaning within the social worlds that have shaped us and through which we negotiate our paths in life.

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 49

IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

In clinical training, practice, and research, greater attention is needed to socio- economic influences in couple and family distress and their future aspirations. Most intervention approaches to strengthen marriages have focused on White, middle- class couples. Applications with low- income and minority populations reveal the corrosive influence of economic duress on relationships over time. Considerable research indicates that low marriage rates and high divorce rates among the poor are rooted not in their character deficits or culture, but in their economic insecurity.

For over 20 years, Congress funded marriage promotion and responsible fatherhood programs in low- income, at-risk couples. Evaluations of healthy marriage programs have found that couples who took relationship skills classes were neither more likely to marry or stay together nor to improve their financial situations. Although in many cases there were improvements in couples’ com- munication and relationship satisfaction and in fathers’ engagement with chil- dren, most gains came not because they taught middle- class values and skills but because they helped couples realize that their challenges were triggered more by their chronic stress than by their inadequacies. Yet, even when their relationship experiences improved, it did not affect marriage, divorce, or poverty rates.

As Aponte (1994) has stressed, clinicians need to understand the emo- tional and relational problems in poor, disproportionately minority families in light of their socioeconomic and political contexts. They are vulnerable to larger social dislocations and cannot insulate themselves from harsh eco- nomic times. Immense structural disparities perpetuate a vast chasm between the rich and the poor, increasing the vulnerability of families struggling to make ends meet. Structural changes in society and its institutional supports are essential for them to thrive.

Addressing Socioeconomic Influences

In couple and family assessment, it is important to ask not just about clients’ employment, income, and education. A systemic assessment with genogram and time-line construction is useful to identify major stressors and their pile- ups and to situate presenting problems in social and developmental contexts (McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008). What matters most is to gain an under- standing of how people make meaning of their social locations and their eco- nomic situations, exploring their constraints, resources, and life dreams.

A collaborative, client- centered therapeutic engagement is essential in exploring social status and financial issues relevant to presenting problems. Given pejorative stereotypes and demeaning attitudes toward low- income and poor people in our society, it is vital to convey respect and genuine interest in learning about their lives, including their strengths, values, and positive vision alongside their hardships, setbacks, and anxieties, and about resources that can be mobilized to overcome their challenges.

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Socioeconomic concerns may involve financial strains or social status issues or both. In terms of finances, McGoldrick and colleagues (2008) rec- ommend noting current income of immediate family members and any major debts or financial obligations that may be stressing family life. Many people hesitate to bring up financial or social status issues directly, so it is impor- tant to listen for and explore such concerns indirectly, as in arguments over money and spending, or in mention of bills piling up, a broken- down car, or skipping needed medication. Untimely losses, such as with the disability or death of a breadwinner or crushing medical expenses, can trigger a cascade of downslides and loss of future hopes and dreams. Major illness is the largest cause of bankruptcy in our society.

Where spouses differ widely in their socioeconomic background, current earnings, or aspirations, conflict may ensue over spending or savings differ- ences, as in a partner’s “penny pinching” or “spendthrift” ways. In heterosex- ual couples, when wives earn substantially more than their husbands or expe- rience greater career success, studies find higher risks for conflict and divorce. It’s important to explore the influence of gendered cultural expectations tying masculine identity and self- esteem to career success and the breadwinner role.

It may be important to track socioeconomic changes over time, in shifts up or down. For a young adult in a family prizing upward mobility, drop- ping out of college, choosing a low- status or low- income career, or marry- ing someone from a lower social status may be met with disapproval, with stigma and shame about lost status. In families in lower and marginalized socioeconomic strata, expectations may be strong for a child to be the first to “make it out.” Some experience jealousy or resentment from family members or friends “left behind” or class anxiety about where they belong and are accepted. Many, especially in immigrant families, feel responsible to help out members in financial need and may disrupt their own education pursuits to do so (Falicov, 2014). Again, it is important to understand each client’s situation.

We might ask clients about their vision of the American Dream—what it means to them, their strivings, achievements, and disappointments. What bar- riers have they faced? What resources have helped— or might help? It’s impor- tant to contextualize concerns about their own deficits, failures, shame, or blame, enlarging their perspective to take into account larger socioeconomic influences in their lives and issues of power and privilege, with mindfulness of their intersection with racial, gender, life phase, and other influences. Our work, when tapping the human potential for resilience, affirms their dignity and worth, rekindles hope, and supports their efforts to re- vision and reach for their dreams.

Case Example: Child‑Focused Presenting Problems

Frequently, a youth’s school dropout or decline in grades is connected to fam- ily stresses around a parent’s job loss and financial strains.

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 51

Mick and Dee, the parents in a lower- middle- class White European Amer- ican family, sought help for their teenage son Kile’s recent failing school grades. He had also stolen money from Dee’s small savings, stashed under the parents’ mattress. In the first family session, they expressed anger and disappointment that he was failing to live up to his potential. They pinned their hopes and dreams on his becoming the first in their family to go to college.

It was crucial to explore the contextual stresses in recent problems and relational strains. Mick had lost his job due to company downsizing and was having trouble finding stable employment. As he was the sole family breadwinner, this situation severely strained their finances, jeop- ardizing their home ownership and fueling marital tensions. Feeling defi- cient as a provider, Mick felt like a total failure as a husband and father. We examined family members’ expectations about what it meant to be “a good husband and father” and broadened the term “provider” to explore many qualities they valued in him. Mick hadn’t realized before how much he meant to them and the many ways he could show his love to his wife and support his son’s best efforts.

For Dee, their precarious financial situation tapped into catastrophic fears from her childhood experience, when her unemployed father had abandoned the family. She became tearful, recalling the shame of being called a “broken family,” forced to go on welfare, and her embarrassment wearing cheap jeans and torn sneakers when her classmates had the lat- est fashions. Mick softened and took her hand, saying, “That’s why she was so upset when her small savings were missing— she lost her security.” Dee nodded, saying, “It wasn’t much, but I’ve been saving up for our 20th anniversary— I’m so worried we won’t make it; that somehow, we’ll just fall apart.” They hugged, as we focused on building mutual support to regain their financial security and strengthening bonds to support their son’s self-worth and success.

Multilevel approaches are essential in overcoming job and financial chal- lenges. It’s important for clinicians to become familiar with resources in the community, including faith-based programs. Low- income families are often isolated and reluctant to seek help in our culture of self- reliance and the stig- matizing of poverty. Therapists can link them with social services to address basic needs such as transportation and child care and can help them to navi- gate access to government assistance for health care, food, or housing needs.

Multifamily Groups with Job Loss and Employment Transitions

Resilience- oriented multifamily groups are very helpful with collective job loss experiences. They provide social support among families facing similar life challenges, contextualizing distress, reducing stigma and shame, and sharing useful problem- solving strategies. At the Chicago Center for Family Health, at the request of a job transition agency, we developed resilience- oriented mul- tifamily workshops for the positive adaptation of workers and their families

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displaced by factory closings or company downsizing (Walsh, 2016). In one situation, over 1,800 workers lost their jobs abruptly with the relocation of a clothing manufacturing plant. Many were ethnic/racial minorities and/or immigrants with limited English, education, and skills for employment in the changing job market. All were essential breadwinners for their families; many women were single parents. The agency sought our family approach because their individually focused services were not addressing the relational strains generated by the job loss, which, in turn, hampered vital family sup- port needed by the displaced worker for successful reemployment.

Family resilience- oriented workshops were designed to address the per- sonal and familial impact of losses and transitional stresses, attending to family strains, reorganizing role functions, and rallying family members to support the best efforts of the displaced workers. Meeting weekly at the job agency, participants and leaders identified discussion themes relevant to their challenges and focused on pathways in resilience. Facilitators shifted focus from perceived deficits to identifying skills and strengths, such as pride in doing a job well and dependability and loyalty in work and family life.

Couple and parental roles often needed to be realigned. For men who lost a sense of worth tied to the traditional male breadwinner role, it was crucial to broaden perspective on the ways they were valued. The job transition also enabled them to spend more time with loved ones and expand helpful con- tributions in family life. Fathers experienced new competencies and benefits through greater sharing of household and child- rearing responsibilities. Single parents who were depressed and depleted were encouraged to reach out to “lifelines” in relational and community networks. They might involve their children’s aunts, uncles, and godparents by offering mutual support, such as exchanging shopping and child care for respite and connection.

The group process encouraged a “can-do” spirit, reducing anxiety and despair by renewing hope and determination to succeed. The biweekly work- shop format supported displaced workers in taking initiative and persevering in job search efforts. Group members celebrated small successes, commiser- ated over setbacks, and found humor amid challenges, strengthening mutual support. Families brainstormed simple ways to build in “family fun time” and to show mutual appreciation. Family counseling was available for those need- ing more intensive help.

Based on the success of that project, we developed a similar resilience- based group approach for young single mothers seeking employment for the first time. Most had to overcome multistress conditions in their families and communities and multiple barriers to sustained employment. In contrast to the common- deficit view of low- income single mothers as underfunctioning and unmotivated, a resilience- based approach viewed them as underresourced and understandably overwhelmed by persistent stressors in all aspects of their lives. We addressed challenges in finding transportation and managing child care arrangements around new job demands. Counseling was available to assist those with challenges associated with raising a special needs child,

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 53

caring for a disabled elder, or ending a troubled relationship with a boyfriend who provided financial support but posed risks of abuse. Potential kin and social supports, including religious/spiritual resources, were identified. The resilience orientation shifted the mothers’ outlook to affirming their strengths and potential. It encouraged their active initiative, perseverance, and mastery of the possible in their efforts to make a better life for themselves and their children.

Exploring Therapists’ Own Social Class Experience

In recognizing social class as a significant dimension in our clients’ lives, it’s important to examine the influences of our own social class experience and the issues and biases we may bring into our practice. It is crucial to gain aware- ness of our own social class privileges and prejudices and how clients may per- ceive our attitudes toward them. It’s important to reach out beyond our class- related circles to gain appreciation for the challenges and strengths of others with different life experiences. Our own family- of- origin explorations— each story unique— can yield unanticipated benefits in our work and our lives.

Growing up in Kenosha, I never felt poor in my blue- collar neighborhood, but I felt the sting of social class prejudice by more affluent peers who lived in fine houses across town where fathers were successful businessmen, doctors, and lawyers and mothers wore expensive mink coats in winter. I noticed the subtle ways they looked down on us. My cheeks would redden, feeling my father’s shame, when gas station customers from the other side of town talked down to him as my father, in overalls, waited on them. My grandparents, also blue collar, were always welcoming, but my upwardly mobile relatives looked down on us as the poor relations, the fault of my father’s failure to succeed financially. One snobbish aunt, at the annual family dinner, always showed her disdain for him. I later understood that, as the second generation of impoverished immigrants, they needed to show they had “made it” and dis- tanced themselves from my father, who hadn’t. At the end of his life, it broke my heart seeing his disappointment when we called his brother and cousins but none came to see him before he died—or to his funeral.

I carried the early sense of class inferiority into adulthood. Unlike those who suffer the microaggressions of racism, I was White and could “pass” as middle class and excelled at a top university. But I noticed disparaging clas- sist comments and believed that more affluent people could tell that I didn’t belong; that my clothes or manners weren’t quite right. I dreaded bringing a beau home to my parents’ small apartment to meet them, fearing he would reject me as “not good enough.”

I noticed that, in our culture, a common question in meeting people is “What do you do?” or “What did your father do?” to probe social class loca- tion. I never wanted to reveal that my father worked in a gas station. One time, invited to a fancy cocktail party in a wealthy community of Ivy League graduates, I abhorred their status- related conversation about their cars and

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boats and vacation houses. When asked what my father did, I retorted tartly, “My father was in the oil business!”

I wanted nothing to do with such snobs. Yet I realized I needed to work on my class issues to deepen my connection with my father. With my persis- tent interest in learning more about his life, he revealed the suffering and dis- appointments he had endured, and I gained compassion for him and respect for his remarkable resilience.

No one had ever talked about my father’s limp; my mother guessed it was caused by a sports injury. I learned that he was born with a congenital hip displacement. In early childhood, he was encased in a plaster cast for many months, but when it was removed, his hip slipped out of place. He was homebound throughout his childhood, unable to walk or play with peers or attend school. His working- class parents couldn’t afford expensive medical advances until financial assistance enabled him to have effective surgery at age 11. By then, with one leg much shorter than the other, he started school in first grade, where the young classmates bullied and made fun of him. Awk- ward and embarrassed, he dropped out of school, later completing his general equivalency diploma on his own. As a young adult in the Great Depression, he enrolled in a college program to become a pharmacist, working in a phar- macy to put himself through school. But the college went bankrupt, a casualty of the Great Depression. His boss, praising my father’s hard work, promised to leave him the pharmacy at retirement if he would continue to work for very little pay. My parents married, struggling financially, yet hopeful for the future. Despite their best efforts, the pharmacy folded, and my father’s dreams were again dashed. My parents then started over, moving to Kenosha, where his uncles deeded him a small gas station to try his hand at. Although it was located on the main street into town, in the post- World War II recovery, the new highway bypassed the street. Through no fault of his own, he was never able to make a go of that business. My parents, with indomitable spirit, re- visioned their lives one more time. We packed our small Rambler (made in Kenosha) and drove west to start a new life.

Gaining perspective on my father’s life fundamentally altered my view of him. My anger, shame, and disappointment melted through compassionate understanding. No longer a failure in my eyes, he had struggled valiantly to overcome the many hardships and cruel disappointments in his life. He was a loner, a misfit, never quite comfortable in social situations or with more financially successful relatives. Yet in many ways he was the strongest, most resilient one in his family. He met his life’s adversities with courage. Tested repeatedly, he always rose to meet the challenges. His mother’s childhood care and his loving bond with my mother nourished his resilience. Widowed in his later years, he worked tirelessly as a volunteer for the Shrine circus, support- ing their Hospitals for Crippled Children. After he died, I found many service awards, which in his modesty he had never mentioned. I had saved his old beaten- up transistor radio to remember him— instead, I put his awards on the mantle to honor his memory.

Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 55

CONCLUSION

Structural transformations in our economy and widening inequality in income, opportunities, and resources are defining challenges of our times. The lives of those in lower socioeconomic strata have been hardest hit, undermining their financial security, sense of identity, self-worth, and future dreams. Social poli- cies and therapeutic practices need to understand the social and economic chal- lenges in clients’ lives and be responsive to their needs, values, and aspirations.

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Austen, B. (2018). High- risers: Cabrini- Green and the fate of American public hous- ing. New York: HarperCollins.

Boyd- Franklin, N., & Karger, M. (2015). Intersections of race, class, and poverty: Challenges and resilience in African American families. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Nor- mal family processes: Growing diversity and complexity (4th ed., pp. 273–296). New York: Guilford Press.

Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2015). Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non- Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 112, 15078–15083.

Cherlin, A. J. (2014). Labor’s love lost: The rise and fall of the working- class family in America. New York: Russell Sage.

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Coates, T. (2017). We were eight years in power: An American tragedy. New York: Random House.

Conger, R., Conger, K., & Martin, M. (2010). Socioeconomic status, family process, and individual development. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 685–704.

Coontz, S. (1992). The way we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap. New York: Basic Books.

Edin, K., & Kissane, R. J. (2010). Poverty and the American family: A decade in review. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 460–479.

Ehrenreich, B. (2011). Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting ahead in America. New York: Picador. (Original work published 2001)

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American right. New York: New Press. Isenberg, N. (2016). White trash: The 400-year untold history of class in America.

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Kimmel, M. (2013). Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era. New York: Nation Books.

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Poor families are among some of the most difficult families to effectively engage in therapy. This difficulty is attributable to the complex dynamics that often characterize the family life of the poor and to the lack of attention that our field devotes to the issue of class oppression and its effects on families. Although many clinicians often work with poor and lower- income families as a routine part of their clinical training, they often do so absent any systematic exposure to the dynamics of class and class oppression. In both training and in the real world, poor families often constitute on-the-job training for many beginning and experienced therapists alike. The dearth of attention devoted to the family interactional patterns of poor families has established and con- tributed to a fairly universal phenomenon whereby middle- class values and theoretical concepts are (mis)applied to economically oppressed families, void of question or scrutiny. Even when there is a conscious recognition that a fam- ily is poor, the trauma and dynamics of poverty are rarely comprehensively factored into the analysis of the family’s problems, dysfunctions, daily inter- actional patterns, or therapeutic interventions.

Most cultural groups are guided by a set of organizing principles, which by definition are “basic constructs that shape the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of an individual or group” (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995, p. 229). In many ways, the “culture of poverty” is no exception. There are several critical orga- nizing principles associated with poor families that are critical for therapists to be aware of and to master clinically. Remaining mindful of these organiz- ing principles enables clinicians to avoid the seductive trap of unintentionally imposing middle- class expectations and standards onto poor families. It also

C H A P T E R 4

The Sociocultural Trauma of Poverty Theoretical and Clinical Considerations for Working

with Poor Families

Kenneth V. Hardy

58 T H E O R E T I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E S

helps clinicians engage in reasonable therapeutic goal setting for poor families that takes into account how their lives, hopes, dreams, ambitions, and pos- sibilities for change may be deeply hampered by class oppression and trauma.

ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES OF POOR FAMILIES

The explication of these principles is intended to provide clinicians and their supervisors with a quasi- conceptual framework for understanding the inner workings of poor families and to highlight critical areas for treatment. They are not intended to supplant all other standard operating procedures that underpin best practices for conducting intensive family therapy. For example, being mindful of these organizing principles as they pertain to poor families does not grant therapists permission to abandon the array of time- tested pro- cesses that constitute good and effective therapeutic practice, for example, joining, creating safety, and clarifying patterns of communication. These principles constitute a metaframework that therapists can use in conjunction with their preferred philosophy of treatment.

Poverty as a Sociocultural Trauma

As I note in Chapter 9 of this volume, the worlds of trauma and culture have been inexplicably separated within our field. It is rare, if ever, that sociocul- tural factors such as the various manifestations of oppression are discussed within the context of trauma or vice versa. Although seldom acknowledged, the connections between oppression and trauma are virtually inextricable. In fact, all manifestations of oppression, whether racial, gender, or class, repre- sent forms of trauma. However, not all traumatic experiences involve oppres- sion.

Class oppression, which ensures that our world is divided between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” is the fuel that drives poverty, a lingering life- long condition that pierces the psyche and the souls of those affected. Poverty is a traumatic experience that affects virtually all aspects of a person’s or fam- ily’s existence. Although there are a number of resilient factors associated with poverty, such as the ability to survive, how to make do with sparse resources, and ingenuity and creativity that are especially pursuant to problem solving and survival, it is nevertheless a potently debilitating condition. Both the expe- rience of poverty and the effects of it leave an indelible mark on the psyches of the poor. Even those who are fortunate enough to overcome the throes of poverty and accomplish the often- difficult feat of altering their class status remain scarred by their earlier experiences and exposures to it in a way that is often unforgettable for many. Consider the following case vignette. David and Angelina, an African American couple I am seeing in couple therapy, exem- plify how unrecognized residual scars from childhood exposure to poverty can surface in an upper- middle- class marriage.

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“It’s Never Enough”

The Corbins, David, age 36, and Angelina, age 34, have been married for eight years and were seeking couple therapy to address “communication problems and personality differences.” Both are very accomplished and successful professionals. Angelina is a highly respected corporate attorney and David, a physician. David grew up in a poor, single- parent- headed household in one of the poorest projects in Washington, DC. Angelina, in contrast, the daughter of two renowned university professors, grew up in a middle- to upper- middle- class, largely African American planned hous- ing development in a Maryland suburb. Angelina complains that David is “a money- obsessed workaholic, who seems to always be anxious about money.” She reports: “no matter what he accomplishes, how much prop- erty we own, or what financial resources we possess, he is always obsessed with the fear of not having enough.” She further commented: “although David is obsessed with money, he constantly sneaks and gives his mother money without ever informing me, and on several occasions has actually lied about it.” David replied to the accusation by accusing Angelina of being jealous of his mother. She strongly dismissed his claim and noted that she loves David but she is growing “increasingly frustrated and intolerant of his obsessions about money, his sneaky behavior with his mother, and his fears about not having enough.” Angelina jokingly described David as an avid conservationist who saves his money excessively and recycles every- thing from aluminum foil to paper plates. “He abhors wasteful behavior and ‘freaks out’ if I discard a trash bag before it is completely full,” she stated in frustration. “He acts as if the possession of resources is somehow a key to his survival and liberation.” David, on the other hand, complains that Angelina is “too extravagant, carelessly frivolous, wasteful and has no sense of delayed gratification.” She “acts as if today is all that matters . . . as if tomorrow is insignificant,” he once asserted.

Poverty, like other manifestations of trauma, has a strong intergenera- tional component. Even when it isn’t transmitted physically, the psychologi- cal effects of it often are. David’s current life is far removed from his life as a poor child living in subsidized housing. Yet the painful effects of those days linger with him. His current work ethic, prudent financial tendencies, worries about not having enough, and angst with Angelina’s lack of delayed gratifica- tion are deeply rooted in the sociocultural trauma of poverty. David’s mother, Edna, grew up with parents who were poor and who were children during the Great Depression. Her entire approach to life was marred by these experiences. Neither David nor Angelina had ever associated his “obsession with work and money” to his earlier experiences of growing up poor and the ways that his sense of security and sense of self had been profoundly shaped by the experi- ence. Instead, they fought incessantly over a hypothesis that had been advanced in Angelina’s previous therapy. The notion was that David’s problems stemmed from the combination of an attachment injury he sustained from being aban- doned by his father at an early age and her disappointment that he failed to measure up to the expectation she had of men based on her relationship with her

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father. As their therapist, I certainly considered the aforementioned hypothesis a plausible one; however, it was nevertheless difficult to ignore the role of class in their relationship and David’s poverty- inflicted wounds.

Understanding poverty as a sociocultural trauma helps to dispel the notion that the experience is just about “not having enough money,” “not working hard enough,” or “the will or lack thereof to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Poverty is an integral part of a well-tuned system that makes escaping it a lifelong endeavor. For many, it demands so much more than just having a willingness to work hard. Helping poor clients to understand the intricacies and the anatomy of class oppression, poverty, and sociocultural trauma should be key to the therapeutic process.

Life Organized by the Limitation of Resources

Although it is commonplace to associate poverty with an absence of adequate resources, it is less common to think about the broad- sweeping, far- reaching systemic consequences of not having adequate resources. There is virtually no decision that a poor family makes or avoids making that isn’t shaped in some way by the perceived availability or absence of adequate resources.

I was reminded of this fact while doing therapy with Zachary, a poor 13-year-old White male who was referred to me for stealing a bicycle that was on display outside in front of a local department store. When I asked him why he stole the bike, he thought for a moment, looked puzzled, shrugged his shoulders, and softly replied: “because I wanted it . . . and my mom said she didn’t have money to buy no bike.” I had no reliable means of testing Zach- ary’s veracity; however, his response did not surprise me, nor was it vastly different from responses that I have received from other poor youth under similar circumstances.

I presented this case during a workshop, and several participants informed me that I “had been played by a cagey and crafty adolescent.” I remained open to this possibility but also didn’t want to dismiss the fact that deprivation and lack of adequate resources can propel one to make decisions that often appear rash, inexplicable, and unwise to those of us who have adequate resources. Zachary’s actions should neither be overlooked nor justified. However, nor should the significance of his lack of (adequate) resources be dismissed as a possible contributory factor to his “antisocial” behavior. Simply having an awareness of the limited resources that characterize the lives of so many poor families is virtually meaningless if consideration is not extended to an exami- nation of the systemic impact of what it means to not have enough and how it shapes everyday decision making.

Dignity Assaults

Dignity assaults are the by- product of perpetual and continual exposure to devaluation, which is the centerpiece of sociocultural trauma (see Hardy, Chap- ter 9, this volume). Devaluation is a subtle, systematic, and pervasive dynamic

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inextricably tied to experiences of domination, oppression, and subjugation that ultimately strips targeted individuals and groups of their sense of dig- nity (Hardy & Laszloffy, 2005). It punctures one’s sense of self and self-pride. When an individual or group is subjected to devaluation, dignity assaults are inevitable and unavoidable. Devaluation is at the core of dignity assaults.

In the social- class- stratified society of the United States, where capitalism reigns and seldom fails to reward and aggrandize the wealthy, poverty and everything associated with it is devalued. Negative valuations of the poor are replete throughout our society. It is commonplace for those who are poor to be characterized as lazy, dirty, impulsive, immoral, less intelligent, and ultimately less human and less valuable. These messages are so pervasive and persistent that they become incorporated into the psyches and consciousness of us all, those who are poor as well as those who are not. These internalized messages provide the foundation for the devaluation and dignity assaults routinely expe- rienced by the poor. When one is consistently and systematically devalued, there is a hypervigilance associated with the quest for respect. Unfortunately, since the poor are often considered invisible and inferior, the expressions of respect that are often desired and needed are frequently difficult to garner. My 38-year-old White Irish client Sean expressed it best when he noted:

“I have been working for the same rich people for 18 years and they don’t know a damn thing about me, they don’t see me, or even really know my name . . . what they care about is what I do for them . . . to them, I am nothing more than poor white trash . . . I am a tool . . . they use me for their benefit, to make their lives and their children’s lives better while they don’t give a damn about me and my family. That’s the way it is . . . it’s the difference between being rich and poor. . . . It’s the American way!”

Stigma, Shame, Secrecy, and Silence

Having membership in a group that is devalued means learning to live inti- mately with a life shrouded with stigma. For those who are poor, the relentless exposure to devaluation also means having virtually all aspects of one’s life, including actions and inactions, organized by and in response to stigma. There is a predictable shaming process that accompanies living with stigma. Con- sequently, poor people can find themselves publicly criticized, ridiculed, and ostracized for the same behaviors that would be ignored if they weren’t poor. The following tearful disclosure during a therapy session from a 43-year-old immigrant from El Salvador provides a useful glimpse of what it means to live with stigma and devaluation.

“Just Another Day”

Carmelita is a proud 43-year-old immigrant from El Salvador and a single- parent mother of six children. Her husband, Jorgé, a seasonal migrant

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worker, died 18 months ago in a job- related accident, which exacerbated the preexisting financial hardships of the family. She noted that dealing with the loss of her husband and her children’s father has been unbear- able. When asked when she misses him the most, she took little time to respond as her voice began to crack and tears flowed: “when I go grocery shopping. He used to be my strength when I was standing in line and watching how people stared at me and judged me for using food stamps. I hate the feeling but I have no choice. I feel so small and guilty for using them. I watched people looking at what I buy . . . and some will actually make negative comments as if they are daring me to respond. I never do. I feel terrible in the moment. Last week, one lady standing directly behind me said to her son, ‘you can always tell when they are using food stamps . . . it angers me that they are using our tax dollars to buy ice cream,’ she said, loud enough for me to hear and with obvious disgust. I wanted to just leave the line. . . . I didn’t want to stand there and continue to be humiliated with my 9-year-old watching, but I needed the food and what was I going to say? It’s just another day of being a poor immigrant where people treat you like you are a thing and you don’t belong.”

The size of Carmelita’s grocery order and what foods she was purchasing would not have been under such careful and critical scrutiny if she were per- ceived as middle class or not using food stamps. The experience she had and the response she had to it is common among the poor. Despite the indignities and public scorn she had to endure, she did not feel free to offer a rebuttal or to speak on her behalf. The messages that she is worthless, despicable, and a poor excuse for a human being are firmly etched in her psyche. The stigma- tized views that society has of her now reside inside of her psyche and become the basis for the development of a deeply held sense of shame and self- loathing.

The chronic and perpetual exposure to devaluation and stigma often leads those who are poor to feel a deep sense of shame about who they are, the conditions in which they live, and about being among the have-nots in society. As is customarily the case with all forms of sociocultural trauma- based shame, secrecy becomes a much employed and preferred tool for coping. Rather than continuously opening oneself to public humiliation, criticism, and stigma, those who are poor learn to be more cautious, less self- disclosing and transparent about virtually all aspects of their lives. Carmelita, for example, shared with me that even though it was tremendously more inconvenient for her to do so, she started making multiple weekly trips to the grocery store. Multiple trips, though profoundly inconvenient, enabled her to buy food in smaller quantities so that she could advance through the express lane and use her food stamps more discreetly.

David Corbin, the client I referred to earlier, made a concerted effort to never discuss his family background, his upbringing, or his mother outside his childhood circle of friends. Even his “sneaky behavior” with his mother was infinitely more complex than it appeared. He was committed to helping his mother but felt ashamed that he had to, especially while Angelina’s parents were completely self- sufficient. After several individual and couple therapy

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sessions, he was finally able to admit one of his deepest and most painful secrets to his wife Angelina and me. He tearfully acknowledged that he had spent much of his life feeling ashamed of his mother while also deeply admir- ing her for all of the sacrifices she made for him. Crying uncontrollably, he went on to admit that he was also ashamed of himself for publicly disavowing his mother while simultaneously appreciating her work ethic and integrity. Although he felt tremendous gratitude and a sense of indebtedness to her, he was also ashamed of her. He didn’t know how to metabolize such a range of deeply conflicted feelings.

For the poor, shame and secrecy are often intricately intertwined. It is one of the major reasons why so many poor and working- class people find it difficult to acknowledge publicly that they are or were poor or working class. Secrecy is often preferable to the crippling devaluation, stigma, and shame that too often accompany the admission of being poor.

Secrecy is often fortified by the strategic use of silence, which is akin to a nonverbal “no comment” statement. The poor will seldom voluntarily introduce or acknowledge topics that are revelatory of their personal back- ground. Experience has taught them to be cautious about openly sharing because respect for privacy and freedom from judgment are reserved for the privileged. Thus for the poor, the proverb “silence is golden” is a major modus operandi. There is nothing that safeguards against shame like a secret, and nothing maintains and secures a secret better than a commitment to silence.

Learned Voicelessness

There is a critical and fundamental difference between “silence” and “learned voicelessness.” As noted in the previous section, silence is a willful and delib- erate act that is a direct response to shame. Learned voicelessness, on the other hand, is a reflexive response to perceived and/or real threat, harm, or punishment. It is a survival strategy to thwart acts of domination, as well as the misuse and abuse of power by the powerful. It has less to do with the poor actually having the ability to speak and more to do with the inability and lack of power to advocate on one’s behalf. Learned voicelessness and power- lessness are closely aligned. It is very difficult to advocate for oneself from a position of abject powerlessness. When the poor, like other oppressed groups, are emboldened to engage in self- advocacy, it is often perceived and treated by the dominant group as an act of betrayal, defiance, or lack of gratitude. After countless experiences of either being threatened or punished for exercis- ing one’s voice, it becomes safer and more prudent for the poor as a matter of standard practice to acquiesce to the wishes of the powerful, speak only when one is spoken to, and keep what one thinks and feels securely sequestered.

Learned Helplessness

The trepidation and fear of advocating for oneself invariably contributes to a sense of helplessness that is also closely aligned with power and powerlessness.

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Through the eyes of the poor, their fate, well-being, and livelihood rest within the hands of the privileged dominant group. When one is stripped of the abil- ity to advocate for oneself, feelings of powerlessness are inevitable. When my client Sean (whom I referred to earlier) noted that he felt like “a tool” in his job, he also stated with a strong sense of despair and resignation: “and there is nothing I can do about it . . . except go to work be treated like scum, grin, do my job, and continue to show up to work so I can support my family.” The very anatomy of helplessness, especially given its connections to voicelessness and ultimately powerlessness, often presents the poor with limited options: either be pleasantly and peacefully compliant or be punished. Through living their lives along the margins of society, the poor learn that their ability to significantly influence matters is virtually nil, as the forces of domination and marginalization, power and powerlessness are nearly insurmountable. This is the essence of helplessness.

Orientation toward Survival

The incessant exposure to dignity assaults, devaluation, and stigmatization, coupled with the harsh realities of voicelessness and powerlessness, often leave the poor with the view that their lives are under siege. The scarcity of resources and the denial of equal access to opportunities constitute a major infringement on the quality of life of the poor. Finding ways to survive from day to day is an all- consuming, singularly focused preoccupation of the poor. Because it is often considered a life or death issue (literally and figuratively), the drive to survive is instinctual, and the mind-set is often to achieve it by any means nec- essary. The orientation toward survival is a worldview that is deeply embed- ded in the desire to survive. It is predicated on the notion that the end (survival) often justifies the means (the method by which it is achieved). The orienta- tion toward survival imbues many poor with an indomitable spirit, sense of determination, and hopefulness even in the face of powerlessness. It was the orientation toward survival that inspired Edna Corbin, the poor, uneducated African American mother of David, my client, to work 16 hours a day for years so that her son could attend college and medical school to become a physician. It is the orientation toward survival that allows so many poor people who are often considered what Hill (2016) refers to as a “nobody” to actually become a “somebody.” It is also the same phenomenon that on some occasions places survival over ethics, legalities, or morality. Entangled with the orientation toward survival is also an often unspoken, unshakable desire to succeed— which often means overcoming the walls of poverty in any way one can.

Reciprocal Familial Obligation

Reciprocal obligation is a legal concept that refers to an agreement that binds two parties to each other equally. The context in which it is used in this chap- ter and is applied to poor families has to do with a nonlegal agreement.

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Reciprocal familial obligation is a strategy often used by poor families to traverse the walls of poverty. It is an unspoken, invisible nonlegal contract between a “chosen” or “anointed- to- succeed” family member and the family. Although in some cases the contract is explicitly discussed, in most instances it is implicit but nevertheless (emotionally) binding. The family “decides” (although not explicitly) to pool and channel a disproportionate amount of its resources into one family member, usually a child, although it doesn’t have to be, to increase the probability of his or her success. It establishes a dynamic in which other family members are expected to make sacrifices on behalf of and for the benefit of the anointed family member. The “terms of the contract” ensure that if and when the anointed member makes the climb from poverty to a more prosperous life, the success belongs to the family, especially to those who sacrificed.

I have worked with a number of families who have used reciprocal famil- ial obligation as a strategy to combat economic oppression. They routinely disproportionately invest in one child who is perceived to have a budding mar- ketable skill that could be a passport to economic success and prosperity. The decision to invest more heavily in one child is strictly dictated by the scarcity of resources and the orientation toward survival. It usually has nothing to do with who is loved and who isn’t or who is most or least preferred. The deci- sion is a pragmatic one, largely precipitated by the need and desire to survive and escape poverty. The dynamic can be expressed in myriad ways but is often done through allocating more resources to the child that is believed to have the greatest potential to be the first to go to college or to excel in sports or to become a successful performer, computer programmer, and so forth.

In exchange for the sacrifices of the family, the anointed family member is bestowed with the expectation and obligation that he or she will never forget where he or she came from (i.e., poverty) or about the collective sacrifices that were made to support his or her success. The reciprocally familial obligated member often lives with the welcomed burden of providing unconditional emotional, psychological, and financial support to family members whose individual and collective sacrifices have given birth to the opportunities and successes that have been realized. Professional sports, for instance, is replete with very poignant and uplifting case examples of reciprocally familial obli- gated children who used their achievements as accomplished athletes to give back generously to both their family members and communities to help loosen the firm grasp of poverty. It is the typical professional sports “rags to riches” story. It is the story of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and many other suc- cessful athletes, artists, and professionals from other walks of life.

The Ubiquity of Class

Social class, whether overtly acknowledged or not, is pervasive throughout all aspects of our lives, including therapy. In the therapy domain, class is often connected either to the presenting problems that bring families to therapy, to

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the therapeutic process between therapist and client, or to both. Regardless of the nature of the suffering that brings poor families to therapy, their relega- tion to second- class citizens and class oppression are formidable components of “the problem” and must be of the therapeutic process as well. Class can have a powerfully significant influence on the psychosocial interior of family life. It can be a hidden dimension undergirding parenting styles, how children are disciplined, expectations for children, family structure, attachment issues, communication, and so forth. The following case highlights how class- related issues and the presenting problem for treatment can be tightly interwoven and yet overlooked in therapy.

“Bad Brandon”

Fifth grader Brandon Caldwell and his family were referred to family therapy for his disrespectful behavior in the classroom and overall incor- rigibility. According to his school social worker, Brandon talked back to his teachers, fell asleep in class, and was on the verge of failing academi- cally. Brandon’s mother, Cynthia, a single parent, was reportedly mysti- fied by her eldest son’s behavior in school. She described Brandon as a respectful and conscientious child at home. Needless to say, she found the social worker’s assessment of Brandon difficult to understand.

Todd, the family’s therapist, reported in one of our supervision sessions that he felt stuck with the case and frustrated by the lack of progress the fam- ily had demonstrated. He continued to point out that his therapy with the family was focused around two principal goals: (1) ameliorating Brandon’s behavioral problems via the use of a behavioral modification regimen and (2) increasing parental engagement, especially by having Cynthia assist Brandon with his homework on a consistent basis. Although these interventions seemed both reasonable and warranted, they didn’t seem to take into account the ways in which Brandon’s bad behavior was potentially influenced by the fam- ily’s class status.

By all measures, Brandon was a 10-year-old parentified child whose responsibility it was to prepare both his 6-year-old sister and 8-year-old brother for school every morning. It was his responsibility to make sure they were out of bed on time, bathed, and ate their cereal before he walked them to the bus stop. In some instances, he was also responsible for ensuring that their clothes were ironed when needed. Cynthia’s typical daily work schedule was slightly over 12 hours. She left home at 6 A.M. before the children left for school and didn’t return until after 6 P.M., 3 hours or more after the children returned home. The Caldwells lived in a two- bedroom apartment where Bran- don shared a room with his two siblings. He and his brother Malik shared one bed and his sister, Makayla, slept in the other bed.

At home Brandon was not a typical 10-year-old elementary school child. He was a man-child invested with adult and parent- like responsibilities. His siblings understood that what he said mattered. He had been empowered

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by his mother to oversee the family in her absence, and Malik and Makayla understood this. He had to wake up over an hour before his siblings. He was expected to wake up when his mother did and to get dressed for school as his mom prepared for work. By the time he arrived to school at 8:20 A.M., he had already put in over 3 hours of labor. While in school, it seemed that it was difficult for him to easily slip back into the role of child and student who was expected to respect and defer to adults. Where would he have learned how to do this?

The Caldwells’ family dynamics were greatly shaped by class and eco- nomic oppression. Ms. Caldwell could not afford not to work despite paying a costly toll for having to do so. She was faced with untenable and double- binding choices. Quitting her job would allow her the opportunity to be a more engaged parent and ultimately lessen the burden assumed by her 10-year-old man-child but would severely exacerbate the family’s financial struggles. She also had the choice to continue working, knowing it was at the emotional expense of her children. Hiring child care was not an option; neither was soliciting assistance from the children’s father, who was incarcerated for rob- bery.

Although Brandon’s conduct in school was unquestionably problematic, the issues were far more complicated than just his bad behavior. So much of his “bad behavior” was connected to the family’s dire circumstances and their efforts to survive. It would seem wise and clinically indicated to factor all of the aforementioned dynamics into the treatment planning and goals for Bran- don and his family.

Social class is a ubiquitous force in our lives, including clinically. Even if class is somehow not connected to a presenting problem, it is virtually always connected to the process of therapy. Class often influences, if not dictates, the quality and duration of treatment one receives, from whom, how often, where, whether it is reimbursed or not, and, most importantly, the percep- tions and decision points made by therapists. When class is not overtly and consciously considered within the context of the therapy process, middle- class values will likely prevail and significantly define the norms of what is attended to, named, not named, normalized, and pathologized.

THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF CLASS, RACE, AND GENDER

To pay acute attention to class also means paying attention to the ways that class, race, and gender are often intricately threaded together. It is critical for therapists to understand and see the ways in which class is both distinct from other contextual variables and simultaneously highly integrated with them. For example, in the case examples of Cynthia Caldwell, Carmelita Ruiz, and Edna Corbin (discussed earlier), all are single mothers, all are women of color, and all are poor. Although on the one hand their economic oppression stands alone on its own, gender and racial oppression cannot be eliminated from the

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calculus of their lives as poor women of color. Carmelita is also an immigrant; that adds yet another layer of complexity to the mix. If they were White and male, their struggles would certainly exist but would also be abated by the power and privilege that maleness and Whiteness possess in our society, even for poor White men.

Paying attention to the intersectionality of class, race, and gender assists therapists in appreciating how possessing multiple subjugated identities is a much more debilitating and disempowering circumstance than it is when pov- erty, for example, is experienced within the context of other privileged identi- ties.

Just as it is important to see the ways in which class, gender, and race can be entangled to exacerbate circumstances for some, it is equally as impor- tant to resist conflating race and class. When these concepts are conflated, it unwittingly contributes to the misguided notion that all people of color are poor and all White people are rich. The conflation of race and class in this way only serves to perpetuate racial stereotypes that support beliefs in the inferiority of people of color and the superiority of Whites. The task is to be able to recognize and appreciate the ways in which class, race, and gender, for example, are inextricably stitched together and when they are not. In this regard, we can embrace the idea that it is not coincidental that race and gender play a vital role in the poverty of people of color and women respectively and, at the same time, that not all people of color are poor and not all Whites are wealthy. This type of critical thinking about the intersections of class, race, and gender can help therapists avoid making the crucial errors of assuming that economic oppression may be an issue for families of color— simply based on race—when it isn’t and assuming that it is not an issue for Whites— based on race—when it is.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY

Because few clinicians have been trained to think critically and comprehen- sively about the impact of class on the everyday life experiences of poor fami- lies, an examination of some of the organizing principles that help shape the ideology of the poor is crucial. The value of being exposed to the organizing principles is that they are designed to promote clinical curiosity rather than advocate orthodoxy. Obviously, not all poor families are influenced by each of the principles discussed in this chapter, and those who are may not be affected in precisely the same ways. Yet it is important for therapists working with poor families to take pause, think, and reflect about how class, and poverty in particular, has been a significant confounding variable in the family’s suffer- ing. Moreover, it is important for clinicians to engage in an active and ongoing process of self- reflection and self- interrogation to uncover and discover class- based implicit biases that one’s social class location may have exposed them to unknowingly.

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There is no sacred model of therapy that is ideally crafted to work effec- tively with poor families, nor is one being proposed here. However, there are salient factors that are incumbent on therapists to consider when endeavoring to engage and treat families whose lives have been upended by oppression. The following is a list of therapeutic objectives that therapists should attempt to execute when working with poor families.

1. Conduct an assessment of the impact of limited resources. Conduct a psychosocial assessment of the impact that the family’s limited resources has on its ability to exercise “voice and choice” regarding self- advocacy. This may be an area in which therapeutic assistance is needed even if it isn’t implicated in the initial articulation of the presenting problem.

2. Counteract devaluation. It is important for therapists to be deliber- ate and intentional about attacking the ways in which devaluation assaults the core of the family’s functioning. Employing strategies that are specifi- cally designed to counteract devaluation, accentuate individual and family strengths, and celebrate survival successes are critical for therapists to imple- ment throughout the therapeutic process.

3. Recognize, uncover, and address shame. Shame is one of the most potent and potentially debilitating emotions in our emotional repertoire. It has an even more paralyzing effect on those who are systematically stigmatized. Directly addressing shame clinically is often challenging because those who have shame find it shameful to acknowledge it. Thus the presence of shame in a family system can have a tremendous impact on how members interact with each other and with the therapist and how they participate in therapy. Clinicians working with poor families must be aware of and sensitive to the anatomy of oppression- induced shame and its effects. It must be recognized and uncovered gradually, cautiously, methodically, and, most importantly, respectfully. This aspect of the treatment process should ultimately and ideally support families in naming, claiming, and taming shame (Hardy & Bobes, 2017). The process of naming is important because it gives clients a language to attach to their experiences. Once shame is named and more comprehen- sively conceptualized, claiming is the next critical step. This process involves being able to understand and embrace the complexity of one’s experience with stigma and shame. And, finally, taming refers to the client having the personal power to manage his or her shame rather than being managed by it.

4. Promote lessons in using one’s voice. It is critical for therapists to take an active role in encouraging and supporting families to challenge and overcome the stranglehold of learned voicelessness. Assisting oppressed clients to overcome learned voicelessness is often a long and arduous process that requires time and patience. Part of the success of this effort is predicated on the therapist’s ability to create emotional safety by initiating conversations about power, privilege, subjugation, and oppression, as well as having a will- ingness to locate him- or herself in the therapy. Providing didactic tips and

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tools for how to advocate for oneself is also a salient component of this phase of the treatment.

5. Find the s/hero within. Looking for and locating the s/hero within is one of a multitude of ways of counteracting learned helplessness and pro- moting empowerment. The lives of the poor are most often explained and perceived through stories of their struggles and suffering. However, embed- ded within most stories of struggles and suffering are also untold stories of heroism and survival that are often obscured by our tendency to look only for what’s wrong. When working with the poor, it is of paramount importance for therapists to honor not only stories of struggles and suffering but those of heroism and survival, as well. It is through this process that the s/hero within becomes easily identifiable. For example, Cynthia Caldwell, the mother who was referred to earlier, who burdened her 10-year-old son Brandon with an overwhelming list of adult-like responsibilities, much to his detriment and development, was as much a heroine as she was a “bad mother.” Being a mother of three school- age children and being the sole provider required an incredible sense of fortitude, focus, and tenacity. She modeled the importance of hard work, self- discipline, and relational commitment to her children even at their young ages. It was through her unrelenting efforts that the family was able to remain together and survive, even if only on a day-to-day, paycheck- to- paycheck basis. It would be an egregious oversight for her unconquerable spirit and determination to be overlooked or minimized.

6. Recognize and address the intricacies of the reciprocal familial obli- gation process. As noted earlier, reciprocal familial obligation can be an important dynamic within the inner workings of poor families. It is a com- plex dynamic that is simultaneously functional and dysfunctional. The func- tional aspects of it were discussed in the previous section. A “dysfunctional” manifestation is that it can be an unacknowledged source of lingering con- flict between family members, especially adult siblings. Because the reciprocal familial obligation contract tends to be unspoken and implicit, the unresolved conflict between siblings is seldom explicitly attributed to it. Instead, the con- flict is often rooted in emotionally charged explanations and analyses regard- ing why one or more siblings is/are more “successful, responsible, and self- reliant” than others. Interestingly, the same messages that are projected onto poor families are imposed on the least successful siblings of the family. That is, “they are responsible for their misfortunes . . . they had the same oppor- tunities that I/we had and they just didn’t work hard enough.” As is true in society, it is also conceivable that the successful siblings are successful because they worked hard and because they received more (resources) than the less successful siblings did. This dynamic often can be a source of continual con- flict that spills over intergenerationally to nieces, nephews, and cousins and/ or one that contributes significantly to family cutoffs and estrangements. It can also be a persistent source of aggravation and conflict in marriages, when spouses become concerned about the gravity of resources that a reciprocally

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obligated spouse may be allocating back to one’s family of origin. In the case of the couple, David and Angelina Corbin, who were discussed earlier in this chapter, one of the wife’s chief complaints was her husband’s insistence on funneling money to his mother on a consistent basis and then lying about it. This is one of many complex and intricate dynamics associated with recipro- cal familial obligation. There are an equal number or more of dynamics that emanate from situations in which the reciprocally obligated family member fails to or is perceived as having failed to live up to the terms of the implicit contract as well. Space limitation does not allow for an in-depth discussion of this dynamic; however, therapists should be prepared to address this and other related issues. Therapists must recognize the intricacies of reciprocal familial obligation and all of its manifestations, as well as be prepared to do the type of relational repair work that it requires.

7. Be the broker of permission. It is essential for therapists to demon- strate the willingness and skill to initiate and conduct sustainable compre- hensive therapeutic conversations with families about class and the host of other contextual variables with which it intersects. It is incumbent on the therapist to ensure that the issue of class is discussed and thoroughly explored regarding how it may be seamlessly interwoven into the presenting problem, the therapeutic process, or both. Because contextual variables are often con- sidered sensitive hot- button issues to discuss, in society and in therapy, we tend to operate under a widely understood but unacknowledged gag order to not discuss them. Therapists must be willing to initiate and “lean into” topic areas that are often considered sensitive and difficult. “Granting permission” by doing is the essence of what it means to be a broker of permission!

8. Be willing to engage in self-of-the- therapist inquiry. As therapists, we all have been human beings longer than we have been therapists. Thus the influ- ences of who we are and the context of our lives can never be underestimated regardless of how much we subscribe to notions of objectivity and being a tabula rasa for those we serve. We are deeply soiled with the human stain in much the same way that our clients are and thus are prone to the internalization of the same societal messages about the other that our clients are, as well. After all, to some extent we live in the same or at least similar societal context. For these reasons, it is imperative that therapists remain actively engaged in processes of self- examination, self- interrogation, and self- reflection (Hardy & Bobes, 2016). Examining our class location, realities, organizing principles, and biases must be an integral part of the work each of us does to ensure that we are appropriately equipped to do the type of transformative work that we endeavor to do.

SUMMARY

This chapter asserts that poverty is a form of sociocultural trauma that is rarely considered within the broader discourse on trauma. A major thesis of

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the chapter is that many poor families constitute on-the-job training for many clinicians, as the major blueprint that is used for working with families is one that is saturated in a middle- class ideology. Although many clinicians work with poor families and know that they do, this awareness rarely means more than simply knowing that the family is poor. Our field has devoted scant attention to actually delving into the intricacies of deconstructing how pov- erty, and access to scarce resources in particular, shapes and reshapes family functioning. This chapter provides a snapshot into a series of organizing prin- ciples that play an instrumental role in the lives of many poor families. These organizing principles constitute a metaframework that can be a useful adjunct to whatever theoretical orientation currently informs a therapist’s work with poor families. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of the organizing principles for clinical work with poor families.

REFERENCES

Hardy, K. V., & Bobes, T. (2016). Culturally sensitive supervision and training: Diverse perspective and practical applications. New York: Routledge.

Hardy, K. V., & Bobes, T. (2017). Promoting cultural sensitivity in supervision: A manual for practitioners. New York: Routledge.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (1995). The cultural genogram: Key to training cul- turally competent family therapists. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21(3), 227–237.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (2005). Teens who hurt: Clinical interventions for breaking the cycle of adolescent violence. New York: Guilford Press.

Hill, M. L. (2016). Nobody: Casualties of America’s war on the vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and beyond. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Spirituality is a vital dimension of human experience. Spiritual beliefs and practices have anchored and nourished families over the millennia and across cultures. Today, the vast majority of families worldwide adopt some form of expression for their spiritual needs, both within and outside organized reli- gion.

Spiritual beliefs come to the fore in dealing with adversity, the experience of suffering, and the meaning of problems, their cause, and their future course. They also influence how people communicate about their pain and their pre- ferred pathways in recovery. Many who seek help for physical, emotional, or relational problems are also in spiritual distress. It is therefore important to address the spiritual dimension as a possible source of suffering, as well as a potential resource for healing and resilience.

RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

The overlapping concepts of religion and spirituality (R/S) are often mistak- enly polarized or conflated. Spirituality, a broad overarching construct, refers to a personal investment in transcendent values and practices, either within or outside organized religion.

Religion

Religion refers to an organized, institutionalized faith system, set of practices, and community of followers. It connects adherents with shared moral values and beliefs about God or a Higher Power. Congregational affiliation offers

C H A P T E R 5

Spirituality, Suffering, and Resilience

Froma Walsh

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a spiritual home, pastoral guidance, involvement in a faith community, and support in times of need. Sacred scriptures, teachings, rituals, and ceremonies provide guides for living, relating to others, and navigating life transitions. They offer ways of understanding the meaning of life and, with death, passage to an afterlife. And they carry profound significance and connection with a shared community and its history.

Spirituality: Transcendent Beliefs and Practices

Spirituality refers to transcendent beliefs and practices lived out in daily life and relationships. Spirituality is “the heart and soul” of religion (Pargament, 2011). It can also be experienced outside religious structures, through personal faith, humanistic values, connectedness with nature, expression through the arts, and involvement in social action.

Spirituality, seen as a dimension of human experience, expands systems theory, research, and practice to encompass bio- psycho- social- spiritual influ- ences and their interplay in personal and relational well-being and in suf- fering, healing, and resilience. Like culture or ethnicity, spirituality involves streams of experience that flow through all aspects of life, from multigen- erational heritage to shared belief systems and their expression in ongoing transactions, spiritual practices, and responses to adversity. It ebbs and surges in significance over the life course.

With neurobiological linkages, spirituality involves the most profound and genuine connection within the self, thought of as one’s inner spirit, center of being, or soul. Universally, the spirit is seen as our vital essence, the source of life and power. In many languages the words for “spirit” and “breath” are the same word. We are “inspired”—breathing in significant influences; and we “aspire”—breathing out our best hopes and dreams. At life’s end, we “expire”—releasing our last breath, which many believe releases the spirit into the universe.

Spirituality includes ethical values and a moral compass. It invites an expansion of consciousness to responsibility for and beyond oneself, with awareness of our interdependence, from local to global concerns. Thus spiri- tuality transcends the self: It fosters a sense of meaning, wholeness, harmony, and interconnection with all others— from intimate bonds to kin and commu- nity networks and to a unity with all life, nature, and the universe. This per- spective is at the core of spiritual belief systems of ancient indigenous peoples worldwide, as in Native American visions of the unity of all creation (Deloria, 1994).

Growing Spiritual Diversity in a Changing Society

As families have become more diverse and complex over recent decades, so too have their approaches to their spiritual life. The religious landscape in North America, predominantly Christian and Protestant until recent decades, has

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been changing dramatically and also becoming more ethnically and racially diverse through immigration (Pew Research Center, 2015). Christians have declined to 70%, and denominational affiliations have been shifting from Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant to evangelical, “born again,” or fun- damentalist groups. Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints), now at 2%, are growing fastest. Nearly 2% of Americans identify as Jewish, varying widely from Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform branches to secu- lar humanist and ethnic identity. Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus, near 1% each, are increasing. Others follow such ancient faiths as Sikh, Shinto, and Tao. Some are drawn to religions offering a universality of faiths, such as Uni- tarian Universalist and Baha’i. Congregants meet in over 500,000 churches, temples, mosques, and other places of worship, from small storefronts to megachurches.

Every spiritual orientation values some form of prayer or meditation, often involving chanting, inspirational music or texts, or lighting candles or incense. Almost all pray for their family’s health and happiness. Prayer serves varied functions: to connect with God; to express praise and gratitude; to gain perspective; to sustain strength and courage; to find solace and comfort; to request help or guidance; to seek forgiveness for wrongdoing; or to appeal for a miracle.

Rituals and ceremonies serve valuable functions in every faith tradition, connecting individuals with their families and communities and guiding them in life cycle passage through rites such as communion, baptism, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals. They provide continuity with the past and into the future, with those before and those to come. They can facili- tate painful, disruptive transitions and comfort the dying and the bereaved (Imber-Black, 2009), often catalyzing transformation and growth. Rituals also transcend a particular suffering or tragedy, connecting it with the human condition.

Notably, formal religious affiliation, congregational membership, and attendance at worship services have been steadily declining. Still, the vast majority of Americans believe in God, a Higher Power, or a Universal spirit. Conceptions of God vary widely, from a “force” that maintains a balance in nature to a personal God who watches over people, judges their actions, and guides them in decision making and in troubled times. Yet most people’s faith is stronger than their religious knowledge: Over half of Americans couldn’t name five of the Ten Commandments (Prothero, 2007)!

Among the growing numbers of unaffiliated, the number of atheists and agnostics— who don’t believe in, or are uncertain about, the existence of God—has risen over the past decade (Pew Research Center, 2015). Yet, most who are unaffiliated regard personal faith, a broader spirituality, or secular humanist values as important in their lives.

Contentious social issues such as gay marriage and parenting, repro- ductive rights, divorce, and assisted dying are finding growing acceptance. However, there is sharp polarization, with strong opposition among religious

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conservatives, older adults, and those less educated. Yet we should not assume that particular individuals or families follow all doctrines of their religion, given their cultural diversity and the growing gap between personal faith and adherence to institutionalized religious systems.

Intertwining of Spiritual and Cultural Influences

Spiritual beliefs and practices are interwoven with sociocultural influences and vary greatly across and within faith groups. Spiritual approaches com- monly vary with generational cohorts, social class, education, and urban or rural settings, and they intersect with political and racial climates that affect their expression.

In contrast to the individualism in the dominant American culture, most spiritual orientations worldwide see human experience as embedded within the family and larger community. As the African theologian John Mbiti (1970) describes this sociocentric view: “I am because we are.” These bonds continue beyond death, over the generations. In a traditional African worldview, life is a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth; the spirit never dies, just as in physics, energy is never destroyed, only transformed. The ancestors, no longer physi- cally present, still can communicate with loved ones and descendants, acting as spiritual guardians.

In the United States, African Americans are among the most religious groups, from personal faith to active congregational involvement. Historically Black churches have been vital resources through slavery and ever since. Gos- pel music, rooted in West African oral traditions and combined with Christian lyrics, became a sustaining force. Families continue to turn to their faith for strength in dealing with adversity (Boyd- Franklin & Lockwood, 2009).

Latino families, fervent in their prayer and congregational participation, have been reshaping the Catholic Church. Younger generations are turning to evangelical Christian churches, particularly Pentecostal and charismatic spirit- filled movements, for more direct experience and view God as an active force in everyday life. Many report experiences of direct revelations and divine healing, miracles, contact with deceased loved ones, transpersonal encounters with angels or demons, and other spiritual visitations.

Immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa often combine tra- ditional spiritual beliefs and practices, such as espiritismo, with Christian- ity (Falicov, 2009). Most turn to the church for weddings, christenings, and funerals, yet many maintain special relationships with spiritual guides or sha- mans and continue ancient rituals. Many believe in an invisible world inhab- ited by good and evil spirits who influence human behavior: They can protect or harm, prevent or cause illness, and bring good luck or misfortune. Incense, candles, objects, herbal remedies, and powders with mystical properties are used to cure illness and ward off the “evil eye.” Many believe that they can communicate directly with the spirits of ancestors who, if honored appropri- ately, will confer their blessings and protect them.

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Eastern medicine and indigenous healing approaches are often turned to for physical and emotional distress alongside Western medicine and psycho- therapy, but patients may not mention them if not asked. Too often, they have been neglected, depreciated, or pathologized in Western clinical settings. In therapy with refugee youth from Sudan, Kamya (2009) found that crucial in their trauma recovery and resilience were both their Christian faith in God and their prayers to ancestors and animist powers in nature and the spirit world. It is important for clinicians to respectfully explore such beliefs and practices.

Prejudice and discrimination toward minority and marginalized groups in the larger society can lead family members to suppress identification. In some cases, groups that are both religious and ethnic religious minorities are targeted in oppression by the dominant group, as in ongoing genocidal atroci- ties in Myanmar toward the Muslim Rohingya by the Buddhist Burmese gov- ernment.

Families in impoverished communities find strength through their faith and congregational involvement to counter despair at blighted conditions and injustices. Aponte (2009) contends that the dispirited, losing hope and faith in their chances for a better life, suffer at the core a wounding of the soul, with a pervasive sense of injustice, helplessness, and rage. He urges therapists to attend to spiritual as well as practical needs to help marginalized youth and their families find meaning, purpose, and connection in their lives.

It is crucial to guard against stereotypes and not to reflexively link religion and ethnicity. For instance, only one-third of Arab Americans are Muslim; most are Christian. Over half of American Muslims are not Arab; they may be African American or come from diverse ethnic and racial groups around the globe. Muslim American immigrants are largely assimilated, moderate in political views, and happy with their lives. Yet Muslims face strong prejudice and discrimination in the current heated political climate, which stokes fears of terrorism. Of note, many Christian and Jewish clergy and congregations have strongly allied with Islamic faith communities in welcoming Muslim refugees and supporting their resettlement.

In a dominant Euro- Christian society, clinicians must be mindful not to superimpose that template of values on other belief systems and practices. It is crucial not to judge diverse faith orientations, particularly those of ancient and indigenous cultures, as primitive or inferior. Religious intolerance, per- secution, and holy wars to convert or annihilate nonbelievers have had cata- strophic consequences throughout human times. Early European conquerors viewed Native peoples in the Americas as heathens practicing pagan witch- craft. In government and missionary programs, children were forcibly taken from their families to boarding schools to educate and acculturate them in Christianity and Western ways, stripping them of their cultural and spiritual heritage. A recent resurgence of Native American traditions has been recon- necting families and youth, especially those at high risk of substance abuse and suicide, with the spiritual roots of their ancestors (Deloria, 1994). Research

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with First Nations peoples in Canada documents the importance of integrat- ing their cultural and spiritual resources for resilience into all mental health services (Kirmayer, Dandeneau, Marshall, Phillips, & Williamson, 2011).

Growing Independence and Blending in Spiritual Life

In recent decades, as global crises, societal dislocations, and family structural transformations have rendered life more insecure and challenging, there is a yearning for greater coherence, meaning, and connectedness in people’s lives. Some are alarmed by a seeming collapse of moral values and seek more tra- ditional spiritual moorings. In the rise in religious fundamentalism in many parts of the world, some return to ancient doctrines and adherence to stan- dards of virtue and sin, patriarchal authority, and absolute certainties.

The predominant trend, in contrast, is the growing independence in spiri- tual lives (Pew Research, 2015). Religion is less often a given that people are born into and accept unquestioningly: more than 4 in 10 do not follow the faith of their upbringing. Surveys reveal that people increasingly pick and choose among elements within or across faiths to fit their lives. Many blend Eastern meditative practices with their Christian or Jewish faith. Many find spiritual connection through nature, expressive arts, or social activism. The author Alice Walker (1997) combined all three in her spiritual journey. Her beloved mother was devoted to her rural church, brought children in need into her home, and tended to others in their struggling African American com- munity. Walker left the church at age 13, feeling that the structure, preacher, and teachings reinforced gender inequality. Finding that nature nourished her soul, as in long country walks, she experienced spirituality through the land and found powerful spiritual expression in her writing and work in social jus- tice movements. Following her mother’s footsteps, she believed that if you just accept conditions, nothing changes and you become shut down. Instead, she found her spiritually inspired activism transformative in rising above despair by acting as a force for change.

Today, individuals, couples, and families increasingly combine spiritual beliefs and practices to fit their complex lives—much like a platter of “reli- gious linguini” (Deloria, 1994). As spiritual diversity increases within fami- lies, many are creating their own recipes for spiritual nourishment.

SPIRITUAL BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN FAMILY LIFE

Spirituality is deeply interwoven in family life, in our earliest, longest, and most intimate bonds. From the miracle of birth to the mystery of death and afterlife, spiritual matters are at the heart of family relations. Family systems are meaning- making communities with directionality and a life of their own. Rooted in cultural, spiritual, and multigenerational traditions, each family constructs its own spirituality, transmitted in ongoing transactions. Through

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dynamic processes that ebb and flow in both individual and family devel- opment, spirituality shifts in salience and meaning over the life course and across the generations. Spiritual considerations arise with each family life phase and with major transitions. Critical events and serious life challenges heighten their saliency or spark new directions.

Most Americans report that religion or a more personal spirituality is important in their lives, fostering closeness in their families, fulfillment in jobs, and hopefulness about the future. A moral compass in family life orients relationships and actions, based on principles of fairness, decency, generosity, and compassion (Doherty, 2009). Surveys find that highly religious adults are more engaged with their extended families, more involved in their communi- ties, more likely to help others in need, and happier in their lives. Those with a deep and integrated spirituality are more likely to be tolerant, giving, and forgiving in their relationships.

A number of studies report the benefits of R/S beliefs, practices, and congregational involvement for stable and strong marriages, family function- ing, parenting, and child development (Mahoney, 2010; Walsh, 2012). When shared in family life, they can strengthen family units and their members; in turn, they increase members’ faith. Of note, adolescents report that what matters most in their spiritual upbringing is that parents practice what they preach! Youth across faiths and cultures express strong interest in discussing life’s meaning and how to make moral decisions, underscoring the importance of open communication and exploration of spiritual matters between parents and youth. Children most value practices that are integrated into family life, as in prayer, special rituals and holidays, community service, and congrega- tional involvement (Bartkowski, Xu, & Levin, 2008). Sharing such practices is a strong protective factor for at-risk single mothers and their children, with lower depression and child maltreatment and with higher socioemotional adjustment and educational and job attainment (Carothers, Borkowski, Lefe- ver, & Whitman, 2005).

Meditative practices are increasingly finding therapeutic value in work with couples and families, within or outside of sessions (Gale, 2007). They facilitate clarity and tranquility and can ease tension, pain, and suffering. Mindfulness in still concentration and focus on the breath can lead to more deliberate action. Practices such as yoga and tai chi aim to integrate mind, body, and spirit. Shared meditative experiences foster genuine and empathic communication, reduce defensive reactivity and conflict, and deepen bonds.

The rise in interfaith marriage and multifaith families bring complexity to family dynamics (Walsh, 2010). Relational and intergenerational differ- ences can fuel tensions, conflict, and estrangement. Under stress, tolerance can erode, particularly if one religious approach is upheld as right, true, or morally superior. Differences that initially attracted partners or seemed unim- portant can become salient and contentious in child rearing, with added pres- sure from grandparents over children’s religious upbringing. Therapists can be helpful by facilitating a spiritual pluralism, with mutual understanding and

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respect for different spiritual pathways, and by encouraging shared spiritual experiences around core values in common.

Facing Death and Loss

Spiritual matters come to the fore in facing death and loss (Walsh, 2009, 2013). People of many faiths find comfort in the belief in passage to an after- life: for some, in a spirit world for eternity; for others, in reincarnation. Many believe in contact with spirits, particularly in times of need, for reassurance to the bereft, or when a serious wrong has not been attended to. The spirits of the deceased live on in the minds, hearts, deeds, and stories of loved ones. They may haunt as ghosts or become guardian angels and guiding spirits, inspiring best efforts and actions, especially in troubled times.

Increasingly, families confront wrenching ethical and religious dilemmas in end-of-life decisions, which can produce long- lasting guilt and relational conflict among survivors. Yet, as Buddhists avow, life’s end offers gifts when faced openly with courage and compassion. More than any other human expe- rience, death and loss can be transformative, teaching us about the meaning of life, what matters most, and the significance of relational bonds.

Spiritual Sources of Suffering

Many persons who suffer emotional or relational problems are also in spiri- tual distress or unable to invest life with meaning, which affects their relation- ships and impedes coping and mastery of life challenges.

Religious Failings; Sense of Injustice

Concerns about the failure to live up to moral codes or religious convictions may fuel guilt, shame, or unworthiness and contribute to addictions, social isolation, or destructive behavior. It can block positive strivings and corrode couple and family bonds. One couple came for therapy on the brink of divorce after many unsuccessful attempts to conceive a child. When asked about their faith beliefs, the husband, deeply distressed, admitted for the first time that he believed this was God’s punishment for breaking his marital vows in past infidelities.

Recent research on the harmful effects of war and combat on soldiers have led to the recognition of moral injury, distinct from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Beyond fear or exposure to life- threatening situations, moral injury involves a profound sense of shame, self- loathing, anger, and demor- alization when deeply held convictions about ethical conduct are violated. Transgressions can arise from acts of commission or omission in such situ- ations as killing, torture, excessive violence, depraved behavior, or failure to prevent serious unethical acts, such as the abuse or killing of women and children. The resulting guilt, shame, grief, and loss of meaning and trust are

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deep spiritual wounds. Feelings of unworthiness to love and be loved or to be accepted in the human community contribute to high rates of suicide (Nash & Litz, 2013). Healing involves self- forgiveness, making amends, and meaning- ful reparative acts, with the therapist or chaplain as witness and coach in a healing journey involving both family and peer support.

A traumatic and untimely death of a loved one, especially a child, is com- monly viewed as unjust and can affect both the spiritual life and relational bonds of the bereaved. Most turn toward their faith, but some turn away. Deep anguish can precipitate a family or marital crisis. It is important for clinicians to explore varied reactions with sensitivity to all family members’ perspectives.

Harmful Religious Beliefs and Practices

Oppressive religious doctrines or judgmental convictions can become harm- ful in families, as in harsh discipline in parenting, summoning images of a wrathful, vengeful God. Patriarchy, sexism, and heterosexist orthodoxy are ancient cultural patterns embedded in most religious traditions, with a domi- nant force in family life.

PATRIARCHAL PRECEPTS AND ABUSE

Religious justifications have been used to justify family violence and the deni- gration, subjugation, and abuse of women. Forced marriages and honor kill- ings of daughters who have been sexually violated or are suspected of dishon- oring the family are common in some cultures. A legacy of the devaluation of females has been the abandonment, sexual trafficking, infanticide, and abor- tion of unwanted daughters in many parts of the world. A spiritual wound can occur with relational trauma, blocking the ability to invest life with meaning or to trust others.

Family therapists have an ethical responsibility to protect those in harm’s way and address abusive beliefs and practices; neutrality sanctions their per- petuation. One fundamentalist Christian woman supported her husband’s right to beat her when she challenged his authority: she was taught that to be “a woman of God,” a good wife must be submissive. Therapists can engage in affirming transcendent values of respect, loving kindness, and the dignity and worth of all lives, and especially loved ones.

HETEROSEXIST ORTHODOXY

The condemnation of homosexuality in religious doctrine has been a source of deep anguish for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals and their couple and family bonds. Some denominations have adopted a loving acceptance of gay persons as human beings created by God, yet condemn same-sex practices as sinful and oppose gay marriage and

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parenting. This dualistic position (“hate the sin, but love the sinner”) perpetu- ates stigma and shame, producing a deep schism in a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation. Many have abandoned their childhood faith, yet seek spiritual connection in more personal spiritual expression. Increasingly, gay- inclusive faith communities have arisen, with growing numbers of religious clergy and congregations challenging institutional orthodoxy as human rights issues for equality and social justice.

Views on same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade, from opposition by most Americans to current support by nearly two- thirds (Pew, 2017). Evangelical Protestants stand out in opposition, although younger generations tend to be more accepting. The purported harm in gay parenting is not borne out by research. And, similar to heterosexual couples and parents, LGBTQ partners and parents draw on their religious and/or spiritual values and resources to support their relationship and their chil- dren’s development and, further, to navigate a social context that stigmatizes their families (Rostosky, Riggle, Brodnicki, & Olson, 2008; Rostosky, Abreu, Mahoney, & Riggle, 2016).

TAPPING SPIRITUAL RESOURCES FOR HEALING AND RESILIENCE

The concept of resilience has come to the fore in our turbulent times of global upheaval and insecurity. There is a widespread yearning for coherence, mean- ing, and connection in fragmented and uncertain lives. Major disasters and terrorist attacks shatter illusions of invulnerability and heighten awareness of the precariousness of life; serious ecological concerns underscore the inter- connection of all on our planet. For resilience in facing an uncertain future, people turn above all else to their loved ones, their communities, and their faith (Walsh, 2016; Wolin et al., 2009).

Resilience is the capacity to overcome major crises and prolonged adver- sity. Belying the American cultural ethos of the “rugged individual,” resilience is essentially relational: nurtured and sustained by family, community, cul- tural, and spiritual connections. A resilience- oriented approach in systemic practice identifies and strengthens resources that enable families to rally and overcome their life challenges (Walsh, 2016).

Abundant research documents the benefits for health, healing, and resil- ience of spiritual beliefs and practices lived out in daily life, relationships, and service to others (Koenig, 2012; Pargament, 2011). Those with deep faith cope better with stress, have fewer alcohol or drug problems, less depression, and lower rates of suicide. Prayer, meditation, and spiritual rituals can strengthen health and healing, influencing neurological, immune, and cardiovascular systems.

In traumatic situations, from relational abuse or the tragic loss of a loved one to conditions of poverty or collective trauma in war and major disas- ters, spirituality is a significant influence in resilience and in posttraumatic

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growth (Walsh, 2007; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Beyond coping or surviv- ing a crisis or hardship, transformation and positive growth can be forged out of suffering and struggle. A crisis may become an epiphany, opening lives to a deeper spiritual dimension and greater appreciation of life and loved ones.

The Power of Belief Systems

Shared belief systems are at the heart of resilience. Surveys find that faith beliefs help people to solve problems, to respect themselves and others, and to avoid doing harmful things. Most believe in virtue and sin, to be rewarded or punished in an afterlife. The closer believers feel to God, the better they feel about themselves and others, and the more hopeful they are in overcoming life challenges. In couples and families, spiritual beliefs and practices support key relational processes in resilience: meaning making, hope, and transcendence (Walsh, 2016). Faith can support the family’s shared conviction that they can master challenges and accept what is beyond comprehension or control.

Meaning Making

Families respond to adversity with efforts to make meaning of their expe- rience, linking it to their social world, cultural and faith beliefs, multigen- erational past, and future aspirations. How families view their problems and their options can constrain or facilitate coping, healing, and growth (Wright, 2009). Spiritual beliefs provide clarity about their lives, offer meaning beyond comprehension, and render unexpected events less threatening and easier to bear.

In adversity, religious beliefs about causality arise. Christian and Jewish faiths emphasize personal responsibility for success or misfortune; tragedy or suffering may be seen as punishment for sins. Those leading good lives often struggle with questions of “Why me?” Some agonize over personal failings; others feel a sense of injustice. In Eastern faith traditions, adversity is more likely ascribed to fate. For Hindus, misfortune may result from bad karma, due to conduct or circumstances in a previous life. Some view mental illness as a form of spiritual unrest, through the agency of a “ghost” or vengeful spirit or a sign of punishment for transgressions. In many traditions, when things go wrong in a family, blame is commonly externalized onto others who are envious, spiteful, or wish them harm; members may turn to sha- mans or faith healers, potions, and rituals to restore health or good fortune ( Falicov, 2009).

Hope: A Positive Outlook

Hope is like oxygen for the spirit, countering despair and fueling best efforts in overcoming challenges. Hope is a faith-based, future- oriented belief, no matter how bleak the present situation. As Martin Luther King, Jr., avowed:

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“We must accept finite disappointment but we must never lose infinite hope.” The Reverend King has been a guiding spirit to many oppressed people through his abiding faith that social justice would prevail. Yet his was not a passive faith that waited for God’s deliverance or simply hope for better times to come. Rather, it was a rallying call to collective action to bring about change, emphasizing personal responsibility, initiative, and perseverance— all hallmarks of resilience.

Spiritual resources support encouragement to sustain a positive outlook, active efforts, and perseverance through prolonged adversity— as in the bibli- cal story of Job. Affirming beliefs that we are valued by a loving God, who gives us strength to succeed, help us to rally in troubled times. Belief that guardian angels watch over us can bolster courage through dark times. One grandmother, with custody of three grandchildren and with serious health problems, was asked how she keeps strong. She replied: “I talk to God every day! I have faith that God loves us and will help us come through.”

Resilience involves channeling energies for active mastery of the possible, with acceptance of things beyond control, akin to the Serenity Prayer at the heart of recovery movements. Those following faith traditions less focused on mastery strive to be more attuned to living in harmony with nature or accept- ing of fate. Those who are more mastery oriented often struggle to accept situations beyond their control. For instance, in cases of end-stage illness, when hopes for remission are dashed, families can be helped to re- vision hope: refocusing from an outcome beyond control to efforts to relieve suffering and make the most of precious time. Even when a tragic event can’t be reversed, families can be helped to heal psychosocially and spiritually.

Transcendence

Transcendent values enable families to surmount crises and hardships and to better accept the inevitable risks and losses in living and loving fully. A shared value system provides a moral compass to guide actions and relation- ships through adversity. Contemplative practices and sacred readings, music, and rituals transmit these vital links. Such resources are transportable and especially valuable through migration, which uproots a sense of identity and connection (Falicov, 2009).

A shared value system enables family members to view their own situa- tion, which may be painful, uncertain, and frightening, from a broader per- spective, reducing their vulnerability to suffering and despair. Seeing their struggles as part of the human condition can strengthen their sense of com- mon humanity with others.

Spirituality can also catalyze positive transformation from adversity. It spurs actions to repair wounded bonds, to help those in need and prevent oth- ers’ suffering, and to alleviate injustice and improve life conditions. In the wake of trauma, harm, or injustice, major faith traditions encourage forgiveness,

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instead of holding onto grievances (Hargrave, Froeschle, & Castillo, 2009), as in the following case (Walsh, 2016).

One family was devastated for many months after the shooting death of their teenage son. In her despair, the mother, who was not religious, recalled her childhood Bible teachings that lack of forgiveness destroys the mind, body, and spirit. To ease her grief and attend to her surviving children’s deep suffering, this led her to forgive the youth offender, while holding him accountable for the impact of his actions on her family. Her husband found his healing pathway through activism, taking leadership in community action for gun control, which the parents pursued together.

The paradox of resilience is that the worst of times can also bring out our best. A crisis can yield growth in unforeseen directions. It can be an epiph- any, awakening family members to the importance of loved ones, healing old wounds, and reordering priorities for more meaningful relationships and life pursuits. Resilient individuals and families commonly emerge from shattering crises with a heightened sense of purpose in their lives and compassion for the plight of others, inspiring advocacy on behalf of others, for social justice, or for the environment (Lietz, 2011; Perry & Rolland, 2009).

A core conviction of the potential for human resilience must be joined with compassion for those unable to overcome their life challenges. We need to assuage destructive, blaming attributions of insufficient spiritual piety for inability to recover from a fatal illness or surmount harsh socioeconomic con- ditions. As we encourage families to have faith and hope, and to strive to over- come the odds, we must work with larger systems to change the odds against them, transforming policies and practices to better enable families to thrive.

INTEGRATING SPIRITUALITY IN FAMILY THERAPY

In all clinical work, therapists need to expand their attention to the spiritual dimension of family life to understand members’ needs and suffering and to facilitate their healing and growth. Spiritual resources can strengthen family bonds and foster resilience in dealing with adversity. Spiritual concerns and differences, commingled with family dynamics, can fuel relational strife and tear loved ones apart.

Just as family therapists inquire about ethnicity and other aspects of cul- ture, assessment should routinely explore the significance of spirituality in clients’ lives.

Spiritual genograms and other assessment tools (Hodge, 2005) can facili- tate deeper exploration. Clinicians shouldn’t presume that spiritual matters are unimportant if not voiced. When clients are not asked about their spiritual resources and concerns, they are likely to edit out this dimension of their lives.

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Faith-based interpretations or homilies should be avoided. Each family’s beliefs and suffering are unique, and attempts by others to cheer or console them by reminding them to count their blessings can unintentionally trivialize their experience. Reassurances such as “God never gives us more than we can handle,” although meant to offer encouragement, may not be felt as empathic or helpful when the pain and difficulty experienced are not understood and validated.

In exploring the spiritual dimension of experience, the following guide- lines are helpful:

•• Conveying a broad perspective, inquire respectfully about the impor- tance of religious and/or spiritual beliefs and practices in individual, couple, and family life and in relation to presenting problems and cop- ing efforts.

•• Explore any spiritual sources of distress: concerns that contribute to suffering or block personal and relational recovery and positive striv- ings.

•• Identify spiritual resources (current, past, or potential) that might ease distress; support healing and resilience, fitting clients’ belief systems and preferences. Consider a wide range of resources from contempla- tive practices, meaningful rituals, faith communities, and clergy guid- ance to connectedness through nature, the arts, and social activism.

It is crucial not to make assumptions about faith beliefs and practices based on clients’ religious identification or family upbringing. A timeline can be useful to track their spiritual journey and changes with crisis events or major life transitions such as marriage, divorce, or remarriage. If a family upbringing has not been followed, how has that affected relationships?

Therapists must guard against imposing their own convictions or judg- ing differences from dominant faith standards. If therapist and clients are of the same religion, it can be easier to form a natural rapport, but caution is needed not to overidentify or assume shared beliefs. Most important is to understand clients’ lived experience and expression of their spiritual beliefs and practices.

Some questions to open a conversation along these lines might be:

“How do you find fulfillment, purpose, and connection in your life and important relationships?”

“When overstressed or depleted, are there spiritual resources that might replenish your energies and bonds?”

“When going through hard times, how do you find strength and cour- age?”

“What beliefs and practices could support your resilience, bolster your family’s best efforts, and strengthen your bonds?”

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For those who are not religious, clients might explore a broader or more personal approach in seeking spiritual nourishment. Even with those who say they are not “spiritual,” exploration of existential issues involving meaning, purpose, harmony, connection, and fulfillment can be valuable.

Addressing Spiritual Sources of Distress

Spiritual concerns and faith differences, commingled with family dynamics, can fuel relational strife and tear loved ones apart. Do spiritual issues contrib- ute to current concerns, conflicts or cutoffs; to suffering, shame, and guilt; or to spiritual malaise? When presenting problems don’t ostensibly involve spirituality, a spiritual source of distress may emerge.

One woman was referred for therapy with inconsolable grief many months after the death of her second child. She had drifted away from her family’s devout Christian faith and married a nonobservant Jewish man. Religion didn’t seem important to them when their first child, a son, was born. However, the death of their second child struck her “like a thunder- bolt,” as God’s punishment for not having baptized her son. She had not told her husband or in-laws of her religious turmoil, fearing their upset, and had withdrawn in her grief and guilt. Individual and couple sessions were combined to foster open communication, mutual support, and joint decision making for their children’s religious upbringing.

Where religious experiences may have contributed to guilt or shame, we can help clients invest in spiritual practices or communities that link them in more positive ways to offer a larger vision of humanity and connection. Deep anguish about injustice can precipitate a family or marital crisis, as in the fol- lowing case:

One couple came for therapy after the devastating stillbirth of their first child—a birth eagerly anticipated by the large kin network, as the first son of the first son in a Greek Orthodox family. When asked if their faith was helpful in consoling them in their loss, the husband shouted: “I want no more of the church! I’m too angry at God! It’s too unjust! How could a loving God take the life of an innocent baby!” The wife continued to believe in God’s goodness and turned to their priest and congregation for support. Unable to tolerate her abiding conviction, her husband withdrew from her at the very time they most needed mutual support.

A consultation with a hospital chaplain was helpful in addressing the husband’s deep spiritual crisis as relational issues were addressed in ther- apy to strengthen mutual support in healing from their tragic loss. The therapist encouraged the couple to plan a memorial service and burial, including relatives and friends. These rites, honoring the birth, death, and loss, were enormously healing for all and helped the husband find consolation, congregational support, and renewal of his faith.

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In addressing spiritual sources of distress, the following guidelines can be helpful:

•• Facilitate communication, understanding, and mutual respect among family members around religious/spiritual concerns or conflicts.

•• Facilitate compassion and possibilities for forgiveness and reconcilia- tion, drawing on clients’ faith beliefs and practices to support efforts.

Practicing a Spiritual Pluralism

The growing diversity and complexity of contemporary families in their approach to religion and spirituality requires a broadly inclusive perspective in clinical practice. Despite differences of faith orientation, the overarching aim of spirituality is to be open to the transcendent dimension of life and all relationships, both in everyday practice and in adversity. With a spiritual plu- ralism, therapists can respect the dignity, worth, and potential of all family members and support their spiritual journey seeking greater meaning, connec- tion, and fulfillment as they move forward in their lives.

Therapists and trainees are encouraged to explore their own family faith traditions and reflect on their own spiritual journeys. It’s also important to develop linkages for referral, consultation, and collaboration with pastoral professionals for spiritual matters beyond the therapist’s role or expertise. Above all, we deepen our therapeutic relationship and effectiveness when we open our work to the spiritual dimension of our clients’ experience, explore their concerns, and tap wellsprings of faith and inspiration that can enable our clients to live and love more fully.

REFERENCES

Aponte, H. (2009). The stresses of poverty and the comfort of spirituality. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 125–140). New York: Guilford Press.

Bartkowski, J., Xu, X., & Levin, M. (2008). Religion and child development: Evidence from the early childhood longitudinal study. Social Science Research, 37, 18–36.

Boyd- Franklin, N., & Lockwood, T. W. (2009). Spirituality and religion: Implications for psychotherapy with African American clients and families. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 141–155). New York: Guilford Press.

Carothers, S. S., Borkowski, J. G., Lefever, J. B., & Whitman, T. L. (2005). Religios- ity and the socio- emotional adjustment of adolescent mothers and their children. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 263–275.

Deloria, V., Jr. (1994). God is red: A native view of religion (2nd ed.). Golden, CO: Fulcrum.

Doherty, W. (2009). Morality and spirituality in therapy. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 215–228). New York: Guilford Press.

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Falicov, C. (2009). Religion and spiritual traditions in immigrant families: Signifi- cance for health and mental health. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in fam- ily therapy (2nd ed., pp. 156–173). New York: Guilford Press.

Gale, J. (2007). Meditation and relational connectedness: Practices for couples and families. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 247–266). New York: Guilford Press.

Hargrave, T., Froeschle, J., & Castillo, Y. (2009). Forgiveness and spirituality: Ele- ments of healing. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 301–322). New York: Guilford Press.

Hodge, D. R. (2005). Spiritual assessment in marital and family therapy: A method- ological framework for selecting from among six qualitative assessment tools. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 31(4), 341–356.

Imber-Black, E., (2009). Rituals and spirituality in family therapy. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 229–246). New York: Guil- ford Press.

Kamya, H. (2009). Healing from refugee trauma. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 286–300). New York: Guilford Press.

Kirmayer, L. J., Dandeneau, S., Marshall, E., Phillips, M. K., & Williamson, K. J. (2011). Rethinking resilience from indigenous perspectives. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 56(2), 84–91.

Koenig, H. (2012). Religion, spirituality, and health: The research and clinical implications. ISRN Psychiatry. Retrieved from www.hindawi.com/journals/ isrn/2012/278730.

Lietz, C. (2011). Empathic action and family resilience: A narrative examination of the benefits of helping others. Journal of Social Service Research, 37, 254–265.

Mahoney, A. (2010). Religion in the home 1999 to 2009: A relational spirituality perspective. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 805–827.

Mbiti, J. (1970). African religions and philosophy. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Nash, W., & Litz, B. T. (2013). Moral injury: A mechanism for war- related psycho-

logical trauma in military family members. Clinical Child and Family Psychol- ogy Review.

Pargament, K. (2011). Religion and coping: The current state of knowledge. In S. Folkman (Ed.), Handbook of coping (pp. 269–288). New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press.

Perry, A. D. V., & Rolland, J. S. (2009). Therapeutic benefits of a justice- seeking spiri- tuality: Empowerment, healing, and hope. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 379–396). New York: Guilford Press.

Pew Research Center, Religion and Public Life. (2015, May 12). America’s changing religious landscape. Available at https://tinyurl.com/y953yrvf.

Pew Research Center, Religion and Public Life. (2017, June 26). Support for same-sex marriage reaches new milestone. Available at http://mailchi.mp/pewresearch/ support- for-same-sex- marriage- grows-even-among- groups- that-had-been- skeptical?e=720b18b7c6.

Prothero, S. (2007). Religious literacy: What every American needs to know—and doesn’t. New York: HarperCollins.

Rostosky, S. S., Abreu, R. L., Mahoney, A., & Riggle, E. D. B. (2016). A qualitative study of parenting and religiosity/spirituality in LBGTQ families. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?do i=10.1037%2Frel0000077.

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Rostosky, S. S., Riggle, E. B., Brodnicki, C., & Olson, A. (2008). An exploration of lived religion in same-sex couples from Judeo- Christian traditions. Family Pro- cess, 47, 389–403.

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Walsh, F. (Ed.) (2009). Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Walsh, F. (2010). Spiritual diversity: Multi-faith perspectives in family therapy. Family Process, 49, 330–348.

Walsh, F. (2012). The spiritual dimension of family life. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Normal family processes: Growing diversity and complexity (4th ed., pp. 347–371). New York: Guilford Press.

Walsh, F. (2013). Religion and spirituality: A family systems perspective in clinical practice. In K. Pargament, A. Mahoney, & E. Shafranske (Eds.), APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol. 2, pp. 189–205). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.

Walsh, F. (2016). Strengthening family resilience (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Wolin, S. J., Muller, W., Taylor, F., Wolin, S., Ranganathan, S., Saymah, D., & Zay-

ada, H. (2009). Five spiritual perspectives on resilience: Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 103–124). New York: Guilford Press.

Wright, L. (2009). Spirituality, suffering, and beliefs: The soul of healing with fami- lies. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 65–80). New York: Guilford Press.

P A R T I I

SOCIOCULTURAL TRAUMA AND HOMELESSNESS

The 1960s radical Tom Hayden, like many people in the United States, grew up knowing nothing about his heritage. Yet, without realizing his connection to his starving ancestors, who were in the United States because of the Irish Famine of the 1840s, his first political act after leaving college was to bring food to sharecroppers. Many years later, having learned much about his his- tory, he wrote a book called Irish on the Inside, about those who “have had to live with their deepest stories denied.”

Growing up in my family, there were many things about my privilege, as well as about my oppression, that I did not know or did not know that I knew—many issues that were mystified, obscured, or kept invisible by my community, by my family, by my education, and later by my social work and family therapy training. Susan Griffin (1992) writes profoundly about this experience in her memoir A Chorus of Stones:

We forget that we are history. . . . We are not used to associating our private lives with public events. Yet the histories of families cannot be separated from the histories of nations. To divide them is part of our denial. All that I was taught at home or in school was colored by denial. . . . It became so familiar to me that I did not see it. We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know. . . . I do not see my life as separate from history. In my mind

C H A P T E R 6

Homelessness and the Spiritual Meaning of Home

Monica McGoldrick

What potential is lost when we are not able to know or come to terms with our cultural heritage? What price do we pay when those who pull the curtains of history allow us to know our history only dimly or with shame? The story of many in our society is one of identity forever blurred by the winds of silence and the sands of amnesia. It is a story of being rooted in uprootedness. The themes that reverberate in each story are those of near destruction and survival, shame and guilt, the long fuse of unresolved anger, the recovery of pride and identity. Many have had to live with their deepest stories denied. We now endeavor toward a time when hope and history will rhyme and everyone may receive the world’s respect for who they truly are.

—ToM hAyDen [paraphrase] (1998, pp. 8–9)

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my family secrets mingle with the secrets of statesmen and bombers. My life [is not] divided from the lives of others. I, who am woman, have my father’s face. And he, I suspect, had his mother’s face. (pp. 7–8)

For myself, I started way behind when it comes to understanding my cul- tural and family legacies. I grew up with no sense whatsoever of my cultural or family history. In fact, I had no real connection to culture prior to going to Ireland in 1975 at age 32, even though I am 100% Irish by heritage (fourth- generation American).

And yet, I grew up with race at the center of my family’s existence, because the person who raised us was Margaret Pfeifer Bush, an African American, descended from slaves in North Carolina, who lived with or near our family from the time I was born until she died, the year after I left home for college. But we had no conscious awareness of our racial arrangements any more than we did of our cultural arrangements.

I grew up with deep feelings for the two places I lived: Brooklyn, New York, and a small farm in Solebury, Pennsylvania. I have come to realize that we were, without having language for it, trying to “pass” for the dominant group—and because of our skin color and the opportunities our social loca- tion provided, we could. What we lost in the process was any sense of who we really were.

I became interested in pursuing Russian “culture” when I was in high school. I tried to teach myself the language, and Russian studies became my major in college and graduate school. I thought culture referred to other peo- ple and that I myself was “regular.” In graduate school I decided to live in the International House, where I met my husband, an immigrant from Greece, who left home for education, as did all the males in his family. My husband’s relatives were themselves immigrants to Greece, forced to move there in 1922 after hundreds of years in Turkey.

Perhaps we are all part of the globalization of our world in our times. One of my nephews moved to Europe after college, and now, with his wife, an immigrant from South Africa, is raising their multicultural son, who is grow- ing up in four languages! My other nephew has migrated to California and has traveled often to Japan and China, creating musical connections between Asian and European/U.S. music. My older sister, an architectural photogra- pher, has written books about the Stepwells in India, the gardens in Italy, the Czech Republic and the water systems of Yemen. My younger sister, a high school teacher, taught and lived for 6 years in Shanghai. Somehow my family always seems to be trying to cross cultural bridges. Is it just globalization that has led to our family’s interest in culture?

I have wondered why I grew up knowing nothing about my cultural his- tory. Was it, as Nuala O’Faolain (2001, p. 5) put it, because “something that had happened more than a hundred years ago and that was almost forgotten, was so terrible that it knocked the happiness out of people and they tried to forget?”

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I was born in 1943. There were people still alive at that time who had lived through the Irish Famine years. It is surely true, as O’Faolain writes, that:

the trauma must be deep in the genetic material of which I was made. I can- not forget it, yet I have no memory of it. It is not mine, but who else can own it. Our own forebears must have been part of the system too. If you and I are sitting here today, we have to ask ourselves how our people survived. What did our people do at the time, that you and I came to be born? Anyone who had a field of cabbages or turnips put a guard to keep off the starving. We were those guards. (pp. 73–74)

My Irish ancestors came to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, at the time of the Famine. I never heard about their traumatic immigration experiences from their children (my grandparents) or their grandchildren (my parents). I also never heard about the Irish who didn’t get away or about the bodies my family must have walked past in order to escape.

There were many things about my privilege and about my oppression that I grew up not knowing or not knowing that I knew, many issues that were mystified, obscured, or kept invisible in my community, my family, and my education. As I think about my family two generations later passing for the dominant group, I am reminded of the memoir of Beryl Fletcher (2003), an Australian of British ancestry, who writes:

I suffer from a deep form of homelessness that I believe to be common to whites1 of my generation whose parents and grandparents came as coloniz- ers and invaders to already inhabited lands. Our stories and myths came from the Northern Hemisphere. Our books, our rituals, our moral universe were forcibly imposed upon the original inhabitants. But we could not keep ourselves apart from the mythologized landscapes of the conquered people. We absorbed them through our senses. Our bodies grew into the shape of the land. At the same time we were taught that everything of importance, of good quality, came from the North. Especially England. . . . In the small dark hours of night, the mattress and pillow that cradles your body at that particular time is home. . . . I know this intellectually, but I am still mired emotionally with the restless legacy of the colonial mind. . . . Deep in the bone is the certainty that real life is taking place elsewhere. (pp. 32–33)

Fletcher’s comments about home remind me of how complex that concept is. Bartlett Giamatti, in a marvelous essay about baseball, described the asso- ciations to “home” in ways that convey its relationship to culture:

Home is an English word virtually impossible to translate. . . . No transla- tion catches the associations, the mixture of memory and longing . . . the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wariness, that cling to the word home. . . . Home is a concept, not a place; it is a state of mind where self- definition starts; it is origins— the mix of time and place and smell and

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weather wherein one first realizes one is an original, perhaps like others, especially those one loves, but discrete, distinct, not to be copied. Home . . . remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it ever were to occur, would happen. . . . It is about restoration of the right relations among things— and going home is where that restoration occurs, because that is where it matters most. (Robson, 1998, pp. 99–101)

Home is a place where we should be able to own our cultural heritage and not have our deepest stories denied. It is about the right relations among things. But society’s invisible structuring of social class, culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation limits relationships, as they were limited in my family, in my schooling, and in the communities in which I have lived. None of these issues was ever mentioned in my childhood, my adolescence, my college or graduate experience, or in my study of family therapy. Historically, certain of us, especially those who are white, have found our safety at the expense of others. We seek safety that jeopardizes others or denies them their own sense of belonging and spiritual connection. For the most part, we do this unwit- tingly.

When the McGoldrick side of my family settled in my beloved Brook- lyn, I never thought about what my ancestors, who came here as members of another race, did to become white. Were they in the draft riots in New York City in 1863, just a few years after they came to the United States? Many Irish, after being drafted, turned against African Americans, blaming them for the Civil War, and staging lynchings and burnings around the city, including the burning of a Black orphan asylum of young children. Were my ancestors a part of this? Did they speak up? Did they remain silent?

Growing up, I never thought (except in the superficial sense that we often went looking for arrowheads) about the fact that the land we lived on both in Brooklyn and in Pennsylvania had been Lenape land. I never thought about the treaties that had been made and broken with the Lenape for the land we called our own—that we were really standing on their land. I didn’t know that many of the streets I knew— Flatbush Avenue, Kings Highway— were originally Native trails and that in 1655 a law was passed that no Indian could powwow or worship within any town in the colony. This law was hardly necessary, as the Indian population in New York had mostly been massacred already. And I was never taught that in 1776 nearly one-third of the popula- tion of Brooklyn (3,700) was Black, all but a handful of whom were slaves. Indeed, Brooklyn had the highest slave population of any city north of the Mason–Dixon Line! Two- thirds of all white families in Brooklyn at that time owned slaves!

Nor did I know that almost 100 years later, in the election of 1860, just after my family had settled there, Abraham Lincoln did not carry Brook- lyn. Abolition was not popular anywhere in New York City, and without an upstate landslide, New York could have lost Lincoln the election. Brooklyn was proslavery, in spite of our Brooklyn hero Walt Whitman. Where did my

Homelessness and the Spiritual Meaning of Home 97

relatives stand? I did not know that New York City had the highest population of slaves after Charleston and as a city built on commerce, benefitted from slavery more than any other northern city.

What did my family do later when they rose in status, education, and positions within the city? How did my grandfather relate to African Ameri- cans when he was a police inspector and had responsibility for riots in Har- lem? What did my father do when he was the New York City comptroller and then city rent commissioner in relation to the segregation, redlining, FHA mortgages, 98% of which went to white people? All my life my family lived in effectively segregated communities, though the subject was never mentioned, and they believed in justice and equality and spoke of it often. Did that bother them? My preschool, grade school, and high schools never had more than one or two people of color.

I then went to Brown University in Rhode Island, where there were prob- ably not 10 African Americans in the entire university. Forty years after I entered Brown, the first-ever African American president of an Ivy League school, Ruth Simmons, fostered support of research on the slave history of Brown, which had been founded by a major slave- trading family, which, of course, I also never learned anything about. Rhode Island was developed on the slave trade and had more slaves per capita than any other New England colony. Slavery also played a major role in the development of New York City, where I grew up. As a financial center, New York thrived on the sale of the products of slavery. Why didn’t I ever know the slave heritage of my school, my cities, or the wealth of so much of the North, or even about the heroism of men like Moses Brown, a major abolitionist who was also a member of the family that founded Brown University, and other abolitionists who should have been my role models for social justice?

I have been wondering what will help us realize that, as Susan Griffin says, our personal stories and the history of the world are all one story. How can we recognize that somewhere within ourselves we know the secrets we keep from ourselves and from each other? And what does it cost us to keep these secrets and wear these blinders? It costs us a lot to deaden ourselves to avoid the cognitive dissonance that would occur if we allowed ourselves to see the pain that our blindness, silence, and denial cause others to bear. How can we realize that somewhere within ourselves we know the secrets we keep from ourselves and from each other?

HOME IS A SPIRITUAL PLACE OF BELONGING AND SAFETY

“Home” is about much more than where we live physically. It is not just where we sleep, and it is not just the nostalgic home of our childhood or our wished- for childhood. It is a spiritual and psychological place of liberation. Home is a space, where we could all belong— with each other— strengthened by what we take from those who have come before us, creating a safe haven for those

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who are with us in our time, and ensuring that we leave a safe space for all those who will come after us. My notions of “going home” have been radically challenged as I have become aware of the constraints of class, culture, gender, and race on the structure of who I am. I have been coming to realize that “going home” means going to a place most of us have never been, as home in our society has not been a safe place for most people in our country— not for women, children, people of color, or gays and lesbians, given the pervasiveness of corporal punishment, child sexual abuse, the mistreatment and devaluing of women, and the appalling racism and homophobia of our society.

UNACKNOWLEDGED ASPECTS OF MY GROWING UP

Although we never mentioned gender in my family, my father was a visiting dignitary, while two women—one the black servant of the other, my mother and Margaret— raised three girls in what was most of the time an all- female household. There were clearly different and preferential rules regarding men, but these rules were kept invisible. Although the influence of my Irish back- ground would have been obvious to anyone who could recognize Irish behav- ior, looks, or names, I never knew that I was Irish. Moreover, we were taught that class did not matter, though we learned implicitly who was above us and who was below us in social class and had a complete set of hierarchical prescriptions for our behavior (acceptable schools to attend, people whom we could date or befriend, etc.). Although we were dimly aware of social stratifi- cation in my family, social class was never mentioned. Class, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, were not categories in our color-blind, gender- blind, and class-blind family, community, and society. At the same time, we were always organizing all our relationships completely according to prescribed and biased rules of gender, class, culture, race, and sexual orientation.

I know now that I could grow up not knowing that I had a cultural back- ground only because I could “pass” for a member of the dominant group. Had I been Black or Latino, I would have known that I had a culture. When I began asking questions, my mother’s answer was: “We’re Americans now, Monica. Our ancestors were just peasants. What difference does it make where we came from?” It was not until the mid-1970s that I realized I was Irish. Through my interest in Murray Bowen’s theory, I had begun to explore my own roots and inspired a family trip to Ireland, where I had the overwhelming feeling that I had come home. Everywhere I seemed to see my relatives, people who looked like my family and who related in the same way my family did—using humor, teasing, and ridicule to keep others in line or to maintain distance in relationships; failing to talk about the most important things that were hap- pening; giving someone the “silent treatment.” Patterns I had experienced all my life suddenly had a context: My family wasn’t “crazy,” I was just Irish! It was a transformative experience that has never left me. I still think of Ireland as home in some deep way, and defining myself as Irish American has been an affirmation at the deepest level of my belonging. Much that I thought was

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strange or eccentric I now see has meaning because of our cultural history. It has been very reassuring to give a name to these cultural aspects of my life that were unacknowledged when I was growing up.

Late in life my mother told me she had always been “somebody’s some- thing,” first “Inspector Cahalane’s daughter,” then “Joe McGoldrick’s wife,” and now, she added, “I’m Monica’s mother. Just once I’d like to be known as Helen McGoldrick, who stands on her own two feet. But that’s never going to happen, Monica.”

The pain of always having to be “somebody’s something” is a problem I have come to realize is mine as well as hers. Her history, fears, insecurities, and struggles continue through me. Because of the time in which she lived, she was not able to be all that she could be. She and her two sisters and their classmates at Barnard College in the 1930s were a privileged and exception- ally talented group of women who, for the most part, had to submerge their identities in those of the men and children in their lives. My mother had a suc- cessful career in public relations before she met my father, but she gave up her career and even her name when she married him.

For years I resented her for what I saw as bragging and covering up who we really were by coloring stories to impress others with our accomplishments— most of all, where we went to school. Now I feel shame about the anger and contempt I subtly conveyed toward her; I realize that she did this because she was unsure of her own status and had been made to feel invisible and inad- equate all her life. I have come to see it as my business. My mother was not free to be all she could be, and we judged her harshly for not being good at certain aspects of mothering. We did not validate or accept her for the great strengths she possessed. Her invisibility made our lives visible. I have come to realize it was not my mother who was inadequate but the yardstick by which I mea- sured her. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg said on her swearing in as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, “I would like to be the kind of woman my mother would have been had she lived in different times.”

UNSUNG SHEROES

Mary Gertrude Cahalane

There were other unsung “sheroes” in my family. Aunt Mamie Cahalane, my grandfather’s sister, was the only female among seven brothers and a widowed father. The men in her family, fearing the loss of their caretaker, discouraged all suitors who came to call. So Aunt Mamie took care of her father and all seven brothers until they died or left home. She became the Santa Claus for five generations of our family, as well as for her whole court at 90 St. Marks Place on Staten Island. Yet she lived in poverty all her life, “on relief” as it was called then. Not having the education for work that our culture sanctions with remuneration, she could not make ends meet. She taught me a great deal about what you can give others beyond your pocketbook— about humor and generosity and beauty that has nothing to do with physical assets or great

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accomplishments of the sort that get rewarded in our individualistic, competi- tive, materialistic society. She was another invisible “shero” of my life.

Margaret Bush

My third invisible shero was Margaret Bush; descended from slaves in Ashe- ville, North Carolina, she was the adult to whom I was closest both emotion- ally and physically all my life until her death the year after I left for college. It was to her that I confided my problems— about boyfriends, about teachers, and about my mother. She was always there for me and loved me uncondi- tionally. She had lost her twin sons and her first husband. She gave up living with her second husband, Joe, much of the time to live with us—a common story for many African Americans, who were forced to sacrifice their own families for the white families they served. I miss her every day, and she, too, lives in my heart and continues to make me who I try to be. I have an ongoing responsibility to her to seek the right relations among people and to speak for those who have given me a chance, most especially those whose invisibility has made my life visible.

But how do I find the right relation? How do I deal with the shadow side of my relationship with Margaret, who, like so many others, worked in the home of a white family and gave to them love and care that deprived their own families? This is the story of racism. What I received is the complement to what my African American friends were denied when their mothers or fathers had to serve white families at their own expense. And this is part of the unac- knowledged benefit I have gotten from racism. It is painful to realize that my love and benefit have meant someone else’s loss and deprivation and that the two are intertwined.

I grew up thinking that I was innocent— that I had nothing to do with racism and certainly not with slavery. I did not recognize Margaret’s white uniform as a symbol of her status within our family. Nor did I grasp the sig- nificance of the fact that she did not learn how to read until after I did—when she was 50 years old. This, too, goes back to the history of slavery, when slaves could be killed for learning to read, as could anyone who taught them. How ignorant of me not to know or sense anything of her dilemma. Her invisible life made mine visible. I realize that I am a part of all that came before, that I have benefitted from racism and benefit from it every day in the unearned white privilege I experience in terms of my safety and status in many contexts. These include the fact that most books are written for me as a white person, so even when Margaret did learn to read, she was forced to read about white middle- class families with Dick and Jane, leaving invisible, yet again, her his- tory and her ancestors’ courage to survive, which would surely have been more affirming for her as she learned to read.

I am coming slowly and painfully to realize what it means to say that we who are white carry around, in Peggy McIntosh’s terms (see Chapter 15, this volume), a kind of invisible knapsack of privilege— which contains special provisions, maps, passports, and credit cards, blank checks, and emergency

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gear. We cannot see it, but those who don’t have one can. And we need to listen to their experience and think about the meaning of our privilege rather than focusing on how we are exceptions and do not have as much privilege as others may think.

BECOMING AWARE OF GENDER, RACE, AND CLASS: PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL STRUGGLES

Until I was over 40, I never noticed how my professional education was struc- tured in terms of gender, class, race, and other group characteristics. As a young family therapist, I never noticed that the leaders of the field were virtu- ally all white men, heterosexual and a high percentage psychiatrists, whereas the followers were largely white women social workers. The major gurus— Ackerman, Haley, Minuchin, Bowen, and Whitaker— were all intimidating to me, but part of the gender problem was also, in Betty Friedan’s (1963) phrase, a “problem that had no name.” I remember being especially intimidated and put off by Nat Ackerman, whose objectifying and sexualizing of women and whose manner of confronting and discounting others was frankly scary. Sal- vador Minuchin also often seemed to disqualify or embarrass trainees, and Murray Bowen had an offensive way of responding to a question he did not like by saying: “Next question.”

I admired the leaders’ intelligence and ability, but they left me feeling inadequate. I felt I could never do what they did, but the idea never crossed my mind that this might have to do with my being a woman. I noticed how men on panels were insulting to Virginia Satir, but I focused on how, amazingly, she never let herself respond with humiliation, aggression, or defensiveness. Satir became the one I followed most closely; I never missed one of her work- shops, no matter what. She had a way of validating each comment, finding something useful in each question.

I did not notice that gays and lesbians were never mentioned. Nor did I have any awareness of the absence of people of color in the field or in my life. I knew no African American family therapists. I admired Harry Aponte and Braulio Montalvo but had no contact with them. It was years before this myopia was challenged and I began to be uncomfortable with the whiteness of the field, the maleness of the leadership, and the heterosexism embodied in it.

Gender

It was not until years after realizing that I was Irish that I first became aware of gender as an issue in my life and in our field—not until the 1980s. And when I began to become aware of it, it created more than a transformation; it created great turmoil in my personal and professional life. With my Irishness, I could maintain a distance. I was Irish, yes, but that was a limited part of my identity. And I could “pass” for “regular” in most contexts. I had also mar- ried a Greek, and my friends came from many different backgrounds. In most

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contexts my ethnicity was not salient. I could get away from it. With gender, however, I could not escape it.

Wherever I went, once I began to become aware of the patterns of gender inequities, I saw the rules of gender inequality playing out. When I left work, I went home to what I was coming to realize was a family pervaded by sexism, with a husband who thought he was helping me if he did any chores around the house. But then I began to see that I, too, had imbibed sexist ideology. I felt grateful for his “help.” Soon after, we had our son, which put me even further in touch with the patriarchal arrangements of my life, as I began to realize that all aspects of child rearing in our society— from the structure of child care to children’s TV, literature, clothing, and education— are pervaded by sexism and inequality. I could not get away from it. My mother felt sorry for my husband when I went away on business. My husband thought of me as “abandoning” him and going “on vacation” when I went to a professional meeting. I myself had to prepare days ahead of time for my absence and make up for it for days on my return. This was so different from my father’s travel- ing when I was a child. Our whole family organized itself for his return, which was always a special occasion.

As I became aware of the inequities of my relationship with my husband, I struggled with how to address them. I tried to be very patient, carefully judg- ing just when I could bring up an issue, so as not to overload the circuits— not when he’d had a hard day or was in a bad mood. By the time I did raise an issue, I had usually been troubled by it for a very long time; yet my husband would see me as “ruining” our relationship by starting the conversation. A part of me believed this also. If I were just more generous or more worthy or knew better how to express myself, I would be able to work things out with him without conflict.

In my work as well, once I began to notice the gender inequities, I became aware (as my closest women colleagues were realizing at the same time) that they pervaded our field, as well as every other aspect of our society. Com- menting on these issues at family therapy meetings brought about powerful reactions. I remember the first panel on gender at a meeting of the American Family Therapy Academy when Virginia Goldner gave an amazing presenta- tion on gender and generation. She pointed out that of these two fundamental categories of human relations, family therapists had been raised to notice gen- eration but to keep gender invisible (Goldner, 1989). I marveled at her clarity. What she said was so true. How had I not seen it? But afterward, many men disparaged her; one of the leaders in the field even described her as “Darth Vader.” Another time, the first occasion of a national family therapy confer- ence program with a strong predominance of women, many men within the organization were outraged. They felt betrayed and thought this represented the desire of the women to “kill off” the men. In the same year, many of the same men organized a major quadrennial meeting of the senior family therapy journal and were unfazed that they had included almost no women or minori- ties. Years later I read somewhere that white people tend to think people of color are “taking over” when their percentages reach something like 14% of

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a group. I thought back to these experiences and sensed the same discomfort and fear of changing the balance, however unequal it may have been to start with.

I have been mystified over the years by the reactivity of men to these issues. No matter how carefully we tried to express ourselves— to say that feminism was about a new structuring of gender relationships as partnerships, not about women winning a competition against men—it was often virtually impossible to have conversations. People spoke of the possibility that the men would withdraw from the field if the women didn’t get off “this kick.” One close male friend asked me after a year or so whether I wasn’t ready to move on from “that fad.” As cautious or careful as I tried to be, the feedback I got was blaming, disparaging, and self- justifying:

“Monica, you used to be so nice. What happened to you? Why are you so angry at men? Did you hate your father? Are you getting divorced? You are ruining our relationship. And anyway, I’m not sexist, I didn’t do anything. I loved my mother, I respect my wife, I’ve never abused a woman—why are you blaming me for this? And why are you saying we have power? I don’t have any power. I feel quite powerless. What you’re saying doesn’t relate to me. We men have problems, too. We’re not allowed to feel. We’ve lost our fathers. We’re walled off.” (And so on.)

Of course, it is the nature of patriarchy that men do not realize their power, because in a society where everyone is measured hierarchically there is always someone ahead of you or just at your heels to take your place. But it seemed impossible to get men to envision a way of being that wasn’t about winning or losing. This changing consciousness in the family therapy field began a very difficult time when distrust increased between men and women: Women feared that they would be sandbagged, while men feared that women were out to get them.

Race and Racism

After a few years, the issue shifted. We began to be confronted by colleagues of color about race and racism. Here I fell on the other side of the power imbalance, so I heard the issues very differently. Suddenly I was the one who was defensive, blaming, disparaging, and self- justifying. I felt like saying to others the same things I had heard men saying about feminism:

“You used to be so nice. Why are you so angry? You’re being divisive. This will ruin our relationship. I had nothing to do with racism, slavery, or segregation. My ancestors were oppressed like yours were. I would love to change things, but I don’t have the power either. We have to deal with sexism first; then we’ll get to racism. You must be talking about some- one else. I’m not prejudiced. We have our problems, too—let me tell you about them.”

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I was trying to exclude myself from the category of oppressor, just as I had heard men do so many times— defending their behavior by reference to their good intentions, their own victimization or powerlessness, or their kindness to women at a personal level. And as I heard my own reactivity, I gradually began to realize that I must be part of the problem or I would not be getting so defensive. Again, I remembered all the times I had heard men say, “We can’t listen when you speak in that angry tone of voice. It makes us feel unsafe. If you would say it nicely, we would listen.” And I saw that I had to start listening differently. I needed to really listen and to believe what people of color said about their experience.

One day I got an insight about how to do this from my friend Paulette Hines during a school consultation. The principal was trying to get us to understand what he was up against with “those people” who just accuse you of being a racist “no matter how hard you try.” He described a mother who was upset about the school’s ways of handling lateness and absenteeism, finally blurting out, “I see this school is just as racist as it was when I went here 30 years ago!” The prin- cipal saw this as proof that “those people are difficult” and “have an attitude.” Paulette quietly stopped him in his tracks, saying, “Do you have any idea what she was referring to?” He had no idea. Her comment struck me deeply. We tend to react almost viscerally against being labeled “racist.” But how can we not be racist, living in a racist society for all of our lives? What if we were to move toward comments about racism instead of running away by defending ourselves? What if we were really to try to understand what people mean when they say that to us? That is what we as women were saying to men for so long:

“Just listen. Try to take in the pain of what we are saying, instead of think- ing of the exceptions. When we speak of men’s violence, for example, give some acknowledgment, rather than getting irate that we have not mentioned women’s violence.”

That is what we had wanted. But with racism the accusation is so painful. Most white people’s image of racism extends only to lynching or the Ku Klux Klan, whereas when people of color use the word, they are often referring to being treated as invisible, to being ignored in a store, or to the everyday oppression and insults that we who are white make through our ignorance of their history and experience. For years, when I gave a presentation about culture, I prefaced my comments by talking about my fear that others would hear my comments as prejudiced or racist, and I appealed to my audience not to think in those terms. That was when I still thought I was not a racist. Now I realize that the point is more to urge the listener to be kind enough to call it to my attention when I do make a racist comment so that I can learn to do better.

What I did was put the burden on the other to make me feel “OK.” Sub- tly, if the subject of racism did come up, I wanted the other person somehow to make peace with the issue by the end of the discussion, just as men often wanted gender problems to be resolved by the end of the conversation. They

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hoped that their comments would somehow resolve the issue so that women would no longer be upset. Such wishes assume that the issues are small, can be resolved within the course of a conversation, and will not require transform- ing our entire societal arrangements. I have noticed at family therapy meetings that when African Americans or other people of color experience frustration, anger, or pain, white people want to get them feeling “OK” within a single conversation. I have done this myself, but I am coming to see the arrogance of this idea. What they are upset about will not be taken care of in the space of one conversation. How can we demand that their pain or anger cease while the problems remain? I am working to face the fact that my invisible knapsack of privilege must disappear before such issues are resolved. To men who said they were not sexist, I used to reply, “Until you are actively working against gender inequality, you are part of the problem.” Unless my own life is about overcoming racism, I am also part of the problem. My privilege will not dis- appear of its own accord. I must work so that everyone is entitled to those privileges, which we all deserve. Then we will all have a home.

Many white people say that they cannot let themselves be very con- scious of racism or they get overwhelmed by guilt and shame. They feel that they will have to give up everything before their lives will become congruent with notions of “liberty and justice for all.” And so denial becomes an easier approach. They move away from the issues, which is very easy for us whites to do. Our society is so very segregated that we can generally live our lives quite oblivious to our connectedness to people of color. We can walk away and pre- tend these issues do not relate to us. We can do this as long as we do not think about who cares for us when we are sick, needy, old, or on vacation, or who makes our shoes, our clothes, and the home products that keep us comfort- able. But our denial will surely kill us in the long run.

I have been trying to think differently about these issues— to listen, to attempt to learn about my ignorance, so that gradually I can overcome it. I am beginning to see the racism in a lot of my work. I spoke about couples or families and didn’t really mean Black couples or families. I spoke about women and didn’t really include women of color. In fact, in the mid-1980s, when I co- organized conferences for women family therapists and almost no women of color came, I kept trying to figure out how to include them—how to get them to recognize the importance of the issues. One who did attend questioned how little reference there was to issues concerning women of color. I felt irritated with her, because I thought it was so hard to think about gender inequality that if we added race, we’d never “get it straight.” Now I realize I had it wrong. The truth is that if we don’t include race in the discussion of gender, we will never get it straight. Women of color have been saying and showing clearly for a long time that they prioritize gender differently. They have been saying and showing by their absence and silence that the field of family therapy often has not related to them. And we have thought it was their problem. We have thought we could go on with family therapy as usual, even though it was really white family therapy.

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I also realize that telling only the stories of the positive values and actions of my family or my culture keeps me part of the problem. Our family members may include Nazis, as well as victims of the Holocaust, members of the Ku Klux Klan and slaveowners, or people who have through history benefitted from the slave trade. This would include all who have been educated in the Ivy League, which grew wealthy on money from slavery and created affirmative action for their descendants that is still in place, even as affirmative action for descendants of slaves is being dismantled. Any time I try to distinguish my family or my ancestors from the oppressors, I may be standing next to a per- son whose ancestors were slaveowners, making this person’s acknowledgment of that legacy even more difficult. I believe we need to create a crucible that can contain the history of us all. If we notice our connections to each other and help each other to acknowledge all of our history, then together we can all work to change our future.

Class

When first challenged to think about class, I thought the issue did not per- tain to me. I was just “regular.” I am learning that this is a common reaction among people of privilege such as myself. We consider ourselves “regular” only because the people we see around us in our schools, on vacation, and in the media tend be like ourselves. I had no appreciation of the complex ways my whole life has always been organized by class hierarchies. My clothes, my home, the pictures on my wall, the music I listen to, the restaurants in which I feel comfortable eating or the places where I would feel comfortable going for vacation, and, of course, even the fact that I can go to a restaurant or on vacation are all about class (and race and gender). Yet it was never mentioned at home or in my training. I had somehow learned the class code for all the degrees in our field—MD, PhD, EdD, DSW, MSW, MA, and so forth—the hierarchy for rating colleges and universities, professions, and neighborhoods, although these things were never discussed directly in my family and are rarely acknowledged directly in our profession.

The entire structure of our lives is organized by these dimensions. How we celebrate life-cycle rituals such as death or marriage is a matter of class (as well as gender, race, culture, and sexual orientation). In my family (at least since the early 1960s), it would be considered inappropriate to have a fancy wedding, with prescribed outfits, food, drink, and music. But for the classes just above and just below that of our family, these rituals were an absolute necessity, and somehow I learned the rules for all this without it being dis- cussed directly. My family had an invisible judgmental attitude that I find very difficult to challenge in myself or even to become aware of about the values of those who do things differently because they have a different social location.

I am trying to make myself aware of how pervasively and insidiously the rules of class influence feelings of “otherness,” of not being “OK” in one situation or another. I am trying to pay attention to the pressure to hide who

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we are in social situations— whether it is to hide Anglo roots or money that would distance us socially in the mental health field or to hide our family’s poverty or working- class origins. My parents were the upper- middle- class Ivy League– educated children of working- class parents, whose own parents were poor, uneducated immigrants. In my generation, my sisters and I moved down in class from my parents’ social standing, which had resulted from my father’s being well known in academia and reform politics. My family included vari- ous members who were in different classes, but the social distance this created was almost never dealt with directly. I think now that my mother was always fearful of losing her social status, which depended entirely on my father’s career, and this anxiety led her to try continuously to impress people with our credentials and accomplishments. I never even thought about the possibility that this behavior reflected her insecurities about her position as a woman and as a descendent of poor immigrants, but it led her to be judgmental about the friends we chose and many times made it hard for her to just be herself. I had no awareness of the contextual factors that undoubtedly contributed to this. I want to create a sense of home where all can be appreciated for who they truly are and judged not by the color of their skin, their gender, sexual orientation, or social location, but, as Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, by the content of their character. Then we will truly be home.

NOTE

1. In this chapter we have capitalized “Black” and lower-cased “white” in spite of the convention to do the reverse, because it seems to us that “Black” is a word which at least to some extent was chosen by African Americans to refer to themselves, while “white” does not deserve the “specialness” of capitalization as an honor to the distinction.

REFERENCES

Fletcher, B. (2003). The house at Karamu. North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press.

Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. New York: Norton. Goldner, V. (1989). Generation and gender: Normative and covert hierarchies. In M.

McGoldrick, C. M. Anderson, & F. Walsh (Eds.), Women in families: A frame- work for family therapy (pp. 42–60). New York: Norton.

Griffin, S. (1992). A chorus of stones: The private life of war. New York: Doubleday. Hayden, T. (1998). Irish hunger: Personal reflections on the legacy of the famine.

Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart. O’Faolain, N. (2001). My dream of you. New York: Riverhead Books. Robson, K. S. (Ed.). (1998). A great and glorious game: Baseball writings of A.

Bartlett Giamatti. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.

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An emaciated Chilean woman wearing a headscarf sits with her husband and their 2-year-old child in my office. This mother lost all of her hair very soon after leaving her 7-year-old son from a previous marriage in the care of her own mother in Chile. Since then, she says, “I have been suffer- ing from a cancer of the soul.” She has her son’s framed photo face down in a drawer and cannot bear to make a phone call to him, her emotional suffering is so intense.

A 12-year-old boy has just arrived from Tlaxcala, Mexico, to be reunited with his mother, a laundry worker, from whom he has been separated since age 6. He is rebellious and defies her, arguing that she has no right to discipline him because she “abandoned” him to become “a woman of ill repute,” an idea his rural Mexican grandmother has repeated often in disapproval of the mother having migrated alone to find a job in the United States.

A 31-year-old Czech woman sits sobbing in my office. She wonders whether her migration 8 years ago to California to marry her African American husband was too much of a sacrifice. Her educated, successful husband does not understand her. It seems absurd to him that her par- ents’ imminent divorce in Prague could cause her such great consterna- tion. After all, he can pay for her to visit her country anytime she wants or even for her parents to visit.

A South Korean mother married to a wealthy American investor brings to therapy her 10-year-old daughter, who is underachieving in private school. The child is very quiet and listless, almost morose. The mother worries that if this goes on, her daughter will not be able to go to Har- vard University. She complains that the girl is also falling behind in her

C H A P T E R 7

Transnational Journeys

Celia Jaes Falicov

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practice of piano, ballet, and sports. Mother and daughter spend long summers in South Korea, where the girl’s achievements are rejoiced over by the extended family. This mother’s distress is precipitated by her fear of her family’s judgment of her as a mother who is doing a poor job rais- ing her daughter and squandering American opportunities.

A middle- aged Puerto Rican woman is brought to therapy by her hus- band and daughters following manic and paranoid- like episodes. She and her husband have managed, after 20 years of extreme hard work, to gradually bring to San Diego 36 members of their original community in Puerto Rico. The couple had become the advisors and economic help- ers for this network. Recently, however, a change in attitude within this network may have precipitated the client’s crises. She had been told by several members in this network that they had grown tired of her “med- dling and controlling” everybody, shattering her hopes of re- creating her community.

The people in the preceding vignettes are from different countries, different class backgrounds, races, languages, genders, and generations. These differ- ences inform their values, themes, and family relationships. Yet they have one ailment in common: They deeply feel the disruption of their attachments to family, country, language, and culture. They strive to keep alive old connec- tions while they shape new lives for themselves far from their birthplaces. Like many immigrants before them, with great determination and daring, they left their countries because they imagined that their lives would be better. The families they formed have been transformed by their migration, as have the families they left.

In the past, economic or voluntary immigrants to the United States, such as the ones in the preceding examples, handled their long- distance attach- ments in a variety of ways: Some cut off their ties completely, some main- tained tenuous connections, and still others returned to their families and countries. The outcomes depended on the geographic distances, the economic resources, the legal status, and the emotional makeup of the people involved. Although these factors operate today as well, ease of transportation and global technologies of communication and information have been construct- ing a scenario that allows the emergence of transnational lives. Immigrants are understood to be transnationals or transmigrants when they maintain multiple relations (familial, economic, social, religious) that span geographic, cultural, and political borders. As Schiller, Basch, and Blanc- Szanton (1992, p. ix) define: “Transmigrants take actions, make decisions and feel concerns within a field of social relations that links together their country of origin and their country or countries of settlement.”

Transnational families are able to keep up their economic and emotional ties by staying in touch via monetary remittances, phone calls, text, emails, audio and video messages, Skype, Facebook, and other social media (Fali- cov, 2007; Bacigalupe & Lambe, 2011). For documented immigrants, these

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long- distance communications are combined with the traditional forms of occasional visits for family events, special holidays, vacations, or funerals. For undocumented immigrants, the physical chasm is a source of deep pain, as sometimes decades pass without tangible physical presence. Most immigrants can also keep abreast of the latest cultural, economic, and political news and cultural changes in their countries through radio, television, and the Internet. Because lives and relationships are linked across borders, transnationalism offers the attractive, albeit ambiguous, possibility of living with two hearts instead of a broken heart (Falicov, 2007, 2014). Family and social connections have a greater chance to remain alive, sometimes throughout the immigrant’s lifetime, and even to become an important part of his or her children’s cul- tural legacies (Stone, Gomez, Hotzoglou, & Lipnitsky, 2005; Smith, 2006; Falicov, 2005). The nostalgic lament “there is no place like home” may still be reserved for a native land that remains vibrant, not frozen in memory. Yet, when immigrants have children in the new country, have jobs, buy property, and develop communities, they acquire another vibrant new “home” as well.

Proximity to the United States, such as Mexican immigrants have, facili- tates decisions to migrate that involve the separation of spouses and also sepa- ration of father and children or mother and children. But for the past 10 years, families from faraway places, such as China, Taiwan, India, or the Philip- pines, have begun similar lifestyles. Engineers from Taiwan or information technology experts from India may take jobs in Silicon Valley and maintain long- distance relationships with their families for several years. They may manage to reunite their families in this country and settle them in schools and communities. But they may also return to their countries several years later, when a stable future for the family can be envisioned in an environment in which cultural and social status dissonance will not be suffered. These types of temporary immigrants, who have variously been called “astronauts” or “modern nomads” (Wong, 2007), may rely on extended households that supplement their functions when absent. Thus extended networks have not atrophied or disappeared but, rather, become part of a large transnational system of economic globalization.

Although the term “transnational” has been around for the past 30 years, it has now fully captured the attention of a wide variety of migration scholars. Like immigration, transnationalism can be best understood by using an inter- disciplinary approach that gathers the insights of several disciplines subsumed under the rubric of migration studies. For family therapists, transnational families are one form of the “brave new families” of this century that present theoretical and therapeutic challenges and demand a new analytical frame for issues of migration, social location, and acculturation. Transnational family arrangements affect community and trigenerational relationships. Even more critically, separations and reunifications between spouses or between parents and children strike at the core of the primary family unit.

The migration status of a family is a fundamental variable that alters the meaning of transnationalism. Although both documented and undocumented

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families can communicate at long distance, those family members residing in the United States without documents live with fear of deportation or of never seeing their families again. Their families in the country of origin may also live with chronic worry about the safety of the emigrant family. Immigrants with documents, on the other hand, can return to see relatives more often and renew their connections face to face.

TRANSNATIONAL LIVES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FAMILY THERAPISTS

Migration is not an experience that belongs solely to those who leave their countries. Transnationalism involves processes of migration that encompass a very large relationship system. The protagonists include those who leave, those who stay, and those who come and go. Children of transnationals also develop objective and subjective ties to their ancestral homes (Stone et al. 2005; Falicov, 2005). People born in the receiving country who intermarry with immigrants develop a variety of connections and reactions to the lan- guage, values, and countries of their mates. The vignettes at the beginning of this chapter illustrate some of these connections, how they persist, and how they are reactivated by various life transitions.

Answers to questions about the degree of involvement with language, visits to and from the country of origin, sending remittances, frequency of communication via phone or email, and the practice of listening to the coun- try’s news, TV programs, or movies may give a measure of the extent to which families, including the second generation, are involved in transnational social fields (Stone et al., 2005, Smith, 2006; Falicov, 2005, 2007). In some cases, immigrants and their families back home watch the same TV programs, such as telenovelas, sharing the experience at long distance (Schmalzbauer, 2004).

Inquiring about the state of mind and heart of those who stayed behind and their reactions to the migration can yield important answers, such as shedding light on internal states, interpersonal conflicts, or personal decisions for an individual or family. Thus family therapy theory and practice must delve further into the nature of the interactions maintained at long distance and the weight these have on the presenting concerns of clients.

Separations and Reunifications

Transnationalism may incur many sacrifices in family life. Poor immigrants have always been separated from their families, lured by the promise of an eventual better economic future for all. Separation from extended family and separation of fathers and children have been common, but economic globaliza- tion, by opening up labor opportunities for women, has affected other crucial core relationships of care. For almost two decades, there has been an unprece- dented number of women who separate from children of all ages (Hondagneu- Sotelo & Avila, 1997). This sacrifice may have grave consequences, such as

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husbands and wives and parents and children reuniting after years of separa- tion only to find themselves to be strangers to each other (Nazario, 2007; Falicov, 2014; Suárez- Orozco, Suárez- Orozco, & Todorova, 2008; Suárez- Orozco, Hee, & Ha, 2011).

Recently, Falicov proposed learning migration- specific competencies, such as two types of “transnational therapies” to be used as therapies of separation and therapies of reunification, each with its own set of systems- oriented and narrative- oriented goals, relevant clinical practices, and specific techniques to help transnational families during these two difficult transitions (Falicov, 2014a, 2014b).

Spousal Relationships

Men often leave their families to search for better economic conditions and better futures for their children, and their families become temporarily matri- focal. Sometimes wives have more skills or more promising job opportunities, and they leave their children with their husbands in a patrifocal household. In addition to poverty, other injustices may plague the lives of women who take on the migration journey on their own. They may come to the United States to escape spousal abuse or other types of maltreatment tied to partner’s alcohol- ism, economic exploitation, or infidelity.

In many instances, a reunion between husbands and wives separated for years is a very difficult adaptation. A Mexican meat packer who manages to bring his wife and four children to the United States after 12 years of separa- tion finds his wife, in spite of his occasional visits and frequent long- distance contacts, to have difficulties with closeness and to be resentful of him. A Fili- pino husband who migrates with his children to reunite with his wife after several years of separation faces a wife who is furious at her not- unfounded suspicion that he had been carrying on an extramarital affair while she was very far away from home indefatigably working to seek a better future for the whole family.

Spouses grow apart and fall out of love, become jealous, feel envy, and may become depressed at both the decision to separate and the decision to reunite (Falicov, 2014a). Of course, there are many couples who rejoice at being able to live with each other again, but they are most likely not seen in the psychotherapy office. Transnational lifestyles often result in changes in values affecting gender relationships in the sending and the receiving countries, such as assertions of women’s rights and more democratic conceptions of couple- hood (Hirsch, 2003).

Relationships between Parents and Children

Separations between parents and children have a host of consequences— some temporary, others long term. Sometimes the sibling group gets separated, as the migrating parent or parents take some children with them and leave others

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in the care of relatives. The siblings who have accompanied the parents may later incur the envy of the other siblings, who felt rejected or abandoned. Adjustment problems at reunification with a father or a mother range from anger and rebelliousness to excessive clinging, dependency, and fears, depend- ing on the age of the child.

In the first vignette of this chapter, we see a mother in unbearable emo- tional pain, with her heart divided and unable to connect with her child at long distance. The separation debilitates her to the point of psychosomatic symptoms. Her collaboration with her own mother, who takes care of her child back home, is poor and full of tension. The task of therapy is to deal with her depression in a systemic relational way. In the second vignette, we see a preadolescent child who hides his hurt at having felt abandoned in rebellious and offensive confrontation with the mother. This mother– son pair will need to find new ways of expressing their plight.

Both of these mothers carried their roles responsibly, obtained the full child- rearing support of the grandmothers as caretakers, and sent economic remittances to them. Yet they lacked their emotional approval for the migra- tion. The eventual continuation of their maternal function is jeopardized by this situation. Family therapy needs to undertake transnational thinking and action whenever possible and help empower the mother to become a long- distance partner in raising her child. Furthermore, it is important, if possible, to work with the three generations at the time of reunification, transnationally if necessary.

Studies on separations in preadolescents, adolescents, and young adult children whose parents have migrated away show that they are deeply affected by their parents’ absences but that, due to the transnational context of fre- quent communication, these same children and adolescents acquire consider- able voice and influence over time to affect their parents’ decisions to stay or to return (Dreby, 2007).

Transnational Caregiving and the Elderly

Migration and transnational life vary in their impacts throughout the family life cycle (Falicov, 2012, 2016). Several recent studies address the implications of transnational caregiving for the elderly who remain in the country of ori- gin. A study of narratives from Cuban immigrants living in Germany focused on the possibilities of their maintaining contact with the elderly relatives who had stayed in Cuba (Brandhorst, 2017). Structural constraints (such as restric- tions of travel and access to information and communications technology) were highlighted as impediments of transnational caregiving. Nevertheless, the results of this study suggest that an imagined sense of belonging to a trans- national family may be an emotional resource for all involved. At times of ill- ness, transnational connections can be a source of emotional sustenance. For example, a 61-year-old undocumented immigrant woman who was a patient at a health clinic in San Diego, California, was facing a leg amputation as a

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result of untreated advanced diabetes. She was despondent over the impos- sibility of visiting or being visited by anybody in her extended family at this critical time. In particular, she had an intense wish to see her two sisters, whom she had not seen for 23 years. However, neither she nor her sisters knew how to use computers, so her grown children were invited to come to one session with her. Within a week, her sons had contacted the cousins, one in the north, the other one in the south, of Mexico, and these young people set up their mothers to use Skype. With the help of their sons, they decided to make this type of communication a monthly routine experience. The prospect of continuing the connection with her sisters via Skype and receiving their optimistic encouragement lifted her mood and her hopeful determination to struggle for her health.

THE NATURE OF CONNECTIONS AT LONG DISTANCE

To theorize about transnational families demands an exploration of the dif- ferences between relationships maintained at long distance and relationships in the intimacy of intensely shared family life. Although transnationalism may assuage the pain of separation and longing for loved ones by allowing con- nection, one might ask to what extent transnationalism creates connections experienced as “real” and viable as opposed to connections that rely primarily on memory and imagination and, at best, occasional renewal. If transnational relationships provide instrumental and affective support, these are necessar- ily limited to extraordinary or occasional circumstances, as opposed to daily interactions. Thus the experience of absence may still override the presence obtained via long- distance communications (Wilding, 2006; Falicov, 2014; Marchetti- Mercer, 2017).

There are several types of rituals that immigrants seem to develop spon- taneously (Falicov, 2012). These rituals assume various forms: connection rituals, memory rituals, re- creation of spaces, and preserving cultural rituals. Among these, probably the most significant in terms of transnational lives are connection rituals. Exploring the presence or absence of these rituals is very helpful in evaluating the degree of family and cultural immersion that the transmigrant has been able to preserve in the sending culture.

Forms of Connection Rituals

Remittances

The practice of sending money and other resources regularly to families of ori- gin and hometowns is widespread among immigrants from many countries. In these sending towns, once a week, twice or once a month, or less frequently, many women, men over 50, and youths wait for their money orders or bank wire transfers to buy food, pay rent, handle a medical or dental emergency, or

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continue to pay for the materials to build a home. These monetary remittances have tremendous importance as economic resources in situations of poverty and also make the absent person present psychologically (Falicov, 2002a). Symbolically, the immigrant is doing his or her part at long distance by being part of the family’s survival. Amounts of money sent are often commensurate with salaries earned but also with length of time in the United States. The longer the person has been in the United States (Cornelius & Lewis, 2007), the less money may be sent over time, for a variety of reasons— such as finding a new spouse in this country who objects to the sharing of resources.

In the countries of origin, packing and mailing services to the United States have proliferated, many in the same places at which the relatives pick up their remittances. Through these local services, relatives do their part to main- tain the social and cultural connection with those who left by sending pho- tos, music CDs, videos, postcards, stamps of local religious figures or saints, candles, holy waters, medications, and favorite regional foods, including some unauthorized ones.

The need for these social and cultural remittances, particularly in the Mexico– United States circuit, is so extensive that businesses have seized the opportunity. They obtain transportation permits across borders that facilitate robust exchanges of goods and resources between separated family members (Rivera- Sanchez, 2007).

Family therapists will learn about these exchanges mostly by asking, because most clients consider them natural or unimportant and therefore do not necessarily speak about the possible emotional meanings they have. These exchanges could symbolize strong continuity of family ties and of cul- tural habits and a new definition of the present as including what used to be considered the immigrant’s past. With immigrant clients, therapists can explore whether relationships would be enhanced or conflicts would decrease or increase by utilizing remittances of various sorts. Care must be exerted to include a discussion of the meanings invested by all involved, as ambiguities could arise, for example, if remittances unwittingly contribute to deepening the social inequalities between those who are there and those who are here.

Communications

Just as economic connections acquire various emotional meanings, more direct emotional contacts, such as are possible via phone calls, emails, or tex- ting, do maintain connections, but they also highlight complexities. The ease and cost of these communications has vastly improved. For less than $10, today’s immigrants can purchase a cell phone service that lets them receive an unlimited number of phone calls from their relatives in many Latin Ameri- can, Asian, and other countries. Phone cards that can be purchased in many street stands in cities around the world also make long phone conversations very inexpensive. Families of limited means may not have computers in their homes, but they sometimes use Internet cafés in their countries. The free

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service WhatsApp is extremely efficient and popular in most countries; it allows users to send photos, videos, and long voice or text messages, as well as free telephone calls, with great ease and is widely used by transnationals in the United States. These technologies open up many possibilities for sharing concerns, informal chatting, and so forth.

Therapists could inquire about or suggest the possibility of making use of these communication devices for therapeutic purposes. Sometimes these suggestions may be received with ambivalence. Parents separated from their children may cope with the distress and sorrow by blocking affect and choos- ing not to open themselves to the intense emotions of hearing the voices of their children, knowing the details of their lives, or having to answer their questions.

Daily routines are not shared, and often truths are not, either. The flow of information between those who have left and those who have stayed may be selective, ambiguous, and superficially positive. Each side may be being pro- tective of the other. Economic transmigrants, in particular, may be invested in making the migration appear worthwhile by not sharing problematic aspects of what they have encountered. The South Korean mother mentioned in the early vignettes wanted to make sure that her family of origin would believe that her migration was worthwhile in the sense of what matters to them—the education of her child. Having to face a less successful outcome was shameful in her culture and devalued her migration sacrifice.

Speaking of suffering may worry relatives. Speaking too positively may give rise to resentments or envy in the family of origin. It is hard to hit the right mark that may protect some form of family harmony even if greater emotional intimacy cannot be achieved. It behooves therapists to explore the possibilities and the complexities of specific communications between a cli- ent and members of his or her family for specific purposes of clarification, of sharing a difficult situation, of seeking advice, or of sharing remorse for a past deed.

Virtual Communities

Remittances extend well beyond the family. Many transnationals continue to have a presence, virtual or real, in their communities of origin through participation in a variety of causes and social projects. At the psychological level, these connections probably help to deal with losses of social and cultural capital while assuaging feelings of guilt for leaving to acquire more resources. Transnationals can support projects that are symbolically connected with those issues that may have been a cause of their suffering by donating money for services related to hunger, health, education, or religion. It may mean that their sacrifices have not been in vain. They can attempt to repair old regrets or look forward to a better future for their communities or themselves, such as fulfilling the dream of home ownership. Sometimes the attempts to remain connected to the community move from the virtual to the realized, as when an immigrant fulfills the joyful dream of community reunification by helping

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the migration of members of their original communities. However, problems sometimes arise in these attempts, as in the case of the Puerto Rican woman in the last of the initial vignettes whose emotional breakdown was precipitated by the rejection of the community that she had helped to reconstitute and who was now embroiled in a negative gossip system.

Original communities can be imagined as home extensions, with their physical and human resources. Therapists must capitalize on these resources the way families do. If feasible, it may be desirable to send at-risk adolescents to school in their parents’ countries in order to get them away from the unde- sirable influences in this country, such as gang involvement. Unfortunately, in this global environment, this social phenomenon can also be exported, result- ing in the appearance of U.S.-like gangs in such places as Ecuador, Guate- mala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

TRANSNATIONALISM AND LEGACIES FOR THE SECOND GENERATION

Transnationalism has important consequences for the second generation. Attachments to country and culture in the children of immigrants could be, at least in part, the outcome of either unconscious or purposeful induction on the parents’ part. Telling stories to share the past, to create bridges with the present, and to caution against excessive Americanization is one of the rituals of immigrant family life that lend a sense of narrative coherence and family continuity (Falicov, 2012). The “roots or/and wings” dilemmas that typify how far or close to live one’s life to the family traditions are ensconced in the possibilities of transnationalism for the second generation (Falicov, 2014a).

Through these interactions, children of immigrants may become emo- tional transmigrants (Wolf, 2002). Some children of Cuban or Greek immi- grants are mesmerized by the beauty of the beaches in Cuba or in Greece, although these beaches may be conjured in their imaginations only (Stone et al., 2005). The voices of their parents may populate these idealized accounts, perhaps because of the magnetic power of the immigrant story within their families (Falicov, 2005).

Rather than feeling “lost in translation,” as the second generation pre- sumably became in the past, the new second generations may attempt to “grow in translation.” Yet positive transnationalism and its advantages for the binational identity that it informs may not be sufficient to overcome the nega- tive experiences of immigrant children who face racism and discrimination in school. Suárez- Orozco and Suárez- Orozco (2001) observed that immigrant children develop a keen eye for the negative reception they suffer because of their ethnicity. These authors conclude that parents’ positive mirroring of their ethnic group may not fully compensate for the distorted reflections that their children encounter outside the home, which, of course, affects their own ethnic identity formation and even their view of their parents’ culture or sta- tus. In the face of discrimination, psychological defenses such as idealization may be used, but denigration and self- destructiveness may also occur. For

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example, in the movie My Family (Nava, 1995), Chucho, the son who has been selling marijuana in the barrios of Los Angeles, says that he engaged in this business to avoid undergoing the oppression his father endured as a poor immigrant, in spite of the fact that both parents instilled in him a great deal of love for Mexican culture.

The exploration of transnational affiliation and the persistence of tra- ditional beliefs may be significant for the second generation, even though they may not make reference to immigration per se or experience the same poignancy of ambiguous loss that their parents have (Falicov, 2005, 2014a). The second generation may travel, learn language and traditions, and accept or reject cultural values. Exploration of language spoken in the household is important, as bilingual households are more indicative of transnationalism.

The second generation and the one-and-a-half generation— that is, those who migrated before age 12—may have knowledge about their birth stories or about how their first names were chosen and passed on by their parents, as these names often contain cultural meanings and symbols (Stone et al., 2005). Likewise, cultural theories of illness and home remedies, including their use for psychological or psychosomatic concerns presented in therapy, may coexist with mainstream use of services and cures. For example, a study of Latino college students at the University of California Los Angeles shows that they adhere to a dual system of causal understanding of diabetes. On the one hand, they do not deny the importance of genetic predisposition, diet, or exercise. However, they also believe that diabetes is caused by other factors, which include stress or susto (fright), and the notion that their risk for Type 2 diabetes may be a punishment or “ mystical retribution” for their violations of social norms or self- indulgent lifestyles, invoking a higher power, such as God’s will, for the onset of the disease; this illustrates the generational per- sistence of traditional folk beliefs, with religious and mystical explanations of illness, even among the educated and acculturated (Santos, Hurtado- Ortiz, & Sneed, 2009).

A second- generation young man’s attachment to his father’s cultural legacy could lead him to search for a wife in the father’s country, as in the case of a Lebanese American young man who went to Lebanon and paid a dowry to secure a Lebanese wife and bring her to the United States. In therapy for marital conflict, it was discovered that this client had attributed the failure of his parents’ marriage to his Lebanese American mother’s lack of tolerance for his Lebanese father’s infidelities. This client believed that his mother had defended her rights as a result of her Americanization and that a nonacculturated Lebanese wife would be insurance against women’s mod- ern entitlements. Ironically, he did not take into account the possibility that a native- born young Lebanese woman had grown up in an environment of rapidly changing gender roles. Indeed, his wife came from a family in which the father was nurturing and did not fit the patriarchal stereotype, as he sup- ported his daughters’ emancipation. Paradoxically, for this young wife, her first encounter with overt family patriarchy occurred with her young Ameri- can husband.

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THEORIES OF ACCULTURATION AND TRANSNATIONALISM

Acculturation theory was based on the idea that there is only one place that a person can call “home.” By and large, the assumption has been that even- tual assimilation by changing their language and culture was a good outcome for immigrants in a pluralistic society. Clinicians interested in cultural values continue to use acculturation theory to judge how far along immigrants are on the continuum of adaptation to the new society.

Transnationalism upsets the apple cart of traditional linear ideas about the gradual assimilation of immigrants. The crossings of geographic, politi- cal, and cultural borders create a bidirectional flow whereby changes and adjustments occur in the sending and receiving countries. New relationships are created and old ones maintained, and both undergo cultural negotiations and hybridizations.

The liveliness of these cultural connections between homes could be interpreted as working against assimilation to the host country. It appears more likely, however, that new immigrants and their children combine trans- national and assimilative practices inside and outside their homes at different stages of their lives and that they use these various combinations to construct their flexible bicultural identities. Furthermore, gender, race, and social class, along with experiences of discrimination and xenophobia, interact with trans- national identities and create great diversity in family stories. Several of my Latina clients, in spite of strong family and cultural attachments, are leery of endogamy because they are critical of aspects of Latino male socialization that could make men in their cultural group questionable candidates for marriage. They may prefer to marry American men, whom they perceive to be more egalitarian. At the individual level, what seems to occur is a selective bicultur- alism that requires exploration for each client (Falicov, 2014a).

The level of acculturation of today’s immigrant is unpredictable. Or per- haps it always was. In most families, continuity and change are happening side by side in creative, nonlinear ways. Some family members may adhere to certain customs, such as home remedies or foods; but the same members or others may oppose vigorously the arranged marriages favored in their culture. Some prefer- ences may have remained unchanged, such as the insistence on modest attire for a daughter. But other aspects of the same patriarchal ideology in Mexico, Turkey, Iran, and other places may have been transformed— for example, an insistence on higher education for young women so that they may be economi- cally independent from domineering men if need be. In short, rather than pre- dicting inevitable assimilation, it is possible to imagine transnationalism and assimilation as coexisting, particularly for the first and the second generations.

BINATIONAL COMPARATIVE RESEARCH STUDIES

Transnationalism has also affected how migration studies are conceived and conducted. New studies involve comparing people who are culturally similar

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but who live in different places— for example, immigrants to the United States and people who have remained in the same original localities. Many contem- porary comparative ethnographies collect data in two or more communities. Noteworthy for transnational work are studies that compare life situations in Mexican locations with the changes taking place in the United States for immigrants from those same locations. These studies hold promise for a more thorough and grounded understanding of the processes involved in migra- tion and transnationalism. The findings of these studies have useful clinical applications.

The SALUD Mexican Immigrant Project (Farley, 2002; Falicov, 2002b) is a binational study that compared the health status of those who stayed in their hometown of Guanajuato, Mexico, with that of immigrants to Colorado who originated from the same areas. The findings indicated that emotional problems such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and posttraumatic stress caused greater physical disability among the immigrant population as opposed to their Mexican counterparts.

Another study compares sexuality and love in couples who have migrated to Atlanta, Georgia, with similar couples who have remained in their small Mexican towns in Jalisco (Hirsch, 2003). This study makes a compelling case for changes in cultural ideals about types of marriages preferred. In her sophisticated analysis of interviews, anthropologist Jennifer Hirsch describes how women and men in both places are attempting to create modern mar- riages based on sexual love and trust (confianza) while striving to maintain the strengths of traditional marital bonds based on respect, commitment, and strong intergenerational orientation.

Another important sociological study illustrates how immigrants and their children move back and forth between New York and their home village in Puebla, Mexico, borrowing from and contributing to both communities as they forge new gender relationships, new parental practices, new conceptions of adolescence, and even new strategies for social mobility in both places while also maintaining many continuities of values and traditions (Smith, 2006).

Binational studies hold the most promise for elucidating issues related to globalization, migration, and culture change. They also hold promise for developing collaborative relationships among anthropologists, sociologists, service providers, and policymakers. In addition to the information about the effects of family fragmentation, these studies have the potential for developing models for professional collaboration and transnational therapeutic interven- tions.

CONCLUSION

The themes of loss and discontinuity that dominated the clinical literature on immigrants are revised in this chapter with a stress on contact and continuity with the sending societies made possible by global communication advances.

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Families separated across countries may be able to maintain greater connec- tions than in the past but may also suffer separations that affect core relation- ships between spouses and between parents and children. The processes pre- cipitated by migration, here and in the immigrants’ countries, create personal and cultural complexities through disconnections, renewals, and transforma- tions that affect the first and the second generations. Therapists need to take into account the nature of long- distance relationships in terms of theory, prac- tice, and policy to ensure services to families that enhance their opportuni- ties for resilient adaptations. Binational research or clinical case studies have the potential to supply useful comparative information about health, men- tal health, and changing values and practices. Therapists must also become transnational in their thinking and practices by making use of the various new technologies of communication to include the clients’ families and com- munities in their places of origin in efforts to maintain and renew family life at long distance.

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Recently, a young therapist questioned what (if any) impact she could possibly have on a family that had been in and out of the mental health system for 16 years. The therapist’s frustration was heightened by the fact that the mother seemed less disturbed than she, the therapist, about her family’s situation. She wondered, “Is this mission impossible, or have I invested in a career that makes very little real difference in the lives of the people I am trying to help? Am I helping my clients to be hopeful, or are they teaching me to be hopeless?”

These same questions prompted me to review my own experiences, both personal and professional. How could I face an aunt and cousin who had lost four children in a house fire? How could I embrace my own pain without showing despair when meeting with a mother who was desperately trying to achieve some distance from the grief she had felt since the traumatic death of one of her twin sons? She and her husband had watched and participated in an unsuccessful rescue effort as their son cried for help.

Given the social, economic, and political times in which we live across the globe, therapists are confronted with the pervasive presence of hope and hope- lessness in our personal and professional contexts and the resulting impact on our resilience, as well as that of our clients. As therapists, we sometimes feel overwhelmed about the possibility that the problems our clients present can be resolved. Some clients, in contrast, appear undaunted, and we are either amazed at their survival skills or convinced that they are in denial. Hernández, Engstrom, and Gangsei (2010) have coined the term “vicarious resilience” to refer to the potential for therapists to be empowered and to learn from clients how to overcome adversity. In other instances, our clients convey a sense of hopelessness, a “dis-ease” of spirit, whereas we as therapists see possibilities

C H A P T E R 8

Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain Hope, Culture, and Therapy

Paulette Moore Hines

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and struggle to help them free themselves from self- imposed limitations. A third scenario is one in which both our clients and we ourselves have a sense of helplessness.

In spite of the pull to supply our clients with the answers to their prob- lems, it is inevitable that neither our personal life experiences nor our profes- sional training prepare us to envision the answers to some dilemmas. We must also confront the reality that there are some problems for which there may be no concrete resolution, either immediately or in the long term.

In the face of such circumstances, the ability genuinely to convey and encourage hope is key to retaining clients in the helping process and to moti- vating them to make behavioral and cognitive shifts that can enhance their functioning and improve the quality of their lives. This chapter advances the premise that every culture has means of preserving the lessons that have been learned over generations about psychological survival. Using African Ameri- can culture as an example, the chapter explores the therapeutic benefit of turning to the wisdom, resources, and practices of those who have survived circumstances that confound us and our clients. This chapter further high- lights the importance of therapists’ being able to help clients make this con- nection, as well as to tap readily into our own reservoirs of hope when it is lacking in our work.

BELIEFS AND WELL‑BEING

There is a clear relationship between our beliefs and our emotional and behav- ioral functioning. Beliefs, embraced intuitively and uttered spontaneously in crisis situations, may either function as anchors during a storm or promulgate a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. Fortunately, our beliefs are acquired through life experiences, and they can be altered likewise.

Counseling and therapy are not modalities that African Americans turn to easily. When they do, few walk in and request treatment for their hopeless- ness. Nevertheless, there is no greater challenge to be faced by African Ameri- cans, a population challenged by generations of past and ongoing daily acts of social injustice, and by those who work with them than maintaining and encouraging, in more culturally laden terms, the will to “keep on keeping on.”

CONNECTING WITH THE PAST IN ORDER TO MOVE FORWARD

Struggle characterizes our African American history, our present, and, no doubt, our future. African Americans have historically recognized that main- taining the will to live life to its fullest and never to give up is vital to our phys- ical, psychological, and spiritual survival, and we have proved to be masters at doing so under unimaginable circumstances. Without hope, for example, the slaves who traveled the Underground Railroad would have succumbed,

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and the outward symbols of racist segregation would not have been outlawed. Now in the 21st century the issue of “keeping our hope alive” remains central to the well-being and literal survival of African Americans, collectively and individually. For the majority of African Americans, freedom from the shack- les of slavery has not given rise to freedom from pain and suffering.

Cornel West (1993) and others have directed attention to the link between escalating social, economic, health, educational, and political problems on the one hand and the erosion of connections with cultural values and traditions on the other. African and African American tradition involves looking to our elders for the wisdom they have drawn from the research laboratories of life. Yet connecting with the oppression that our forebears experienced both dur- ing slavery and since the Civil War era brings forth conflicting wishes for many African Americans: the wish to forget the inhumanity our ancestors suffered and the wish to remember their amazing capacity not only to survive but also to transcend difficult circumstances and overwhelming odds.

Countless recognized and unsung heroes and “sheroes” were first physi- cally enslaved and then segregated; the real victory was their audacity in believing in themselves and in maintaining a sense of dignity, self- respect, concern for one another, and hope for a better day. These were individuals who kept their spirits intact even though they were repeatedly treated as if they were dangerous or invisible. They had to struggle mightily to overcome the oppressive forces of poverty and racism. In short, the African American story is one of unrelenting struggle— people searching for a way to be happy, to function at their fullest potential, and to be free from the scars of the past and the restrictions of the present.

Lerone Bennett (1991) wrote that the voices of the past speak to us of hope, endurance, and daring. They tell us that life does not exist in the absence of connection with family and our culture. They tell us, among other things, that nothing can destroy us here if we keep the faith of our fathers and moth- ers and put our hands to the plow and hold on. They suggest that we can call on the story of the collective and draw strength and direction.

African American culture is distinctive in the reliance placed on oral communication to transmit beliefs, values, and traditions across genera- tions. Proverbs and jokes, religious sermons and prayers, poetry, spirituals, the blues, and other forms of music, and stories and fables drawn from Afri- can and African American tradition are rich in wisdom about endurance and remaining spiritually healthy in spite of unrelenting oppression. Although the messages may be linked to either secular or religious sources, the themes are constant because of the strong spiritual orientation that permeates African American culture.

Folk Wisdom

Among African Americans, interest in preserving the wisdom of our elders is apparent in the recent popularity of what are known as “books of affirmation”

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(Riley, 1993; Vanzant, 1993; Copage, 2005). These old sayings, quotations, and proverbs drawn from African and African American experience are intended to pass on a message of empowerment. These messages have particu- lar significance and familiarity for many African Americans. Some, such as “Stand tall, walk proud” and “Even an ant may harm an elephant,” prompt us to let go of hopelessness and believe in ourselves. Others, such as “What storm is there which has no end?” and “Tough times don’t last, tough people do,” remind us that troubled times will come to an end. Yet others prompt us to take risks and to persevere: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress”; “When life knocks you down, land on your back, because if you can look up, you can get up”; and “You don’t get there because, you get there in spite of.”

Some messages connect us with our past and future, eliciting images of what has been and images of what can be. They draw attention to our interre- lationship with one another through our commonalities in experience. These include the following: “Our successes have been earned while we stood on the shoulders of those who came before us”; “Reach back, give back”; “Look from whence you have come”; “Lose not courage, lose not faith, go forward.” The power of these messages to energize, mobilize, and promote transforma- tion is readily apparent both inside and outside the therapeutic process.

Spiritual Beliefs

Two- thirds of the people of the United States consider spirituality or religion to be important or very important in their lives and may prefer approaches that are sympathetic to spiritual values (Richards & Bergin, 2005). Even when they are not involved with organized religion, African Americans tend to hold biblically based beliefs, although they may not identify them as such.

Cooper- Lewter and Mitchell (1991) have outlined a number of basic beliefs in African American culture that are tied to Judeo- Christian tradi- tion and traditional African religion. These include reminders of the power of God (e.g., “God is in charge”; “God knows everything and is an all-wise protector”) and of the security that a just God offers (e.g., “God is just, fair, and impartial”; “God is gracious, offering unqualified love”; “God regards all persons as equal”). Common religious beliefs also pertain to the sanctity of life and basic human rights (e.g., “Each person is absolutely unique and wor- thy of respect”; “We should not surrender to the pressures of life and give up in despair”; “We are all related as a family”). The values that are encouraged by these beliefs parallel those espoused in the therapeutic community: forgive- ness of self and others, self- discipline, respect for self and others, courage, honesty, ability to let go of negative emotional states, and so forth (Richards & Bergin, 2005).

When African Americans call on spiritual and religious sources of inspi- ration, we call not only on the wisdom of our ancestors but also on the power of a higher spirit. Family stories, fables, poetic prayers, daily meditations, sermons, and such hymns and spirituals as “Let Me Tell You How to Move

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a Mountain” or secular songs such as “Imagine Me” and “Rise Up” contain messages that encourage an outlook that promotes triumph over obstacles. They proclaim that no matter how bad things seem, everyone’s life is worth living. They encourage perseverance, forgiveness, not wasting one’s time on vengeance, celebrating one’s uniqueness, self- understanding, and uncondi- tional love. They encourage us never to feel alone. They remind us that when we partner with the higher power, nothing can penetrate our armor. Although we may not know what the future holds, we need not be fearful. We can move from obstacles to possibilities. We can run a race with one foot, if necessary.

When we lack any clue about how to proceed, or when we run out of steam and cannot try or cannot conceive of what to do next, the implication of adopting such a perspective is clear. As Weingarten (2007) points out, hope is not just a noun but also a verb; hope drives action. Solutions are more likely to be found when we actively continue to search for them.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

For African Americans, culture, spirituality, and religion are intricately inter- twined, influencing our belief systems and potential for resilience and resis- tance of oppression. The training of most therapists does not allow us to deal with spiritual beliefs and values easily. The anxiety associated with addressing religious beliefs is even greater, for a variety of reasons. First, unfamiliarity breeds discomfort. Second, many therapists interpret the mandate to be “neu- tral” in transactions with clients to mean that they should avoid discussions about religious and spiritual beliefs and values. Some fear that they will abuse their power and influence clients toward adoption of their own viewpoints. Third, there are times when the mental health issues that clients present are rooted in their particular beliefs or the meaning they assign to these and to life experiences (Walsh, 2009). Other times, therapists are closed to conversations with clients about their religious beliefs because of the ways that religion has been misused to support oppression.

Clearly, to ignore the interrelationship among mind, body, and spirit is to draw an artificial distinction that distances us from our clients. Although we can abuse our influence, the truth is that we convey messages through our omissions, as well as through what we say and do in therapy. We are prob- ably less likely to influence changes in our clients’ basic beliefs about religion than we are changes in other domains. We have also matured in our recog- nition that there can be healthy, as well as unhealthy, religiosity. A person’s religious beliefs and values may heighten stress, provide a haven from stress, foster higher moral behavior, and/or promote personal growth and fulfillment (Spilka, Wood, Hunsberger, & Gorsuch, 2003).

Regardless of whether their belief systems are grounded in secular or religious folkways, clients will vary in their abilities to readily articulate their basic beliefs. They will also vary in the extent to which they make a conscious,

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active effort to access cognitions (and associated images and positive “self- talk”) that can empower them when they face obstacles. Therapists can ref- erence clients’ prior comments and use circular questioning to help clients pinpoint basic beliefs that shape their worldviews, feelings, and behaviors. It is important to explore the personal meanings that underlie abstract belief state- ments (e.g., “I believe God will make a way”), even when the language that cli- ents use is familiar. Another key therapeutic task is to help clients understand that many of their beliefs are not based on absolutes (e.g., always true vs. always bad; advantageous vs. disadvantageous); it can be helpful to evaluate whether a given belief (or notion about how to translate this belief into action) is serving them well even though embracing it in a particular way may have been helpful in the past. To the extent that it is relevant to clients’ well-being and therapeutic goals, therapists can facilitate awareness of inconsistencies in beliefs, as well as inconsistencies between beliefs and behavior. The aim in these instances should be to help clients evaluate their positions, expand their perspectives, and draw their own conclusions about which beliefs they cling to, which they reformulate, and which they let go.

In some instances, the challenge may be to help clients develop strategies to gain inspiration to go on with their lives when they are immobilized with despair. For example, a client whose son had been killed in a gang murder became immobilized every time he had to go to court for the arraignments of the young men who were charged with his son’s murder. To support him in imagining that his life could ever be fulfilling again, I showed him and his family a film clip during therapy about a woman whose life was transformed when she found a way to forgive the gang member who had killed her son. Her story provided my client with an alternative script, which inspired him to speak to his son’s killer at the next hearing and to forgive him. Symbolizing his recognition that he could reclaim the gift that the memories of his son in life represented, several weeks later he extinguished the candles that he had been burning for his son since his untimely death 2 years before.

In other instances, clients simply need to be encouraged to make more consistent use of the resources they have already identified and previously used, particularly in tough moments.

Working across Differences

Although many clients prefer therapists who share their beliefs and value sys- tems, their bottom- line concern is having a place where they can talk openly without being judged. A therapist may have beliefs that are dissonant with a client’s, or the therapist and client may share common beliefs that may origi- nate from disparate sources. In either instance, it is possible for the therapist to be empathic and creative and to facilitate hope through therapeutic transac- tions. When therapists greet clients with genuine respect and an openness to learning about them, there is a greater potential for discovering commonalities of experience that transcend differences. For example, it may be difficult for a

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therapist to experience the same emotion and empowerment as some religious clients might when listening to a spiritual leader; however, the same therapist may fully appreciate the notion that music, words, and images drawn from his/her own past experience can connect people, at a multisensory level, with memories of inner peace and hope and of a point in time when they felt happy, protected, and safe (e.g., listening to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or some other song cherished during childhood).

Case Example

A poignant illustration of the benefit of pursuing cultural narratives in the context of family therapy and how helping people link to their past, present, and potential future via the use of culturally congruent resources can prove transformative (McGoldrick & Hines, 2007) is provided by the case of a cli- ent, Jerry, who complained of anger and depression after he was demoted on his job. Jerry’s preoccupation with what he viewed as an act of racial dis- crimination had resulted in considerable tension between him and his wife, as well as between him and his two adolescent children. He noted that his recent experience had left him feeling deflated and hopeless that a Black man could ever be treated justly in this society. The quality of his work had declined, and he had begun to have panic attacks when driving to work each day. He felt ashamed that his finances would not allow him to quit his position; he saw himself as the only one of four children that his aging parents could depend on for financial support, and he was also anxious about putting away funds for his own children’s college education. Jerry had begun to withdraw from everyone and had lost interest in all of his former social and cultural activities. His wife complained that he would not share his thoughts and feelings with her; Jerry viewed himself as a hypocrite in that he found himself unable to model positive functioning for his children.

During the review of Jerry’s family history, he revealed that his grandfa- ther was the person who had most significantly influenced him as a child. He recalled that one legacy passed on by his grandfather was the belief that “When one door closes, another opens.” Within the context of a family session, we explored Jerry’s thoughts about what his grandfather had meant when he cited this adage, as well as what Jerry had wanted to convey to his children on the numerous occasions he had repeated these same words. Jerry had shared very little with his children or his wife about his childhood. He assumed that they had little interest, but, even more, he feared he would be overwhelmed by feel- ings of loss. His two teenagers, who had done little to hide their reluctance to come to therapy, showed a high level of interest in the discussion about their ancestors’ “story of hope, faith, and resistance.” Jerry shared a story with his family about a time when his grandparents’ farm was sold at auction follow- ing several years of bad crops, and the family was forced to give up most of their acquisitions. Although the bank had granted additional time to many of his grandfather’s European American neighbors, his request for an extension

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had been denied. For the first time in many years, Jerry allowed himself to cry as he recalled the awe and pride he felt when his grandparents looked the auctioneer and bankers in the eye and walked proudly away from the home they had built themselves. His grandfather subsequently established a small trucking business, which sustained his family through the Great Depression.

When asked what advice his grandfather would give Jerry about coping with his current situation, Jerry imagined he would say, “Another person can’t ride your back, unless it’s bent.” Discussion followed regarding how Jerry might better align his behavior with his grandfather’s prescription. Among other things, Jerry reported that he had begun to read from a book of medita- tions daily. Aware that Jerry gave himself little or no room to lean on others for support even in the most difficult times, the therapist asked Jerry about the nature of his prayers. Not surprisingly, Jerry had operated from a firm conviction that it was OK for him to pray for others but that it was selfish to ask for anything for himself. The therapist prescribed that Jerry begin a ritual of praying at least once a day, during which he was to ask God for help with his own problems.

Jerry and his wife discussed with the therapist their varied notions about how they would recognize God’s answer to Jerry’s prayers. Jerry’s unresolved guilt about being away at college during the last month of his grandfather’s life surfaced. His inability to forgive himself had kept him distant from his grandmother during the remaining years of her life. Jerry was becoming very conscious of the double standards that he applied in his life in that he was far more forgiving and less demanding of others than he was of himself.

The subsequent therapy continued to build on the value Jerry placed on his grandfather’s wisdom and on his heightened awareness that he had departed from fully embracing it. He was asked (1) to project himself for- ward in time and to visualize himself having resolved his current dilemma by calling on the cumulative wisdom of his ancestors and (2) to define the minimal changes necessary to shift from his present (undesirable) situation to the scenario he had visualized in which his dilemma had been resolved. With the therapist’s coaching, Jerry developed a plan to visualize his grandfather coaching him prior to each planned encounter with his boss. His boss seemed to be unbalanced by Jerry’s calmness and self- confidence and began to back down from the power and control games he had initiated shortly after Jerry’s demotion. Jerry ultimately decided to take an early retirement package, and his wife agreed to support him in starting his own consulting firm.

Our Clients, Ourselves: Avoiding the Hopelessness Trap

As therapists, we are generally attuned to the instances in which clients assume postures of hopelessness, imposing limitations on the possibilities that they can conceive because they are unable to see beyond their beliefs, imagination, and self- definition. We are less apt to recognize the negative influence that our own hopelessness has on our clients.

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Most frequently, we have a sense of when our clients are likely to ter- minate therapy prematurely. This circumstance may result from our failure to communicate a sense of hope regarding the challenges the clients face. As one client put it, “Why invest my time and money in coming to see someone who only leaves me feeling worse?” African American clients, in particular, are very attuned to “negative vibes” (i.e., nonverbal messages), as well as to what is or is not communicated verbally. A message of hope that is insincere is unlikely to lead to positive results.

Within the context of a typical therapy hour, we have little time to pro- cess the barrage of information that is shared by clients. There is even less time available to ponder the roots of and remedies for our own hopelessness when it surfaces. We share with our clients a need to recognize when we are so afflicted; we also share a need to slow our pace occasionally, in order to embark on a process that can help us find a means of spiritual renewal.

Ongoing self- reflection and discussion with colleagues can provide insights that will assist us as therapists in mapping a path from hopelessness to hopefulness. The following questions may prove valuable in this process.

1. When you feel hopeless, what are the cues? 2. Who has loved you in your life? Is there a particular person, image,

thought, or story that you are likely to access to help you cope? 3. What are the cultural messages and family stories that have been

passed down to you about coping with adversity? 4. How are your personal beliefs and patterns of coping similar to or

different from those held by most people in your family or culture? 5. Are there situations that are rightfully construed as hopeless? 6. Are there occasions on which one may actually do harm by encourag-

ing hope? 7. To what extent is your way of responding to adversity different from

those of the clients who have proven most challenging to work with in therapy?

8. What strategies do you use to diminish burnout and revitalize your- self?

9. How do you distinguish between times when it is reasonable to con- tinue therapy with a client and times when you should transfer the case because you feel hopeless about the potential for a positive out- come?

CONCLUSION

On occasion, our clients’ well-being is tied to figuring out concrete solutions to their problems; more frequently, though, the key issue is a loss of the will necessary to pursue possibilities, however limited these may be. The basic premise of this chapter is that we therapists and our clients alike can find

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guidance regarding how to protect and heal our bruised spirits by turning to the wisdom of our ancestors, through whatever means this knowledge has been preserved. Within African American culture, proverbs, folk sayings, poetry, movies, literature, art, music, fables, biblical scriptures, and stories of hope, faith, and resistance drawn from real-life narratives, among others, can serve as resources that not only inspire but offer specific prescriptions about how to avoid and master obstacles in life. We and our clients can be empow- ered by reaching into and beyond ourselves and tapping our cultural legacies.

REFERENCES

Bennett, L. (1991, February). Voices of the past. Ebony, pp. 120–122. Cooper- Lewter, N., & Mitchell, H. H. (1991). Soul theology: The heart of American

black culture. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Copage, E. V. (2005). Black pearls: Daily meditations, affirmations, and inspirations

for African- Americans. New York: Morrow. Hernández, P., Engstrom, D., & Gangsei, D. (2010). Exploring the impact of trauma

on therapists: Vicarious resilience and related concepts in training. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 29(1), 67–83.

McGoldrick, M., & Hines, P. M. (2007). Hope: The far side of despair. In C. Flas- kas, I. McCarthy, & J. Sheehan (Eds.), Hope and despair in narrative and fam- ily therapy: Adversity, forgiveness, and reconciliation (pp. 51–62). New York: Routledge.

Richards, P. S., & Bergin, A. E. (2005). A spiritual strategy for counseling and psy- chotherapy (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Riley, D. W. (Ed.). (1993). My soul looks back, ‘less I forget: A collection of quota- tions by people of color. New York: HarperCollins.

Spilka, B., Wood, R., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (2003). The psychology of reli- gion (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.

Vanzant, I. (1993). Acts of faith: Daily meditations for people of color. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Walsh, F. (2009). Religion, spirituality, and the family: Multifaith perspectives. In F. Walsh (Ed.), Spiritual resources in family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 3–30). New York: Guilford Press.

Weingarten, K. (2007). Hope in a time of global fear. In C. Flaskas, I. McCarthy, & J. Sheehan (Eds.), Hope and despair in narrative and family therapy: Adversity, forgiveness, and reconciliation (pp. 13–23). New York: Routledge.

West, C. (1993). Race matters. Boston: Beacon Press.

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Historically, there has been very little clinical, empirical, or theoretical con- sideration given throughout the field to the interrelatedness of culture, oppres- sion, and trauma. The insistence on rather narrow and lineal definitions of trauma has impeded the ability of our field to fully grasp the pervasive and multitudinous ways in which trauma permeates the lives of the oppressed. Although it may not be uncommon for a clinician to astutely identify trau- matic experiences within the interactional patterns of an immigrant family, for example, it would be uncommon for that same clinician to consider the very process of immigration through a prism of trauma. When culture is con- sidered within the context of trauma, or trauma considered within the context of culture, the underlying dynamics are usually the same. The mind-set is usu- ally one that posits that “culture” and “trauma” are two discrete entities that may be related under some circumstances. In both research and clinical prac- tice, this particular worldview leads us down a path where we are inevitably compelled to ask questions such as “How do Asians and Latinos, for example, respond to and recover from trauma based on their respective cultural posi- tioning?” (this is reflective of culture considered within the context of trauma) or “Are there specific types of traumatic experiences that we should anticipate within this or that type of cultural group?” (this is reflective of trauma con- sidered within the context of culture). It is rare, if ever, that aspects of culture, especially (sociocultural) oppression, are conceptualized as trauma. The fail- ure to consider the powerful relationship that exists between sociocultural oppression and trauma has made it difficult, if not impossible, for human service providers to respond effectively to the complex and multifaceted needs

C H A P T E R 9

Toward a Psychology of the Oppressed Understanding the Invisible Wounds of Trauma

Kenneth V. Hardy

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of many clients from oppressed backgrounds. Clients from marginalized and oppressed backgrounds are often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and conse- quently underserved. The bifurcation of culture and trauma and, by exten- sion, sociocultural oppression and trauma, have made it difficult for clinicians to conceptualize and respond appropriately to the oppression- related subtle- ties that often undermine effective clinical engagement and treatment. A much more expansive and broader notion of trauma is necessary, one that highlights the dynamics of oppression.

OPPRESSION TRAUMA

Because racism, Islamophobia, anti- Semitism, elitism, and other manifesta- tions of bias, bigotry, and discrimination are cornerstones of the society in which we live, expanding our notions of trauma to include sociocultural factors seems not only timely but also essential. Unfortunately, issues of culture and trauma have been fairly segregated historically. Scholars interested in culture have spent considerable time discussing the relationship between culture and oppression but have devoted scant attention to the issue of trauma. Although much of this work has reflected an implicit understanding of the rudiments of trauma, it has not been addressed overtly. Similarly, trauma scholars have not historically devoted serious attention to culture. In recent years, there has been more attention extended to trauma and culture, but it has been done in a rather cursory way. Much of the attention devoted to trauma and culture has been sharply focused on trauma- based work with certain cultural groups or examining cultural differences in response to various aspects of trauma. There have not been many substantive works that have explored, for example, the traumatic effects of racism, oppression, and systemic inequality. What we need is a comprehensive framework for conceptualizing the trauma of oppres- sion. To achieve this goal, a set of fresh and expansive ideas for conceptual- izing what constitutes oppression trauma is essential.

This chapter posits that a thorough understanding of the dynamics of sociocultural oppression, as a precursor to oppression trauma, is necessary to work across cultural boundaries, especially with marginalized populations. Oppression trauma is a life- altering and debilitating experience that affects countless individuals, families, and groups over multiple generations. It is an affirmation of the interlocking of sociocultural oppression and trauma. The insistence on separating the two phenomena severely limits our collective understanding and ability to work with clients who live their lives along the margins of society by virtue of their social location. Oppression trauma is the inescapable by- product of persistent exposure (primarily or secondarily) to repressive circumstances that emotionally, psychologically, and/or physically devastate one’s being and sense of self while simultaneously overwhelming, destroying, or neutralizing one’s strategies for coping. Because sociocultural oppression by definition is a systemic condition that is sustained and intense,

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occurring over a protracted period of time, there is very little release or relief from oppression trauma. People of color and members of other oppressed groups live in the midst of sociocultural conditions that are injurious to their psyches and souls. Trauma- informed work that is oblivious to the subtle but potent impact of sociocultural oppression is probably replete with culturally based oversights.

SOCIOCULTURAL OPPRESSION

Sociocultural oppression, for many, is an integral aspect of culture. It is an umbrella term that refers to experiences of domination- induced marginal- ization that results in the subjugation of a person or group based on social location. When thinking culturally, no one is technically immune from some form of sociocultural oppression, especially as a major feature of it has to do with being on the receiving end of the domination– subjugation cycle, particu- larly in response to one’s social location. Race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and mental and physical ability, just to cite a few, are all social locations connected to experiences of sociocultural oppression. In this regard, males and females, straights and gays, whites and people of color, rich and poor, and the able- bodied and those who are not can all live in the same world and yet live fundamentally different lives based on social location. Those who have membership in groups that are valued in our society (males, whites, het- erosexuals, for instance) see and interact with the world through the prism of privilege. Those, on the other hand, who have membership in groups that are devalued by our society (women, gay/lesbians, people of color) see and inter- act with the world through the lens of subjugation. The privilege of privilege is to have it and not know you have it, which facilitates feelings and acts of entitlement. The realities of subjugation, on the other hand, are to live a life of psychological incarceration with underlying feelings of anger, suppressed rage, despair, and humiliation. The process of subjugation is one of the many defining features of sociocultural oppression.

Sociocultural oppression is systemic and pervasive in its reach and affects all aspects of the lives of those who are targeted. Although seldom acknowl- edged, it is, for all practical purposes, an insidious precipitant of trauma. All forms of oppression are essentially connected to trauma, although not all trau- mas are affiliated with oppression. Similar to other types of trauma, those suf- fering from sociocultural oppression are often symptomatic for a protracted period of time. Most manifestations of sociocultural oppression occur over a prolonged period of time and in many instances, such as in the case of poverty, can persist over a lifetime, whether the poor remain poor or not. Regardless of the age of onset, sociocultural oppression is like an undetected and untreated cancer. In a slow, deliberate, but progressive way, it makes its mark. It takes its toll; it maims, mutilates, weakens the spirit and the body. In short, it signifi- cantly alters the course of one’s life directly and indirectly over generations.

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Both Leary (2005) and Lerner and Hardy (1995) have discussed the ways in which the institution of slavery has forever and profoundly affected the everyday contemporary lives of many African Americans. According to Leary, contemporary African Americans suffer from the trauma of posttraumatic slavery syndrome.

THE ANATOMY OF SOCIOCULTURAL OPPRESSION

Sociocultural oppression is a silent assassin in the lives of those who are tar- geted. It is a condition, an experience that is broad in scope and potent in its impact. It is not terribly visible to either those who unwittingly support it or those whose lives are imprisoned by it, yet the ruins of its effects are often painfully visible. Sociocultural oppression has no conscience, and it is not partial to a particular stage of the life cycle. It attacks, assaults, and affects children just as easily as it maligns adults. There are two levels of oppression that affect the lives of the infected: primary and secondary. The relationship between primary- and secondary- level oppression is not a hierarchical one in that one is necessarily worse than the other. Instead, the two levels represent, in one sense, opposite sides of the same coin. If we were to think of these levels as manifestations of trauma, primary oppression would refer to experiences of direct exposure to domination– subjugation based on social location, whereas secondary oppression would refer to either indirect exposure (e.g., the case of children of parents who were directly exposed) or the residuals associated with the aftermath of direct exposure. It is possible that one could experience primary- and secondary- level oppression trauma simultaneously. Some of the salient distinctions between primary- and secondary- level oppression trauma are described next.

Primary‑Level Oppression

Primary- level oppression is the by- product of being relegated to the inescap- able systematically subjugated position within the domination– subjugation cycle for an extended period of time. Primary- level oppression is not an expe- rience that is attributable to a one-time fleeting episode. Instead, it is usually an experience that is widely systemic, intensive, and sustained over a signifi- cant period of time. The rules of engagement between the “Oppressor” and the “oppressed” are clearly demarcated, although seldom discussed overtly. Both the subtleties and the silence associated with the rules of engagement are purposeful in that they aid and abet in the reinforcement of oppressive trau- matic conditions. It is virtually impossible in any relationship to have fairness and equity when the rules of engagement are not explicated, concretized, and/ or acknowledged. Those who are dominated are not afforded the opportu- nity to discuss their condition or to negotiate with those who dominate. Thus silence is the hallmark of primary- level oppression. The sense of mental and

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psychological control, brute force, and reprisal for speaking, resisting, or even attempting to negotiate often mutes the voices of the oppressed, just as it is intended to do.

Primary- level oppression also involves situations and circumstances in which the physical presence of the Oppressor/Dominator is required. The physical presence of the Oppressor/Dominator ensures unrelenting compli- ance with and acquiescence to the rules of engagement by the oppressed/sub- jugated without the threat of dissent. The physical presence of the Oppres- sor/Dominator is threatening (often physically) to the oppressed/subjugated and engenders fear. In this regard, the presence of the Oppressor/Dominator becomes an effectively powerful “tool of enforcement.” Consequently, for the oppressed, hypercompliant behavior, whether authentic or not, is a lifeline that provides safety and security— and is, ultimately, a strategy for survival.

Power, and particularly the unequal distribution of it, is a critical issue in the anatomy of oppression. Within the context of primary- level oppression, there is always one person or group who is the beneficiary of a differential access to power and resources and one who is profoundly maligned by it. The differential access to power and resources helps to sustain the dynamics of sociocultural oppression. The exercise of power is not limited to classical expressions such as the use of physical force, although such expressions would be within the purview of what is discussed here. However, the use of power, especially in this context, also refers to experiences and expressions that are much more emotional and psychological in nature and that, as such, are much more insidious, egregious, and damaging to the souls and psyches of those who are affected.

The power to name (Collins, 2000) and define are two forms of power that are highly interrelated and are not predicated on overt acts of physical aggression or threats, yet their ability to constrain, repress, and distort the life space and circumstances of the oppressed is extraordinary. The process of “naming” is a significant event in the lives of each of us without regard to social location. The naming process ultimately involves having the ability, freedom, and affirmation to make meaning out of one’s subjective experiences that then can be shared, acknowledged, and validated without reprisal or cen- sure. The experience of naming is integral to the human development process. A fundamental part of growing up involves each of us learning how to give words to—or “name”—our thoughts, feelings, and subjective experiences. In the midst of turmoil, adversity, or hardship, the naming process can offer catharsis and pave the way for recovery. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for the oppressed to name virtually any aspect of their experiences. Attempts to do so are often dismissed, negated, or pathologized by the Oppressor and/or those who hold power and privilege.

Often there is no one directly prohibiting the oppressed from naming their experiences. Despite the power differential that was mentioned earlier, there is no powerful overseer issuing a cease-and- desist mandate to the oppressed regarding the naming process. Yet, a cease-and- desist order is precisely what

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occurs. The vehicle that is employed is much more subtle and indirect than a formal prohibitory mandate, yet it is just as effective. Whether it is people of color attempting to discuss the effects of racial oppression on their lives or gays and lesbians discussing how they are victimized by heterosexism and homophobia in the broader society, the telling of one’s own story in one’s own words uninterruptedly is virtually impossible. Although the oppressed may not be denied the opportunity to talk in the strictest sense of the word, the mean- ings that they attach to their experiences are often denied or redefined, with acquiescence as the only viable recourse. Whether it is whites telling people of color that what they, as the victims of racial oppression, label as racism is “not racism at all,” or heterosexuals insisting to gay and lesbians that homosexual- ity is a choice (although they themselves have never been gay) is emblematic of how difficult it is for the marginalized to name their experiences in a context of sociocultural oppression. The differential access to power, which is crucial to the anatomy of sociocultural oppression, grants the more powerful a license to deny the experiences of the less powerful, while simultaneously (re)defining them in ways that benefit the self- interest of the former.

The power to define allows the most powerful to be the framers of others’ experiences based on their respective subjective views of the world. Here again, the power to define is subtle but ubiquitous. It is what permits men, within in a patriarchal society, to “define” what constitutes appropri- ate and desirable behavior for women; it is what permits Eurocentric values to define what is “normal and human” and that which is not consistent with such values to be considered “abnormal, pathological, or undesirable”; it is what allows the “white way” and the “right way” to be considered one and the same; it is what allows marriage to be defined as an act between “one man and one woman.” The common thread unifying all of these seemingly disparate definitions of “other” is the fact that they are productions of the dominant groups. In other words, they are the by- products of what happens when the more powerful has the power to define the experiences of the less powerful whereby the subjective truths of the few are treated as if they are the objective realities of the masses.

The process of objectification is also associated with primary- level oppression. It is a systematic process whereby the stripping of one’s sense of humanness is the result. Objectification essentially transforms “beings” to “things.” Simply put, human beings cease to be regarded or treated as humans in a context of objectification— they become objects! It is the process of objec- tification that allows police officers to gun down unarmed black men and women with impunity and without conscience or compassion. Whether they are standing with their hands up and/or kneeling with their heads down, run- ning toward or running from the police, whether alone or with their progeny strapped in the car seat in the back of a car watching, the message is the same: “Neither you, nor your life, matters.” When subjected to objectifica- tion, there is little to no empathy for the feelings, sense of worth, personhood, or dignity of an individual or group. Humans are considered to be objects or

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object- like, with their major purpose being to serve a utilitarian purpose. The ties between sociocultural oppression and the process of objectification are inextricable. Like the other processes embedded within primary- level oppres- sion, objectification occurs subtly and is delicately interwoven into the fab- ric of everyday life, which makes it at first glance very difficult to detect. At least, it may be difficult for the perpetrators of objectification to detect. Often, those who are objectified know that they are objectified even if/when they have no language for it. They simply know that they are treated in a way that suggests that they are emotionless, robot-like performers. Enslaved Africans, Native Americans, and women are but a few examples of groups who have a long history of objectification in this country. Churchill (1994) has written extensively about the ways in which United States citizens have objectified Native Americans by our insistence on using the names of Indian tribes for cars, sports teams, and mascots. Unfortunately, many of us find very little offense, insensitivity, or absurdity in cheering for the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians, or the Florida State Seminoles, to cite a few of the many examples. Yet, it would seem odd, curious, and an act of hostil- ity if those same teams were renamed the Washington Whites, the Cleveland Caucasians, or the Florida State WASPS, with mascots that mimicked Native Americans’ view of white people.

The process of objectification is pervasive and takes on many forms as it permeates our everyday interactions. The following vignette is yet another poignant example of how the process of objectification infiltrates our entire lives.

Nameless

Betty, an African American woman in her mid-30s, worked with the maintenance department of the University for a little over 10 years. Dur- ing these years with the University, she worked in the same building, Bodell Hall, maintaining the bathrooms and the floors in the common areas and collecting the trash from the offices of the faculty and their graduate research assistants. Over the years, she appeared to have mas- tered the details of her duties. Like clockwork, at virtually the same time every day, she would gently knock on the door of faculty members to col- lect their trash. She had mastered the art of being unobtrusive and invis- ible as well, although the latter was not entirely of her doing. As faculty, we all saw her, and we didn’t see her. She rarely missed a day from work, but even she eventually had to yield to a vicious mid-March snowstorm that kept the majority of the workforce home one day. Her presence was immediately missed, as some faculty complained about the lack of paper towels in the bathrooms and the mounting trash. She returned to work the following day apologetic for her absence and for the scarcity of paper towels in the men’s bathroom. A few weeks later, she was forced to miss a week from work due to a family tragedy. After numerous complaints about the trash, and ultimately the cleaning lady, it was announced in

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a faculty meeting that Betty’s 14-year-old son, her only child, had been viciously murdered on the way home from school. The story of Betty’s son was on the front page of the local newspaper for several days and was the lead story on all of the local television news programs. Despite the widespread news coverage, the faculty was shocked to learn that Betty’s son had been murdered. In fact, the faculty was surprised to learn that Betty even had a son. Although Betty and the faculty had shared the same intimate space in Bodell Hall daily for over 10 years, she was unknown to the politically liberal university faculty. Although the faculty knew each other’s spouses, significant others, and children and shared activities out- side of work, such as Bar Mitzvahs and weddings, the faculty knew vir- tually nothing about Betty, her life, or what was important to her. They didn’t know that she was a breast cancer survivor, married, or the second generation of Wilsons to work for the university. More importantly, and even more revealing, was the fact that there was not a single faculty mem- ber, not one, who even knew her name. To the faculty she was nameless; she was only known by the functions that she performed for us; she was the “trash lady.” The tasks that she performed for us defined her being. The fact that she was someone’s mother, daughter, sister, and the flesh of someone’s flesh was lost to the faculty. Betty was an object— a trash- discarding, floor- mopping, paper-towel- dispensing object!

This vignette is illustrative of how easily and innocently the process of objectification can work. It is a common and predictable experience for both the oppressed and the oppressor. After all, Betty did not purposely and will- ingly make herself invisible and unknown. She intuitively understood, as do most oppressed people, that her “job,” especially from the perspective of the faculty, was to keep them happy and their offices clean, and no one needed to know her name for those goals to be accomplished. This is the essence of objectification.

It is worth noting here that no single factor discussed in this section would necessarily constitute oppression trauma. However, it is the confluence of the various factors that is devastating to those who are affected. There is a critical synergistic interplay that occurs between the processes of silencing, objecti- fication, naming, and defining that is compounded by the physical presence of an oppressor and the unequal allocation of power and resources. It is the integration and synergistic interplay of each of these factors that contributes to and ultimately supports both primary and secondary levels of oppression.

Secondary‑Level Oppression

As noted earlier in this chapter, the use of the terms “primary” and “second- ary” oppression is not intended to imply a qualitatively hierarchical relation- ship between the two experiences. Instead, the distinction is made as a means of acknowledging that these are two anchors of oppression trauma with some similar overlapping but distinctive characteristics.

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Unlike primary- level oppression, secondary- level oppression does not require the physical presence of an oppressor. In fact, it is the absence of any discernible oppressor that makes secondary- level oppression an exceedingly complex phenomenon to fully comprehend. Although on the one hand it is understandable that the complexity of the phenomenon makes it difficult for even the most sophisticated clinicians and social scientists to comprehend, on the other hand, there are some inherent dangers born out of our lack of understanding. The epidemic of youth violence within communities of color, the high rates of alcohol and other substance abuse among Native Americans and other communities of color, the high rates of despair and disillusionment of many of the poor, as well as the skyrocketing rates of tummy tucks, breast and “booty” enhancements, and collagen injections among women, can all be, in my opinion, attributed to secondary- level oppression trauma. In each of the aforementioned instances, there is a tendency by the dominant group to blame the victim for its unsavory and inexplicable behavior.

The fallen superstar recording artist and performer Michael Jackson was the poster child for secondary- level oppression. Although the stories of Jack- son’s alleged physical abuse as a child and the painful experiences of grow- ing up Black and poor in the United States have been well documented over the decades, these facts are often lost when a substantive conversation of his “problems” is discussed. As Michael’s skin became whiter and whiter over the years, and his facial features more European, to many he simply appeared more weird, “Wacko Jacko” as he was often referred to in the media. Even with the lyrics of two of his hit songs stating, respectively, “I am not going to spend my life being a color,” and “All I am really saying is they don’t really care about us,” secondary oppression was rarely, if ever, considered. To the casual onlooker, Michael was rich, famous, and had everything. No one made him whiten his skin, change the contour of his nose, or take drugs, any more than there was anyone to blame for the epidemic of “drunken Indians” or Blacks killing other Blacks other than the drunken Indians and violent Blacks themselves. The absence of a visible oppressor complicates matters and invites a blame-the- victim (Ryan, 1976) response from even the most empathic and insightful observers.

In secondary- level oppression trauma, the physical presence of the oppres- sor is no longer necessary because the oppressed become the vehicles of their own oppression. Self- subjugation and internalized hatred are the hallmarks of secondary- level oppression. The process of internalization is a very effective tool of self- subjugation. Poor people who are resigned to a life of poverty and are hopeless regarding their chances of escaping it are not responding to any person or group denying them access to opportunity. There is no person or group standing over them viciously shattering their hopes and dreams for a better way. The roadblocks, the impediments, the self-doubt, and the absolute certainty that one cannot succeed, are all rooted in the process of internaliza- tion and self- subjugation. The physical presence of an oppressor is no longer

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necessary, because their work, deeds and misdeeds have already been done. The effects of internalizing such toxic messages are long term and harmful. All of the negative attributions and ways in which the Oppressor has defined the oppressed are internalized and eventually become the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of the oppressed themselves. Consider the following vignette.

Asian Men Need Not Apply

Moon Ja, a 45-year-old Korean female client, recently informed me in a therapy session that she loathes Korean men and could “never, ever marry one.” When I asked her why, she noted: “I prefer white men . . . they are so much more confident, secure, and sure of themselves. Unlike Korean and other Asian men, they don’t want to be taken care of . . . they are happy to take care of you. . . . Korean men seem so weak, broken, and needy . . . they have so many issues and want to be taken care of. . . . I feel sorry for them in a way, but who needs it?!”

There are any number of hypotheses that would be worthy of consid- eration regarding Moon Ja’s thoughts and feelings regarding Korean men. Obviously, she is entitled to date and marry anyone she wishes. However, her thoughts and reflections about Korean men seem to reflect a disdain for them—which could be attributable to her relationship with her father, or it could be indicative of messages that she has internalized about Koreans in general and Korean men specifically. The process of internalizing self- hatred is common among people of color and other groups who have suffered pro- longed sociocultural oppression. The salient point here is not that Moon Ja prefers white men, but rather that she should explore the origins of her disdain for Korean men and idealization of white men.

Many of the issues that are denied expression in primary- level oppres- sion due to fear of punishment by the Oppressor are actually expressed in secondary- level oppression in the form of self-hate. Whether it is the case of Michael Jackson and his changing appearance, Black youth killing Black youth, or Native Americans killing themselves with alcohol, these are all rather striking examples of secondary- level oppression manifested through the process of internalization and self-hate. Self-hate can be a multifaceted phenomenon that can either be directed toward one’s literal self, as in Jack- son’s case, or toward one’s symbolic self, as in the case of Black on Black youth violence. Regardless of the target of the hatred, the ultimate impetus for the behavior is the internalized disdain that one has toward one’s self and a cor- responding identification with the Oppressor.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of secondary- level oppres- sion is also exacerbated by the tendency of the oppressed to identify with the Oppressor. It is a common practice in secondary- level oppression trauma for the oppressed to (unconsciously) assume the characteristics of the Oppres- sor. This occurrence is significant for two important reasons. First, the

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identification with the Oppressor fuels expressions of (self) hatred toward one’s symbolic self (members of their group) as the object of disdain and disapproval. In this regard, the oppressed begin to perceive themselves and their group through the lens of the Oppressor. This in part helps to explain, for example, the phenomenon of the self- hating Jew, Black, transgender per- son, or any other member of an oppressed group who loathes members of its respective group, or its symbolic self. Secondly, the oppressed who identify with the Oppressor not only loathe their symbolic selves, but they also uncon- sciously reject major components of who they are in order to psychologically accommodate and internalize the worldview of the Oppressor. Unfortunately, our society is replete with examples of this process, whether it is the survivor of poverty who disavows his or her experiences with it and instead adopts the way of the wealthy, or the person of color whose painful experiences with race and racism propel them to out-white most whites.

OPPRESSION TRAUMA AND INVISIBLE WOUNDS

For those who experience oppression trauma, everyday life experiences are often obscured and complicated by the presence of invisible wounds. Oddly enough, these wounds are usually just as invisible to their hosts as they are to their onlookers. Thus it is possible, and is often the case, that the oppressed are purveyors of wounds to which they themselves can be oblivious. Even in therapy, treatment with members of oppressed groups often falls short of desired outcomes because there is usually a generalized failure to recognize and address the invisible wounds of oppression trauma. Although there is an array of invisible wounds associated with oppression trauma, the discussion here, in the interest of space, is limited to three of the most prevalent ones: (1) devaluation; (2) learned voicelessness; and (3) rage.

Devaluation

Devaluation is both a process and a wound of oppression. It is a systematic process whereby an individual or group is stripped of the essentials of their humanity in a way that assaults their sense of dignity (Hardy & Qureshi, 2012). It is often the result of persistent exposure to “dignity slights” that insult and assault one’s sense of self. Devaluation conveys the unambiguous message that a person or group is less than another and is believed to be unworthy of the basic dignity and respect that others enjoy. As a wound, devaluation distorts one’s sense of self and how one perceives situations. It is a major organizing principle in the lives of those affected. It becomes a prism through which they view the world. The wound of devaluation dictates how one sees oneself and how one believes one is seen by others. Because the pro- cess of devaluation is essentially what Pierce (1970) termed a microaggressive

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act, the hosts of the wound often assume an overall posture of self- protection, heightened sensitivity, and acute alertness— especially to dignity assaults. The devaluation wound also creates an insatiable appetite for respect among those who suffer from it. In fact, there is a very high significance attached to the acquisition of respect. In a sense, it becomes that which one both lives for and for which one is willing to die (literally and/or figuratively). For those who have been perpetually disrespected, death is preferable to a life of disrespect. When others interact with or observe an individual or group with the invisible wound of devaluation, their incessant quest for respect and what they are will- ing to do to receive it seems preposterous and shallow, especially to the naïve observer. But when this behavior is considered within the context of trauma, it becomes infinitely more understandable.

Assaulted Sense of Self

An assaulted sense of self is the culmination of chronic and persistent experi- ences of being defined and silenced (Hardy, 2013). Through a host of mech- anisms that rely on massive abuses of power and privilege, the Oppressor defines all aspects of the lives of the oppressed. Whether it’s the systematic promulgation of messages about the laziness of the poor, the inferior intel- ligence of people of color, the inherent criminality of Black people, or the accusations that all Latinos are illegal and undocumented, the effects of these unrelenting assertions are enduring, debilitating, and hard to overcome. Nega- tive valuations of the oppressed with limited opportunities for redress provide the foundation for the assaulted- sense-of-self wound. When born into and liv- ing against a barrage of negative messages, stereotypes, and dignity assaults, it is very difficult to have a clear sense about one’s identity and sense of self.

A Long Way to Go

Adelita, a 34-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, unknowingly pro- vided a poignant description of the long-term effects of an assaulted sense of self in an e-mail she sent to me following a very intense therapy session. She stated:

“I grew up hearing incredibly harsh messages about who supposedly I was when I was a child, teenager and young adult. So . . . what happens is that it is hard, challenging, overwhelming and just triggering when I hear or attempt to internalize the opposite messages about myself. I have been working on this part of my life for a long time. Although I made some incredible strides over the years, I still have a long, long way to go. I am emotional just writing to you about it now. I don’t think that I can ever fully grasp what you share with me . . . every time you tell me these incredible things you see in me. It is like hearing you talk about someone else. It is so far removed at times it lives energeti- cally outside of me. I feel your words pass me by and sometimes I am able to hold to one or two and something shifts in me.”

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The essence of an assaulted sense of self is to live with an ever- present nagging tension between “how I see myself and how I believe I am seen.” All too often it is safer and critical to one’s survival to live life in accordance with how one believes one is seen, even in the face of disconfirming and conflicting data.

The following is an abridged version of the major characteristics of an assaulted sense of self:

•• Distorted self-image •• Emotional deregulation (overcompensation, rage, unacknowledged

hurt) •• Focus on what/who I am not rather than who/what I am •• Internalization of crippling messages •• Negative valuation of self •• Exaggerated need for respect •• Disavowal of cultural self (rejection of parts of one’s cultural self to

accommodate the Oppressor)

The totality of these factors constitutes the behavioral and psychological manifestations of an assaulted sense of self and what it ultimately means to be systematically defined. The process of being defined is only effective when it is accompanied and fortified by silencing and voicelessness.

Silence and Learned Voicelessness

Learned voicelessness is another debilitating invisible wound associated with oppression trauma. When one is devalued, all aspects of one’s life are also devalued, including one’s ability to advocate for oneself. Thus learned voice- lessness refers to the inability to speak on one’s own behalf— to tell one’s story, in one’s own words without edit, censure, or interruption! It has less to do with the actual production of utterances, verbalizations, and words— although this may be a component— and more to do with possessing the power and free- dom to exert personal agency and self- advocacy. Learned voicelessness is the product and culmination of being stripped of the opportunity to “name” while simultaneously having one’s experiences “defined” in a context of devaluation and perceived threat. Learned voicelessness is an invisible wound that occurs when silence is a “verb”—an action. Silence as a verb is something that hap- pens to you! Learned voicelessness is not a voluntary act but rather one that is imposed. It makes it difficult for the oppressed to give voice to their experi- ences. Often, the silence of the oppressed has little to do with the willingness to speak and more to do with the inability to do so. Clinically, learned voice- lessness is often misunderstood and misdiagnosed as “resistance” or “recalci- trance.” As a result, it is not uncommon for the oppressed to suffer in silence with considerable degrees of underlying angst, humiliation, despair, depres- sion, and rage—all without appropriate channels for expression and discharge.

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Rage

When the avenues for self- expression and self- advocacy are denied, rage is often the result. Rage is an intense emotion that is inextricably tied to experi- ences with domination, devaluation, and degradation. Rage is distinguish- able from anger in that it is a much more primitive emotion that occurs over an extended period of time. Rage is an explosive emotion that is difficult to modulate. In many respects, rage and voicelessness are opposite sides of the same coin. There is a recursive pattern that exists between rage and voiceless- ness. The more one is silenced, the greater the depths of one’s rage; the more rage intensifies, the more difficult it is to break the loud silence that fuels the rage; and so on. The cycle continues. The appropriate venues in which one can express the depths of one’s rage are virtually nonexistent. Even in many therapeutic settings it is difficult for the oppressed to receive “permission” to express rage. In fact, managing the expression of rage is one of the most chal- lenging aspects of working with oppression trauma in clients. This is in part due to the fact that expressing rage requires “having a voice” and that many are maligned by the wound of voicelessness. Furthermore, when clients are successful in overcoming their silence and gradually moving from voiceless- ness to voice, this represents a pivotal and one of the most difficult phases of the treatment process. When one is developing one’s voice, the “young emerg- ing and developing” voice is an unrefined, uncultivated, raw voice that often engenders fear. The typical response to this potentially powerful transforma- tive moment is to either misinterpret the rage as anger or attempt to discourage the expression of it completely—“You know all that anger is not going to help you get the respect you want!”—or to attempt to reshape how it is expressed, such as: “I could hear you a lot better if you stopped yelling.” Expressions of rage by the oppressed are rarely welcomed and received without scathing criti- cism, judgment, or attributions of pathology.

Rage is a very complex wound that can be very confusing and difficult to understand. Although it is a very strong and intense emotion, it can remain slightly beneath the surface for lengthy time periods until it is aggravated. At any point, without warning or provocation, one can very easily and quickly move from enraged (an internal dormant state) to outrage, which is the out- ward, often boisterous, animated expression of very intense emotions. Inter- esting enough, the timing at which one expresses outrage may have little or nothing to do with an immediate stimulus. Because rage is the product of blocked emotions that build up, it can emerge at any time with or without provocation. This is why rage is often very distinguishable from anger. It has a certain baffling element to it whereby the (out)rage response to a given situ- ation is massively out of proportion to the seemingly precipitating event. Such is generally less characteristic of anger. And finally, rage has a certain element of self- destructiveness to it. The buildup and subsequent need for discharge and catharsis often leave both the timing and expression of rage unpredict- able and with little regard for the effective appraisal of consequences. A type

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of cognitive freeze that hampers one’s ability to engage in momentary ratio- nale and effective decision making usually compounds the emotional flooding that accompanies expression of rage. In many instances, most rage- induced actions, unless rage has been deliberately rechanneled, culminate in self-harm to the oppressed.

Although devaluation, assaulted sense of self, learned voicelessness, and rage have been presented here in a very methodical and linear way, these wounds are interconnected and feed off of one another in a nonorderly, non- linear way. It may be that one wound is more pronounced than another in a given moment under a certain set of circumstances, but even then the other wounds are “present,” although they are also invisible. It is very difficult to effectively address the invisible wounds of oppression trauma by focusing only on one wound without also attending to the others.

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY

Oppression trauma is the result of the synergistic interplay of a host of dynam- ics born out of sociocultural oppression. To fully appreciate the gripping com- plexity of oppressive trauma, the interplay between oppression and the vari- ous invisible wounds must be considered interactionally. For example, there is nothing particularly traumatizing about the inability to name one’s experi- ences. In isolation, this would constitute an unfortunate circumstance that was potentially painful but certainly would not rise to the level of a trauma. When all of these dynamics interact over an extended period of time, the con- sequence is toxic. It is the complex interaction of the dynamics of sociocultural oppression and the ongoing efforts to manage wounds that are invisible that provide the core of the conditions described throughout this chapter. Oppres- sion trauma is an unnamed, unacknowledged, silent assassin that alters the course of people’s lives in multiple profound ways. I think it is time that we add it to our nomenclature and have it guide our work, especially along the margins of society and in the trenches where trauma seems to live.

REFERENCES

Churchill, W. (1994). Crimes against humanity. In M. Anderson & P. Hill (Eds.), Race, class and gender: An anthology (pp. 366–373). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Collins, P. H. (2000). Toward a new version: Race, class, and gender as categories of analysis and connection. In M. Adams, W. J. Blumenfeld, R. Castañeda, H. W. Hackman, M. L. Peters, & X. Zúñiga (Eds.), Readings for diversity and social justice: An anthology on racism, anti- Semitism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and classism (pp. 457–463). New York: Routledge.

Hardy, K. V. (2013). Healing the hidden wounds of racial trauma. Reclaiming Chil- dren and Youth, 22(4), 24–28.

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Hardy, K. V., & Qureshi, M. E. (2012). Devaluation, loss, and rage: A postscript to urban African American youth with substance abuse. Substance Abuse Quar- terly, 30(3), 326–342.

Leary, J. D. (2005). Post traumatic slave syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injury and healing. Milwaukie, OR: Uptone Press.

Lerner, S., & Hardy, K. V. (1995). The psychological residuals of slavery [Videotape]. United States: Equal Partners Productions.

Pierce, C. (1970). Offense mechanisms. In F. Barbour (Ed.), The black 70’s. Boston: Porter Sargent.

Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the victim (2nd ed.). New York: Random House.

P A R T I I I

RACIAL IDENTITY

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For the most part, youth today must cast about and find out for themselves what adulthood means. If they are lucky, they have a good role model or two to follow. Although they probably feel many of the same pressures youth have always felt in terms of competition, romances, or thinking about a vocation, today few have overt rituals to guide them. In the past, rites of passage offered young people some structure and guidance and formally connected them to those who might support them on their life journeys. This chapter describes a community– family intervention combined with a Naming Ceremony for an adolescent boy who suffered from depression, historic trauma, and attempted “identity theft” by the dominant society. Our effort was to draw on Native American cultural resources for purposes of healing and transformation. I (RR) participated in all aspects of the therapy and ceremony, while Sharla Robbins provided consultation and cowriting. The family was part of our Native American Community– Family Counseling Project, the aim of which is to foster adolescents’ and their families’ understanding of themselves and to nourish the vitality of traditional tribal practices among Native American people. The project is focused on both identity development and social change with the hope that its interventions and protocols can provide inspiration and a framework not only for tribal family therapists but also for therapists in general.

Before colonization, Native American groups assumed responsibility for inventing themselves, which contributed to a realization of personal and tribal power. Native American tribes created Naming Ceremonies as tools of trans- formation for individuals and for the conservation and transformation of their

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Native American Identity Transformation Integrating a Naming Ceremony with Family Therapy

Rockey Robbins Sharla Robbins

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cultural communities. Attempts were made to connect the ceremonial acts with positive change. The ceremony is often so powerful and symbolic that it can influence the unconscious of participants. Its purpose is to promote the identity development of the individual and the community. Naming Ceremo- nies have an enormous potential to mediate positive developmental change.

Most Native American young people today are removed from rituals. Despite revitalization programs in many tribes, only a small minority of young people know their tribal songs, dances, protocols, or spiritual teach- ings. Because of the absence of traditional ways in their lives, Native Ameri- can people suffer spiritually and psychologically from the depression and anxiety associated with postcolonial trauma and acculturation stress (Garrett & Pichette, 2000).

Today, critical race theorists refer to the relationship between White peo- ple and Native Americans as a “settler and savage” structural positioning. In the United States, Native Americans must interact with White people as if they themselves were White. They must speak English, adopt Whites’ mannerisms and gestures, assume European American epistemologies and metaphysics as universal, and pretend to ignore White persons’ amnesia about the land they have stolen. As Frank Wilderson (2010) has argued, Native Americans have had their cultural capital virtually eradicated, making authentic relationships with White people almost impossible. Wilkerson acknowledges that there are a few ceremonies practiced by a limited number of “traditionalists,” which may provide sufficient cultural identity to offer a veneer on which a limited amount of respect in relationships with other groups can be based. Deloria (1973, pp. 173–176) has argued that the unique cultural identity of Native Americans consists in the following beliefs:

•• The sovereignty of the earth includes not only human beings but also all animate and inanimate creatures (rather than viewing nature in terms of humans’ power over it and its “use” for their exploitation).

•• The wisdom of elders is powerful. •• Activities should be organized by small decentralized political groups. •• Celebratory events should honor the tribal group or clan within the

individual (rather than the self within the group). •• Spiritual connections and stewardship of one’s historic tribal place

roots one with ancestors and with the soul. •• We must have a deep appreciation of the pervasive power in stillness,

often experienced in ceremony.

The case presented in this chapter describes a Native American family planning and implementing a Native American Naming Ceremony for their son, John. (Identifying information has been disguised to protect client con- fidentiality.) John’s family adhered to the common Native American perspec- tive that one’s identity is intricately tied to one’s tribal identity. For traditional Native Americans, making sense of their lives is a social process that is always

Native American Identity Transformation 153

situated within a tribal, cultural, and historical framework. The way parents, as well as other people in their lives, bring attention to a child’s behaviors, feelings, and ideas has dramatic impacts upon their worldview and feelings of competence. In this approach, clients are supported to find the courage to question themselves and their identity, to open themselves up to learning about who they are according to a relational rather than an individualistic outlook, and to become willing to engage in positive changes. The family and the community are expected to provide support and instruction to help them integrate tribal ways into all aspects of the youth’s identity. The Naming Cer- emony is a community- based enactment involving collaboration with elders and community members. Community members support and witness initia- tives and enactments. Michael White (2000) wrote about “witnessing” as a crucial element of support and validation for clients in the therapy process. This witnessing process is essential to this Native American family identity counseling approach.

NATIVE AMERICAN NAMING CEREMONIES

To situate this particular Naming Ceremony in Native American history and a larger contemporary context, every tribe has some form of naming ceremony, because they all view the giving of names as crucial life rituals for all human beings. Often children are given short nicknames at birth and then a for- mal name at puberty based on an accomplishment. A common practice that accompanies Native American females “coming of age,” or first menstrua- tion, involves their being guided to a sacred tepee where they meditate alone about their identity for a few days. They too are given new names. Additional names might be conferred when new accomplishments are attained or new status is conferred. Usually an elder, such as an uncle, grandparent, or leader, provides the name at a special ceremony, such as a sweat ceremony or a peyote meeting. Piercings are also often part of certain ceremonies. These traditions are still practiced more or less by traditionalists in different tribes, sometimes in ceremonies or during feasts, though many of the ceremonies have been lost partially or entirely. These ceremonies have historically facilitated Native Americans to not only individuate but also integrate into their tribal groups by assuming more adult roles in the tribes (Sutton, 2000).

IMPACT OF HISTORICAL TRAUMA ON CULTURAL IDENTITY

John and his family reported several challenges and strengths that are com- mon among Native American people, including historical trauma, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and tribal connectedness.

Historical trauma is associated with past destructive events character- ized by successive attempts to eradicate a community’s cultural identity (Brave

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Heart, 2005). From the beginning of contact between Native Americans and conquistadors and continuing through Christian evangelicalism; Christian baptism practices, which introduced Christian names and family names; and schooling practices, in which teachers shortened or introduced either generic names or nicknames, many Native Americans hid or lost memory of their Native names (Swanton, 2000). Today, only a small percentage of Native Americans know the names of their ancestors, which often carried profound meanings about family histories of places, events, human interactions, and relationships to animals and other aspects of nature (Swanton, 2000).

Native American youth report experiencing acculturation, stress, and identity confusion associated with living in a larger society whose values and customs are at odds with their tribal values (Markstrom, 2011). Depression and anxiety, which are often reactions to adverse social conditions, have been associated with suicide among Native American children and adoles- cents. LaFromboise, Medof, Lee, and Harris (2007), studying early adoles- cent Native Americans, found a high correlation between depression and sui- cidal behavior. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 2014) reported that 22% of Native American adolescent girls and 12% of boys have attempted suicide. Whitbeck, McMorris, Hoyt, Stubeen, and LaFromboise (2009) reported that 20.5% of tribal adolescents had daily thoughts about their tribe’s loss of land and cultural traditions. Several large-scale studies of Native Americans in the Southwest and across the United States (Van Win- kle & May, 1993; Lester, 1999) have consistently demonstrated a correlation between acculturation, stress, and suicide among Native Americans.

On the other hand, identification with one’s Native American tribal culture has been associated with good mental health. Native American ado- lescents with the highest self- esteem and social competency were those who reported a bicultural identity and a high identification with Native American culture (Moran, Fleming, Somervell, & Manson, 1999) and scored lower on hopelessness than those who identified solely with Native American culture (LaFromboise et al., 2007). Participants who reported neither feeling a part of White culture nor participating in Native American ceremonies had the most problems with drugs and alcohol.

John’s family, at least on the surface, displayed a respect for Native Amer- ican elders.

Unlike some communal societies, which are basically democratic in nature, Native American tribes have a hierarchical element that is crucial to the transmission of traditions. They tend to create a space for elder knowledge and wisdom in all vital decision- making contexts. Not only does the tribe learn from the experience of older people, but it also benefits from the mem- ory of the tribe’s history, which only the elders can provide. Elders’ knowledge and wisdom can combat cultural loss and disconnections that Native Ameri- can adolescents feel today (Robbins, Scherman, Holeman, & Wilson, 2005).

John, a 14-year-old Chahta (Choctaw)/Muskogee (Creek)/Tsalagi boy from a small Oklahoma town, was initially brought in for therapy by his

Native American Identity Transformation 155

mother, Sarah, age 36, and his uncle, Jake, age 39, because of his suicidal feelings (see Figure 10.1). He came dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. He was physically frail, quiet and anxious, with short, straight black hair. He sat tapping his foot, while his mother and uncle reported that he was frequently ill and lacked the normal physical strength of a boy his age. They said John did “well enough” in school, was a B student, and was rarely in trouble at home or at his middle school (which had 75% White students and 25% Native Americans). Sarah said John had only a couple of friends who were “actually not that close” and had rarely ever “hung out with friends” except during lunch at school.

John’s mother, Sarah, was a 36-year-old full- blooded Chahta woman. John was her only child. Sarah had completed two years of college and worked 40 hours a week as a bookkeeper’s assistant. She had divorced John’s father before John was born. The father, who was of Tsalagi and Muskogee descent, had spent most of the past 14 years in jail for selling drugs. Sarah had not dated since her husband’s departure and interacted little with friends herself. She spoke some Chahta and attended Native American ceremonies but did not consider herself traditional; nor was she a Christian. Her parents and her ex- husband’s parents were deceased.

John’s uncle, Jake, Sarah’s only sibling, was divorced and without chil- dren. He lived outside of town, mainly among Native Americans, working in construction and visiting Sarah and John often. He had a BA in Native

FIGURE 10.1. John’s family genogram.

Don

Tsalaga & Muskogee

speaks Muskogee

CHAHTA (Choctaw)/Muskogee

(Creek)/Tsalagi (Cherokee)

CHAHTA- Full

Blooded

2 yrs college; bookkeeper assistant

degree in Native Amer. Studies- works

constructionreportedly in jail for past 14 yrs

Jake Sarah

div 15 yrs fr before John born

frail, frequently ill sometimes wished he

was not alive John

speaks Chahta- has known John since birth

Marlene (an aunt “in the Indian Way”)

Tsalaga & Muskogee

speaks Muskogee

CHAHTA (Choctaw)/Muskogee

(Creek)/Tsalagi (Cherokee)

CHAHTA- Full

Blooded

2 yrs college; bookkeeper assistant

degree in Native Amer. Studies- works

constructionreportedly in jail for past 14 yrs

Jake Sarah

div 15 yrs fr before John born

frail, frequently ill sometimes wished he

was not alive John

speaks Chahta- has known John since birth

Marlene (an aunt “in the Indian Way”)

14 69

Don

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American Studies, spoke Chahta fluently, participated in ceremonies regu- larly, and was an activist for Native American rights. Jake did not believe in counseling and thought John needed a Naming Ceremony. Sarah was pri- marily interested in counseling for her son and agreed to the idea of develop- ing a Naming Ceremony only if John would participate in counseling. So we combined the two ideas: working in counseling with developing a Naming Ceremony for John.

Sarah and Jake agreed to choose two elders to help with “the healing.” They chose Marlene, 69, who was an aunt in the “Indian way,” they said; she had lived in the same community as the family and had known John since he was born. The other elder, Don, 85, was John’s great- grandfather on John’s father’s side. He was Muskogee and Tsalagi. Marlene spoke Chahta, and Don spoke Muskogee. They had both been part of Naming Ceremonies previously, though none exactly like this one. They agreed to attend all the planning sessions, to sit in on “a couple” of the counseling sessions, and to attend the Naming Ceremony.

I (RR), the therapist, was a 50-year-old Chahta/Tsalagi and had coun- seled and taught Native American clients and students my entire work life. I had participated in hundreds of traditional Native American ceremonies, mostly sweats (purification ceremonies), but in only two Naming Ceremo- nies.

During the first session, having made introductions with John, Sarah, and Uncle Jake, the discussion revolved around John’s written comment on his intake form that “sometimes I wish I was not alive.” John had promised at the end of the first session not to harm himself until he had talked to all three of us about it in a counseling session. Sarah said he had talked about it to her sometimes on the way to school and back. But both he and she reported that he had no plans for suicide. Sarah said she asked his uncle to talk with them about the grave comments. John told Jake he was “unhappy and did not know who he was.”

Jake scolded Sarah and told her “attending a yearly festival does not make an Indian,” adding that John could not possibly know who he was if he did not connect to his tribal culture.

I attempted to question how Jake’s comment might suggest a power dif- ferential between Jake and Sarah. But John interrupted me, looking at his mother, telling her “I really want to learn more about my Indian traditions.”

Jake asked him, “Do you want an Indian name? I think it would help.” John nodded and quietly said, “Yes.” Sarah agreed to support this if John would continue counseling while get-

ting an Indian name. She wished to have counseling once a month. She also said that Jake should attend, and he agreed. All also agreed to meet to plan the protocol and schedule for John’s Naming Ceremony. Jake proposed that elders should be included in the planning and execution of the ceremony, and all agreed. Consent and confidentiality forms were provided and soon signed by all.

Native American Identity Transformation 157

PLANNING SESSIONS

All of the planning meetings included John, Sarah, Jake, Marlene, Don, and me. The first meeting lasted for over 4 hours, though the others, which occurred once per month, lasted about an hour and a half. The first meeting consisted of a discussion of Native American Naming Ceremonies. Jake had called tribal conservators, who provided us with library research on historical Naming Ceremonies for Muskogee. He provided several documents to help us with John’s Naming Ceremony. He added that much of what Tsalagi and Chahta traditionalists use was preserved for them by Muskogee people, who were more likely to keep traditional ways, such as stomp dances and songs. Still, he emphasized that he wished to incorporate Chahta and Tsalagi lan- guages and ways as best as he could.

Grayson (2000, p. 31) described Muskogee naming ceremonies in the following way:

Usually at night in intervals the young men are . . . invested with what is called a war name by which they are known for the rest of their lives. . . . The Micco rises from his seat and calls the name in a shrill, long tone of voice. At the call, the young man rises, picks up the war club or attussa and goes forth to him . . . when he informs the young man that he is now named as other men and he now can assume the manners and customs of other men. He then puts a feather on his head and when . . . the man raises his war club above his head, starts a long whoop and runs in a circle to the place from which he started and when he stops he cries “youh, youh.”

(Young women have parallel rituals. Historically, they sat alone in a sacred place— typically in a tepee—when they went “on the moon” for the first time, where they would be visited over the course of 4 days by adult women who would talk to them about adulthood and responsibilities in their families, clan, and tribe. Today, some Native girls and women engage in ritu- als more similar to the ones that were originally designed for boys and men, which is controversial in the Indian world.)

During the second half of the meeting, committee members developed a 6-point guide for committee interaction and community mobilization, which was eventually made into a document that was distributed to all planning committee participants. Some of the points the document covered were: har- monic interaction; considerations about goals, activities, and roles; alliances between community and project workers; and ways to express commiseration for everyone’s work.

The second planning meeting was concerned with the particular chal- lenges that would be required of John in order to receive an Indian name. The group decided on 10 enactments to be accomplished over the next 12 months. The 10 enactments included traditional practices, current cul- tural practices, and mainstream White practices to encourage John to have a bicultural identity. All of the enactments were specific, such as learning

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150 Chahta words, playing stick ball on a weekly basis, and learning three Chahta songs.

Though I knew I had to be careful about bringing John into the discus- sions too much during the planning meetings because we were among elders, I asked him how he felt about the enactments. Jake quickly told me that since the elders were planning and implementing these ceremonies, it was not John’s business what was required of him. John teared up and began to cry. His mother asked him what was wrong. He said he didn’t want to fulfill the enact- ment of killing a bird. Jake was visibly disgruntled at Sarah and me and gave John a disappointed look. Jake was a good hunter and had always wanted John to go hunting with him. After an uneasy silence, Don said, “Let me speak for John. Hunting is not John’s way. I think all the other things will be challenging enough.”

John replied, “I am sorry, Jake. I don’t like to kill animals.” Jake answered, “Well, you do eat them.” There was silence until Jake said, “Aaay! . . . No problem, John.” Every-

one laughed. We called for another planning meeting in 2 weeks. We met as a core group six more times before the Naming Ceremony and

once afterward. There were sparkling moments as well as challenges. Sarah and Jake were extraordinarily gifted at creating schedules, enlisting help for events such as the celebratory dinner, obtaining money and food gifts from stores, and the physical labor involved in building the sweat lodge, mobilizing others to work on the project and other activities. Everyone celebrated their accomplishments during every planning meeting. John and Don were hesitant to offer comments during planning discussions. I finally accepted that John was there more to learn than to offer opinions, for reasons described above; besides, I could make space for him to talk during counseling sessions. But I refused to see Don marginalized by Sarah and Jake. I repeatedly intervened to support Don in expressing his views and often had to challenge Sarah and Jake to refrain from interrupting him. Also, at one point during the year, after John quit the stickball team, Jake literally threw up his hands in disbelief and was ready to abandon the project. It was only when Sarah, Don, Marlene, and I aligned ourselves with John that Jake relented.

Don quietly said, “Jake you must realize that John is not that kind of guy.”

Jake retorted, “My nephew is not gay!” Don replied, “I did not say that. He is just not a real aggressive person.”

Jake relented and the project continued.

FAMILY THERAPY SESSIONS

Thereafter, there were several poignant moments during therapy sessions. At one point John mentioned that he felt he was a lot like Don because he was very quiet. Jake and Sarah contradicted him, telling him he was nothing like

Native American Identity Transformation 159

that side of the family. I asked them why they had selected Don for the core team and was told that it was the “right thing to do for tradition,” because he was John’s family.

Then Sarah described John’s father as “no good,” a drug addict, and said he had abandoned John. Jake agreed and said, “If I saw him I would punch him out!” We speculated about how their feelings about John’s father might be affecting how they were treating Don.

John interjected, “I don’t like it when you say bad things about Don.” Everyone was silent. I let the silence sink in. Then I said, “Tell me more.” John said that when they talked about Don it was like they were talking about him. Jake and Sarah reassured him there was no connection as far as they were concerned.

I asked John how it felt when they called his father negative names. John was visibly uncomfortable. “I don’t like it,” he said. Sarah and Jake rushed in to explain to him that he needed to know what kind of person his father was.

I dared to wonder out loud whether it felt similar to hearing the negative comments about Don. John declared, “Exactly.”

I asked how Sarah’s and Jake’s and maybe others’ views of his father affected his self- esteem. He elaborated how it had hurt him all his life. Then, using the grafting technique (intervention techniques are discussed later), I had Sarah and Jake, having heard John’s comments, discuss what they thought and felt about how people’s views of John’s father might affect John’s self- esteem. They discussed this issue sensitively and ended the session promising to “stop putting his father down.” John simply said, “Thank you.”

Another powerful moment in the therapy sessions occurred in the session following the planning session in which Jake had commented, “My nephew is not gay.”

I began the session with the question, “John, would you tell us about changes in your life since the last session?” (I often begin sessions this way, with the underlying assumption that change happens whether we want it to or not.)

Jake interceded, saying that early in the month, he had begun teaching John to play stickball. Taking the focus off Jake quickly, because he had a tendency to dominate conversations, I asked John how he felt about it. John was very anxious as he related that he “cherished playing stickball with Jake.”

“Tell me about that,” I queried. John replied, “When it is just for fun, I like it, and Jake is nice to play the

game with me.” Sarah then interjected, “Let me tell you the story. Last week I took John

to join a teen Chahta stickball team, ‘The Badgers.’ During practice, John was knocked down and had the breath knocked out of him.” Jake interrupted, “I told him it was the roughest sport in the world! He just quit right there and went to his mother. I told him, well there goes the Naming Ceremony.”

John began to sob. Then after a pause, he whispered, “I’ve thought about it and I don’t know if I am or not. Maybe I am gay.”

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I asked him if he thought gay people were not as tough as other people. He did not answer. I decided to try to use a deconstruction technique to open up and hopefully expand the family’s notions of what “tough” meant. “What does it mean to be tough?”

Jake said, “I think it is to not quit when things get hard.” I asked Jake if he could think of any examples of when “quitting” could

be tough. A long pause ensued. Sarah looked at Jake and said, “How about when you hurt your back cutting wood?”

He replied, “I kept trying until I couldn’t do it anymore.” I said, “So it was tough for you to decide to quit.” He burst into laughter. He said, “You know you and Sarah are pretty ‘tough’

to challenge me like that. Yea, tough can come in a lot of shapes, I guess.” “Anybody else have ideas?” I asked. John said, “I am tough when it comes to doing my homework even when

I am tired.” Everyone nodded approval. Then Sarah said, “I think toughness means to have the courage to be who

you are.” I asked permission to make a transition into something we had “left

hanging.” They approved. I asked Jake if it were possible to graft Sarah’s idea about “toughness being who you are” onto his idea of being gay.

He said, “I have always had a problem with gay people. They give me the creeps. It is not natural.”

I dropped the grafting technique for a moment and used a phrase we had agreed to use whenever we heard a judgment. (Jake loved this technique partially because he saw it as “real Indian counseling.”) I said, “Complete the circle. . . . Where did you get that idea, that feeling?”

He said, “I think it was when I listened to the ‘tough’ soldiers in the army. I wanted to fit in with them.”

Sarah answered that she knew that before the advent of Christianity most tribal people accepted gay people as spiritually gifted and equal to everyone else. Jake admitted that was true but said he still wrestled with accepting gay people as “normal.”

I asked him to pull the idea out of himself for a moment so we could look at it objectively (externalization). Knowing that his prejudice did not stem from his tribal belief system, I asked where and when these ideas about LGBTQ people showed up. First, he stated that the problem was that he thought men had to be tough, and gay men did not seem tough.

John said, “But I thought we already dealt with that.” Jake said, grafting Sarah’s idea onto his, “I see what Sarah was talking

about when she said that courage was the greatest toughness. I have been colonized, I guess. . . . And the truth is the toughest Indian I ever met might just be gay and that is all right.”

“Tell me more,” I said. Jake said, “It was when John stayed strong even though his daddy had left

his mother and him to fend for themselves.”

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Later, John again commented that he would like it if he could just play stickball for fun with Jake to fulfill the Naming Ceremony requirement. Jake simply said, “Sure.” Both Marlene and Don listened throughout the session. At this point, I called attention to their witnessing the session’s interactions and asked them for words of wisdom and encouragement.

Marlene simply said, “Love is the way we can make things work out.” Don said Jake and John had a father– son relationship “the old Indian

way.” Then he added, “Thank you for being what my grandson was not.” Jake reached across the circle and gave Don the well-known Chahta one

shake of the hand and said, “Don, you are a good man and I wish your grand- son the best.”

Many elements contributed to the transformative experience described above. The trust that had gradually emerged between the clients was crucial. The very open and honest comments and working through the conflicts of previous sessions contributed to the development of trust that allowed for taking risks. These interventions created spaces for all participants to express themselves and to connect with each other. Further, emotional expression was always accompanied by insight. Emotional ventilation in its own may have offered relief and transitory connections, but cognitive reflections crystal- lized the emotional experiences into something that was more substantive and meaningful.

Not all the counseling meetings were so emotional; several involved John’s descriptions of the documents related to his assignments, as well as the neces- sary tasks Sarah and Jake carried out to ensure a good Naming Ceremony. At the counseling sessions, I had John bring in his scrapbook that documented all his activities, and we discussed the enactments, as well as the feelings that he had in completing them. Sarah and Jake helped him to keep records in his scrapbook of all the meetings they had with community members (can you tell us a bit about this—how did they decide on such meetings and who to include for what purpose?), receipts, directions for making the sweat lodge, multiple checklists, the list of people to be invited to the ceremony, a list of people he wanted to make sure to pray for with his prayer ties (small tobacco pouches which are hung from the ceiling of the lodge), a list of gifts he would give after the ceremony, and the songs and stories he was to know at the ceremony. He made it clear time and again that keeping lists and describing activities related to the Naming Ceremony helped him stay focused on his goal. He later wrote “the scrapbook kept in my mind my advances as a person so I don’t go back- wards.”

Worth noting also was his story about doing something fun with a non- tribal person. He wrote that one evening he had gone to “the mall and hung out with White kids.” He explained that Native Americans went to Walmart. He said all the White kids had money to buy food and drinks, something that most Native American kids could not do. He said the White kids laughed and talked about doing things he had not done, like “going to the lake on weekends.” The first part of the story was somewhat critical of White kids,

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focusing on differences, but the second part described the White kids talking about some of the same things he thought about, such as conflicts with par- ents, television sitcoms, teachers, being overweight, and crushes. He said he would go to the mall again and “maybe talk more next time.”

JOHN’S NAMING CEREMONY

Nearly 40 people attended the Ceremony, which was behind Jake’s house in the countryside outside his small Oklahoma town. Most attendees were Chah- tas, with some Muskogee and Tsalagi people. There were fewer than a dozen nontribal people; two were John’s “mall friends.” Everyone gathered near the sweat lodge, and about 15 people went in for the purification ceremony. John went in last and positioned himself on the west side of the fire pit looking east. Jake poured (lead) on the hot rocks, and Sarah sat next to him. She passed out sage and placed cedar on the stones. One of John’s nontribal friends was honored by being allowed to carry the rocks. There were four rounds (of cer- emony, prayer, and specific songs each round, with breaks in between to bring new rocks into the lodge). During the sweat, Jake and John sang the three songs they had been practicing over the previous year, and John told one tra- ditional Native American story.

At the end of the sweat, everyone gathered outside the lodge. The four planning committee members sat together in chairs. Don and Marlene called for the “Unnamed Seeker” to come before them. Marlene and then Don said short prayers. A Chahta song was sung by everyone. Jake told the witnesses the Unnamed Seeker’s accomplishments over the past year. After a brief pause, Jake gave John an eagle feather, and then Jake shouted out in an elongated way John’s Indian name (a particular bird). Then, one of John’s “mall friends” grabbed John’s arm and raced around the area and back (as Jake had earlier instructed him). Attendees formed a line to shake hands with and congratu- late John. Jake invited everyone to view the scrapbook, which was on the living room table.

Next, attendees shared a traditional Chahta meal that was orchestrated by Marlene. Toward the end of the meal, Don invited attendees to respond to three prearranged questions:

1. To comment first on what they had observed during the evening. 2. To offer any words of encouragement they might have for John. 3. To share their own thinking about how they themselves and their

tribes had changed through witnessing this event.

Participants spoke about the spiritual nature of the experience, about the amount of work it had obviously taken to conduct the ceremony, about their appreciation for being able to participate in an “Indian” ceremony, and about the quality of John’s scrapbook. Many offered to help John in his life’s jour- ney. Several commented about how impressed they were that he had learned

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traditional songs and words of the tribal languages. In terms of how the cere- mony had changed their own thinking, some of the younger Native Americans said they were inspired to embrace their tribal identities. Others told John they were proud of him for continuing to carry the torch for Native American people and that he made them hopeful for the future. (John had also taped four letters of support from Sun Dancers in his scrapbook.)

Other questions asked of the participants included “What does your name mean to you?”; “What about this project do you value?”; “What knowledges and skills have you used and developed during this project?”; “Why might it be relevant today to take Native American names?”; “How do you link your experience in this project to the Native Americans who lived before, who live now, and who will live in the future?”

The last session, consisting of John, Sarah, Jake, Marlene, Don, and me, began with everyone talking about their experiences of fear, struggle, humor, and hope during the previous year. When I asked John what positive qualities he had to tap into to achieve such an accomplishment, he replied, strength, kindness, and perseverance, which, he added, he did not know he possessed. Jake added, “And toughness.” When I probed John to describe how he saw himself as different from a year ago, he said, “more confident, spiritual, and more tribal.” I asked him if he felt differently about people around him and he said, “Yes. I feel more supported and encouraged.” He also said that he felt that in the future he could count on his mother and uncle to support him in his endeavors. He said he felt that he saw new possibilities for his life. He said he could foresee himself working for his tribe someday, possibly as a cultural conservator after going to college for Indian Studies.

CASE CONCEPTUALIZATION AND TREATMENT INTERVENTIONS

John and his family and their community had had insecurities about both their individual and tribal identities. John had initially said he did not know who he was. The Naming Ceremony that he and his family wished to carry out directly transformed this issue. John related that he came to know himself as a tribal person during the experience, but he also said that he had interests and goals shared with nontribal people. He said he found great meaning in the ceremony but found it hard to put its meaning into words. Such a com- ment harks back to the mystical or unconscious elements of ceremony we discussed earlier. By choosing to become the focus of the Naming Ceremony, John was able to transform those around him, and in the process he was trans- formed himself. He revealed tribal history and culture to witnesses and also experienced a power that elevated his self- concept beyond anything he could articulate.

One area of John’s identity and his family members’ views about identity was gender stereotyping. In order for the Naming Ceremony to move forward, the family had to discuss and repudiate Western traditional roles and stereo- types and to be accepting of John’s choosing his own gender identity. Jake, in

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particular, with his patriarchal belief system, had to examine his assumptions. The Naming Ceremony created a space and time to deal with gender identity issues.

Community involvement created a dynamic and creative space that drew generations together to help John and his family to evolve more complexly and profoundly. The suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety John had described initially seemed linked to feelings of being marginalized. As soon as he took a step in the direction of his Naming Ceremony, he chose life. He was no longer a lonely adventurer but part of a collective. His was an experience of being joined with others around similar knowledge and interests and with tribal people who shared a sense of unity. He was also united with both the past and the future when he learned and sang traditional songs and told stories before people his own age.

He had generated documents and shared them with witnesses and then listened to their comments about his journey and their own reactions and dreams. Documenting his experiences benefitted not only John but also the planning committee in their efforts to focus their energies. John made com- ments that documenting also helped him to remember and consolidate his developmental gains. In a larger sense, this healthy documenting worked to combat the destructive documenting engaged in by colonialists that damaged tribal cultural identities.

Documentation

Since the time of colonization, documents such as treaties and governmen- tal policies have been used to cheat and take land from Native Americans. But the creation of alternative documentation, in which Native Americans play a central role in contributing to their specifications, offers the possibility of transforming documentation into a beneficial use. Documentation can be situated in alternative forms of knowledge that emphasize Native Americans’ competencies, as well as their place in the larger community. Bird and Harjo (2007) wrote, “It is through the colonizers’ languages that our land and chil- dren were taken away . . . but it is with the ‘enemies’ language’ that we can tell our truths, to remember ourselves during these troubled times” (p. 20). We can use documentation to transform our lives and combat colonization and to regenerate ourselves as Native Americans.

The use of creative “documentation” in family therapy, in written form, oral retelling, music, and other forms can contribute to continuity in Native American lives. Such documentation can provide an element of intentionality to the often shifting and dynamic growth of individuals and families. Docu- mentation may also aid Native Americans with greater mindfulness in their battles against outside influences that might misguide them.

John and his family recorded details of the planning and implementing of John’s Naming Ceremony. He created a scrapbook filled with photographs, a diary, drawings, and descriptions of events that led up to the ceremony for his tribal community to view on the day of his naming.

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“Completing the Circle” Questioning

A Chahta (Choctaw) elder taught me (RR) that the habit of judging others was the most common way human beings block healing for themselves and others. He explained that we try to build ourselves up and protect our “false egos.” This initiates anxiety and stress. He said that people have done it for so long that they are no longer even conscious that they constantly engage in it. He thought that to help our clients become mindful of this destructive tendency, we might simply say to one who is judging others, “Complete the circle,” chal- lenging them to reflect upon their comment’s destructive impact by examining themselves to consider the origin and effect of such a judgment. So “com- pleting the circle” involves helping clients reflect back upon themselves after judging others. For example, a family member may label another as “para- noid.” The therapist, by suggesting: “Complete the circle,” can help accusers consider their connection with the accused. In other words, how might their behaviors contribute to the other person’s lack of trust? No greater illusion exists, according to Native American spiritual perspectives, than to believe that any thing or person exists in isolation. “Completing the circle” is a way of acknowledging that we are all connected and of helping us to take responsibil- ity for the fact that we are all always interdependent. In the above story, Jake had to reflect back about how he had come to have negative feelings about people who identify as gay.

Grafting

This technique was also aimed at helping John and his family realize their connectedness on a deep level. In family or group therapy settings, a client may offer a perspective about an event or a concept. Grafting consists simply of asking another client participant his or her perspective in order to expand understanding. For instance, when Jake and Marlene spoke of John’s biologi- cal father in very negative terms, I asked John for his perspective. He said that talking about his father in such a way influenced how he felt about himself. Eventually Jake and Marlene were able to graft John’s perspective onto theirs, which affected future discussions about John’s father. Therapists might ask the first storyteller whether the second person’s version has revealed perspec- tives that could affect the way they feel and the way they perceive a person or an incident. It is vital that the therapist create a space of silent listening while the stories of each family member are told. Interjections from those in the listening role are not allowed. The therapist attempts to help each family member understand and integrate the other’s point of view.

Deconstruction

As therapy proceeded, John’s uncle engaged in narrow- minded thinking, and we used deconstruction to address this problem. This technique involves hav- ing clients expand their definitions of concepts and problems. Specifically,

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it helps clients implode their definition of a problem by considering how its opposite is contained within the concept. For instance, “good” cannot be defined without considering how its definition is related to what is considered “bad.” In the above case, Jake had a limited notion of what “tough” meant. The therapist and John’s mother helped him to see that tough might mean not only enduring pain courageously but also being brave and smart enough to know when to cease to endure it.

Witnessing

So much of counseling is about helping clients pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Yet, for Native Americans, individuality is expressed through one’s participation with others. As was seen with John, having others wit- ness his transformations validates him as a social/tribal person and sets up a system of social support. A family therapist may simply ask other family members to observe a counseling session with an adolescent. Then at the end, for example, as happened in the above story, the therapist may ask for com- ments on what they have seen taking place or wonder whether they may want to encourage the adolescent further in his or her personal development.

CONCLUSION

Ceremonies that promote health among tribal people have a long history, though currently there may only be traces of what they were earlier. Such rituals are just waiting to be reclaimed, because they possess enormous heal- ing power. Even as they are modified from what they were originally, they may be conducted with the help of elders and with respect and may yet be of great benefit to participants. Native Americans and other marginalized people should be supported in their efforts to construct their own identities and to arrive at their own meanings. As counselors, when Native Americans come to us with their own ideas about healing, we may witness and support them, carefully considering what creative ideas from our helping professions and from our own healing in our own lives may facilitate their evolution.

All therapists, no matter what race, would do well to consider how rituals benefit their clients. They may give some time in therapy sessions to acknowl- edging and discussing family rituals that acknowledge life cycle transitions such as bar/bat mitzvahs and baptisms, births, weddings, and funerals. Ritu- als that help people transform their identities as they evolve into adulthood or from one phase of life to another are especially important for fostering a greater sense of belonging to their group, as well as promoting individual development. They can provide a space for healing. Lastly, if documentation is kept of the event, it will not only foster intentionality during the process but will promote a sense of life cycle continuity and connection to one’s ethnic heritage.

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REFERENCES

Bird, G., & Harjo, J. (2007). Reinventing the enemy’s language: Contemporary Native women’s writings. New York: Norton.

Brave Heart, M. Y. H. (2005). Substance abuse, co- occurring mental health disorders, and the historical trauma response among American Indians/Alaska Natives (Research Monograph). Washington, DC: Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014). High school youth risk behavior survey data: 2013. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/ss/ss6304.pdf.

Deloria, V. (1973). God is red. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Garrett, M. T., & Pichette, E. F. (2000). Red as an apple: Native American accul-

turation and counseling with or without reservation. Journal of Counseling and Development, 78, 3–13.

Grayson, G. W. (2000). Creek warrior for the Confederacy: The autobiography of Chief G. W. Grayson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

LaFromboise, T. D., Medoff, L., Lee, C. C., & Harris, A. (2007). Psychosocial and cultural correlates of suicidal ideation among American Indian early adolescents on the Northern Plains reservation. Research in Human Development, 4(1–2), 119–143.

Lester, D. (1999). Native American suicide rates, acculturation stress and traditional integration. Psychological Reports, 84, 398.

Markstrom, C. A. (2011). Identity formation of American Indian adolescents: Local, national, and global considerations. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21, 519–535.

Moran, J. R., Fleming, C. M., Somervell, P., & Manson, S. M. (1999). Measuring bicultural ethnic identity among American Indian adolescents: A factor analytic study. Journal of Adolescent Research, 14, 405–426.

Robbins, R., Scherman, A., Holeman, H., & Wilson, J. (2005). Roles of American Indian grandparents in times of cultural crisis. Journal of Cultural Diversity, 1, 46–56.

Sutton, M. Q. (2000). Introduction to Native North America. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Swanton, J. R. (2000). Creek religion and medicine. Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press. Van Winkle, N. W., & May, P. A. (1993). An update on Native American suicide in

New Mexico, 1980–1987. Human Organization, 52, 5. Whitbeck, L., McMorris, B., Hoyt, E., Stubeen, J., & LaFromboise, T. (2009). Per-

ceived discrimination, traditional practices, and depressive symptoms among American Indians in the upper Midwest. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 43, 400–418.

White, M. (2000). Reflections on narrative practice: Essays and interviews. Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwich Centre.

Wilderson, F. B. (2010). Red, white and black: Cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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MULTICULTURAL AND MULTIRACIAL LEGACIES

Holding all of who I am has been challenging, difficult, even impossible at times, but necessary to move forward in life: learning about my history, my cultural legacies, and trusting that if I bring forth all of who I am, I will find my way in the world. I am a multicultural, multiracial, cisgender woman born in Puerto Rico, an island in the Caribbean, a U.S. colony. This is where my story begins. I don’t really know who my ancestors were, I have a few names and dates, but I don’t know where their stories began, or where they came from. What I know began in Borinquen before the Spaniards came and named it Puerto Rico, and I often imagine stories that emerge from an inner aware- ness, knowledge that is genetic and spiritual.

I always knew I was White, Black, and Indian, some Spanish, some Afri- can, and some Taino, but testing my DNA gave me more specific information

C H A P T E R 1 1

Letting My Spirits Guide Me Multicultural and Multiracial Legacies

Nydia Garcia Preto

I am standing tall on a mountaintop, the sun warming my face, looking at the sea, feeling the ocean breeze, listening to the palm trees. Distant drumming in my soul, letting my spirits guide me. I ask. Who are you? My people came first from distant lands, across the seas,

searching for peace and found this beautiful island. I am your spirit of peace. And You? My people were brought here in chains enslaved from Africa. We

brought our pain and our strength. I am your spirit of strength and survival. And who are you? My people came searching for gold. We took the land, raped

the women, killed the men, and brought the slaves. I am your spirit of shame. And you? I am a goddess, a warrior. I have always lived in your heart. I have

known those before you and have travelled with them. I will travel with you and hold your hand.

They are with me, guiding me in this cold, dark land. Not being seen, not being heard, listening to a strange language. I have learned to be among strangers. I am learning to accept my strength, to listen to the drumming, to make peace with my shame and let the goddess, the warrior in my heart give voice to those who came before me and guide those who will come after me.

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about where my ancestors came from. According to Ancestry.com, they were Iberian, Nigerian, and American Indian. I know that both my maternal grand- father’s and grandmother’s families came from Spain. I think the mixture of American Indian and Iberian ancestry comes from Mama Marta, my paternal grandmother, a spiritual healer who profoundly influenced my ability to seek peace and gain strength through spirituality. My Nigerian ancestors are mostly on my paternal grandfather’s side. While doing family- of- origin work, I met my father’s only surviving paternal aunt, who told me that their father was a Corso and their mother a slave. I wonder who came first, and what they left behind. I don’t know their stories or their names, but they live in my heart and in my con- sciousness. They are part of me and of my children and my children’s children. I want them to hear and feel their spirits, find peace, and own their strength.

Legacies of colonial oppression and patriarchy have informed relation- ships in my family for generations, and to this day they affect my life and decisions I make. Knowing that some of my ancestors were White European colonizers who oppressed, raped, and enslaved women and men is painful and shameful. Yet legacies of survival, perseverance, and fortitude empower me to give voice to injustice and oppression in my life and in the lives of others and have influenced my choice of work. There have been critical moments in my life when I have felt the goddess, the warrior in me hold my hand and say we can do this, and I have let her guide me, listening to the drumming, feeling spiritually liberated, strong and clear to think, feel, and be all of who I am.

Just as my ancestors must have traveled from land to land before set- tling in Puerto Rico, my family, a U.S. Army family, moved many times and lived in different countries before I settled in New Jersey. My father chose a military career after returning from the Korean War in the early 1950s, when the economy in Puerto Rico was changing from agrarian to manufacturing, and many were unemployed. Many people left the island and came to the mainland, mostly to New York City. The Army provided some security and benefits, such as housing and health care, and the possibility for travel, but it also meant enduring hardships such as dislocations, losses, and isolation. Our family was poor in the military, an authoritarian and hierarchical system, where power is determined by rank. As a dark- skinned Puerto Rican staff sergeant in that system, my father ranked low.

STANDING ON THE BRIDGE

Standing on the bridge, I look back at times in my life when the goddess, the warrior in me held my hand and led me.

Trusting that those who came before me will give me strength to transform shame into hope and survival.

Free to take what helps me grow. Free to be all of me.

Moving from Puerto Rico to Columbus, Georgia, in 1956 when I was 12 is my first and most vivid experience of feeling different and confused about

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my identity. Unable to speak English, or to understand the racist context in which we were living, was traumatizing. I felt mute, not seen, not heard by those outside my family and often wonder how my parents, a biracial couple, must have felt living there. Our experience in Georgia also brought our fam- ily closer than ever as we tried to create a haven at home while adjusting to living in a new world. I remember one time standing with my family in front of a shoe store window looking at the shoes, when a White woman behind us picked up one of my braids to feel its texture. I was scared, and my father yelled and screamed at her in English and Spanish. She ran away. I tell that story because I think that experience of feeling dehumanized was traumatiz- ing but also transformative for my family. It led my father to ask for a transfer. I have always thanked him for recognizing the need for change and for doing something about it. And as I retell the story, I wonder if my father, who at 33 had survived two wars, was listening to the drumming of those who came before him and who overcame the impossible. Did he feel the warrior in him pull him to safety?

Six months later we moved to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where we lived on the base; there were other Puerto Rican families, and we could visit family in New York City. Those connections, that feeling of belonging, made me less afraid to speak, to learn English, to be me. At home we spoke Spanish and functioned as a traditional patriarchal Puerto Rican family, with gender- role double standards, where males were privileged and had more power and freedom than women. I was 3 years older than my brother, yet he had fewer restrictions and certainly fewer chores at home. I was angry and objected to the unfairness but got little support from my parents. I would present argu- ments to my mother, who seemed to understand, but didn’t have the power to change the rules, since my father made major decisions at home. With the sup- port of other Puerto Rican girls who were having similar experiences, I found ways to get out of the house, such as school activities, going to a friend’s house to study, and sometimes sneaking out the window. I made up my mind that although I loved my mother, I was not going to end up like her. I was going to make my own decisions about my life.

Throughout my adolescence I moved six times: Puerto Rico to Georgia, to New Jersey, to Maine, to Italy, to Germany, and back to New Jersey when I was 20. I went to six different schools and had to learn different languages and adjust to different cultural and social contexts. And, because I was often the only Puerto Rican or Latina in school, such as in Georgia, Maine, Italy, and Germany, I had no friends who could help me negotiate adjusting to a new culture while staying loyal to my protective Puerto Rican family. My parents felt that the American culture, which now surrounded us, was in direct oppo- sition to their most fundamental values: respect for parents, obedience, and female modesty. The last thing they wanted was for me to be like those Ameri- can girls, too much makeup, tight clothing, dating, answering back, and hang- ing out on the street. But I was drawn to the freedom that American women

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seemed to have, and I began to practice acting American outside, while fol- lowing the rules at home. Unknowingly I started building bridges from one cultural context to another. The bridge is a safe place to stand, knowing I can go back and forth, staying open to possibilities.

Moving to Maine from New Jersey during my junior year in high school was as traumatic as moving from Puerto Rico to Georgia. Being the new kid in two different high schools during my junior year meant having to introduce myself many times and explain what it meant to be Puerto Rican and why my father was in the army. I was shy and speaking up was painful. I was ashamed of my accent. I cringed every time someone asked me, “What did you say?” I still do today! Competing academically was torturous. Going from an upper- middle- class school district in South Portland to an urban, working- class dis- trict in Portland meant having to adapt to two different academic systems and student populations. I was very confused, and felt that others saw me as an oddity, a skinny, Brown girl, not Black, not White, who spoke English with a Spanish accent. Making friends felt impossible. I now understand that I pro- tected myself from being in that painful place by standing at the margins, at the edge of the bridge, observing, venturing to cross, and stepping back into the comfort of my family. That our family was able to travel as a unit was a blessing in that it provided us with stability and emotional support as we faced adversity.

I missed New Jersey and my family in Puerto Rico. To ease my loneliness I started writing letters to my grandmother, Marta, who had always been my spiritual support, telling her how sad I felt and how much I missed her. She was illiterate, and my godmother Victoria, who lived across the street, read and wrote for her and added her own messages. Both had lived in New York City in the late 1940s and early 1950s. My grandmother had traveled alone and found work at an Italian laundry in Brooklyn, where she later became the owners’ children’s nanny. My godmother also traveled alone. She had gradu- ated as a nurse in Puerto Rico and found work at Bellevue Hospital. She was my role model of a strong, independent, and determined woman. I learned how Marta and Victoria survived their stay in New York. They had posi- tive memories and felt good about having experienced the challenge of doing something uncharacteristic for women in their families. Those letters helped me stay connected to Puerto Rico, to my complex identity, and to my spiri- tual strength. Their immigrant stories and reasons for returning to the island validated the way I was feeling. Just like them, I wanted to be in a familiar place, with others who looked like me, rather than feeling different, invisible. I wonder if we had not left for Italy at the end of that year how far would I have traveled across that bridge. I think that my deep compassion for adolescents and interest in working with their families stems from the experiences I had during those years in my life. Although our family offered comfort, we didn’t talk about the isolation and sadness we felt; we moved on. We could have used a good family therapist.

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CROSSING BRIDGES

Our experience in Italy was healing, transformative. We lived in Vicenza, not on the base, but unlike our experience in Georgia and Maine, we felt wel- comed by our neighbors, invited into their homes, encouraged to learn Ital- ian. There were no other Puerto Rican families to feel at home with, but the cultural similarities made adjusting easier for our family. A big change in the family was that my mother felt happier, more independent, and began to cross bridges herself. She found Italian much easier to learn and felt encouraged by the neighbors. I think that change made it possible for her to be more accept- ing of my need for freedom and opened possibilities for me to feel freer, to explore my sexuality, and to question my religious beliefs and my cultural values. My father was not as easily convinced, but he was happy about the change in my mother, and more open himself. My brother was now an early adolescent, and for the first time he and I went to the same school. The bound- aries in our family were more flexible, but the gender double standards were not changing that much. For instance, although 3 years younger than I was, my brother’s comings and goings were less questioned than mine.

Unlike in Maine, I had friends, a German girl who spoke English as a second language, and a White girl from Alabama who spoke English with a southern accent. Looking back on why we became friends, it makes sense. We all had accents, we lived in town rather than on the base, and our fathers were all sergeants in the Army. We were more integrated into Italian culture than the students who lived on the base, we were learning to speak Italian, and we were having fun. My American friend drove and had a wild streak I really liked. We went to the center of town to check out the Italian guys and the American soldiers. I met my first serious boyfriend there, an Irish American soldier from Detroit. This relationship created a huge cultural dilemma for me and for my parents. I was dealing with my father’s disapproval because he didn’t want me dating an American soldier! And I had to listen to my mother’s advice about the virtue of keeping my virginity! I was afraid to disrespect my parents and go against their values, yet to my American friends these were not issues they thought about. Although afraid, I also felt strongly about making my own decisions about what cultural values to keep and what to let go in order to grow, to be all of me. In retrospect this was a time when I stood on the bridge and felt the Goddess, the warrior in me, hold my hand and guide me.

SELECTIVE ADAPTATION AND TRANSFORMATION

They stand on a bridge between two worlds, rejecting and loving, frightened and hopeful, screaming and praying, taking steps back and forth, learning to choose how much to change and how much to stay the same. They are learning to take care of themselves.

We returned to New Jersey from Europe the summer of 1964. I had spent

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the last 2 years in college at the University of Maryland’s campus in Munich, Germany. Reentry into this culture was tough. Living in Europe the previ- ous 3 years had kept me removed from the social movements going on in this country. The civil rights movement and the feminist movement were over- whelming, and I found that holding on to the complexity of my multiracial and multicultural identity was very difficult in a society where there was such a racial divide. I felt pressured to choose or run the risk of becoming invisible. As in Maine, I learned to deal with an unwelcoming culture by staying at the margins, observing, and choosing to adapt those values and beliefs that made it easier to fit and to access resources, while holding on to what gave me a sense of identity. Rather than adjusting or assimilating, I like to refer to this pattern as a process of selective adaptation. I find it more empowering.

During the next few years I lived with my family at Fort Dix and com- muted to college in Trenton. I graduated and had my first job as a caseworker at Trenton State Psychiatric Hospital. Working with Puerto Rican and Cuban patients who spoke no English and whose lives had been dangerously affected by discrimination and oppression in this country made staying at the margins impossible. I was also, for the first time, being confronted by a “bigger than life” White Protestant woman from the Midwest, a supervisor who had no problem telling me what to do and challenging my beliefs. She questioned why I was living at home, and I was surprised and annoyed by the question, as I was enjoying going home to my mother’s cooking, having my clothes washed, and not having many responsibilities except to help clean the house on Satur- days. She urged me to go to graduate school, to get a master’s of social work degree, and benefit from a program the state offered at the time. They would pay my salary while I went to school if I agreed to return to work at the hos- pital for the time I had been away.

I listened to her, applied, and was accepted at Rutgers University Gradu- ate School of Social Work. My parents were supportive of my furthering my education. My mother had always told me, “You need to have a career and be able to take care of yourself, in case you get married and he turns out to be no good.” And my father would say, “You have to go to college and get a career in case your husband gets sick or dies.” It was a sexist and patriarchal message: “Be prepared to take care of yourself, but only if your husband can’t take care of you.” They didn’t say “Find a career you love, and be the best you can be.” Although I missed the comfort of my family, I loved the freedom. It was 1969, and I became very active protesting against the Vietnam War, organizing moratoriums and marches, finding speakers, and making sure that the issues of minorities were addressed at school. This was the first time I had an opportunity to get to know and work with African Americans, and as the only Latina in my class, I had a voice. Working with them to ensure that the school had courses and teachers addressing the issues of underserved clients and communities was amazing.

I felt confident, purposeful, and liberated, until my mother suddenly died from a brain aneurysm in 1970. Her death stopped me in my tracks. Was this

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a punishment for having gone too far across the bridge and broken with my cultural traditions? Her death was devastating, but it was also an opportunity for me to feel less bound to the world she represented. Instead of returning home to take care of my father, as a good Puerto Rican daughter might have done, I continued my studies and became even more committed to being an independent woman, seeking my professional goals. Within a year my father remarried, my brother married, and I became involved with my future hus- band.

There have been many other losses and difficult transitions in my life when I have struggled with cultural dilemmas that have shaken my determina- tion to hold on to all of who I am. Times when finding shortcuts or a logical solution to the conflict may have been easier than holding on to all the com- plexity of my identity. Separating from my Italian American husband after almost 30 years of marriage was one of those times when I felt pulled and pushed by different cultural beliefs and values. I had learned from my family and culture that you stay with your husband unless he is physically abusive or abandons the family. I wasn’t being physically abused, and neither were the children, but I felt emotionally controlled and abandoned.

The story in our relationship became that I had changed and become self- ish and prioritized work rather than the family. Whenever I traveled to speak at a professional conference or do trainings, he claimed I was abandoning the family. This was excruciating because a part of me believed that story, since in my culture a mother must sacrifice herself for her children. Yet deep inside I knew that the work I did was important and not a reason for losing my fam- ily’s support. I was contributing more than he was financially and carrying the major load of housework and child care. It took years of going back and forth and of standing on the bridge before letting the goddess in me, the warrior, help me transform legacies of shame into hope and liberation. My children were greatly affected by this decision, and to this day I feel sad about having caused them pain. Whenever they go through hardships I question my deci- sion and work harder at strengthening our connections by supporting their own search for peace. I want them to gain strength by staying connected to all of who they are, to listen to the drumming, and let their spirits guide them.

CONCLUSION

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. —AuDre lorDe (1984, p. 36)

Finding words to describe the complexity of my multicultural and multiracial identity has always been difficult, yet through poetry a subtle awareness of what is hidden in my consciousness comes alive. Legacies of loss awaken bit- tersweet memories in my heart, sending waves of sadness and compassion through my being. Reviewing stories about my life’s journey, the struggles,

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the conflicts, the accomplishments and transformations, reveals legacies of survival and spiritual strength that have come down the generations. My Ibe- rian, Nigerian, and Taino ancestors and those who came before them fought, survived, and endured. Their spirits live in my soul. My challenge has been to stay connected to them and to acknowledge their legacies while staying open to possibilities for transformation and liberation as I move through life,

Living in different countries and diverse cultural contexts has meant struggling with cultural dilemmas and finding ways to survive without losing myself. Building bridges to connect to the new world has been an empowering metaphor in my life and work, offering the safety of the bridge as a place to stand to observe and to discern how others view me. Do they see me? What do I see in their eyes? Is there a reflection of interest, curiosity? Can I see their humanity, a willingness to hold out a hand? Feeling welcomed in a new soci- ety makes crossing bridges much easier to explore, to observe, and to select which values you may want to adapt and what beliefs to leave behind. When faced with adversity, discrimination, oppression, the opposite happens, and there is a greater sense of alienation from the new world. In those situations I find that standing at the edge of the bridge, at the margins, in the shadows provides me enough safety to decide whether to cross the bridge and explore. And in my way of speaking, I let the goddess, the warrior in me, guide me.

I have found using the metaphor of the bridge very helpful, particularly in my work with immigrant families. Engaging them in conversations about their family stories, their cultural values, and their spiritual beliefs can be healing. Often this is the first time they have been asked, and as they tell their stories they gain understanding about themselves and their struggles and especially get in touch with their legacies of survival and strength. Offering the metaphor of the bridge as a safe place where one can stand to observe and select what to adapt from the new world and what to leave behind from the old is empowering. My personal knowledge of what it means to live between two worlds and to struggle with cultural dilemmas is a major part of what I offer Latin or other immigrant clients who are struggling with cultural differ- ences. It is what enables them to trust me with their stories and to look to me for guidance. Aside from my skill as a therapist, my sociopolitical awareness, and my experience as an immigrant, I offer optimism. Although it is never easy, I know it is possible to shuttle between two worlds without losing my multicultural, multiracial complex identity.

REFERENCE

Lorde, A. (1984). Poetry is not a luxury. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches by Audre Lorde (pp. 36–39). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

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Just over 15 years ago, I had the good fortune of receiving a fellowship from East–West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, to provide support for me to be away from my job as a university faculty member. As a midcareer professional, I considered myself lucky to have an opportunity to work in a beautiful tropical location and to be associated with an institution that promoted a mission that I held as an ideal. The United States Congress established the East–West Cen- ter in 1960 to promote understanding and better relations among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific; it does so by sponsor- ing programs of cooperative research and dialogue. It was there that I had a pivotal and life- changing experience.

Within the first week I was there, another Fellow in my research group, which was studying diaspora Chinese families, suggested we go to a lecture about the similarities between Transylvanian– Hungarian (Magyar) and Inner Mongolian (China) folk music. The lecture was being given by his colleague at Beijing University. Because he knew that my mother was a Transylvanian Hungarian and he was from Inner Mongolia, he thought the lecture would be of interest to us. When we walked into the lecture hall, the speaker, his friend, greeted him, then turned to me and said, “You must be Transylvanian and Chinese— I can tell.” What I learned that night was that the rhythms and structure of the music from both cultures were similar. More importantly, I

C H A P T E R 1 2

Moving toward Multiracial Legitimacy A Personal Reflection

MaryAnna Domokos‑Cheng Ham

I can attest that being mixed makes it harder to fall back on the tribal identities that have guided so much of human history, and are now resurgent. Your background pushes you to construct a worldview that transcends the tribal.

—Moises velAsquez- MAnoff (2017)

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learned that I could feel a sense of pride and respect for myself as a biracial person and even embrace my multiple selves.

Throughout the last centuries in American history and into the 21st century, the exclusion, intolerance, and prejudice that multiracial people in America have experienced parallels societal values. These values and social attitudes about race and ethnicity have continued to be reinforced as norms sanctioned by prevailing societal institutions. This statement is not an abstrac- tion but is the underlying story of my personal journal as a biracial person. My intention is to convey how my definition of myself has been informed by the influence of social norms embedded in history’s inescapable presence, which supports the acceptance of society’s construction of identity devel- opment within a context of race, social class, and gender (Torres, Jones, & Renn, 2009). My narrative includes many stories: the historical narratives that shaped my self- definition, the accounts of revising my self- definition as social institutions began to adjust to societal and demographic changes, the life- long story about my efforts to reconcile society’s attitudinal changes toward mixed-blood persons with my definitions of myself. These stories are not mine alone but touch upon similarities with those who grapple with self- definition.

SELF‑DEFINITION WITHIN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT

My story begins with my mother, who was confronted by the realities of giv- ing birth to a biracial infant during a specific time in history, in 1939, the beginning of World War II. She was a first- generation Hungarian Transylva- nian who had fallen in love with a fellow graduate student, a young man who had come from China to attend a prestigious midwestern university. My story continues from this union as an ongoing process to reconcile my mother’s response to me as a biracial child with my own understanding of biracial identity within an omnipresent sociopolitical environment. My story is not an isolated instance. Many life stories of mixed-race peoples are fraught with narratives about reconciling for themselves the meaning of racial and ethnic self- definition.

I define myself as a biracial person, yet the label “biracial” began with a misrepresentation about my identity in the hospital where I was born. My mother, many years after my birth, told me about her experience giving birth to me. Her story was that she unwittingly provided the hospital with informa- tion about my father so that I could have a legitimate birth certificate. A few months later, she decided that she could not have anyone know her child was of mixed race. She returned to the hospital and asked the attending physician to write a statement that could be used as a legal document in place of a birth certificate. The statement read: “Mary Domokos gave birth to a baby girl on October 5, 1939.” From that point forward, my mother claimed the hospital never provided a birth certificate for me.

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For my mother to give birth to a biracial child was a reminder that the Chinese man who was alleged to be her husband had left her several months before I was born. Not only did she carry the stigma of giving birth to an “illegitimate” child, but I was also racially mixed. Both of these circumstances placed her in a position of being outside the social norms, and, likewise, she feared I would be a social outcast. Many years later I was aware of how her trust in my father was misplaced. She was sufficiently naïve in accepting my father’s proposal to marry him, a Chinese man, in Nevada. She was unaware that in 1939 the State of Nevada enforced antimiscegenation laws for “yellows marrying whites,” and she was uninformed about the legal implications of marrying my father, to whom she was never legally married.

After a few months of living in California, my mother must have been painfully aware of the prejudice and overt discrimination toward Japanese and Chinese people. This overt discrimination toward Asians living in Cali- fornia affected her daily life. Years later, she told me about her experiences as a single mother of an Asian- looking baby. One story described how she was forced to move from apartment to apartment because “landlords would not rent to me since I had an infant who looked ‘oriental’.”

At the time of my birth, events happening on the world stage shaped societal attitudes and contributed to irrational responses to the Asian popula- tion. One significant world event occurred on December 2, 1941, soon after I turned 2 years old. On that momentous day, Pearl Harbor, located in Hawaii, was bombed by the Japanese, and the United States joined the Allied Forces to fight in World War II. Japanese were now seen as the enemy, and in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt implemented an execu- tive order on February 19, 1942, commanding that Japanese Americans be placed in military internment camps. Because Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are often indistinguishable to the general American population, the effects of prejudice and discrimination affected all Asians. These were the prevailing attitudes during the years of my childhood and adolescence.

Over the last 60 years, from the end of the 20th century to the begin- ning of the 21st century, a noticeable change in the population demography has taken place. There has been an increase in numbers of non-white and ethnically diverse populations in the United States. Along with this altered demographic configuration, social awareness has increased, along with a noticeable proliferation in scholarly literature pertaining to the experiences of biracial and multicultural peoples (Parker, Horowitz, Morin, & Lopez, 2015). One example is the continuous rise in numbers of multiracial and multiethnic Americans during the mid-20th century. From approximately 5% of all mar- riages in 1970, 3 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision of Lov- ing v. Virginia (1967), interracial and interethnic marriages in America have steadily increased to 18% in 2015 (Parker et al., 2015). The share of multira- cial babies rose from 1% in 1970 to 10% in 2013. Demographers expect this rapid growth to continue, if not quicken, in the decades to come (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013a).

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Another factor that has contributed to society’s becoming aware of mul- tiracial people is the change in how the U.S. Census Bureau determines the number of multiracial people (Patten, Horowitz, & Rohal, 2015). Since 2000, self- definition of racial status has been permitted; it was the first year the Census Bureau allowed individuals, in filling out census forms, the option to choose more than one race. The number of Americans self- identifying as mul- tiracial and/or multiethnic has continued to increase. In 2013 the U.S. Census Bureau (2013b) found that about 9 million Americans chose two or more racial categories when asked about their race. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of white and Black biracial Americans more than doubled, while the population of adults with a white and Asian background increased by 87%. “Multiracial Americans are at the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the U.S.—young, proud, tolerant and growing at a rate that is three times as fast as the population as a whole” (Parker et al., 2015, p. 1).

BIRACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT: A FUNCTION OF SELF‑DEFINITION

Throughout my personal and professional life, I have been on a quest to find explanations and have sought out guides to make sense of my personal anguish and discomfort with the label of “biracial.” I questioned whether I had become a victim of internalized racism, in which the conscious and unconscious acceptance of racial hierarchy is determined by the ranking of whites above people of color (Huber, Johnson, & Kohli, 2006). Had I created a self- definition internalized from my school experiences and other encoun- ters with my immediate community (Hipolito- Delgado, 2010; Nittle, 2017)? I was confused and bewildered; I was not able to distinguish my self- defined notions of who I was from the meanings of the labels society had constructed for me.

Although many theoretical frameworks have been compelling, I have found these three articles most useful in my own self- analysis: “The Bira- cial Identity Development Model” (Poston, 1990), “Research on Biracial and Multiracial Identity Development” (Renn, 2008), and “Resolving ‘Other’ Sta- tus: Identity Development of Biracial Individuals” (Root, 1990), which offers later refinements of Poston’s model. Poston’s (1990) and Root’s (1990) biracial models and the critique in Renn’s research (2006) countered the preexisting claim that biracial identity could not be accurately assessed by previous mod- els of minority identity development (Cross, 1987; Morten & Atkinson, 1983). Rather, the biracial models promoted their function as bringing together both a person’s personal situation and the larger social context.

In reflecting upon the process of my own biracial identity over the last decades, I became acutely aware that my lived experiences were the start- ing point for exploring the complexities of my individual identity within the extensive identity variations of social structure (Dill & Zambrana, 2009; Shields, 2008). I have found the models and scholarship of Poston, Renn, and

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Root to be positive guides in legitimizing my own personal vignettes. These interpretations have evolved from questions I have asked myself (Gibbs & Hines, 1992).

•• Who am I? How do I integrate racial identities that might be socially conflictual?

•• Where do I fit in? What group do I belong in? How do I resolve feelings of being socially marginalized?

•• Who is in charge of my life? How do I separate and individuate from parental attitudes and feelings about their ethnicity and race and from their unresolved issues about their own interracial union?

•• What will be my future? Reflections.

Who Am I?

A Memory

For my first day of elementary school, my mother woke me up early, because we had a 2-mile walk ahead of us. She accompanied me so I could learn the route. She was sending me to a school outside my neighborhood so I could be with children of affluent means. I was the last person to enter the classroom. My mother led me to the teacher and then left the room. I immediately noticed how different from me everyone looked. I was the only person in the room with dark brown-black hair, with braided hair, and with olive- colored skin. The teacher took me to my desk. Once I was seated at my desk, the teacher asked all of us to tell our classmates our first names. When my turn came, I didn’t hesitate to say, “MaryAnna.” Later that morning, while we were all working alone on a worksheet, she called me up to her desk. What could she want? I wondered. “MaryAnna, I want to write out for you your last name.” She wrote, “DOMOKOS.” I looked at this name and questioned whether this was the right name, for Domokos was my grandparents’ last name and the one my mother used. Even as a 6-year-old child, I had an uneasy feeling something was not right. Whenever I recall this event, I realize my discomfort was, once again, my repeated awareness that the identity of my father was being con- cealed. My classmates could all acknowledge their fathers; I could not.

I have a vivid memory of an event in second grade. I often walked home with several girls in my class. One day one of the girls began to taunt me by chanting, “Ching Chong China Man.” She then pull my long dark brown braids until it hurt. After the event I felt rejected and ugly. I didn’t under- stand why I had been singled out for ridicule, but I sensed that “Ching Chong China Man” had something to do with the girl’s actions. I decided to tell my mother about the girl’s spiteful behavior and ask her if I really was Chi- nese. Emphatically she said, “No, you’re not Chinese. You’re Hungarian and your grandparents are from Transylvania— everyone there has high cheek- bones and straight black hair—that’s common.” My mother took pride in her

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knowledge of Transylvanian history, so I believed her. Later, I discovered that some Transylvanian people have straight, coarse, black hair, and Asian facial features, while others have Austro- Germanic characteristics (Makkai, Mócsy, & Szász, 2001).

The Process: Integrating Racial Identities That Might Be Socially Conflictual

Young children begin to compare themselves to a reference group, which serves as a standard to measure their behaviors and attitudes. They are seeking a spe- cific reference group to help them identify social norms that guide and orient their general approach to social interactions. This task has not fully evolved in young children. However, reference- group orientation becomes more relevant as children develop their personal identities, which include constructs such self- esteem, self-worth, and interpersonal competence (Cross, 1987). At this developmental stage (ages 3–12), children tend to have a sense of self, which is somewhat independent of their racial and ethnic background, and racial cat- egorization. Yet any child can be fully aware of the concepts of race and eth- nicity, as children’s ethnic socialization is a function of both their immediate environment and their larger social context (Phinney & Ong, 2007; Phinney & Rotherham, 1987; Ponterotto & Sabnani, 1989; Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2008; Sellers & Shelton, 2003).

Where Do I Fit In? What Group Do I Belong To?

A Memory

Throughout elementary school knew I was different from my classmates. What was clearly visible to me was that I did not look like them. But more painful to me was that they had two parents and lived in what I thought were mansions where Japanese workers attended the beautiful gardens. I found no one who resembled me or who could even understand how I could live in a one-room apartment with a single mother. In junior high, which was racially and economically diverse, I still wondered where I belonged: not with the kids from my elementary school, not with the Black students, nor with the domi- nant Asian group of Japanese students.

One memory of an event occurring in junior high school has remained with me as a searing open wound. This one memory is surrounded by my recall of many joyful, pleasant events as a member of the girls’ junior high school basketball team. More than half of the team’s players were Black, so I felt privileged to be chosen to be on the team as one of a few “non-Black” girls. At the time I played on the team, players were either forwards or guards who played on half a court. I was a guard and admired the quickness of sev- eral of my fellow Black guards. But I liked the friendliness of the all-Black forwards and would hang around with them after a game. However, after an

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intermural championship game, the forwards had left the locker room early to have their pictures taken, and I was left with remaining players, the Black guards. I found myself feeling very tense, uncomfortable, and wanting to leave as soon as I could. I noticed that I was not understanding their speech or their slang, that their voices were loud as if shouting while laughing. I wondered if they were laughing at me. Next thing I knew, one of the girls yanked at the belt stitched to the body of my gym suit and pulled it off. I just saw a blur of Black faces all laughing at me. I stood very still and said nothing. They laughed some more and said some things, which I don’t remember, and then left the locker room. I was paralyzed and felt hurt and angry. At that moment I detested them and thought, “Didn’t they realize I was one of them, one of the guards? Didn’t we always get along on the court?” The next time the team came together, I felt I was truly an outsider— not one of them, not one of the Black girls. I avoided being alone with any of the guards, and even though I was still friendly with the forwards, I was cautious and distant with them. I was not one of them: I was not Black; I was not comfortable behaving with their mannerisms; I did not know their slang; and I couldn’t distinguish their playful teasing from harsh ridicule.

The Process: Resolving Feelings of Being Socially Marginalized

As children develop into adolescents, their racial identification emerges from their environment, which highly affects the decisions they make in defining their own racial identity. Their environment can influence them to accept and feel close to one race or another. In the case of biracial individuals, numer- ous factors push them toward adopting the identity of a particular racial or ethnic group. At this point in development, discernment of the differences between their own physical features and personal traits and other people is highlighted by the exposure and interactions with people of different races and ethnicities. An individual might begin asking, “Am I alike or different from that other person? And if I’m different, how am I different?” In regard to race, similarities and differences are determined by how the person defines race and constructs racial categories, a process known as racial category con- struction (Shih & Sanchez, 2009). Also important is to determine where other people belong; in other words, to know how other people are being classified so that you can know how you are being characterized. This process of com- paring and contrasting is called racial identification (Shih & Sanchez, 2009). To accept classifications and categories as immutable would leave any biracial or multiracial person in a marginalized position.

Who Is in Charge of My Racial Identity?

A Memory

During childhood and adolescence my mother had the keys to my identity. Only she could reveal to me who my father was. By using her maiden name as

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my legal surname, she could perpetuate the myth that I was solely Hungarian, not a biracial Chinese Hungarian person.

The night I left for college, at age seventeen, my mother, at a celebration dinner, said, without any segue from the ongoing conversation, that she had something she wanted to tell me. “I thought this would be a good time to tell you your father was Chinese.” She delivered this message without any visible emotion. I was stunned by her announcement and skeptical about the truth of her statement.

After this presumed celebration, my mother took me to the airport to board a plane to attend a school nearly 3,000 miles from where we lived. On the journey I could not stop thinking about how to tell my closest friends that I was half Chinese, a biracial person. I wondered how I should introduce myself to the new people I would be meeting. Should I immediately tell them I was biracial, or should I let them wonder what was different about me? I felt pow- erless. My mother’s words had changed my sense of myself, my racial identity.

The Process: Individuating from Parental Attitudes

Once my mother announced to me that my father was Chinese, I didn’t know what would help me to understand, to accept, to integrate my altered sense of myself. I questioned whether any of her words were accurate. Was my mother telling me the truth? In the last several decades I wanted to know more than family names. I needed to understand the consequences and implications of the historical and societal context at the time my parents met and at the time of my birth.

We were all participants in a social drama that reflected the societal atti- tudes of the time. I was caught, as part of her, “in a racist discourse con- structed around a ‘boundary dispute’ ” (Bhabha, 1991). If she was unaware of the sociopolitical factors affecting the relationships between Chinese and Caucasians, then certainly I was. When she experienced the disorder, confu- sion, and pain that her alleged marriage and my illegitimate birth brought, I did also. Even as a child I sensed that perceptions about my own identity were echoing my mother’s attitudes and experiences. Only in my adult life could I understand how the historical context of California during World War II had been a drama playing out in a social structure that evoked feelings of bewil- derment and then of despair within both myself and my mother.

The predominant view among social scientists at the end of the 20th cen- tury and into the early 21st is that racial categories are socially constructed and are not fixed and immutable categories (Goodman, 2000; Shields et al., 2005; Shih & Sanchez, 2009; Spickard, 1992). Racial identification too has been operationalized by using social criteria. However, social criteria have been seen as sanctioning political, social, and historical applications of nar- rowly focused interpretations of reality, and thus as an inaccurate way of for- mulating racial identity (Hall, 1992). In 1993 Maria P. P. Root wrote out a Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage, which was an explicit declaration that a biracial or multiracial person had the right to proclaim his or her racial

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identity without having to select from a set of contrived categories (Root, 1996).

Even though my personal experiences had been supported by scholarship, I was left with a troubling feeling of powerlessness, and a gnawing sense that I must take charge of defining my racial definition and identity. I now had the choice of telling others I was biracial: half Hungarian Transylvanian and half Chinese. I have never said I am only Chinese or only Hungarian Tran- sylvanian; I do not want to ignore and let go of an important half of myself. The stance I’ve worked to attain is where “both/and” was the norm and not “either/or.” I hoped that soon I can now say that I can be both Chinese and Hungarian Transylvanian.

What Will Be My Future?

A Memory

In Hawaii in 1990, at the location of the East–West Center, to my surprise, I experienced the feeling of being an “insider.” This emotional awareness was unlike my usual assumption of being an “outsider.” A significant number of the Hawaiian population was biracial and continues to be so. (In 2015 Hawaii was home to the nation’s largest share of multiracial Americans [Krogstad, 2015]. Nearly one in four residents, 24%, of the Hawaiian population is multiracial.) When I first arrived in Hawaii, I found that I “fit in.” Hawaii gave me the opportunity to experience my own identity in a way I never had before. Whenever I was in any public place near the Center, such as a grocery store, restaurant, or just walking down the street, I saw other hapa haoles, the Hawaiian term designating someone of Asian or Pacific Island origin mixed with European heritage (Root, 1996). One afternoon at the library I noticed a young man with blond hair and green eyes with epicanthic folds, a dominant characteristic of Asian eyes. I found myself staring at him. He then said with a slight laugh, “See, I look just like you.” As I left the library, I reflected about his remark and concluded that in Hawaii both he and I were legitimate mem- bers of a biracial community often seen as marginal in other states within the United States.

A Personal Reflection

I have found that the journey toward identity is not linear and predictable. Rather, events occur that I never could have anticipated, and those events may move me toward a deeper understanding of myself. I have found that reaching any semblance of a racially integrated self has required diligence and perseverance in addressing the conflicts occurring between my psyche and the sociopolitical environment surrounding me.

Recently I was scanning the Web and found the term “identity resolu- tion” in technology blogs. To my surprise, I found the discussions about this term “identity resolution” relevant to my own definition of biracial identity.

Moving toward Multiracial Legitimacy 185

From these different blogs, identity resolution is defined as a way of matching the different IDs stored by both online and offline channels, systems, and data sources so they can be all tied back to the same person. The process of iden- tity resolution requires a database that determines whether a single identity is the same when being described differently. The goal of resolution is to detect duplicate identity records that refer to the same individual in the real world (Acxiom, 2017; Liliendahl, 2011; Techopedia, 2017). But, unlike technology, biracial identity cannot be extracted from an algorithm, which searches for ways to find a common denominator among us all. My plan is to expand the number of possible options for defining us, which includes our perspectives of ourselves. As biracial people, we have “rights” to contribute to our self- definition.

LESSONS FROM PERSONAL STORIES: MOVING TOWARD MULTIRACIAL LEGITIMACY

I have come to believe that, through the challenges of a rapidly shifting soci- etal landscape, my personal narrative can be an example of a journey to biracial or multiracial identity. What I discovered is that this is a personal journey, primarily mine alone. I’ve had to develop a biracial identity by grap- pling with multiple social expectations and perceptions. This task was not simple; it demanded awareness and understanding of society’s overarching white- dominated worldview and its influence in my life. I was required to interact with a racist society, either by my cooperation, my complicity, or my resistance to it (Chang, 2016). From my birth, my caretakers became the inter- preters of the society and culture surrounding me. They took on the task and responsibility for providing explanations and giving meaning to my experi- ences of my environment.

My personal stories are examples of how my primary caretaker, my mother, and my early social experiences at school came to shape my self- perceptions. The template I created came from asking difficult questions about myself and reflecting about the composite vision of all those events, people, and institutions in my life. Even as a child, I realized my mother’s lack of awareness about her own racial environment and her own racism added to the struggles I had in defining who I was. What is clear to me is how impor- tant the attitudes and behaviors of those interacting with me were in shaping my racial identity.

A CARETAKER’S GUIDE FOR MOVING BIRACIAL AND MULTIRACIAL CHILDREN TOWARD LEGITIMACY

At every point in the journey of racial identity development of multiracial chil- dren and adolescents, their primary caretakers contribute to the child’s racial identity and, in addition, have a responsibility to acknowledge the enormous

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influence they have on it. The following guidelines are based on Chang’s (2016) microinterventions that caretakers can use at each life stage to foster the child’s racial identity development.

Be Concerned

Chang (2016) suggests that caretakers elevate their concern about experi- ences of biracial/multiracial children in their care. This means that caretakers would willingly listen, understand, and accept descriptions of the biracial/ multiracial child’s reality.

I knew my mother was concerned about how I fit into the white world. I also knew that she was as concerned about her own ability to meet the expec- tations of her social environment. Her own fears of social isolation influ- enced her responses to my stories of being treated like an outsider. She often was more agitated by stories of some unfair treatment of me than I was. Her response was to tell me she would meet with my teacher in order to inform her I was being mistreated. I was embarrassed to think of my mother confront- ing a teacher in order to express concerns about me. Instead of talking with teachers, I wanted her to talk with me about the fears and uncertainty of who I was. For my mother to fully address this question, she would have had to examine her own marginalization and to acknowledge her own fears and concerns about herself.

Be Aware

Chang (2016) looks to caregivers of multicultural children to avail them- selves of information affecting racial identity. She points out how informed and aware caretakers need to be knowledgeable about the historical, societal, and cultural components affecting racial identity. She expresses doubt about whether we, as caretakers of multicultural children, sufficiently know about the multiracial experience and the experiences of all persons of color.

My mother was unaware of the historical, societal, and cultural contexts of her life. She created her own contexts that were constructed from the immi- grant stories of my grandparents. The world she created did not include the realities of racism in the United States. I experienced her world as one that was not mine; Transylvania, part of Hungary prior to World War I, was her world. This was the world my grandparents knew before they immigrated to the United States. My world was California during World War II, a world fraught with prejudice, racism, and exclusion of Asians.

Be Intentional

To be intentional is contrary to being silent. Silence masks unpleasant realities and attempts to eliminate painful experiences, thoughts, and attitudes. In con- trast, intentionality is a deliberate act of acknowledging and confronting what

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exists. An intentional caretaker of multiracial children deliberately teaches skills that help them to move through the world. “We must give our children the language and concepts to speak about experiences and name offenses” (Chang, 2016, p. 200).

Because my mother had concealed my father’s identity from me, she had intentionally erased the existence and credibility of a multicultural experience for me and for herself. She had concluded that she could create my identity by denying my Chinese birthright and highlighting my Hungarian Transylvanian heritage. Her approach to my identity development was to create an idealized identity for me, a white identity. Where do I fit in? What is my social role? were questions that I could never answer honestly because I was not aware of all the components of my identity. Who was in charge of the formation of my identity throughout my life? This question was one that I thought in my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood was easy to answer. I would easily have said my mother, who was the gatekeeper of truths. But my answer evolved as I was confronted with life events. With each new situation, such as marrying a white man, having mixed-race daughters, working in dominant- culture institutions, living in white- dominated neighborhoods, I needed to find explanations about the historical– social– political– cultural factors that affected society’s behaviors and attitudes. I needed to know more about the controlling and dominant attributes of society; I needed to acknowledge how these factors created a context from which my identity formed. As I continue to track social and historical changes in global societies, I am ever more aware of those influences “in charge” of shaping my identity. The impact of racism, oppression, colonialism, and power not only affected my own identity devel- opment but also places its mark on every socialized human.

A WORLD IN TRANSITION: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR MULTIRACIAL LEGITIMACY

As Americans become more racially diverse and social taboos against inter- racial marriage fade, a new Pew Research Center survey (Parker et al., 2015, pp. 1–9) finds that majorities of multiracial adults are proud of their mixed- race background (60%) and feel their racial heritage has made them more open to other cultures (59%). At the same time, a majority (55%) say they have been subjected to racial slurs or jokes, and about one in four (24%) have felt annoyed because people have made assumptions about their racial back- ground. Still, few see their multiracial background as a liability. In fact, only 4% say that having a mixed racial background has been a disadvantage in their lives. About one in five (19%) say it has been an advantage, and 76% say it has made no difference.

Although the implicit objectivity of surveys and statistics gives credibil- ity to the rapid growth of the U.S. multiracial population, I find the per- sonal narratives of multiracial individuals a poignant addition to impartial reports. One example of such a testimonial appeared in The New York Times.

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Moises Velasquez- Manoff, identifying himself as a multiracial person, shared an op-ed reflection in The New York Times about people with mixed blood. He speaks to the future: “I can attest that being mixed makes it harder to fall back on the tribal identities that have guided so much of human history, and are now resurgent. Your background pushes you to construct a worldview that transcends the tribal” (Velasquez- Manoff, 2017).

As a marginalized person, not a person of the dominant culture nor a person totally alienated by society, I am aware of the difficulties I have had in shaping and reshaping my social identities. Perhaps I can now integrate words I remember reading over two decades ago: that in coming to our own self- understanding and self- acceptance, we can enable society’s understanding of intra- and intergroup relations, identity, and resilience (Root, 1992).

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NAMING THE UN‑NAMED

With issues of diversity being front and center in our country, the process of creating a deeper understanding and deconstructing the relationships between different groups is necessary. Clinicians and trainers of all social locations are affected by their race, gender, class, religion, and immigration status and will continue to have increasingly more contact with diverse groups of people in their work. Furthermore, deconstructing within-group relationships is equally imperative to prevent the development of the “myth of sameness.” The myth

C H A P T E R 1 3

On Being a Black Dominican

Ana M. Hernandez

I am Hispanic . . . from Spain. I speak Spanish . . . from Spain. The Spaniards who came to rape the Indigenous and African people . . . To create . . . Me. I am Hispanic . . . from Spain? Where did my African roots go? When I see myself in the mirror, I see Africa, I see Changó The Spirit of the sea, La Negra. But I am Hispanic, they say, and I speak Spanish from Spain. Where did my Africanness go? I wear it on my skin. I see it in my hips. I feel it in my hair. But . . . when I am Hispanic, I am from Spain and I speak Spanish No? So, where does my Africanness go? You see, you want to keep me invisible To forget what you did to my African people So you call me Hispanic, but I’m not from Spain. I may speak your language. But I am here to remind you that my Africa is still here.

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of sameness posits that members of a particular cultural group are all the same (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995). Latinos are one of the largest of such diverse groups currently in the United States, and the term was constructed by com- mittee members at the United States Census to describe a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse group of people from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. In order to better understand some of the major concepts related to these groups of people and their cultures, it is important to state that the term “Latino” does not exist in the reality of those on whom this label is being forced in the United States. What does exist are Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Venezuelans, Mixtecs, Garifunas, Cholos, Chica- nos, Peruvians, and so forth. Family therapy models and framework should adapt to accurately provide informed interventions for these groups. So the goal of this chapter is to redirect the narrative of “the Latino” that aims to erase these realities and to tease out the conflux of race and power within the various narratives of identity related to these groups.

THE CREATION OF A LATINO IDENTITY

Growing up in a Dominican household as a dark- skinned female has had an immense influence in my insecure attachment to the term “Latino.” First, I knew from an early age that I was a Dominican. My mother migrated legally to the United States when she was 25, while pregnant with me, and relied heavily on my grandmother for support to raise me as she transitioned from life in the Dominican Republic to life in New York City. Growing up watch- ing telenovelas in Univision and Telemundo, spending time with Mexican and Guatemalteco families that my mother connected with frequently, I never saw us represented in U.S. media, music, or organizations. Similarly, family ther- apy textbooks, workshops, and frameworks tend to exclude marginal groups within what is considered the “Latino” community. When it came to what a Latino looked like, it was always a light- skinned or White person from Mex- ico, Colombia, or Argentina. This was my early education into White privilege in the context of “Latino” culture that is rarely addressed in the field of family therapy. To better understand the installation of White privilege, it is neces- sary to look at the formation of the Americas. The United States’ tendency to ignore that there are other Americans is a major factor in the cultural distor- tions and visibility of those from the other regions of the Americas.

The process of colonization started in 1492, when the Spanish conquista- dors abused the rights of the native indigenous Tainos, Caribe, and Mandingo tribes on the island of Hispaniola, considering them savages and barbaric and esteeming themselves as “natural, civilized, and divine” (Weismantel & Eisenman, 1998, p. 122). The concept of Spanish and “White” superiority continued with the development of enslaving Africans in the early 1500s; by that time a large portion of the indigenous tribes had perished due to Spanish

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slaughter and disease. The installation of the Atlantic slave trade enabled European nations such as Spain, Portugal, and France to enslave millions of African people. Most Africans were brought from West Central Africa, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast. The institution of slavery lasted for two centuries, with Haiti being the first nation to abolish it and Brazil being the last. For several centuries, indigenous, African, and Spanish peoples shared land. The development of the caste system was a way to monitor the interactions, treat- ment, and privileges of the people, to ensure the purity of White blood, and to keep the White race at the top and the Black race marginalized at the bottom. This history has significant implications for the ways individuals from these countries identify. As the field of family therapy continues to embrace cul- tural diversity, this context will become critical. Family therapists have been trained to think in terms of multisystemic thinking. However, when it comes to “Latino” communities, few leaders in the field acknowledge the historical contexts from which non-White groups come and tend to focus primarily on their adjustment, acculturation, or experiences in the United States.

LATINO IS NOT A RACE

It has always intrigued me how inaccurate language and false narratives are used to describe contextual factors affecting Latinos by people outside the community and from Latinos themselves. It is important to clarify these incongruent ways to represent us if we have any hope of having a deeper understanding of our complexities. First, Latino itself is not a race, but rather an ethnicity that denotes a group of people from a specific geographical loca- tion who have a diversity of languages (Spanish, French, Mixtec, etc.). The term “Latino” was first coined by the United States Census in 1970 and is a term that is mostly associated with the mixture of different races that resulted from the European conquest of the indigenous and African peoples during European colonization spearheaded by Spain, France, and Portugal.

However, this term is very vague and misleading, because it is not able to provide adequate information about the contextual factors that influence individuals. For example, aside from giving away someone’s gender by identi- fying as a Latina versus a Latino, the term alone does not say anything about which country one is from, what language(s) one speaks, what races one is part of, what a person’s skin tone is, what religion one practices, and whether someone is a first- generation or fifth- generation immigrant or born in the United States.

My black skin positions me uniquely to see the ways the term “Latino” is an insufficient label to describe people in Central and South America, since in the United States, the dominant narrative about what classifies as Latino is a light- skinned, Spanish- speaking individual. Furthermore, when I go to my home country, the Dominican Republic, this term is never used. It is critical

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for clinicians, supervisors, and trainers to challenge themselves and others around them to further explore what individuals might mean when they refer to themselves as Latino. For example, when a clinician is assigned a Latino family, it is imperative to be courageous in asking more questions about whether the family members are Spanish- speaking, first or second generation in the United States, and which countries of origin they are from. It is criti- cal that they explore how the individuals see themselves racially, if at all, and how this then affects their presenting problems. For example, many brown- and black- skinned “Latinos” are affected by police brutality, and though the media do not sufficiently cover it, these families are deeply affected by the anger, anxiety, frustration, and disillusionment that many individuals in the African American community experience. It is our duty as clinicians to ask the questions and address the impact of race on this group of people.

THE POWER OF WHITENESS

The very purpose of White privilege is to protect those that are classified as White, whether they self- identify as such or not. In order to protect White- ness and White privilege, a method had to be created to control and monitor the varying degrees of inevitable racial mixing postslavery, and thus the caste system was created. The caste system labeled the mixing of Spanish and Afri- can as mulatto, the African and indigenous as Ladinos, and indigenous and Spanish as mestizos. Other racial classifications to describe racial mixtures included Castizos (one mestizo parent and one Spanish parent), Cholos (one indigenous parent and one mestizo parent), Pardo (mixed African, Spanish, and indigenous), Zambo (mixed indigenous and African; Cruz- Janzen, 2001). Although the caste system is outdated, its impact is rampant. Many individu- als in Mexico continue to identify as Cholos, due to the prominent influence of their indigenous roots. Many individuals in the Dominican Republic iden- tify as mulatto in order to uplift both their Black and White heritage, given the lack of sufficient language to describe their experience. The naming of these racial categories is a way to highlight White people’s compulsive and irresistible preoccupation with divide and conquer by creating fictional lines of separation between human beings who are not pure White.

Unlike the U.S. one-drop rule, by which one drop of African blood makes one Black in the U.S. societal context, the Spanish introduced the concept of Blanquiamiento, or “Whitening.” This process denotes that one drop of White or Spanish blood makes one White or Spanish. The caste system cre- ated in colonized America shows the Spanish at the top and the African at the bottom. Mixes of both or other races were placed hierarchically in the middle, with privileges, advantages, and desirability afforded to those who are closer phenotypically to Spanish/White, whereas those who were phenotypically closer to Black were denigrated and devalued. When a Puerto Rican mother

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exalts her daughter’s decision to marry a White man or a light- skinned Puerto Rican, she is practicing and reinforcing the Whitening socialization, as her grandchildren will have a higher probability of being phenotypically White and thus will be protected by White privilege. Presently, individuals who iden- tify as “Spanish” and exalt their White features and/or Spanish language are trying to survive within a system of White supremacy. Postcolonization, we continue to see the effects of racism, the caste system, and the implementation of White supremacy within our respective countries of origins. It is impor- tant to understand our origins and the origins of specific labels if we seek to deepen our relationships to each other.

LATIN AMERICA IS NOT A COUNTRY

One of the challenges that contributes to the myth of sameness within and outside Latino cultures is the continual reference to “Latin America.” Latin America is not a country, but rather a geographical location composed of more than 20 nations, each with its own unique racial, national, and cul- tural history. The area that is commonly known as “Latin America” is actu- ally Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Most people in the United States tend to think of Central America as somewhere near Kansas, when in fact it includes countries such as Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicaragua. In the United States, we tend to see only ourselves as “American,” instead of recognizing that we are one of three countries in North America (with Mexico and Canada), not to mention all of the Caribbean, Central, and South America, all of whose peoples are also American. With the United States’ cre- ation of the “Latino” category in 1970, all these diverse groups are clumped together, and their rich history and diversity is erased. This chapter is a call to action to name and claim the country where you are from with pride and not let this general term “Latino” erase your ancestry, your history, and your country of origin.

THE DENIAL OF BLACKNESS

Black Shame

Latinos may have indigenous ancestry, African ancestry, and/or Spanish ances- try, as well as a mixture of any two or all (Hernandez & Curiel, 2012), and it is essential for us as clinicians to affirm the complex identities of all mem- bers of our society. To do this, we must counter the history of colonization and White supremacy and the implicit messages about who is worthy within the Latino community. During colonization, Black people were legally denied access to education, jobs, and medical care. In addition to marrying lighter to ensure the survival of one’s children, another way that Blacks survived was

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denying their Blackness. It is very common for individuals who phenotypically look Black to not identify as such, no matter their country of origin. They prefer to identify solely as their country of origin, such as Dominican or El Salvadorian. In the United States, ways of denying one’s Blackness include identifying as Spanish, Latino, or Hispanic. Therefore, many Latinos who are Black based on phenotype and skin color deny their blackness, as it has never been a positive, prideful racial identity. The term “Black Latino” is a term that denotes individuals in the Latino culture who are of African descent. In the United States, where the effort is to make the terms Latino and Black mutu- ally exclusive, many people struggle with how to racially classify this group of people.

In the Dominican Republic, as in most countries, there is a narrative of racial inclusion and national identity that supersedes any narrative of racial differences. As a result, I did not always know I was Black. I simply saw myself as a Dominican American because my parents were from the Domini- can Republic, despite my coarse hair and dark skin. My mother told me that she married my father, a mulatto, in order to “whiten” the race of her chil- dren. When I went to a predominantly White college, my mother was excited and hoped that I would marry a White man because she did not want to have dark grandchildren. This was a sign of her own internalized Black shame, a residual of slavery and colonization survival tactics by White colonizers, and her message had a deep impact on my personal view of the devaluation of Blackness and my subsequent valuing of Whiteness. Deconstructing White- ness and its psychological impact on Central Americans, South Americans, and the Caribbean is thus necessary for us to truly reach a postracial society.

White Shame

A White Latino and a White American are different ethnically, nationally, and maybe linguistically, but are the same racially. It is often difficult to distin- guish a White Argentinian from a White person from the United States unless they have a specific last name, speak English with an accent, or self- identify as Latino. When someone identifies as a “White Latino,” they are owning their Whiteness as their racial identity; however, their “Latino” part needs further exploration and deconstruction. For example, asking if they are White and Latino, which country of origin they are identifying with, is a great starting point to developing a deeper understanding of who they are and how they see the world. White people from Central America, South America, and the Caribbean have difficulty identifying as White because it is synonymous with White Americans (United States), and they don’t feel that they benefit from White privilege in the same way that White people in the United States do. Individuals who are of mixed race and who choose to identify predominantly with their White heritage are disavowing their other race(s), and it is impor- tant to offer them an understanding about the cultural and societal factors that contribute to their disowning parts of who they are.

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THE PATH TO RACIAL IDENTITY

It is not until arrival to the United States that Black and Brown people from Central and South America and the Caribbean experience the blunt racial dis- crimination, marginalization, stigma, systematic oppression, and individual acts of discrimination without the disguise of racial unity. For example, in the United States, African Americans know they are Black and may understand to varying degrees that their social circumstances can be explained by racial discrimination and marginalization, whereas in the Dominican Republic, for example, the lack of accessible resources and education are typically explained by social class status rather than by race. Unfortunately, the lack of a racial lens to understand your experiences is a barrier to identifying racial inequity and advocating for oneself. Both fortunately and unfortunately, in the United States, it is difficult to remain oblivious to your race, although many people continue to deny it.

I draw an example from my family of origin to highlight how the inter- sections of race affect Black people from South and Central America the same way as Black American men in the United States. When my brother was racially profiled by a White police officer and a White “Latino” police officer late one night on his bike ride home from working at a restaurant, he was pre- sumed to be carrying illegal drugs and was brutally beaten on the street near our house in the Bronx. He was targeted because he was Black, not because he was Dominican or spoke Spanish. Because of this experience, I’ve always maintained that it is never beneficial for Dominicans, or any other Latino, to deny their Blackness, as this does not protect them from the harsh realities of being Black in this world.

Individual experiences with oppression due to skin color can leave those who have been affected with an array of invisible wounds that generally go unacknowledged by others and often even by the person him- or herself (Hardy & Bobes, 2016). Even those who look phenotypically Black and iden- tify as such often prefer to identify by their nationality and will accept these definitions rather than embracing a both/and approach. Embracing a both/ and approach enables us to hold seemingly contradictory positions. In the example with my brother, if he were to enter a therapy room and acknowledge that as a Dominican man he was unjustifiably targeted, it would be essential for the therapist to also acknowledge how his Blackness played a role in his marginalization.

AN AUTHENTIC IDENTITY

As we move toward a more multicultural society, it is important not only to recognize the diverse cultures, races, and ethnicities of the communities in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean but also to identify and decenter White culture’s influence and continued oppression in these

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communities. As a Black Dominican, I am acutely aware of Dominicans’ obsession with Whiteness by the ways that White features and phenotype are glorified and emulated in my culture. My first experiences with the ways that Whiteness is valued were in Dominican beauty salons. The hairdressers often had pictures of White women with long silky hair, blue eyes, and thin lips. The expectation was that all women wanted to look like these models, even though the majority of the women had pelo malo—coarse hair, with kinky curls. The only solution was to chemically treat the hair to straighten it. Furthermore, it is not uncommon to hear mothers rejoice when their daugh- ter’s hair is straight or their eyes light because they would be considered pret- tier. Growing up hearing these messages as a Black woman contributed to my internalized self-hate around my skin tone and hair type that had fueled some of my past depression and anger that I am still unpacking today. For example, in my racial identity journey, starting in high school, I did not know why, when I would identify as Dominican, people would often ask “Can you prove it by saying something in Spanish?” I realized over time that this was a testa- ment to my Blackness; that on some level most people did not see that I was Dominican, and I had to prove that I was from the Dominican Republic by speaking in Spanish to them. This reiterates to me the notion that to be Latino and to speak Spanish, the language of the oppression, is a White legacy, and my Blackness defied this. The question implies that my black skin could not coexist with a language whose origin lies in Europe or with any connection to the White Eurocentric identity that is often prescribed to anyone from a Spanish- speaking country.

When society divides Black and Latino as distinct racial categories, it also creates a psychological split internally for those Black Latinos, as they do not know where they fit in and often struggle with having to choose one identity over the other. Often, issues that pertain to Blacks are categorized under the ethnic label of African American. In such cases, the Latino is excluded. On the other hand, when it comes to issues of being Latino, the Black Latino is also excluded because Latinos are represented in the media and in society as mixed or White race. Rarely is the Black race represented when a discussion about Latinos arises in many places across the United States. This is a false division. The creation of the term “Latino” is a sophisticated alternative to the caste system because it separates groups from Central and South America who are Black, White, and indigenous from White, Black, and Native Americans who all who come to us for therapeutic interventions. As therapists we need to decenter Whiteness in our therapy rooms so that we begin to uncover hidden wounds of racial and ethnic pain that results from a history of oppression and colonization, and, in doing so, we can be effective at healing these wounds.

In order for this to happen in the therapy room, there needs to be some work around the “self,” in which there is self- interrogation and development of self- awareness that entails exploring one’s own racial identity and the parts that are disavowed (Hardy & Bobes, 2016). We need to bring our race into these spaces in their authentic forms. Yet we are unable to do so if we continue

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to own the term “Latino” as a racial category and disavow our countries of origins, our races, and our ethnicities. When I began my racial identity jour- ney using books and movies that provided me accurate information about the history of my country, I did not know that I would find myself in an academic family therapy setting continuing to uncover the psychological significance that this history has in the lived experiences of the families we serve. As I became more attuned to my true “self,” I started to notice the areas in the family therapy field that lacked sufficient information, frameworks, and inter- ventions on how to best facilitate an open, honest, and courageous conversa- tion about the impact of race for Central, South, and Caribbean Americans living in the United States. I learned to own all of my identities as a Spanish- speaking Black Dominican first- generation woman.

The very existence of Blacks who eloquently and fluently speak Spanish is a testament to the history of colonization, assimilation, and struggle to survive that many of my African ancestors had to endure during slavery and postcolonization, and up until the present. If the White colonizer had not restricted the use of my ancestors’ languages and forced them to use a foreign language, with pride I would speak the languages of my original cultures. It is for this reason that now, more than ever, we need to rethink how we use the label of “Latino” so that we do not continue to erase the racial and ethnic richness of our people.

REFERENCES

Cruz- Janzen, M. I. (2001). Latinegras: Desired women: Undesirable mothers, daugh- ters, sisters, and wives. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 22(3), 168–183.

Hardy, K. V., & Bobes, T. (2016). Core competencies for executing culturally sensitive supervision and training. In K. V. Hardy & T. Bobes (Eds.), Culturally sensi- tive supervision and training: Diverse perspectives and practical applications (pp. 11–16). New York: Routledge.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (1995). The cultural genogram: Key to training cul- turally competent family therapists. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21(3), 227–237.

Hernandez, A. M., & Curiel, Y. S. (2012). Entre nosotros: Exploring Latino diversity in family therapy literature. Contemporary Family Therapy, 34(4), 516–533.

Weismantel, M., & Eisenman, S. F. (1998). Race in the Andes: Global movements and popular ontologies. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 17(2), 121–142.

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Most African Americans tend to remain silent about race in the company of Whites. This chapter is intended primarily to open a window into the silence— what African Americans aren’t saying about race—when they pres- ent for therapy. My hope is that White therapists and therapists of color will do the self- interrogation and self- reflection necessary to at least be curious about African American clients’ silence about race, starting with their own unspoken inner dialogue about race. The following questions may be used as a guide:

•• Do you see race? Why? Why not? •• Do you pretend not to see race because you want to be seen as a good

person? •• Do you avoid race because of your own or the client’s emotions? •• Do you secretly believe race isn’t as much of a problem as African

Americans make it out to be? •• Do you believe African Americans have the same opportunities as

everyone else? •• Do you fear being seen as a racist? •• Do you find yourself having stereotypical (positive or negative) racial

thoughts? •• Do you challenge racial stereotypes (negative or positive)? •• Do you believe in the myth of White superiority and Black inferiority?

African Americans struggle against the “Black shadow” born of White supremacy. The Black shadow is the internalized myth of Black inferiority

C H A P T E R 1 4

Facing the Black Shadow Power from the Inside Out

Marlene F. Watson

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that was conceived and propagated by slaveowners to justify the enslavement of African people more than 400 years ago (Watson, 2013). Living in a racist context, African Americans learn, incorporate, and internalize the fundamen- tal messages of inferiority that are vital to the preservation and maintenance of racism. Internalizing racism, African Americans unconsciously anticipate rather than question Black inferiority.

For generations, slavery has been a taboo topic for many African Amer- icans. The reticence about discussing slavery and facing the Black shadow unwittingly have allowed racist messages to stand. Centuries of racist mes- sages have become expectations that are formative to the roles and relation- ships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and siblings. By ignoring or not making overt the lie of Black inferiority, African Americans become complicit in the myth of White superiority and Black inferiority.

African Americans have been systematically denied the positive accounts of our contributions to America and shamed into not honoring slavery because of the dominant culture’s edict: Slavery is in the past and should be forgot- ten. Not talking about slavery and the present- day psychological residuals of slavery is disempowering to African Americans. To know, understand, and embrace our history, including slavery and internalized Black inferiority, is an important way of developing power from the inside out.

Power exists where we believe it exists, and power can be used for good and bad. Power asks two age-old questions: Who’s in charge? and Who has value? Consequently, power usually contains a struggle, whether emotional, moral, spiritual, or physical. In the United States, the dominant discourse on power is characterized by prevailing beliefs in individualism, meritocracy, and capitalism. A competitive system of power is created that emphasizes two states: haves and have nots. Power as conceived by the dominant society con- tributes to a social hierarchy that advantages some while disadvantaging oth- ers. Most notably, advantage and disadvantage can be seen along the lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, and ability.

THE POWER OF THERAPY

African Americans have learned not to share our racial pain because of dis- missal and/or minimization. Therapists too have entrenched racial beliefs, atti- tudes, and values, but most are not trained to become conscious of deep- seated racial bias. Without engaging in sustained self- examination about how White- ness (White supremacy) or Blackness (Black inferiority) affects them, thera- pists are vulnerable to issues of power and powerlessness. The greatest power a therapist has to help is to know him- or herself, because the self is the instru- ment of the therapist (Aponte et al., 2009). Taught to be objective and neutral, many therapists have the illusion of total control over their feelings. Under the misconception of individual power over feelings (falsely believing you can keep personal feelings out of the therapeutic process without consciously and

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actively managing them) rather than power to use them (awareness and will- ingness to consciously and actively manage them; Krestan, 2000), therapists are likely to become victims of their biases, limiting their use of self and the ability to be in relationship with African American clients.

Race is one of those topics that requires vulnerability. The reasons that many therapists of all hues don’t ask about it say more about the person of the therapist’s issues than about a client’s presenting problems. The typical reason therapists give for not bringing up the issue of race in therapy is “I don’t bring it up if it’s not related to the presenting problem.” My question is, “How do we know if we don’t ask?” For example, my client David’s presenting problem was, he stated, “I’m a depressed person.” Years of being ashamed of being Black and race-based microaggressions on the job made him a depressed per- son.

Therapists must embrace their wounds to be more available to the work of therapy (Aponte & Kissil, 2014), especially if they are to help African Ameri- cans face the Black shadow. Therapists specifically should aim to empower marginalized clients to see themselves as capable, worthwhile human beings. By ignoring contexts of oppression (e.g., race, class, gender, sexual orienta- tion), therapists risk reinforcing clients’ sense of powerlessness and their own self- aggrandizement (Pinderhughes, 1989).

Facing the White shadow, the internalized myth of White superiority that tells White people they are good, beautiful, just, moral, knowledgeable, deserving, and rightful heads of the human table, not only requires acceptance of White privilege but unequivocal confession of wrongdoing. The havoc wreaked on the lives of people of color by White people is real. Whether Native American, African American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian or multiracial, the seeds of White supremacy have led to ongoing racial trauma, exacting a cost for not being White. As a first step in facing the White shadow, Whites must learn how to listen without becoming distracted by guilt, denial, or the need to be cared for, made comfortable, or seen as an individual, making it about their pain and/or wanting to be told what to do. All of the above distrac- tions are manifestations of the White shadow that says, “You’re first in line.”

The myth of White superiority and Black inferiority expresses a racial hierarchy wherein Whites are at the top and Blacks are at the bottom. Brown people (e.g., Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and Native Americans) are in the middle. Like middle children, Brown people sometimes become invisible, especially when they’ve been forced into isolation and abandoned, such as Native peo- ples, and may be left out of the dialogue on race. Of the Brown people, Asians are regarded as the model minority group and given the status of honorary White. Hence some Asians wear the mask of invisibility as protection. As one Asian student put it, “I like being invisible so I don’t have to get involved in the race conversation. I don’t want to upset anybody.” When asked to delve deeper into her feelings, she realized that the cloak of invisibility provided her safety. Secretly, she believed the myth of White superiority and Black inferi- ority. Thus it was as much, if not more, about her as about upsetting others.

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As educators and trainers of future family therapists, it’s incumbent upon us to encourage students to share what they’re thinking but not saying about race. Human characteristics of authenticity, honesty, forthrightness, toler- ance, understanding, vulnerability, and risk are my tricks of the trade. My students can count on me to say what I think about race and to listen to what they think about race without being reactive or judgmental. However, they also know that I will challenge them on their conscious and unconscious racial assumptions, biases, and misperceptions.

To help establish a trusting environment for students, I put race in a his- torical context. Race was socially fabricated to maintain White economic, political, and cultural power, as demonstrated by the event of slavery and the construction of Whiteness to assert a superior group. Race as a social con- struction is further demonstrated in how and when certain ethnic groups (e.g., Jews) became White and others (e.g., Mexicans) became non-White. History, like the family genogram, helps to put race into perspective and to assist each individual in understanding that he or she is a victim of the myth of White superiority and Black inferiority regardless of skin color and/or ethnicity. With awareness comes responsibility and choice. Family dysfunction may not have begun with you or your generation, but it’s up to you and your generation to pass or not pass it on to the next.

Many people like lists, so here’s a list of things you can keep in mind as you work with African American clients to face the Black shadow:

1. Come to terms with Whiteness. Don’t consciously or unconsciously assume that White is not about race. White is fully and wholly about the con- struction and design of race. Whiteness has a meaning and history. Embrace and get to know it.

2. Don’t be too literal about White privilege. Remember that White priv- ilege is not about one White person’s individual power and privilege. White privilege is about the unearned advantage that Whites as a collective system- atically enjoy.

3. Feel that you have a right and moral obligation to learn from and not practice the world’s racist traditions, whether in thought or deed. You can choose to move away from White supremacy by not remaining silent or oblivi- ous. Start with a racial family genogram. Trace beliefs that hint at or outright suggest that White is superior.

4. Understand that White supremacy lies beneath the surface of every social institution in America, if you have the eyes to see it. Start with watching movies. Write down three things you see in the movie that perpetuate White superiority and/or Black inferiority.

5. Be human. This is not an option. To be fully human, you need to con- nect your humanity to every other human. In order for you to survive, you need me to survive.

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6. Don’t think of facing the White shadow as a list of things you shouldn’t do. Think of it as positive things you should do to end the myth of White supe- riority and Black inferiority, things which contribute to and help the human community.

7. Cultivate knowledge, compassion, and acceptance. History is a great teacher. Arm yourself with the truth. Use that knowledge to develop compas- sion for all sides. Allow compassion to lead you to acceptance. Acceptance is where the journey to healing begins.

8. Use other White allies for support. Approach them as routes to White insight and experience. Get to know what “White silence” is really about. Don’t go to a person of color for education, make it a pilgrimage, contemplate Whiteness.

9. Be committed in facing the White shadow. Use your intuition and gut; trust and develop it. Develop a concrete practice or activity you engage in to be made more fully aware of internalized White superiority. It could be disclos- ing to your White allies— your inner support circle— when you find yourself thinking in racial stereotypes or feeling more deserving. Also, it might be paying attention to your language about Whites and/or people of color or consciously thinking of yourself as a White person every day.

10. Embrace your White shadow. Don’t be afraid of it. Make it a friend so you’ll know when you’re being visited by the White shadow. Listen to what it’s telling you. Externalize the voice of White supremacy. Separate yourself from embedded racist teachings that are often unconsciously internalized without conscious challenge. Understand that facing the White shadow is a step toward living a more open, joyful, and just life.

POWER FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Facing the Black shadow is work for the soul. Ultimately, African Americans have the courage of our conviction to empower us to action. Courageous, we not only know what is right but also the right thing to do. Promote new rules of communication with family and friends by challenging them to avoid using the n word. Acknowledge your Black shadow. Negative reactions to other Blacks, language used to describe Blacks, dichotomous thinking about Blacks and Whites, expectations of sameness for Blacks, and/or feelings of hope- lessness, powerlessness, shame, and rage, of not being smart enough, pretty enough, or worthwhile, are all opportunities for facing the Black shadow. De-color-code your thoughts and feelings. Recognize the myth of White supe- riority and Black inferiority. Start a family movie club. Select movies that are age- appropriate and have each person say three things they see in the movie that reinforce the myth of White superiority and Black inferiority. Commit to ending skin color privilege. Do a skin-color- focused family genogram. Talk

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about family beliefs and practices around skin color. Replace negative think- ing and use affirmations to counteract internalized Black inferiority. If you think you’re not as smart as Whites, repeat daily, “I study and grasp fast. My brain is capable.” Pledge to end the myth of Black inferiority. Remember to honor the slaves and survivors to ensure that the lessons of slavery are taught in perpetuity. Develop power from the inside out.

THE COMPLEXITY OF POWER

Power is multifaceted, and African Americans simultaneously can be power- ful and powerless. Positive racial socialization and identity can be a source of power despite society’s view of African Americans as inferior. Power can be negotiated personally to challenge the negative effects of White supremacy. Parents must impart positive racial messages and instill confidence in their children that they will challenge racism (Chávez & French, 2007).

Power is more complex than the up–down framework generally used to characterize its functioning in our society. Explicitly, power is an evolving, not a static, phenomenon. Also, one can be in a powerless social position yet retain the power of self- definition. Dignity, respect, courage, and moral fortitude are stepping stones, forces from which African Americans can resist the idea of Black inferiority. A persuasive example of this is Nelson Man- dela. From a lengthy and brutal imprisonment in apartheid South Africa, Mr. Mandela rose to become president, evidencing the authority within the man because of his belief in the power of a word— justice.

THE POWER OF WORDS

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.

—eMily Dickinson

Words have power, conveyed by ideas that can corrupt, enlighten, take you prisoner, or be your salvation. Ideas become encoded in our psyches, and from the inside out they work their power for better or worse. Ideas have the power to numb our thoughts and abilities, at their worst, and the power to facilitate our thoughts and abilities, at their best.

For instance, look at what power the n word holds. The n word transmits an idea of Blacks as less than human. The n word was manipulated in slavery to be a mental weapon of mass destruction because of this idea. It so capti- vated Whites that they proclaimed themselves masters, and once they used the n word to envelop themselves in power, they spun it around like spider silk, constructing a wall to keep Blacks on the outside and them on the inside. Out- side the wall, Blacks became inferior, while, inside the wall, Whites became

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superior. Whites as superior and Blacks as inferior took root in the American psyche. Once in the American psyche, the idea of White superiority and Black inferiority became a deeply entrenched hole from which African Americans have yet to fully escape.

The n word was invented by Whites in slavery to conjure up images of Blacks as ugly, lazy, violent, animal- like, and in need of control by the humans— Whites. Despite some African Americans’ claim that the n word is a term of endearment used by us to take away its power and the sting of dehumanization, the n word still has the power to obscure our abilities and constrain our possibilities. The n word, when used by African Americans, manages to erode our self-worth and destroy our self- identity without our linking it back to its original source— slavery. African Americans didn’t invent the n word. It was given to us by White America and said often enough so that we, like Whites, believe its not-so- subtle message of Black inferiority. Thus our use of the n word becomes a sword that we fall on.

Like magic, words expressing ideas have the power to foster or derail a child’s future and limit or enhance an adult’s life. No doubt, the powerful myth of White superiority and Black inferiority has scarred Blacks and privi- leged Whites. Just as words and ideas have the power to harm, they also have the power to heal. Perhaps it’s being human and flawed that makes us use cer- tain words and ideas to empower ourselves and disempower others. For this reason, a conscious and sustained effort is required for committing to words and actions that heal rather than damage.

The n word and the myth of Black inferiority have caused self- hatred in the minds of African American men, women and children. Understanding the intended negative power of racism and internalized racism is the begin- ning of wisdom and the realization of self- liberating power. Moving from destructive self-hate to constructive self-love is reclaiming the positive power of self- definition. Many African Americans become so influenced by the myth of Black inferiority that we begin to see, feel, and hear through the lens of Whiteness. Enthralled in Whiteness, we may find it difficult to hold on to the most basic form of power—self- respect. Because oppressive power concedes nothing without a demand, African Americans must learn to appreciate one another and collectively resist passing racist messages on to our families, gen- eration after generation.

THE POWER OF THE COLLECTIVE

There is power in the collective. White superiority and Black inferiority are social constructs, created in slavery by White power holders, in the name of the collective. As a group, Whites receive privileges based on the assigned social benefit of being White, and Blacks receive doubts (suspicions) based on the assigned social detriment of being Black. Advantage or disadvantage thus is at the collective level, systemically operating at the institutional, not

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individual, level. Nonetheless, it positively or negatively affects each individ- ual. Racial advantage or disadvantage has nothing to do with an individual’s personal attributes. It’s not about individual merit, hard work, or who’s more deserving. It’s about White racial favoritism (Kendall, 2006).

African Americans try to escape the penalty for being Black by separat- ing ourselves along skin color and class lines. Although Black disadvantage may vary according to skin color, class, and/or gender, White remains the preferred social group. Understanding and knowing well that the system of White superiority and Black inferiority isn’t about individuals can unite Afri- can Americans and promote our working together to end the myth of Black inferiority, rather than erroneously promoting it in artificial and superficial skin color and class divisions.

All human beings want to feel accepted and valued. Fear of Black infe- riority makes African Americans use words (e.g., light skin vs. dark skin) as power to separate us and distinguish ourselves. Using the power of words to negate other African Americans, we fall prey to White supremacy. Confront- ing the myth of Black inferiority, we can tap into our collective power and use our strength to really heal, particularly since African American divisions have negative social and psychological consequences that contribute to passivity and internal strife.

As documented by the civil rights movement, activism is more likely as a collective. Emboldened by the collective, Blacks disrupted White power by standing up to dogs, fire hoses, police beatings, and jail to demand equal rights. Fear of White brutality receded to the background in the collective, igniting a sense of Black power that permeated throughout all of America. Fighting alongside each other for equal rights, African Americans developed bonds of trust in one another and their White allies. Blacks and Whites were allied around a common cause. In solidarity, they effectively protested, dem- onstrating that White supremacy is not impervious to change.

THE POWER OF TRUST

Trust is empowering because it portends shared responsibilities and common interests. Trust asks that you meet each other halfway, which we each have it in our control to do. With will and the resolve to tolerate discomfort when we fear that other Blacks are living up to racial stereotypes, African Ameri- cans can hold ourselves accountable for internalized Black inferiority instead of turning on or away from our brothers and sisters. By holding ourselves accountable for internalized Black inferiority, we can create a trusting envi- ronment that allows us to stand in solidarity against White supremacy and the myth of Black inferiority.

An assumption of those in power groups (e.g., race, class, gender) or positions (e.g., supervisors, managers, executives) is that they deserve to be trusted. Trust, however, cannot be separated from what disempowered groups

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(e.g., people of color, women, LGBTQ community, immigrants, workers) have known and experienced from interacting with and being affected by policies, laws, beliefs, and practices of those in power.

At a book signing, a very anxious and persistent young White woman wanted to know how to get African Americans to see how sincere she was in wanting to be their friend. Her efforts to befriend African American females had so far gone unrewarded. I could see how troubled she was and that she was being honest about wanting to develop Black friendships. “Do you have White privilege?” I asked. Her answer was a resounding “no.”

Most Whites don’t reflect on or consider what it means to be White or to have White privilege. From the White person’s perspective, a friendship with a Black person shouldn’t be difficult because this proves she or he is a good White person. For the Black person, it’s reaching across a long history of racism and White people knowing a little about Blacks while Black people know a lot more about Whites (from being the help in their homes to tak- ing care of their children to not having the luxury of insulating ourselves in our own racial group because of White dominance). To be in true friendship with a Black woman, this young White woman would need to do her own work on what it means to be White. Ask yourself, “Am I willing to stand in solidarity with a Black friend by holding myself accountable for White privi- lege and internalized White superiority?” Many Blacks don’t believe or trust that Whites will be accountable, given our interactional history. Like many Whites, the young White woman at my book signing expected and thought she deserved (White privilege) to be trusted by Blacks.

Trust needs integrity. The above young White woman is a product of her dominant upbringing, having been socialized not to acknowledge White- ness or its ensuing privilege (Kendall, 2006). African Americans, on the other hand, have not been privileged to live in a world where race does not matter. Every day, most African Americans are aware of being Black. Concomitantly, every day most Black people are aware of Whiteness. As a result, Black–White friendships are very difficult to build when one (the White person) does not think about being White and the other (the Black person) can’t stop think- ing about being Black. Such a relationship is bound to lack integrity because neither will be able to trust the other with the truth. Being afraid to trust the other with the truth is the same as being afraid of the other.

The crucial first step of trust is to know oneself. To help this young White woman become conscious of her White privilege, I would use bibliotherapy and film (e.g., Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race [Irving, 2014]; Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible [Butler & But- ler, 2006]; and The Color of Fear [Wah, 1994]). Trust starts with you and is a great liberator. One of the pathways to knowing yourself and having the power to choose your own life is telling your own story (but you must know the whole story). At another author event, a self- identified Jewish woman asked, “Why don’t Blacks narrate their own story?”

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Black folk tales, slave narratives, Black autobiographies, and even hip-hop are some of the ways African Americans have used to narrate our own story. In 1950, Zora Neale Hurston undertook the issue of our Black stories in an essay entitled, “What White Publishers Won’t Print.” She concluded that the aver- age American couldn’t conceive of the complicated emotions of minorities and lacked interest in our stories above the lower class. Hence publishers— whose interest is to make money, not to educate— will only print what they can sell.

Not having willing listeners is silencing. Silenced, Blacks have learned to live in the shadow of the White story. With our African heritage erased in slav- ery, our accomplishments in America absent from history books and schools, and the high visibility of lower-class African Americans, the dominant story we’re left with is that of Black inferiority, and that makes us ashamed. Ashamed, we have difficulty finding our voice.

Slavery is at the center of the African American story. The African Ameri- can is the slave, and the slave is the African American. Disowning the slave and not talking about slavery come with a price. It makes us afraid of our own story because we fear slavery and the myth of Black inferiority will over- shadow our rise and continued resistance.

Though we’re denied access and resources and then blamed for not achiev- ing the American dream, African Americans must not yield the power to pur- sue success. Even when African Americans are educated and well employed and epitomize American success (wealth), we aren’t exempt from negative racial stereotypes and racial profiling. Hence African Americans may always have an uphill battle narrating our own story. However, by facing our slave past and engaging in honest talk about the psychological residuals of slavery, we empower ourselves to live happier, healthier lives.

Are Whites willing to acknowledge Whiteness and place privilege at the center of their story? Are African Americans willing to acknowledge slavery and make room for our fear of Black inferiority in our story? Trust starts with truth. Truth starts with self. Without truth, African Americans will be suspi- cious of other African Americans and distrusting of Whites. Without truth, Whites will lack self- understanding and disbelieve African Americans when we talk about racism. By understanding themselves (White privilege) before expecting to be trusted, Whites will make better friends to African Ameri- cans. With the power of self- knowledge, genuine friendships between Whites and African Americans may be more possible.

THE POWER OF CULTURE

“African Americans don’t have a culture. Ebonics is considered Black cul- ture, but that’s not real culture. The Black church is the closest we have to a culture. My friend John says Black women don’t have a culture. He dates Hispanic women because they have a culture. I had not thought

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about this deeply until my conversation with him. But it’s true. I think I’m attracted to Ghanaian women for this reason. They have a culture. I think not having a culture that binds us together is what keeps us divided. We came from Africa and we were slaves. That’s it.”

When my client shared this in therapy, I felt his pain echoing all the way back to slavery, when slaves were forced to abandon their specific cultures, even their native tongues. Curious to understand more about Black culture or the absence of Black culture and the role it might play in his Black shame, I invited David to tell me more. David saw slaves as docile and blamed them for not fighting back. He felt shame instead of pride in his slave ancestors, and that feeling extended to contemporary Blacks, specifically homeless Black men begging in the streets.

Ebonics, baggy pants, hip-hop, welfare queens, absentee fathers, thugs, and ghetto are terms frequently used to signify Black culture in the media. With African American life portrayed in the movies and on television in this way, African American culture is negatively shown to the world, shoring up Black shame and divisive class issues. Feeding on a steady diet of negative depictions of Black culture, too many African Americans, like David, are recruited into self-hate. In short, we are left feeling powerless and incapaci- tated instead of energized— victims of White supremacy. As victims, African Americans don’t have the energy to defy or contradict White supremacy.

Disempowered, a significant number of African Americans live up to society’s negative expectations. With accurate knowledge, African Americans can become reinvigorated, reinvesting in our culture and receiving the posi- tive benefits of cultural pride. Kwanzaa is an example of African Americans investing in our cultural development and reaping the benefits. Dr. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa, the first specifically African American holiday, during the height of the civil rights era, to honor our African heritage and to celebrate African Americans. Kwanzaa gave African Americans something positive that was created by us and for us, something that didn’t imitate the dominant culture. Kwanzaa imparted knowledge of the seven guiding prin- ciples of African culture and instilled a sense of Black pride.

THE POWER OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is the guardian of freedom. Knowledge of your history is freeing because the truth is freeing. Embracing your history enables you to know what you could and should not do. Ultimately, knowledge is the power to do good or evil. As evil, knowledge is propaganda used to distort and bend another to one’s will and personal agenda. As good, knowledge is confidence that allows one to follow one’s own conscience and to do what’s right.

Knowledge gives you insight and helps you to see more options. Also, it helps you to be authentic. With knowledge, African Americans would neither

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chase nor need White acceptance. Rather, African Americans would define ourselves and project our self-worth, not believe in the myth of Black inferior- ity and accept second- class citizenship. By doing so, African Americans would be better positioned to resist racism.

To ensure that African American children aren’t recruited into self-hate, African American parents should arm their children with knowledge. From the start, African American parents should read history books (e.g., Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson [Nelson, 2011] and Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom and We March by Shane W. Evans [Evans, 2011, 2012]) at bedtime, forgoing the fairy tales that do little to protect African American children from racism or to foster pride, particularly since they are mostly absent from the fairy tale books read to them. Developing early knowledge, African American children can solidify a positive identity. Positive identity then becomes a protective factor against racism. Importantly, knowledge becomes a part of you that no one can take away and that equals power.

Knowledgeable African American parents are powerful advocates for their children. Making certain their children have knowledge, they increase their children’s options and opportunities, steering them toward positive out- comes and away from negative self- fulfilling prophecies related to the myth of Black inferiority. Knowledge can end African American parents’ silence and passivity about racism, helping them to talk openly about race and racism. As a result, African American children may be spared from internalized racism.

THE POWER OF FAITH

The African slaves brought various faith beliefs and practices with them from their different tribes. Due to forced separations between families and tribal members and the imposition of Christianity in slavery, it was difficult for slaves to maintain their natural religious/spiritual practices, but not their faith. Faith has sustained African Americans throughout a history of slavery and continuous racism (Hines, 2008). African American resiliency was born of that faith. For African Americans, faith has strong roots in a belief in the world of spirits, ancestors, and various religious teachings. No matter the uncertainties of life, African Americans have traditionally relied on the cura- tive and healing power of spirituality/religion. Faith gives African Americans a sense of power because of our relationship with ancestors, spirits, and/or a higher being and their almighty power through prayer. African Americans take refuge in the power of prayer, and prayer becomes freedom from worry, giving way to hope.

The Black church always has been a sanctuary of power. It’s the one insti- tution in America in which African Americans are free from the White gaze (scrutiny of Whites). African Americans profit from the power of connection and restoration found in the Black church, tempering our harsh realities from

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racism. Faith practices not only buttressed the personal lives of slaves but also were used as the power to communicate. Sermons and songs (e.g., “Steal Away” and “Wade in the Water”) contained covert messages, telling slaves of escape plans. Similarly, African American preachers (e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) used their pulpits to mobilize Blacks to action during the civil rights movement, and that tradition has carried forth to today’s Black clergy. Hence faith and forgiveness traditionally have been power tools, fortressing African Americans and allowing for greater emotional freedom and coping.

THE POWER OF ACTION

A middle- aged White woman approached a Black college- age cashier at Marshall’s with a return. The young Black female cashier asked the cus- tomer if she had a receipt. The customer repeated loudly, “Receipt?” The cashier began to explain that without tags on the items, a receipt was the only way she could be sure of pricing. Otherwise, she’d have to try to locate the items on the floor and give her the current selling price. The older customer lectured the young woman, saying, “You need to talk louder so I can hear you. And when you’re talking to a customer, you need to look at the customer.” Another young Black female cashier, witnessing the exchange from the very next register, decided to call in a manager to deal with the situation. The Black manager arrived at the same time that a White male worker passed the returns counter. In what appeared to be a sexy voice, the White customer said, “Excuse me, can you tell me who the manager on duty is?” He pointed to the older Black female standing at the counter with the humiliated young Black woman. To this, the White customer responded, “Oh?”

The significance of power is its purpose and impact. The above customer centralized her power by marginalizing the cashier. The White customer’s language was used in a way to construct a reality of the cashier as lazy and uneducated, revealing the power of Whiteness and the powerlessness of Black- ness. Paradoxically, the White customer may have felt powerless in the situa- tion (without tags and receipt), attacking the Black cashier in order to regain control of her own fear and shame. Whereas the customer used intimidating (bad) power to achieve her purpose, the cashier witness used caring (good) power to call someone with more authority to handle the situation. By not remaining silent, she was empowered as an ally to the disempowered cashier. My hope is that the affected young Black female cashier will remember more the actions of her coworker than the words of the customer.

As a young Black woman, the cashier witness knew how the other felt. As a cashier, she knew she didn’t have power over the situation but found a way to liberate herself and find power in the situation. Addressing racism seems to be left to those most vulnerable and hurt by it, which is why therapists must be prepared to empower African American clients to talk about race.

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The privileged tend to offer spoken support for diversity but then can’t be counted on to stand up for racial justice. The same is often true of the privileged when it comes to other forms of oppression (gender, sexual orien- tation, class, religion, etc.). Many of us are supportive and want to see our oppressed family members, friends, and coworkers do well without commit- ting ourselves to public action. To move from support to action requires self- empowerment. Self- empowerment by necessity entails being clear about your motivation and expectations. White guilt as the motivation to work for racial justice is likely to result in a harmful misunderstanding, especially if the White person expects automatic and complete trust by people of color. Looking for thanks or appreciation as opposed to recognizing that taking action is in your best interest is operating from a disempowered position (Kendall, 2006).

African Americans must understand our need to face the Black shadow to be free to act in our own best interest and to be allies to each other (Watson, 2013). Although it should be noted that African Americans are a very resilient people, empowered by our courage and ability to hope, many of our psyches remain in bondage. Facing the Black shadow could help to emancipate us from psychological bondage or mental slavery. As resistance in the war on racism, facing the Black shadow is a powerful natural response to the oppressive idea of Black inferiority. Powered from the inside, African Americans could act to make a huge difference toward our common purpose of dismantling White supremacy and ending the myth of Black inferiority.

REFERENCES

Aponte, H. J., & Kissil, K. (2014). “If I can grapple with this I can truly be of use in the therapy room”: Using the therapist’s own emotional struggles to facilitate effective therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 40, 152–164.

Aponte, H. J., Powell, F. D., Brooks, S., Watson, M. F., Litzke, C., Lawless, J., et al. (2009). Training the person of the therapist in an academic setting. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 35, 381–394.

Butler, S., & Butler, R. (2006). Mirrors of privilege: Making whiteness visible [Film]. Oakland, CA: World Trust Educational Services.

Chávez, N. R., & French, S. E. (2007). Ethnicity- related stressors and mental health in Latino Americans: The moderating role of parental racial socialization. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37, 1974–1998.

Evans, S. W. (2011). Underground: Finding the light to freedom. New York: Roaring Brook Press.

Evans, S. W. (2012). We march. New York: Roaring Brook Press. Hines, P. M. (2008). Climbing up the rough side of the mountain: Hope, culture and

therapy. In M. McGoldrick & K. V. Hardy (Eds.), Re- visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice (2nd ed., pp. 367–377). New York: Guilford Press.

Hurston, Z. N. (1950). What white publishers won’t print. Negro Digest. Retrieved from http://images.pcmac.org/SiSFiles/Schools/AL/GenevaCounty/

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GenevaHigh/ Uploads/DocumentsSubCategories/Documents/ What_White_ Publishers_Wont_ Print.pdf.

Irving, D. (2014). Waking up white: And finding myself in the story of race. Cam- bridge, MA: Elephant Room Press.

Kendall, F. E. (2006). Understanding white privilege: Creating pathways to authentic relationships across race. New York: Routledge.

Krestan, J. (2000). Addiction, power, and powerlessness. In J. Krestan (Ed.), Bridges to recovery: Addiction, family therapy, and multicultural treatment (pp. 15–44). New York: Free Press.

Nelson, K. (2011). Heart and soul: The story of America and African Americans. New York: Balzer & Bray.

Pinderhughes, E. (1989). Understanding race, ethnicity, and power: The key to effi- cacy in clinical practice. New York: Free Press.

Wah, L. M. (1994). The color of fear. Berkeley, CA: Stir Fry Productions. Watson, M. F. (2013). Facing the black shadow. Author.

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Through work to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of less- ening men’s. Denials which amount to taboos surround the subject of advan- tages which men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of white privilege which was similarly denied and pro- tected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as some- thing which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an

C H A P T E R 1 5

White Privilege and Male Privilege A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences

through Work in Women’s Studies

Peggy McIntosh

This chapter is reprinted from “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (Wellesley College Center for Research on Women Working Paper No. 189). Copyright 1998 by Peggy McIn- tosh. Reprinted by permission. Neither this chapter nor the original paper may be dupli- cated without permission of the author: Peggy McIntosh, Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481; 781-283-2500. No excerpting is permitted. Pro- ceeds from the duplication of this chapter or the original paper support the National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum.

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untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. This paper is a partial record of my personal observations, and not a scholarly analysis. It is based on my daily experiences within my particular circumstances.

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.

Since I have had trouble facing white privilege, and describing its results in my life, I saw parallels here with men’s reluctance to acknowledge male privilege. Only rarely will a man go beyond acknowledging that women are disadvantaged to acknowledging that men have unearned advantage, or that unearned privilege has not been good for men’s development as human beings, or for society’s development, or that privilege systems might ever be chal- lenged and changed. I will review here several types or layers of denial which I see at work protecting, and preventing awareness about, entrenched male privilege. Then I will draw parallels, from my own experience, with the deni- als which veil the facts of white privilege. Finally I will list 46 ordinary and daily ways in which I experience having white privilege, within my life situa- tion and its particular social and political frameworks.

Writing this paper has been difficult, despite warm receptions for the talks on which it is based, for describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women’s Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, “Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”

The denial of men’s overprivileged state takes many forms in discussions of curriculum change work. Some claim that men must be central in the cur- riculum because they have done most of what is important or distinctive in life or in civilization. Some recognize sexism in the curriculum but deny that it makes male students seem unduly important in life. Others agree that certain individual thinkers are blindly male oriented but deny that there is any sys- temic tendency in disciplinary frameworks or epistemology to over- empower men as a group. Those men who do grant that male privilege takes institu- tionalized and embedded forms are still likely to deny that male hegemony has opened doors for them personally. Virtually all men deny that male over- reward alone can explain men’s centrality in all the inner sanctums of our most powerful institutions. Moreover, those few who will acknowledge that male privilege systems have over- empowered them usually end up doubting that we could dismantle these privilege systems. They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society or in the university, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. In curricular terms this is the point at which they say that they regret they cannot use any of the interesting new scholarship on women because the syllabus is full. When the talk turns to giv- ing men less cultural room, even the most thoughtful and fair- minded of the men I know will tend to reflect or fall back on conservative assumptions about

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the inevitability of present gender relations and distributions of power, call- ing on precedent or sociobiology and psychobiology to demonstrate that male domination is natural and follows inevitably from evolutionary pressures. Others resort to arguments from “experience” or religion or social responsi- bility or wishing and dreaming.

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowl- edged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was uncon- scious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are justly seen as oppressive, even when we don’t see ourselves that way. At the very least, obliviousness of one’s privileged state can make a per- son or group irritating to be with. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence, unable to see that it put me “ahead” in any way, or put my people ahead, overrewarding us and yet also paradoxically damaging us, or that it could or should be changed.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depends on her indi- vidual moral will. At school, we were not taught about slavery in any depth; we were not taught to see slaveholders as damaged people. Slaves were seen as the only group at risk of being dehumanized. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow “them” to be more like “us.” I think many of us know how obnoxious this attitude can be in men.

After frustration with men who would not recognize male privilege, I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. It is crude work, at this stage, but I will give here a list of special circumstances and conditions I experienced, which I did not earn but which I have been made to feel are mine by birth, by citizenship, and by virtue of being a conscientious law abiding “normal” person of good will. I have chosen those conditions which I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographical location, though of course all these factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can see, my African American co- workers, friends and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place, and line of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mis- trust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing

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housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neu- tral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another woman’s voice in a group in which she is the only member of her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find some- one who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief wor- ries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothing, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of

color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my cul- ture any penalty for such oblivion.

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23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its politics and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feel- ing somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnum- bered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost us heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minor- ity activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self- interested or self- seeking.

35. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.

36. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

37. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

38. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflected on my race.

39. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co- workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

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41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feel- ings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give atten- tion only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to tes- tify to experiences of my race.

46. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

I repeatedly forgot each of the realizations on this list until I wrote it down. For me, white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive sub- ject. The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy. If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one’s life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own. These perceptions mean also that my moral condition is not what I had been led to believe. The appearance of being a good citizen rather than a troublemaker comes in large part from having all sorts of doors open automatically because of my color.

A further paralysis of nerve comes from literary silence protecting priv- ilege. My clearest memories of finding such analysis are in Lillian Smith’s (1949) unparalleled Killers of the Dream and Margaret Andersen’s (1984) review of Karen and Mamie Fields’ Lemon Swamp. Smith (1949), for exam- ple, wrote about walking toward black children on the street and knowing they would step into the gutter; Andersen contrasted the pleasure which she, as a white child, took on summer driving trips to the south with Karen Fields’ memories of driving in a closed car stocked with all necessities lest, in stop- ping, her black family should suffer “insult, or worse.” Adrienne Rich also recognizes and writes about daily experiences of privilege, but in my observa- tion, white women’s writing in this area is far more often on systemic racism than on our daily lives as light- skinned women.

In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed con- ditions of daily experience which I once took for granted, as neutral, normal, and universally available to everybody, just as I once thought of a male- focused curriculum as the neutral or accurate account which can speak for all. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive. Before proposing some more finely- tuned categorization, I will make some observa- tions about the general effects of these conditions on my life and expectations.

White Privilege and Male Privilege 221

In this potpourri of examples, some privileges make me feel at home in the world. Others allow me to escape penalties or dangers which others suffer. Through some, I escape fear, anxiety, or a sense of not being welcome or not being real. Some keep me from having to hide, to be in disguise, to feel sick or crazy, to negotiate each transaction from the position of being an outsider or, within my group, a person who is suspected of having too close links with a dominant culture. Most keep me from having to be angry.

I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. I could measure up to the cultural standards and take advantage of many options I saw around me to make what the culture would call a success of my life. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely. My life was reflected back to me frequently enough so that I felt, without regard to my race, if not to my sex, like one of the real people.

Whether through the curriculum or in the newspaper, the television, the economic system, or the general look of people in the streets, we received daily signals and indications that my people counted, and that others either didn’t exist or must be trying, not very successfully, to be like people of my race. We were given cultural permission not to hear voices of people of other races, or a tepid cultural tolerance for hearing or acting on such voices. I was also raised not to suffer seriously from anything which darker- skinned people might say about my group, “protected,” though perhaps I should more accurately say prohibited, through the habits of my economic class and social group, from living in racially mixed groups or being reflective about interactions between people of differing races.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfort- able, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color.

For this reason, the word “privilege” now seems to me misleading. Its connotations are too positive to fit the conditions and behaviors which “privi- lege systems” produce. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. School graduates are reminded they are privileged and urged to use their (enviable) assets well. The word “privilege” carries the connotation of being something everyone must want. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically over- empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex. The kind of privilege which gives license to some people

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to be, at best, thoughtless and, at worst, murderous, should not continue to be referred to as a desirable attribute. Such “privilege” may be widely desired without being in any way beneficial to the whole society.

Moreover, though “privilege” may confer power, it does not confer moral strength. Those who do not depend on conferred dominance have traits and qualities which may never develop in those who do. Just as Women’s Studies courses indicate that women survive their political circumstances to lead lives which hold the human race together, so “underprivileged” people of color who are the world’s majority have survived their oppression and lived survi- vors’ lives from which the white global minority can and must learn. In some groups, those dominated have actually become strong through not having all of these unearned advantages, and this gives them a great deal to teach others. Members of so- called privileged groups can seem foolish, ridiculous, infantile, or dangerous by contrast.

I want, then, to distinguish between earned strength and unearned power conferred systematically. Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or dominate. But not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race will not count against you in court, should be the norm in a just society. Others, like the privilege to ignore less powerful people, distort the humanity of the holders as well as the ignorant groups. Still others, like finding one’s staple foods everywhere, may be a func- tion of being a member of a numerical majority in the population. Others have to do with not having to labor under pervasive negative stereotyping and mythology.

We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantages which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. It is, let us say, an entitlement which none of us should have to earn; ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. The negative “privi- lege” which gave me cultural permission not to take darker- skinned Others seriously can be seen as arbitrarily conferred dominance and should not be desirable for anyone. This paper results from a process of coming to see that some of the power which I originally saw as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred domi- nance, as well as other kinds of special circumstances not universally taken for granted.

In writing this paper I have realized that white identity and status (as well as class identity and status) give me considerable power to choose whether to broach this subject and its trouble. I can pretty well decide whether to disap- pear and avoid and not listen and escape the dislike I may engender in other people through this essay, or interrupt, take over, dominate, preach, direct, criticize, or control to some extent what goes on in reaction to it. Being white,

White Privilege and Male Privilege 223

I am given considerable power to escape many kinds of danger or penalty as well as to choose which risks I want to take.

There is an analogy here, once again, with Women’s Studies. Our male colleagues do not have a great deal to lose in supporting Women’s Studies, but they do not have a great deal to lose if they oppose it either. They simply have the power to decide whether to commit themselves to more equitable distributions of power. They will probably feel few penalties whatever choice they make; they do not seem, in any obvious short-term sense, the ones at risk, though they and we all are at risk because of the behaviors which have been rewarded in them.

I have met very few men who are truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. We need more down to earth writing by people about these taboo subjects. We need more understanding of the ways in which white “privilege” damages white people, for these are not the same ways in which it damages the victimized. Skewed white psyches are an inseparable part of the picture, though I do not want to confuse the kinds of damage done to the holders of special assets and to those who suffer the deficits. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. Many men likewise think that Women’s Studies does not bear on their own exis- tences because they are not female; they do not see themselves as having gen- dered identities. Insisting on the universal effects of “privilege” systems, then, becomes one of our chief tasks, and being more explicit about the particular effects in particular contexts is another. Men need to join us in this work.

In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advan- tage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation. Prof. Marnie Evans suggested to me that in many ways the list I made also applies directly to heterosexual privilege. This is a still more taboo subject than race and privilege; the daily ways in which heterosexual privilege makes married persons comfortable or powerful, providing supports, assets, approvals, and rewards to those who live or expect to live in heterosexual pairs. Unpacking that content is still more difficult, owing to the deeper imbeddedness of heterosexual advantage and dominance, and stricter taboos surrounding these.

But to start such an analysis I would put this observation from my own experience: The fact that I live under the same roof with a man triggers all kinds of societal assumptions about my worth, politics, life, and values, and triggers a host of unearned advantages and powers. After recasting many ele- ments from the original list I would add further observations like these:

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1. My children do not have to answer questions about why I live with my partner (my husband).

2. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

3. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit, and do not turn them against my choice of domes- tic partnership.

4. I can travel alone or with my husband without expecting embarrass- ment or hostility in those who deal with us.

5. Most people I meet will see my marital arrangements as an asset to my life or as a favorable comment on my likeability, my competence, or my mental health.

6. I can talk about the social events of a weekend without fearing most listeners’ reactions.

7. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

8. In many contexts, I am seen as “all right” in daily work on women because I do not live chiefly with women.

Difficulties and dangers surrounding the task of finding parallels are many. Since racism, sexism, and heterosexism are not the same, the advantag- ing associated with them should not be seen as the same. In addition, it is hard to disentangle aspects of unearned advantage which rest more on social class, economic class, race, religion, sex and ethnic identity than on other factors. Still, all of the oppressions are interlocking, as the Combahee River Collec- tive Statement of 1977 (The Combahee River Collective, 1982) continues to remind us eloquently.

One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms which we can see and embedded forms which as a member of the dominant group one is taught not to see. In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible sys- tems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth. Likewise, we are taught to think that sexism or heterosexism is carried on only through individual acts of discrimination, meanness, or cruelty toward women, gays, and lesbians, rather than in invisible systems conferring unsought dominance on certain groups. Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitudes; many men think sexism can be ended by individual changes in daily behavior toward women. But a man’s sex provides advantage for him whether or not he approves of the way in which dominance has been conferred on his group. A “white” skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate, but cannot end, these problems. To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The

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silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these taboo subjects. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like oblivious- ness about male advantage, is kept strongly enculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confi- dent action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.

Though systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily conscious- ness on the perquisites of being light- skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advan- tage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily- awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.

REFERENCES

Andersen, M. (1984, November). Race and the social science curriculum: A teaching and learning discussion. Radical Teacher, pp. 17–29.

Combahee River Collective. (1982). A black feminist statement. In G. T. Hull, P. B. Scott, & B. Smith (Eds.), All the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave: Black women’s studies. New York: Feminist Press.

Smith, L. (1949). Killers of the dream. New York: Norton.

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After more than 30 years of wrestling with the topic, the American Fam- ily Therapy Academy (AFTA), an intellectual home for many of the field’s most accomplished practitioners, researchers, and educators, still roils with disagreement regarding whether or not social justice belongs among the aims of the field. In other words, there are some in our field who choose silence on matters related to power, privilege, and oppression. They adhere to the myth of neutrality, behaving as though they can help their client families thrive without challenging the social norms that subvert their efforts to love, nur- ture, and protect one another.

Let me tell you where I stand personally. I believe that the institutions within which we live our lives, including our communities, workplaces, and families, as well as each of us as individual human beings, cannot reach our highest potential until we have dismantled the oppressive hierarchies of our “power over” world in favor of the alternative, a world in which power means “power with,” the responsibility to facilitate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, including our nonhuman fellow earthlings and the liv- ing systems upon which we all depend.

As a White man, I legitimize my words on power, privilege, and oppres- sion by first noting that my awareness of this subject and all of my thinking about it have arisen through my connections to people who are racially and

C H A P T E R 1 6

Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy

Ken Dolan‑Del Vecchio

The more we have in common with those who dominate our politics, our police, and our press in the United States— White, upper class, heterosexual men—the greater our responsibility to push through the silence that hides our fear into an honest, personal conversation about racism in our own White lives.

—linDA louDen (2016)

Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy 227

sexually different from me, critically conscious in a way that I was not, and almost unimaginably generous in their willingness to educate me. I am grate- ful for the patience and tolerance demonstrated by Roberto Font, Nydia Gar- cia Preto, Gloria McDonald, Monica McGoldrick, Theresa Messineo, Rose- mary Woods, and other mentors who have helped me begin to move away from blind complicity with White male supremacist culture.

DOMINANT VALUES AND FAMILY THERAPY

Proponents of traditional theories that have privileged intrapsychic processes, those who believe in the medical model (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Asso- ciation, 2013), and promoters of solution- focused and narrative therapies still argue that their approaches offer “neutrality” or “objectivity.” In reality, how- ever, this means that the values informing these approaches do not conflict substantially with dominantly held values and ideas of primarily privileged White men regarding the optimal structure for family life and the meanings ascribed to life’s difficulties.

Salvador Minuchin’s contributions to our field would have been even more helpful had he challenged, instead of colluded with, systems of power, privilege, and oppression. As I read The Craft of Family Therapy: Challenging Certainties (Minuchin, Reiter, & Borda, 2014), I noted his comments about “flirting” with mothers as a way that he connects with them. Interestingly, he never mentions flirting with his male clients. I find myself considering the sex- ist and heterosexist impact upon Minuchin’s clients, as well as upon students of his work. After all, advising male therapists to flirt with their female clients reinforces the traditional expectation that men may most effectively engage women through playful appeals to their vanity. Imagine a female therapist attempting to flirt with her clients or a man attempting to flirt with his male clients or an African American man, in particular, attempting to flirt with a White mother in the company of her family members. There are important gender, racial, sexual orientation, and class implications, none of them help- ful to the task of therapy, that go unmentioned as Minuchin describes flirting with his clients.

Also, Minuchin apparently never inquired about whether or not intimate partner violence was occurring, something that, in my opinion, every thera- pist should do in a private meeting with each partner before agreeing to see them together as a couple. Conjoint couple therapy when one partner is abus- ing the other will likely escalate rather than diminish the potential for danger. In the passage that follows, from a meeting with a family headed by a mother, Emily, and father, Benjamin, Minuchin (Minuchin et al., 2014) avoids such an inquiry even when Emily invites it.

MoTher: I know what you’re saying, but he isn’t always silent. You’re say- ing why do I approach him so gingerly? Do you want me to answer that?

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Minuchin: No, I would never want you to answer that. I am interested in both of you. See, you are working too hard. Benjamin, don’t let her work so hard. Take over. (p. 100)

Minuchin’s insistence that he is “interested in both of you” communicates his belief that responsibility for what goes on within the couple’s relation- ship is shared equally. Because he does not critically examine patriarchy, it becomes inevitable that Minuchin would reinforce it, as is always the case when a therapist professes “neutrality” or “objectivity.” He reinforces patri- archy when he “flirts” with his women clients, refuses to explore the possibil- ity that responsibility for some couple interactions (abusive behavior among them) is not shared, and instructs a husband/father to “take over.”

A therapist who assumes a “neutral” stance pretends that each partner in a couple relationship has equal power (i.e., that the relationship has developed outside of any larger historical and relational context). As the above example illustrates, such a therapist actually endorses the oppressive social patterns, including sexism, racism, homophobia, and economic power and status, that contribute to the structure of all relationships in our society.

One of the ways that “neutrality” is enacted within the health care arena today is the medicalization of nearly all aspects of the human experience. Let me explain what I mean: When behavior doesn’t fit within dominant cultural norms, the guiding presumption is not that those norms should be evaluated and perhaps changed but, rather, that what needs to change is the brain func- tioning of those who don’t fit easily within those norms. The problem, in other words, is presumed to lie entirely within the individual and not at all within larger systems. Witness the ever- expanding reach of psychopharmacol- ogy toward children of younger ages, with clinicians more likely to advocate that parents medicate their children than that they work toward adjusting parenting approaches, family dynamics, and the school setting. This has been a triumph for the pharmaceutical industry.

In keeping with this trend, neurobiology informs the work of some of today’s prominent voices in the field of family therapy, shifting therapeutic focus away from the way that larger systems, including gender socialization, class location, and racism, shape family interactions and toward the physi- ological correlates of individual experience. There is also a trend toward com- bining a neurobiological approach with attachment theory, which focuses on the parent– child bond’s lifelong influence. Adherents to this school of thought focus almost exclusively upon what’s going on between members of a couple and, more specifically, what’s going on inside and between their two brains, with virtually no acknowledgment of the influence of larger social forces on the child’s responses.

Stan Tatkin’s (2012) psychobiological approach to couple therapy (PACT) follows this path. He presents a neuroscience- based framework for under- standing how the passion of new love yields to a more habitual, less con- sciously attentive style of interaction over time and what to do about it. His

Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy 229

writing offers many examples in which this approach helped couples adapt to one another’s styles and succeed in their relationships. In applying this framework, however, he misses an opportunity to examine the biases that most of us incorporate during our formative years (biases that continue to be reinforced by our dominant culture). What I mean is that Tatkin’s approach can be used to make sense of our habitual participation in sexism, racism, and other oppressive patterns. Having learned to accept these patterns during childhood, we have, using Tatkin’s terminology, “automated” them. Discuss- ing this with clients would empower them to examine and challenge, rather than participate “automatically” in such behaviors, and doing so would undoubtedly provide them with additional benefit.

Sue Johnson (2014) describes her emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) as an amalgam of the approaches developed by Carl Rogers, Salva- dor Minuchin, and John Bowlby, each of whom minimized the impact of the extrafamilial context. Pat Love, Eva Berlander, and Kathleen McFadden (2015) ground their work in neuroscience and attachment theory. I think these approaches have missed opportunities for helping clients challenge the oppres- sive patterns that intrude into couple relationships from higher systems lev- els. More specifically, I wish they had taken a more systemic view, explicitly addressing the ways that gender, race, sexual orientation, and other aspects of diversity shape socialization, access to privilege, and, therefore, the dilemmas that couples face, as well as their access to solutions that may free them from the limits of traditional social prescriptions.

If sexual demands are tearing your relationship apart it’s highly likely that you and your partner have different sexual styles. What turns one of you on may not do it for the other. Doing more chores may not sound like foreplay to you, but if it gives your partner time to relax and get ready for sex, that’s what you need to do! Talking about your day may seem like a waste of time, but if it draws your partner closer, that’s what you need to do. (Love et al., 2015, p. 90)

I imagine the above passage striking some readers as chiding. This reac- tion may be most common among heterosexual women readers, as they so often handle the majority of housekeeping responsibilities within their domes- tic partnerships. Other readers, male readers in particular, may believe the authors join them in trivializing their partner’s requests to share household chores and emotional connection. These readers may assume that the authors are encouraging them to humor their partners, as though household chores and “talking about your day” are fair trade for sex, rather than reasonable expectations of both partners in a loving relationship.

Wouldn’t it have been more powerful if the authors had explored patriar- chal gender socialization’s long- standing assignment to women of second- shift work, including household chores and hosting the daily banter that maintains a relationship bond, and to men the expectation that women care for the

230 R A C I A L I D E N T I T Y

household and that we should be “men of few words”? Such a discussion would problematize these traditional norms rather than focusing on either partner’s behavior as an individual and would challenge readers of all genders to choose more egalitarian patterns of behavior.

Most therapists aim to help their clients experience less pain at an indi- vidual level, but I believe that we can do more. We can help our clients resist the oppressive patterns that limit our lives within our families and communi- ties, knowing that (and here I quote Alice Walker, 1993) “resistance is the secret of joy” (p. 281).

MY PHILOSOPHY AND VALUES

I employ a sociopolitically informed systemic view that brings discussion of power and privilege into therapeutic encounters. I believe that a therapy that heals families is also a therapy directed by necessity toward healing communi- ties and ultimately toward healing civilization— such is the completeness and inescapability of our connections to one another.

The 20th century saw collective struggles against ancient practices of domination unfold in every realm of life and in every corner of the globe. It was an era when colonizers were finally being dislodged, when slavery was finally being outlawed, and when women were finally being made citizens in many (though still not all) places on the globe. With the unfolding of the labor movement, middle- class White women’s movement for parity with White men, movements for social justice for men of color, and lesbian and gay rights movements in our own country, the times bore witness to collective struggles against a multitude of institutional structures of domination.

The outset of the 21st century finds us fighting to maintain these gains. The advent of cell phone video technology has forced White people to witness and respond to the killing of countless unarmed Black people, most of them men, by police officers, something African Americans in the United States have been living with for centuries. Struggles to remove the Confederate flag and statues of Confederate leaders from public places have been successful, but not without great resistance from Whites. The Black Lives Matter move- ment has arisen in resistance to the ongoing assaults of entrenched institu- tional racism.

State governments have tried to institutionalize the harassment of trans- gendered people by legislating access to public restrooms according to gen- der assigned at birth. This can only be understood as an effort to further endanger trans people. State and federal government officials are attacking Planned Parenthood and other clinics that offer access to safe and legal abor- tions, as well as preventive screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and other health conditions. And the current administration seeks to criminalize undocumented immigrants and refugees from countries that our own govern- ment has ravaged by war.

Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy 231

Also, despite the fact that gay marriage is now the law of the land in the United States and many other nations, the far right continues their crusade to reverse this accomplishment, arguing that gay marriage somehow threatens the institution of marriage. These crusaders vilify alternative family structures in an effort to enforce the traditional, male- dominated– female- serviced fam- ily model as the only valid option.

All of these developments represent the endurance of the “power over” or “power as domination” paradigm, wherein any visible difference ignites a battle for supremacy. This model affords no place for “both–and”—no place for respectful and collaborative bridging across differences. As Audre Lorde (1984) put it:

We have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. (p. 115)

Our civilization can no longer afford conceptualizations and practices of power built upon these “us and them” polarities, however, because of our unavoidable proximity to one another. We live in a world where advances in communications, travel, and information processing bring us together in ways previously unimaginable. In a civilization where difference, since the dawn of recorded history, has meant domination (Eisler, 1987), we are challenged to find new paradigms for connection if any of us are to survive and prosper. We have entered an era when— because the paradigm of dominance hierarchy will no longer hold, because of the new smallness of our world and our undeniable connections to one another, and because of our identification as healers— psychotherapy and struggles to end domination are joined.

THERAPY BASED IN LIBERATION CONSCIOUSNESS

Therapy based in liberation consciousness works to dismantle the hierarchy of power underlying White male heterosexual privilege (Dolan-Del Vecchio, 2007). Two case illustrations follow.

Josh, a White man of Eastern European Jewish heritage in his early 20s, was in a dilemma. Several months previously, during a 4-month period of time when he and Susan, his White, Jewish fiancée, had broken up and were not seeing each other, he impregnated a woman named Linda. Josh then ended the relationship with Linda and reconciled with Susan. With the support of advice from friends, his parents, and his brother, Josh kept Linda’s pregnancy secret from Susan in an effort to “protect her.” The baby was born 4 days before his initial consultation with me. Josh first told Susan about the child on the day of delivery. He was now considering terminating the relationship with Susan,

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because he felt her emotional response to the news of his newborn daughter was excessive and unpredictable. “Hey, I told her what’s going on! Besides, the whole scenario’s under control— I don’t want anything to do with the kid, but I will pay child support . . . there’s nothing to worry about . . . so I don’t know what she’s so freaked out about! Besides, I’m trying to start a new busi- ness, and that’s where I really have to put my energy, not into this bullshit!” He presented this story in a tone I use too frequently myself— a style of voice common to us White men. It’s a tone that suggests a solid belief in the cor- rectness of our singular vision. I have heard Monica McGoldrick describe the voice of White male privilege as the voice of a person who presumes to “hold the truth of the universe within.”

Josh believed that the issue he and Susan needed to address was their “communication problem,” related mostly to Susan’s excessive emotionality and difficulty understanding him with accuracy. He seemed to assume that my role would be to help Susan calm down, listen to reason, and help him “keep his eye on the ball” with his new business.

My hypothesis, however, centered upon Josh’s decisions to keep Linda’s pregnancy a secret from Susan and to invalidate her concerns and responses when she learned about the birth of his daughter. I saw Josh’s entitlement and his emotional blindness as connected to our shared socialization into White manhood within this culture. Raising consciousness regarding pat- terns of socialization, I believe, shifts some life decisions from “inevitable and unavoidable” to the realm of deliberation and choice. For Josh, this would mean an exploration of the cultural and familial processes that convinced him to resign from most emotional connections with other human beings, disavow his accountability to his woman partner and to his child, and instead sacrifice his humanity to the ravenous masculine deities of work and financial success.

I began to ask Josh an array of questions designed to spark in him some awareness of how his current dilemma, including his vision of fathering and other relational responsibilities, along with his overall pattern of relational decision making, was connected to White heterosexist male socialization:

“Where do you imagine you got the idea that it is reasonable for a man to try to ‘protect’ his woman partner from unpleasant or difficult realities that concern both of them? Would you consider it respectful to ‘protect’ a male friend or business partner in the same way? What rules within our society contribute to your belief that you have no responsibility at all to ‘protect’ the mother of your child and that financial support is an adequate contribution to the life of your newborn daughter? How would you imagine your average man would feel and respond if his fiancée con- cealed the fact of her child’s existence? What are we White men taught regarding our primary responsibilities toward our children, and how do you imagine that the teaching women get on this topic is different? How do you imagine this teaching and the pressures connected to it might be

Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy 233

different in a family of color, where the prospects for men making big money are more remote due to institutional racism? What do you imag- ine, from your infant daughter’s point of view, are the most important things her father can give her?”

The work included family- of- origin sessions with Josh’s parents and cou- ple and individual sessions with his fiancée. After much directed questioning, Josh’s father voiced a willingness to support Josh’s developing more than a monetary connection with this child if he so desired. The father was also guided toward reevaluating his view of Susan, whom he saw as demanding, childish, and unsupportive of Josh. I wondered whether he would be so negat- ing of his child’s partner’s life and needs if Susan were his daughter and Josh her partner. I also wondered whether he would so readily disavow his new grandchild if it were a grandson instead of a granddaughter. Josh’s mother saw these issues in a more balanced way, but her voice was constricted by the presence of three males in her family.

In order to gain a fuller understanding of the relationship while also orienting Susan’s attention to the often hidden or taken-for- granted dimen- sions that form the foundation of heterosexual partnerships, I began to work with the couple by seeing Susan individually for a survey of power and con- trol dimensions. Predictably, she related that Josh demonstrated a number of controlling patterns within the relationship, including characterizing Susan’s emotionality as craziness while presenting a void of emotionality himself; regularly intimidating her by using a loud, belligerent voice; and consistently assuming that he would be the one to define shared realities. He demanded that his compartmentalized experience of relationships— a hallmark of male socialization— be the standard. For example, if Susan asked Josh a question about the status of the legal process regarding custody, he might angrily shut her down and then a half hour later feel baffled by Susan’s irritability toward him when he invited her out to dinner. He might tell this story, starting at the point that he asked her to go out to dinner, as evidence of Susan’s bizarre moodiness and unwillingness to “open up to” him. Tying this kind of pattern together for Josh and asking him to take responsibility for his control and intimidation became a part of the work of therapy.

Family therapy based in liberation consciousness rebalances the tradi- tional practice of blaming women through a process of inquiry regarding men’s relational patterns and male socialization across multiple systems levels.

Steven, a 17-year-old White male of Italian heritage, was brought to see me because of withdrawn behavior at home, punctuated by moments of explo- sive verbal and sometimes physical outbursts toward his mother. Donna and Al, Steven’s parents, both believed that the core problem was between Steven and his mother. Many family therapists would be inclined to agree, hypoth- esizing perhaps that this “overly involved” mother was “enmeshed” with her son and that his violence toward her was an attempt to gain the space neces- sary for proper male development.

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In my formulation, however, this family’s problem (as well as their idea of the problem) reflected the overly responsible role in which heterosexual women are typically cast by the parental irresponsibility of their male part- ners, as well as the ambivalence with which our society teaches us to view closeness between a mother and a son (and, more particularly, the assumption of authority by a mother over her teenage son). Donna’s position as the target of Steven’s rage was probably more the result of her acceptance of parental responsibility than it was of anything as pathological as “enmeshment,” and both her overresponsibility and Steven’s rage and isolation were connected to Al’s underresponsibility and distance. My hypothesis was aligned closely with the thinking Olga Silverstein presented in The Courage to Raise Good Men (Silverstein & Rashbaum, 1994). This book provides an essential reexamina- tion of mother– son relationships within (White) families.

Steven and I talked about what it takes to be respected as a man within high school culture. We talked about how power as physicality and as control over oneself and others is the standard, and stoicism and anger are the allowed emotions. We talked about the risks of being labeled a “fag” or a “girl” if a young man’s actions differ from these prescriptions. We explored the impli- cations of being labeled “feminine” or “homosexual” (i.e., how females and homosexuals are devalued). From there, we moved into an exploration of how Steven had seen the men in his family deal with conflict. He mentioned his father’s abusiveness toward both him and his mother.

A private conversation with Donna revealed Al’s long history of abusive- ness. Although he had never been physically violent, Al had regularly abused and intimidated Donna by loudly screaming insults and foul names at her. After these explosive episodes, Al would sometimes not speak to Donna for days. Because Donna assured me that she felt absolutely safe with my revealing the content of our conversation to Al, I opened a dialogue with him about his abusive actions. Al said that he was ready to do “whatever will help my son.” In order to make his communication deliberate, comprehensive, and clear, Al was coached on writing a letter to Steven in which he apologized for his emo- tional abusiveness and distance in a way that claimed full responsibility for his behavior. Within this letter, he acknowledged that his abusive actions toward Steven’s mother were the model for Steven’s own abusiveness toward her.

The therapy with this family included an exploration of multigenera- tional legacies. During a meeting with Al and his father, Frank, we discussed how traditional White working- class family structures when Al himself was a child had contributed to his father’s absence from his life and how norms of male stoicism had contributed to Frank’s never acknowledging with his son the losses connected to that distance. We discussed the emotional and functional burden this structure had placed on Al’s mother, Mary. Al was helped to see how the needs unmet by his father contributed to his demand- ing posture within his own marriage. Frank and Al readily agreed when they were encouraged to invite Steven into their conversation by taking him out to dinner and sharing much of what they had discussed.

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CONCLUSION

Years of indoctrination into a relatively powerful and relatively blind place within the social order were challenged for me when I entered family therapy training led by women. My experience since then convinces me every day that if we White men are to understand and intervene in a truly respectful and constructive fashion with families, we must engage in training relationships with women, people of color, and people who are gay and lesbian (if one is heterosexual), relationships in which we can experience a strong measure of accountability. Only if this occurs— only if we relinquish center stage and claim wholeheartedly the role of students relative to teachers whose gender, race, and sexual orientation locates them where they experience the impact of White male supremacy— will we remain reasonably conscious of the social realities that structure all of our lives, both publicly and privately. I believe, moreover, that the continuance of these kinds of connections throughout our professional careers is warranted, as the world is only too ready to reappoint those of us who are White and male to the position of unquestioned experts— and we, unfortunately, are too ready to accept these appointments.

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of men- tal disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: Author.

Dolan-Del Vecchio, K. (2007). Making love, playing power: Men, women, and the rewards of intimate justice. New York: Soft Skull Press.

Eisler, R. (1987). The chalice and the blade: Our history, our future. New York: Harper & Row.

Johnson, S. (2014, February 19). What is emotionally focused therapy (or EFT)? [Video file]. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQCg-jC25fo.

Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press. Louden, L. (2016, May 11). White privilege and the deadly effect of silence [Blog

post]. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com/linda- louden/white- privilege- and-the- deadly- effect- of- silence_b_7222776.html.

Love, P., Berlander, E., & McFadden, K. (2015). You’re tearing us apart: Twenty ways we wreck our relationships and strategies to repair them. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications.

Minuchin, S., Reiter, M. D., & Borda, C. (2014). The craft of family therapy: Chal- lenging certainties. New York: Routledge.

Silverstein, O., & Rashbaum, B. (1994). The courage to raise good men: You don’t have to sever the bond with your son to help him become a man. New York: Penguin Books.

Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for love: How understanding your partner’s brain can help you defuse conflict and spark intimacy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Walker, A. (1993). Possessing the secret of joy. New York: Pocket Books.

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What happens when we consider Whiteness in family therapy practice and training, not only when one party in the relationship is of color, but also when both therapists and clients are White? U.S. dominant discourse nor- malizes Whiteness, so when therapists and client family members are White, race easily becomes invisible. Whiteness is the default (privileged) category, rendered seemingly irrelevant in case presentations and intake reports. Yet because racial ideologies permeate all relationships between and within races, any clinical exploration of the lives of clients or therapists neglecting social location, including Whiteness, is incomplete.

We (the authors) are all White. We recognize how White domination and assumptions of superiority infuse all experience and how internalizing and performing White superiority does damage. In this chapter, we explore the relational impact of internalized White superiority on Whites; the impact on people of color is already well established. Societally, the problem lies with discourse that hierarchically categorizes people by “race.”1 Hardy and Laszloffy (1998a) called such discourse proracist ideology, which supports Whites’ superiority, “ownership” of society, and profit from enslavement of Africans, genocide of Native Americans, and ongoing systemic race-based marginalization.

Regardless of racial identity or commitment to racial justice, everyone in a proracist society internalizes discourses of White superiority, privilege, and entitlement. White people perform entitlement, benefitting from structural

C H A P T E R 1 7

The Inevitable Whiteness of Being (White) Whiteness and Intersectionality

in Family Therapy Practice and Training

Jodie Kliman Hinda Winawer David Trimble

Whiteness and Intersectionality in Family Therapy Practice and Training 237

oppression, purposefully (like White nationalists) or inadvertently, in inter- personal interactions. Each of us (the authors) has unwittingly performed White privilege in relationships, often when vulnerability in other domains of our intersectional identities blinded us to our White privilege. We2 cannot prevent all injuries. As addressed later, microlevel White entitlement routinely assaults marginalized people. Our perspective emphasizes accountability, not blame. In a racialized society, unintended racist acts are inevitable.

This chapter deconstructs largely unspoken and color-mute (Bartoli et al., 2016) assumptions of White superiority in family therapy and training. Performances of White privilege shape practice and training. These phenom- ena are shaped, and masked, in relation to intersectional identity (Almeida, 2013; Kliman, 2010). We address obscured, underlanguaged discourses (Hare- Mustin, 1994) of White superiority and entitlement in all families and in family therapy and training (Hardy & Bobes, 2016).

INTERNALIZED WHITE SUPERIORITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Whiteness, the norm to which “others” are negatively compared (Coates, 2014; Painter, 2010), pervades U.S. experience. James Baldwin (1965) stated that “the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it and history is literally present in all that we do” (p. 47). We carry all the intergenerational consequences of colonial- ist history (Baldwin, 1965). Racism therefore permeates education, media, and discourse, and calls for immigrant families to abandon (lesser) cultures for White “American” (Christian) identity (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia Preto, 2005).

Yet personally owning the impact of historical, institutionalized White supremacy and colonialism is hard for Whites (DiAngelo, 2011; Tatum, 1997). White people’s pain about our intentions being misunderstood can eclipse pro- ductive learning about our impact in racialized society (Hardy & Laszloffy, 2002; Sue, 2010). The challenge lies in scrutinizing feelings nondefensively. Honest self- examination of internalized racism’s effects on us (Whites) can mitigate those effects’ destructiveness and support relational healing.

Historical examination is fundamental to understanding internalized White privilege. White supremacy has justified and legally sanctioned mas- sive atrocities: colonialism, slavery, lynchings, mass incarceration (Alexan- der, 2012) that separates families of color, and genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (Duran, Duran, Yellow Horse Brave Heart, & Yellow Horse-Davis, 1998). Exclusionary immigration policies since 1882 have tar- geted immigrants not considered White (Zakaria, 2016).

Historically, discourses of White superiority distinguished people of color from Whites. “Ethnic” immigrants and their children— Jews, Irish, Poles, Italians, and other originally “inbetween people” (Barrett & Roediger, 1997)—could take comfort that despite facing poverty and prejudice, they

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could “become” White (Ignatiev, 1995). Baldwin (1998), therefore, called them “people who believe they are White” (p. 180). Obscuring class oppres- sion and intraracial competition solidified White identity, obstructing cross- racial class solidarity.

The dominant discourse, therefore, often conflates “American” with “White,” despite demographic realities. For example, a White mother recently said in therapy of her adopted Korean- born daughter, Alison, that, “people are often surprised that Alison’s mother is American.”

DISCOURSES OF WHITENESS IN MENTAL HEALTH

Discourses of racial superiority, normalizing Whiteness and defining other racial identities as “less than,” are in the air we breathe (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1998b). Even people of any racial identity who consider themselves antiracist inhale, internalize, and act based on White superiority. Power operations of proracist discourse insidiously distort therapeutic and clinical training rela- tionships, regardless of racial composition (Boston Institute for Culturally Affirming Practices, 2017). Whiteness comes with comfortable ignorance of itself and of its privilege. White fragility (DiAngelo, 2011), demanding the protection of only the gentlest confrontation, buffers White people against the moral pain of recognizing how their advantages come at the expense of people of color.

Dominant mental health discourses supporting “color- blindness” and “colormuteness” (Bartoli et al., 2016) obscure White therapists’ responsibility for self- scrutiny and accountability in their therapeutic and training relation- ships. Training rarely helps White therapists recognize either the impact of their performances of Whiteness on their colleagues and clients of color or the influence of Whiteness in all-White professional relationships (Watts Jones, 2016). Concepts of “cultural competence,” “multiculturalism,” and “diver- sity” tend to focus on “otherness” (i.e., “not- Whiteness”), neither examin- ing Whiteness in therapy (Winawer, 2017) nor self- reflexively grappling with racism and colonialism” (Pon, 2009, p. 59). A potentially more useful con- cept is cultural metacognition, or the self- awareness of one’s own and others’ cultural assumptions (Chua, Morris, & Mor, 2012), which requires flexible, creative thinking about culture and race, including Whiteness.

INTERSECTIONALITY, WHITENESS, AND PERFORMANCE OF WHITE PRIVILEGE IN THERAPY

Race operates in relation to all domains of identity, including both privileg- ing and marginalizing ones. Whiteness can be understood in relation to other social locations, identities, and memberships, which all intersect with and shape each other (Almeida, 2013; Crenshaw, 1989; Falicov, 1995; Kliman,

Whiteness and Intersectionality in Family Therapy Practice and Training 239

2010). Thinking intersectionally, however, has risks, because people recog- nize their marginalized or subjugated identities more easily than their areas of privilege (Hardy & Bobes, 2016; Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995; Kliman, 2010). Whites who are marginalized in other domains easily overlook their racial privilege. Wounds from such marginalization tend to dominate their racial experience, obscuring for them their racial privilege. White lesbians hurt by homophobic injuries, White Jews by anti- Semitic ones, and working- poor Whites by class-based injuries can easily overlook how their racial privilege protects them. Similarly, a White therapist might think only about a Haitian American client family’s racial experiences— but not her own.

White therapists and trainers with mostly privileged domains of iden- tity may assume that everyone in the therapeutic or supervisory constella- tion is “societally normal” (i.e., sharing their privileged, normalized, social locations), absent contradictory evidence. Assumptions of “normalcy” rest on privilege (Almeida, 2013; Crenshaw, 1989; Falicov, 1995; Kliman, 2010, 2015; Winawer, 2017). It is the powerful who define “normalcy” (Foucault, 1980), which, in White- dominant culture, is Whiteness.

Whiteness is mistakenly conflated with (“normal”) middle- class status, although Whites of different class positions experience Whiteness very differ- ently (Kliman, 2015). Conversely, White therapists may mistakenly assume that clients and students of color, absent obvious contradictory evidence, grew up poor and White clients did not; clients of color may incorrectly assume that White therapists grew up with class privilege.

In a racist, sexist society, race interacts with gender (Coates, 2015; Cren- shaw, 1989). Constructing Black (and more recently, Latino) men as rapists and killers and White men as (White) women’s defenders rationalizes incar- cerating and shooting Black men, deporting Latinos, and arming White men as (White) society’s protectors (Alexander, 2012; Potok, 2017). Yet it is more powerful White men who are most likely to rape female employees or renters of color (Painter, 2010). Implicit racial bias (Banaji, Bhaskar, & Brownstein, 2015) associates Whites with good qualities and people of color with negative ones. Thus therapists more likely see White clients who have difficulties with the law or child protective services as deserving and treatable and to advocate for them than they do for clients of color. I (JK) once fell into the easy trap of seeing a White teenage girl’s pattern of violence only through the lens of her trauma, inadequately exploring her earlier acts of violence in her housing project. I convinced a judge to increase her family and individual therapy; she avoided juvenile detention for assault. Soon thereafter, she seriously injured a rival for her boyfriend’s affections. I had to ask myself: Should I have advo- cated so strongly against criminal consequences? Would she have so success- fully elicited my sympathy or received such successful advocacy had she been Black and male?

Whiteness and the internalized assumption of White and male superior- ity are interwoven into White families’ interactional patterns. A White Welsh American physicist whom I (HW) saw in couple therapy felt unappreciated

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by his colleagues, whose comments evoked his working- class father’s critical voice. He said, “I don’t get it. I worked hard all my life, and I am the only American in the group.” (On inquiry, he reported his colleagues were Arab Americans.) Oblivious to his covert racism, he equated his White/British ori- gins with being American. His reactivity to feeling criticized and rejected at work contributed to his depression and distancing in his marriage. His dis- tancing behavior activated his wife’s childhood feelings of abandonment; she responded with angry outbursts. He did not reflect on how his White, male entitlement affected his relationships at work or at home until helped to do so in therapy.

RACE AND INTERSECTIONALITY IN TRAINING RELATIONSHIPS

Thinking intersectionally offers opportunities for complex, socially just learn- ing training. A White doctoral student, Sam, angry over his own parents’ divorce, understood 12-year-old Mateo’s aggressive behavior as a protest against his parents’ divorce. Mapping Kliman’s (2010) social matrix of inter- secting domains of identity for Mateo’s family members and his own for a midterm paper for me (JK) challenged that understanding. Sam realized that Mateo, adopted at age 4 from a Colombian orphanage that had neglected him, was the only Brown person in his family and school. He had to adjust to a new family, language, culture, and school; his grandparents openly rejected him. Classmates racially taunted him, and teachers singled him out for discipline.

Comparing social matrices helped Sam see that parental divorce was the least of Mateo’s challenges, especially since many classmates’ parents were divorced. Sam realized his Whiteness had blinded him to the impact of racism and racialized linguistic prejudices. He acknowledged the gravity of Mateo’s preadoptive neglect. I helped him, as a White therapist, resist decontextu- alized and linear psychological understandings narrowly defining Mateo’s angry “acting out” as mere inchoate protest against divorce, without includ- ing the traumatic consequences of racism and maltreatment.

White therapists easily “forget” that they do therapy or teach while being White. Therapists who forget they are White can be oblivious to their power over meaning making about client families’ diagnoses and lives (Foucault, 1980) and can easily misdefine clients, thereby doing harm. Dominant mental health discourse directed Sam’s view of Mateo’s struggle into a racial blind spot that obscured race and other significant contextual factors.

Overt prejudice is clearly also harmful. Brian, the White, Christian super- visor of Noah, a graduate student placed in a school, told him that the father of Noah’s dark- skinned, hijab-clad, Pakistani Muslim client, a 12-year-old girl, “must be a terrorist.” Brian’s groundless claim hurt Noah, who worried both about his own professional safety as a Bosnian American who, unknown to Brian, was Muslim and about how the school would treat the girl and her family.

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LOCATING OURSELVES IN RELATION TO RACE AND INTERSECTIONALITY

Here, we address our own intersectional social locations in relation to those of trainees and of the clients and organizations that we and our trainees serve, premised on race’s centrality in U.S. society. Because these locations influ- ence the entire supervisory constellation, neglecting anyone’s complex identity leads to misunderstandings, microaggressions (Pierce, 1995; Sue, 2010), or worse in training White therapists to work with clients of color (Falicov, 2014; Hardy & Bobes, 2016) and in training therapists of any race to work with White clients. Leaving damaging interactions unaddressed causes permanent relational injury. We therefore contextualize our work as embodied beings with intersectional identities shaped by White privilege.

David’s Intersectional Whiteness

I (DT) am White, healthy, tall, male, cisgender, heterosexual, and in the pro- fessional class. Being a White man in my early 70s affords me power. My late first wife was African American/Native American; our two children identify as multiracial. I am now married to a White Jew (JK); we are bereaved of the child we adopted together. I am a Jew by conversion.

Despite my parents’ progressive socialism, my childhood racial socializa- tion mystified me. My parents taught me about the moral wrongs of segrega- tion and discrimination, but also that Black people were no different from White people. That color-blind discourse left me unprepared for my early encounters with Black people. Joining the civil rights struggles of the 1960s challenged my color- blindness. I made a lifelong commitment to internal con- versation and dialogues about race with relatives, friends, colleagues, and friends of color. Because I cannot silence my internalized White supremacy, I struggle to notice and resist it. Although this self- monitoring can be painful, my obligation to resist internalized White supremacy liberates me from para- lyzing guilt and shame.

I recognized that I could not stop internalizing White supremacy unless it is dismantled at all levels of human experience once I asked myself a racialized version of the “miracle question” (de Jong & Berg, 2008): “What if I were to wake up tomorrow morning and be free of internalized White supremacy?” The answer was that it would be restored by evening. My environment con- stantly congratulates me for the fruits of unearned privileges, boosting my confidence and decreasing my critical awareness of systematic oppression. I call such incidents of social reproduction of unearned privilege “microenti- tlements.” Microentitlements undergird and fuel the microaggressions (Sue, 2010) that assault the daily lives of people who are marginalized.

Pinderhughes (2017) argued that White people benefit from racism and racial privilege, usually without realizing it, at the expense of people of color. Like microaggressions, microentitlements operate outside their beneficiaries’ awareness in everyday interactions but are obvious to those they marginalize.

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I therefore strive to recognize and refuse deferential service at the expense of someone of color; I probably miss more instances than I catch and resist. Oth- ers accommodate my taking disproportionate time in conversation. My tone can convey expectations of being accommodated. I can become dominating when frustrated, which I more automatically ascribe to minor learning dis- abilities than to racial (or class and gender) privilege. Despite having raised children of color and my heartbreak over police shootings of people of color, I expect uniformed public safety officials to protect me.

I teach family therapy to interns at a psychology internship program in which most staff and interns are of color. Despite trying to maintain self- reflective awareness of my Whiteness, I can miss racial power dynamics that my students notice. I therefore try to be curious and respectful about life experiences that inform my students’ perceptions of me. I cannot know how they see me unless they tell me. But, as students of color have stated, I am responsible for understanding the effects on them of my “stimulus value” as a White man. Given the power relations of training settings, I build “critical self- examination” and feedback into the seminar each semester. One cohort of interns reported that, as an older White man, my filling silences in discus- sions was silencing.

Because White entitlement hides itself from the entitled (Pinderhughes, 2017), I must earn trust and credibility for my students or trainees to feel safe with me. I have to demonstrate that I will listen carefully when colleagues, students, or clients of color alert me to my unwitting performances of White (and male) privilege. I learn to live with brokenheartedness, as honest con- versations about my microaggressions expose pain and vulnerability for all concerned (Boston Institute for Culturally Affirming Practice, 2017).

To earn their trust, I draw on AVAF, Hardy and Laszloffy’s (2002) model of accountability for the effects of one’s actions, regardless of intention, and for their repair. AVAF involves first Acknowledging having caused an injury and then Validating the experience of the injured person, listening deeply and nondefensively to the person’s account of the effects of the harmful action. Validation includes productive action, demonstrating the determination not to repeat the injurious behavior. Only then comes Apologizing, although only the person injured can decide whether to Forgive the offense.

Drawing on my own interracial family experience, I helped a White hus- band see how cutting off his African American wife’s description of a traffic stop and declaring it an “obvious” case of “driving while Black” had dis- missed her more complex experience. I invited her to share the uncertainties and ambiguities that make responding to microaggressions such a source of chronic stress. His difficulty seeing his White male privilege had contributed to estrangement in the couple. He had a turning point at work when a power- ful White philanthropist, frustrated by a meeting, simply walked out without a word. After we all discussed that illuminating performance of White male privilege, he became more responsive and responsible about his performances of privilege in the marriage.

Whiteness and Intersectionality in Family Therapy Practice and Training 243

Hinda’s Intersectional Whiteness

Born to Polish- Jewish, working- class immigrants who had never completed high school, my (HW’s) brother applied to medical schools when quotas restricted Jews’ admission. I did not see our family as privileged. Nevertheless, White privilege invisibly paved our way to higher education, good health care, and expectations of a good life far less available to people of color. My par- ents, in “becoming American,” internalized the prejudices around them. They had no friends or neighbors of color. Despite later participating in Dr. King’s March on Washington, I did not grasp the microentitlements my Whiteness afforded.

As a young social worker in a South Bronx antipoverty program, I entered a new career and foreign territory as the only White staff member. The economically marginalized clients’ enthusiasm to develop their earning capacity and autonomy inspired me. My colleagues welcomed and mentored me, leaving my ignorance of racism’s profound impact unchallenged. After a downtown meeting, the elegantly dressed, socially prominent African Ameri- can program director knelt down to adjust her shoe and asked me to hail us a taxi. It did not occur to me for years that this visibly wealthy professional would worry about a taxi driver refusing service to a Black person.

I did not grasp the racist context of the lives of people I respected and learned from daily. Did they “hide” their experience from me, perceiving my White fragility (DiAngelo, 2011) and protecting me, or themselves, from the distress of their daily humiliations, or did unchallenged “White blindness” protect me? What were the consequences of such ignorance? I now recognize that her request and her prolonged shoe adjustment reflected my White micro- entitlement.

How do disparities of political power influence relationships in racialized society? How did such disparities guide or hide the nonverbal subtext of that moment? How am I complicit in perpetuating racialized silences? I gradually learned that moving beyond decrying injustice requires examining the mani- festations of my Whiteness as a therapist, trainer, and human being. I have, therefore, pursued difficult conversations in organizations, in teaching, and in ongoing learning about the impact of Whiteness on others and on me. Learn- ing has been gratifying and challenging. I have felt hurt and have hurt others, though I regard my own discomfort as trivial compared with the daily assaults on people of color. Accountability for my Whiteness is an ongoing process to which I remain deeply committed.

I directed and supervised two social workers in an organization serv- ing a predominantly Black and Latino public school. Our intersectional identities overlapped, affecting our relationships and collaborations. Maya, a highly respected African American woman, had worked in the school for years. Lenore, a young White woman, was a new hire. They described a trou- bling school meeting with a White administrator, who had spoken primarily to Lenore. Both women originally thought that he was being welcoming but

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soon realized he was privileging Lenore at Maya’s expense, affording Lenore entitlement.

Together, we unpacked the administrator’s behaviors and their effects on their collaboration. The conversation was difficult. Maya expressed dis- comfort, irritation, and anger at the administrator’s giving Lenore unearned privilege. Lenore, one of the school’s few “out” lesbians, feeling vulnerable, acted defensively about Maya’s pointed comments about her White privi- lege. Uneasy, I knew I had to be mindful of our group dynamic. As an older White, Jewish straight mother of both LGBT and straight children, some European and some Latino, I wanted to act in solidarity with Maya around race and with Lenore around sexual orientation. Maya, a conservative Chris- tian, respected Lenore but prayed for her sinner’s soul. I felt solidarity with Lenore’s sexual marginalization but also concern about undermining our racial examination of events. Lenore, seeing Maya’s prayers as homophobic, found it hard to focus on the impact of racial microaggression and microen- titlement on Maya.

Maya was angry at Lenore’s racial naiveté; Lenore, feeling misunderstood and intimidated by her colleague’s racial assertiveness and upset with her heteronormativity, became tearful. I had to attend to disparities of power in supervision, including my White, straight, supervisory privilege. I wondered if Maya might see me as too sympathetic to Lenore; Lenore knew that I had a long, warm professional relationship with Maya. I encouraged transpar- ency about how our social locations affected our work together. I had to help Lenore to move from defensiveness and guilt over racial privilege to construc- tive solidarity with Maya, while resisting the latter’s microaggressions based on sexual orientation and religious belief. This learning experience alerted me to the risks of White blindness inviting insidious collusion about racism among Whites, in therapy as well as in supervision (Blitz, 2006). The impact of White microentitlements can be invisible, particularly in their intersections with other social identities.

Jodie’s Intersectional Whiteness

I (JK) grew up Jewish. My great- grandmother fled pogroms, including one that led to the massacre of her entire village. Many family friends were Holo- caust survivors. I connected anti- Semitism to racism while reading “White” and “Colored” signs on drives to Florida relatives; I joined the civil rights movement at 14. I began accounting for my Whiteness in graduate school, where half my classmates were of color, although I then believed my marginal- ized Jewishness and gender “balanced out” my White privilege. Now I see my racial privilege as more fundamental to my experience than my marginalized identities, despite their importance to me.

Stepmothering multiracial children has deepened my racial commitment and challenged me. As a girl, I had never questioned that others would see my intelligence, but my stepchildren could not assume that Whites, including

Whiteness and Intersectionality in Family Therapy Practice and Training 245

me, would see their intellectual gifts. Captured by their childhood creativity, I, channeling Jewish traditions in parenting bright youth, challenged them to think more deeply about their ideas. I was horrified when my new stepson, injured, asked his father (DT) if I thought him stupid. This situation came to a head when my stepson, 14, developed a blueprint for a “space ark” to save 10,000 people from postnuclear disaster on earth. In trying to engage him, I asked far too many questions about the ethical dilemmas involved in choosing who would survive on the ark. My interrogating his ideas, even with love and intellectual respect, was racially microaggressive for him. I had to overcome feeling misunderstood and hurt (DiAngelo, 2011) to heal his injuries, affirm- ing my appreciation for his intellect and adapting my parenting practice to his life experience as a boy of color.

I grew up expecting a safety my stepchildren could not. I worried more about my teenage stepson of color leaving the house than I did about my White son when he reached his teens. When my son died at 19, White acquain- tances whispered that it was unnatural to bury children. Despite my grief, I knew such tragedies befall parents of color all too often.

In therapy, I have most often committed microentitlements, initially igno- rant of their impact on clients of color, when I feel anxious about their wel- fare. For example, a Black single mother in family therapy abruptly stopped therapy after I had pushed her to see a doctor for her child’s medical symp- toms, despite her clear discomfort with the idea. Her sudden, unexplained termination alerted me that I had performed White superiority; my (unearned) confidence that I knew better had blinded me to her parental judgment. My misuse of definitional power as a White therapist had left her hurt, angry, and unsure of herself and of me.

Using the AVAF model (Hardy & Laszloffy, 2002), I wrote to let her know I had thought seriously about her experience of the injuries I had caused her, acknowledging and validating them. I invited her to meet (without charge, since I was at fault) so I could apologize and she could consider whether to forgive me and resume our work. Thankfully, my accountable self- reflection, heartfelt apology, and witnessing of her understandable response to my injur- ing her healed and strengthened our relationship.

It can be uncomfortable for both White therapists and White clients when therapists, rather than clients, bring Whiteness into treatment, but doing so is important. I (JK) feel the need to address clients’ casually racist comments (Blitz, 2006), not because my multiracial family life requires it of me but as an ethical imperative for all White therapists. At times, simply letting clients (or students) know that a racist or particularly entitled statement is injuri- ous can open up conversations about Whiteness, piquing clients’ interest in challenging themselves racially. One White client, Alyssa, described a dream about Black people as reflecting her desire for less sexual guilt, saying that Blacks “are sexually freer than we are.” My wondering aloud, without sham- ing her about her racism or her sexual inhibitions, about why her dreams had involved racist stereotypes and not herself acting on sexual desire, helped

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her claim her sexuality as a White woman without relying on racist imagery. However, pushback happens, in both training and therapy. A student once wrote in my faculty evaluation that “Dr. Kliman hates White people.”

Mistakes easily deemed “innocent,” including my lifelong tendency to mix up names or, postconcussion, to lose track of students’ key historical facts (such as whether they grew up here or abroad) can land differently on students of color than on Whites. I want to explain away such mistakes but cannot discount the added meaning to people of color when White people with power over them mix them up (Boston Institute for Culturally Affirming Practices, 2017).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Relationally ethical family therapy and training practice require alertness to the destructive effects of racial privilege and microaggressions and responsi- bility for taking socially just corrective action. This work necessitates rigor- ous, often painful attention to our responsibilities to clients, students, and colleagues of color when we hurt them by claiming or accepting microentitle- ments at their expense. We call not for “more righteous than thou” stances but for committing to the work of repair and, whenever possible, prevention. The AVAF model (Hardy & Laszloffy, 2002) and colleagues, students, clients, and loved ones of all races have helped us along this rocky path.

This work is not about self- recrimination, guilt, or defensiveness over Whiteness. Striving toward racially just work is a gift to ourselves, as well as a relational responsibility. It facilitates our introspection, self- awareness, and authentic examination of our capacity for humanity. Most students value our training more when we actively address Whiteness, privilege, and racial oppression (Salmon, 2015). Doing this work deepens and strengthens our ties to family and friends of all races.

We cannot address racism alone. Solidarity and collaborative learning with colleagues, students, and clients engaged in this struggle, both White and of color, is essential. Without collegial support, Whites can respond to challenges of their microaggressions and microentitlements with argumenta- tiveness, withdrawal, incoherence, arrogance, and perceived entitlements to comfort and safety (DiAngelo, 2011). Such behaviors contradict healers’ fun- damental imperative: “First, do no harm.”

We, the authors, turn to our fellow White family therapists and teachers to join collaborative, cross- racial efforts to embrace rigorous examinations of Whiteness, in solidarity with colleagues, students, and clients of color. Our own vibrant collegial community buoys our commitment to struggle toward authenticity around race. We may feel awful when our microentitlements are brought to our attention, but that community helps us resist performing White fragility in response, responding instead with compassion, solidarity, and accountability.

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We offer the following guidelines for White family therapists, not as “truths,” but as aspects of an ongoing imperfect process that we believe helps all of us. We invite White therapists to:

1. Recognize our automatic tendency to overlook microentitlements in all encounters across race.

2. Resist color- blindness, which helps Whites ignore societal racializa- tion, promoting the belief that everyone has equal opportunities.

3. Recognize and resist the impulse to retreat in discomfort into guilt, defensiveness, or silencing by shame, when informed of having com- mitted a microaggression. Openness, listening, and accountability can counter illusions of superiority and support developing more authentic relationships.

4. Stay aware of our racial impact on everyone we work with, since dominant culture consistently endorses White privilege and its enti- tlements.

5. Remember that Whiteness has a cost (Spanierman & Heppner, 2004) to White families and therapists because having advantages over oth- ers creates anxiety over losing status and because dehumanizing oth- ers dehumanizes ourselves.

6. Learn to address blatant or veiled expressions of racism in clinical and training contexts, even when it is uncomfortable to do so. Ignor- ing racism in any form constitutes collusion (Blitz, 2006).

7. Remember that White therapists working with White families easily overlook the impact of privilege on White families’ dynamics and interactions with other systems.

8. Resist unconsciously norming White racial identity when decon- structing relational patterns. Explore Whiteness as one of the multiple contextual factors in treatment and help client families, students, and ourselves with potential discomfort over such unexpected inquiry.

9. Attend to intersectional domains of identity without letting other domains overshadow White identity. Although some aspects of Whites’ identities may be quite marginalized, race still privileges Whites.

10. Seek collegial groups to constructively examine their own and each other’s internalized racism; such support and accountability is essen- tial to manage the professional and emotional challenges of this work.

We, the authors, have learned and grown in both multiracial and White groups of professionals, in organizations and informal networks for years, helping each other with this lifelong, ethically imperative learning and the personal and professional challenges it generates. We join those committed to expanding and deepening the meaning of the racial dimensions of therapy and training as they apply to Whiteness.

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NOTES

1. Race, an inherently hierarchical social construct, born of the European imperial- ism and colonialists’ need to debase the colonized, was nurtured by capitalism’s rigid class structures (Painter, 2010).

2. We, the authors, recognize that our readers may be of any racial identity. In soli- darity with our colleagues of color, some of our statements are specifically to our fellow White family therapists.

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This chapter describes my experiences of being a South Asian, Brown- skinned, Sikh, Canadian, woman, family therapist, and academic living in the United States for the past 14 years. My hope is that it will help others understand the breadth and depth of the complexities of South Asians living in the United States as it relates to race and religion.

I use personal examples from my life story to highlight the impact of racial and religious bias.

South Asia is composed of India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Mal- dives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Over 4.3 million South Asians live in the United States (South Asian Americans Leading Together, 2018). Approxi- mately 750,000 Sikhs live in the United States. While I cannot speak for all South Asians’ or Sikhs’ experiences and am not Arab or Muslim, the instances of racial and religious bigotry I share in this chapter are ones with which many of us are familiar. In my work with South Asian communities, I am amazed at how normalized instances of racial bias and religious bigotry have become— so much so that at first people wonder why I am curious about the impact of the larger contextual world on a person’s life and relationships. The struggle is accepted, internalized, and often an unending part of life.

Brown- skinned Muslim, Sikh, Arab, and South Asian communities in America have experienced a compounding effect by which racial and reli- gious biases have coalesced. These communities represent diverse nationali- ties, religions, and languages. Yet their identities have become imbued with a narrow and prejudiced view. The American public has developed particu- lar stereotypes and prejudices about Brown people. Many white Americans view Brown people as “other,” religious extremists, terrorists, and violent.

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Brown in America Living with Racial and Religious Bias

Kiran Shahreen Kaur Arora

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Regardless of religious affiliation, Brown people in America are targeted for their assumed religious identity and religious expression.

LIVING IN A POLITICAL CLIMATE OF HATRED

The sharp rise in violent attacks against members of the Muslim, Sikh, Arab, and South Asian communities interestingly coincides with increased hateful political rhetoric. Although these attacks did not begin after 9/11, the tragedy exacerbated an already intolerant undercurrent toward these communities. Some political leaders continue to perpetuate xenophobia, racism, and reli- gious intolerance by instilling a bias and fear toward Muslims and Islam. Questions posed to leaders on their anti- Muslim bigotry become opportuni- ties to speak about radical Islamic terrorism. Several political leaders in the United States continue to advance anti- immigrant and white nationalist agen- das by posing exaggerated fear and hostility toward Brown people. Muslims are experiencing an unending reoccurrence of hate crimes. The Council on American– Islamic Relations (CAIR; 2017) released a report outlining a 50% increase in anti- Muslim bias paralleled by a spike in anti- Muslim hate crimes in 2016–2017. The current political rhetoric is thick with xenophobia and continues to malign and single out all those who are not white. Brown people of different ethnicities and faiths continue to be discriminated against because they are perceived as unwelcomed immigrants, foreigners, and Muslim ter- rorists.

A number of targeted violent incidents have occurred against a thick backdrop of racial and religious bias perpetuated by political campaigns of various leaders. Alauddin Akonjee, an Imam residing in New York City, and his assistant, Thara Miah, were shot and killed while on a walk. Srinivas Kuchibotla and Alok Madasani, both Hindu men, were shot at a bar in Kan- sas. This incident killed Kuchibotla. A Sikh man in Seattle, Deep Singh Rai, was shot after being told to “go back to your country.” A Sikh taxi driver in New York City, Harkirat Singh, was attacked and had his turban ripped off in a vicious hate attack. In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a white supremacist shot and killed six Brown- skinned Sikhs at a Gurdwara (Sikh place of worship). Although the victims had various religious backgrounds, they were all Brown- skinned people (mostly men) who, in the mind of the murderers, appeared to personify the terrorists of 9/11. The singling out of Brown- skinned men who look to be of Muslim descent is the fusing of race and religion, in which skin color combined with articles of faith are “othered” and deemed un- American. For Brown people it doesn’t really matter if one is religious or atheist, or to what degree spirituality is a part of one’s life. One only has to have Brown skin or a Muslim or South Asian name to be considered other, foreigner, or suspicious.

My own life was marred by hate when, in 2002, on the 1-year anniver- sary of 9/11, Canadian federal authorities arrested me. The cause of arrest

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was not disclosed at that time. I was swept up in the anti-Brown crackdown, and my Canadian passport did nothing to protect me. After several hours of being interrogated in a cell, I learned that it was a case of mistaken identity and that the incident in question involved U.S. authorities. This dehumanizing and frightening incident was a small piece of the larger milieu of the height- ened suspicion around being Brown immediately after 9/11. At the time I did not know how significant this trauma would become in my life and that the lingering effects of fear and anxiety would have an impact on multiple parts of my personhood and relationships. The racial bias that the police officers held in my arrest and interrogation was unshakable. My repeated attempts at speaking my truth failed, as their framework of Brown equals terrorism organized their judgment and treatment of me. Further, being interrogated by a group of men while being dressed in an exposing prison jumpsuit deeply assaulted my sense of dignity. My parents, who witnessed the arrest, were terrified.

For several years afterward, my somewhat unconscious posture in life was oriented toward righting this wrong. I tried to do this in several ways. First, I tried to excel in graduate school and do my best so that nobody could find anything wrong with me. I had internalized the treatment of being guilty, despite being let go by the police several hours after my arrest and cogni- tively knowing I did nothing wrong. Following the arrest, I was emotionally organized by trying to defend myself across many facets of my life. The other by- product of the arrest was that I tried to protect my family from worrying about me by putting on a hard exterior. I did not want to share any pain or sadness with them in an effort to protect them from further stress. These attempts were mostly futile. Over the years I continued to feel a deep shame and humiliation about the arrest that I could not suspend. At times I tried to counteract and overcompensate for the injustices by being polite, appro- priate, soft- spoken, nonthreatening, and silent. This created dilemmas for me because, while I was expressing these attributes externally, my inner self screamed and was infused with sadness and rage. Further, I felt worried about the emotional impact on my parents as they witnessed the incident. Unex- plainable body aches from the trauma plagued me for years.

BELONGING

The arrest disrupted my sense of belonging and home place. The tragedy of 9/11 exacerbated the circumstances, which seemed to be lurking at the inter- section between racial and religious supremacy. Despite Canada’s façade of being an inclusive country, it struggles with inequity. Stories like mine and countless others provide confirmation that racism and religious bias are woven into the fabric of Canadian institutions.

In the United States, Muslims and Sikhs, along with other non- whites and non- Christians, continue to have to traverse the fundamental human right

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of religious freedom. Since 9/11, non- Christian faiths have been increasingly openly defamed. The national discourse has become full of loathing for those many view as the enemy. The erroneous notion of the “Muslim or Sikh ter- rorist” has been embossed on American political culture. And some of our elected officials are at the forefront of this hate campaign.

A few years after my arrest, I immigrated to the United States to pursue a PhD in marriage and family therapy. At the time of writing this chapter, my legal status in the United States is of permanent resident alien. I am an immigrant who has legal status to reside in the country. With my status, I am afforded privileges such as being able to engage in any legal work of my choos- ing and being protected by the laws of the country, my state of residence, and legal jurisdictions. I am conscious of the fact that I do not live with the fears and stress that undocumented immigrants experience. Within all the privi- leges that I have with my status, I struggle with feelings of affinity, kinship, and home, and my immigration status complicates the pain I have felt from racial and religious bias. In many ways the alien in my status is appropriate, as it reflects how different I feel, almost incompatible to others around me. Hardy and Laszloffy (2002) call this phenomenon psychological homeless- ness—a generalized feeling that one does not belong anywhere, often coupled with a yearning to find rootedness and security. Like many people of color, my sense of belonging has been disrupted by white supremacist ideology over the course of my lifetime. I am faced with the expression of white supremacy in my everyday experiences. Recently, while walking in my neighborhood in New York City, a white man spit in my face while hurling racist abuses, say- ing, “Go home, fucking Hindu.”

Other assaults on belonging include racial bias I experienced as a faculty member. I have spent much of my academic career handling microaggressions, clearing stereotypes, and being buried under passive digs at my intellect. I have had to continue to battle through stereotypes such as the “exotic other” and the “dangerous other.” My interest in racial inequities in families was interesting to my colleagues as long as it was limited to my clinical work. I have been viewed as aggressive when I wanted to discuss race between us as colleagues. I have understood that discussing race must be avoided at all costs even if it cripples my growth as a person of color (Hardy, 2008). These mes- sages are highly problematic, as they continue to uphold racist ideology.

I joined academia because I wanted to belong to a community of phi- losophers. I wanted to teach, write, and make contributions to the dearth of knowledge in the area of South Asians, Sikhs, and family therapy. I have repeatedly struggled with these aspirations. I was faced with a difficult envi- ronment that demanded more labor from me than from my white colleagues. They continued to get a pass at slipping on their commitments while I was burdened with their share. These discrepancies upheld white supremacist views of whites being superior over other races. Tenure was elusively dangled before me, while academic institutions highlighted my achievements in the name of diversity. I was expected to work harder and be smarter than my

Living with Racial and Religious Bias 255

white colleagues. The psychological exhaustion I experienced in these envi- ronments interfered with the ability to produce and maintain creativity. There was a constant hum of racism in the background of my academic life, which highlighted that I do not belong.

INVISIBILITY

The inability to be seen also contributes to my sense of not belonging. One of the challenges I have experienced repeatedly is the lack of acknowledgement and interest in discussing a race other than white or Black. I have attended multiple conferences at which presentations and workshops on race are pri- marily centered on issues concerning white and Black communities. Early in my career, I was desperate to find ways to understand the ways race and racism shape and affect the lives of Brown people in the context of family therapy. I learned a lot from the workshops I attended on race and from Black presenters. I am immensely grateful for these opportunities. Once I created my own ideas, my attempts to create space for the South Asian experience went nowhere. I provided detailed feedback to conference organizers request- ing South Asian presence, and yet at conference after conference South Asian voices and experiences never made it on the presenter list. They were simply ignored. I was faced with a choice of either attending conferences where I could learn something on issues of race and being with a professional com- munity that I had something in common with or bailing on the conferences altogether and getting nothing. In the instances when I have been invited to speak, I have been asked to speak on the Asian American experience as a whole. Although institutions may recognize that Asian Americans represent multiple races, religions, cultures, and languages, there is still a push to lump all these experiences together. During one of my workshops, while discussing the impact of 9/11 on Asian Indians, a white and a Black participant got into a heated discussion. The Black participant was sharing his experiences of rac- ism, and the white participant was looking for validation on her experiences of subjugation, which were not related to race. The Black participant then shared his frustration regarding her ignorance on the racism that Black people experience and her need to discuss her feelings of inequities before him. At one point, the workshop severely diverged from its theme, which was Asian Americans and race. Their discussion is critical in understanding the racial tensions between the two groups, yet it completely decentered Asian Ameri- cans. Both participants veered away from the topic at hand. In my experience, this is a common occurrence that we see perpetuated in many systems in the United States, such as in the media. Understanding the centrality of whiteness on the experiences of racism on all people of color is needed, as is the ability to improve our understanding of each other.

My experiences of invisibility were further cemented when I tried to sub- mit journal articles on Sikh family experiences to reputable academic journals.

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The feedback I received was that my topic was too specific and I would have to find a way to make my work broad and interesting to the masses. Making the Sikh experience worthy of clinical research and worthy of contributing to the collective knowledge base required that I remove historical and political discussions specific to Sikhs’ experiences and dilute their reality. The message I have repeatedly received is that Sikhs and their relational and psychological experiences are not stimulating, meaningful, or visible. These messages are problematic because they fail to recognize this community as deserving and assume that Sikhs and other faith communities do not have commonalities with regard to religious bias and relational and psychological health.

BEING TERRORIZED

Recently, I had risen to the ranks of president of a major family therapy orga- nization. I was the first South Asian and Sikh president. I took this job very seriously. It was a job without pay, and yet I prioritized it before my paid work, family, and friends. I was deeply committed to the growth of the organization and to the inclusion of all people. It was a challenging year. Every day, I some- how managed to upset the membership’s sensibilities. The first directive I gave was to create a task force to write a statement in support of Black Lives Matter. The statement was written and released and met with silence. For a member- ship that is quite enthusiastic and active on the listservs and on social media outlets, the release of the statement was meaningful to only a few people. The year continued with coded racial assaults. I was expected to manage myself in two bifurcated selves: the institutional self and the cultural self (Hardy, 2008). My institutional self had to take priority, and any time my cultural self reared its head, it became a hindrance. I could never lead fully from my whole self, as a South Asian and a Sikh. The person I worked the closest with, the person who reported to me, a white man, constantly undermined me. I was somewhat naïve about the grandiosity of the racism operating and still remained hopeful when I ran for a second term against a white man. I was privately informed by many long- standing members of the organization that it was one of the most contentious elections in the history of the organization. Letters were circulated and phone calls were made in an effort to help the other candidate win, and he won. During my term, white people who held prominence in the organization ignored my gestures of friendship and kindness at our annual meeting and talked down to me. People in the membership who were white were the loudest in their critiques of me. And many white “allies” privately sent me messages of support but never publicly called out the racist undertones of critiques I received. The more issues I tackled regarding race, the louder the critiques became. I was a constant source of discussion among the member- ship. The indignities continued throughout my time as president.

After my resignation and some soul searching, I realized I was simply too foreign for people, and I was being terrorized. There was a massive push by

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white people to create fear and anxiety and to silence me. A series of decen- tralized leaderless pop-up events continued throughout my presidency, which created social solidarity among many white members. A radical openness is required in the field of family therapy and in society, through which white people are moved to give up power and entitlement in order to truly move the field and society forward.

ACTIVISM AS A PATH TO HEALING

One powerful reaction to the discrimination against South Asians has been the response by South Asian and allied communities. Social media have allowed people to create platforms that inform, educate, and resist hate. Groups of people have organized to protest, petition, repair vandalism, and create coali- tions that speak directly to hate crimes. Civic groups such as the Sikh Coali- tion were created in the aftermath of 9/11 to address the escalating violence perpetuated toward Sikhs. CAIR was created to challenge stereotypes of Mus- lims and Islam. Groups like these have had significant impacts on practices in law enforcement and in bringing concerns to various government administra- tions.

Many young South Asians have found comfort and home place in online spaces that help to bring communities together in the prevention and after- math of horrific incidents. Poets and playwrights, musicians, and orators have taken concerns and facilitated communities of witnessing, learning, solutions, and healing. Campaigning to bring political and social change has proven to be a powerful pathway to healing. In the aftermath of the Oak Creek shoot- ings at the Sikh Gurdwara, I was able to provide crisis care to community members immediately affected by the shooting. My ability to be of service at this time was immensely healing to my own wounds from racial and religious bias. Further, I was able to use what I learned from my work in Oak Creek to speak about the damage hate crimes have on people, communities, and societies.

FAMILY THERAPY IN THE FACE OF RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS BIAS

Family therapy must aim to meet the needs of Brown people in America and the world over. Space must be created for knowledge and involvement of Brown communities, students, educators, and family therapists. The field struggles to understand their racial and religious identities as a complex web of historical and contemporary contextual factors that shape their lived expe- riences. Understanding the histories of Brown families in the United States and how the larger social, cultural, and political contexts affect relational and psychological health is critical. Being curious about these communities and bearing witness to family stories is important. Race and religion are major

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meaning- making markers that family therapists should be inquisitive about. Ignoring these two salient markers is problematic, as it does not allow the acknowledgement of one’s whole self.

Further, we must have the courage to examine the ways in which the field continues to uphold white supremacy and Christian hegemony by simply ignoring and silencing issues faced by Brown people of various faiths. I have had to examine the ways in which whiteness has been internalized inside of me. As conscious, thoughtful, family therapists who care about the human condition, our work requires this level of self- interrogation.

REFERENCES

Council on American– Islamic Relations. (2017). New CAIR report shows more than 50 percent spike in anti- Muslim incidents. Retrieved from www.cair.com/press- center/14322-new-cair- report- shows-more-than-50 -percent- spike-in-anti- muslim- incidents.html.

Hardy, K. V. (2008). On becoming a GEMM therapist: Work harder, be smarter, and never discuss race. In M. McGoldrick & K. V. Hardy (Eds.), Re- visioning family therapy (2nd ed., pp. 461–468). New York: Guilford Press.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (2002). Couple therapy using a multicultural per- spective. In A. S. Gurman & N. S. Jacobson (Eds.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy (3rd ed., pp. 569–596). New York: Guilford Press.

South Asian Americans Leading Together (2018). Demographic information. Retrieved from http://saalt.org/south- asians- in-the-us/demographic- information.

P A R T I V

CULTURAL LEGACIES AND STORIES

Therapists’ Experiences

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The invisibility of African Americans in the recorded history of the United States has led to a pervasive ignorance for everyone, Black or White, about African Americans and their contributions to the building of our country. African Americans themselves have colluded in maintaining secrecy about their history. With no power to affect the writing of American history and few resources to disseminate our story, it has remained invisible or distorted by negative stereotypes, and we have until recently remained unable or unwilling to challenge the distortions, untruths, and omissions that have been accepted about our past. Sealing off the past has been a way of dealing with the pain, hardship, humiliation, and degradation that have marked African American history from slave times to the present. But we are coming to realize that knowledge of the past, even if painful, can nourish a people’s strength. This realization has stimulated us to unseal these memories and reclaim the truth, no matter how cruel and shocking, so that the festering wound can begin to heal and so that we can better cope with the present and build the future. Only by exploring this painful history can we learn of the ingenious survival practices developed during and after slavery, which may guide us toward our own salvation as a nation. Many individuals have joined in the movement to search out their family odysseys in order to see more clearly the struggle of our people to live with dignity and to find some sense of meaning and value, even as they have been dehumanized.

This chapter is part of my contribution to this effort. Discovering pride and love for my extended family which I had repressed has become an expan- sive experience for me. I value greatly what I have learned about my rela- tives’ legacy of strength and endurance. This new learning has enabled me to

C H A P T E R 1 9

Black Genealogy Revisited Restorying an African American Family

Elaine Pinderhughes

262 C U L T U R A L L E G A C I E S A N D S T O R I E S

achieve a greater sense of integration and personal clarity within my family, along with a more fundamental sense of authenticity, rootedness, and conti- nuity with history and time.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MY RESEARCH: GAPS IN MY KNOWLEDGE

I began to research my family in 1977 and was able to trace two branches of my mother’s family back to the 18th century. Growing up in a segregated, pro- tected, and very supportive middle- class African American community, I had thought very little about my family origins. Apart from some stories about my two grandmothers, there was minimal mention of our history by the family. All of my grandparents had died before my birth, and because my parents had left the other members of their extended families behind in Louisiana in their search for a better life in Washington, D.C., I had had little contact with them. My mother died when I was only 16, and it was not until my father died at age 88, when I myself was well into middle age, that my curiosity about my origins led to action.

I had always wondered how a family as impoverished as my father’s had been— toiling in the bayous, harvesting rice, and battling snakes in the swamps— could produce such a bevy of high achievers. Indeed, I have recently found a record of the bank account of my paternal great- grandfather, Aaron Brazier (1838–1894), opened at Freedman’s Bank in 1869 (Figure 19.1). It lists his age as 31, his occupation as farming, and his birthplace as Hope Plantation in St. John the Baptist County, Louisiana. Aaron’s father is listed

FIGURE 19.1. Aaron Brazier’s February 9, 1869, bank account at Freedman’s Bank in Shreveport, Louisiana.

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as Amos Brazier, who had died about 20 years earlier, and his mother and brother, Mary and Synod Thomas, who both resided with Aaron. Aaron went on to have seven children, including my father, Joseph Brazier, who became a dentist. Joseph’s siblings included a physician, a pharmacist, a nurse, and an undercover FBI agent, seen by the family as a “stool pigeon” and the family scapegoat. More recently I learned of his heroic acts. He was recognized for bravery in the line of duty, actually saving the life of Franklin Roosevelt (see Figure 19.2).

But I was secretly more curious about my mother’s family, though I could not let myself admit this, for reasons that will become clear shortly. As I began my search, I ran into barriers in researching my father’s family prior to 1880. However, the search for my mother’s family produced knowledge that has had a profound influence on my life.

Prior to my research, I knew only a few facts about my mother’s family (see Figure 19.2). I knew that my mother, Ollie Bourgeois, was the granddaughter of Lettie Bibbs Roberson (Figure 19.3), who had been born a slave. I had met Great- Grandma Lettie on several occasions when we visited Louisiana in my childhood. I also knew my mother’s brother, Henry, and one of her sisters, Coralee. My maternal grandmother, Cecelia (Figure 19.4), for whom my sister was named, had died when my mother was 16, just as my mother had died when I was 16. Whenever my mother had mentioned her mother’s death, it was with great sadness. Although I knew my mother carried her father’s name, Bourgeois (which I often wrote on documents when asked to give her maiden name), I knew nothing else about him and never dared to ask, although I was curious.

This side of the family was shrouded in shame for me as a girl. I knew that this was somehow connected with my mother’s name and her appear- ance (see Figure 19.5), which I suspected was related to her father’s being a White man and not being married to her mother. Mother had always refused to discuss her father. I did not learn his first name, Adolphe, until I procured a copy of my mother’s death certificate. I also learned from my research that my maternal grandmother’s last name had been Tureaud and that she too had been fathered by a White man, whose name she bore.

As a child, I had known my great- grandmother Lettie’s second husband, Frank Roberson. I had also heard stories about the warmth and caring of her first husband, Alec Bibbs, who, along with many other family members, had helped to raise my mother. Lettie had two other daughters besides my grandmother: Mahaly Landry, whom I learned had been named for her White father, and Carrie Bibbs, Alec’s daughter. Mahaly, like my grandmother, also had a daughter, Mamie Armitage, by a White man.

When I was a girl, my mother had taken my sister and me to visit Live Oak, the farm in St. James Parish, Louisiana, where Lettie’s family had lived for two generations. In 1935, Live Oak burned down in a tragic fire, and the family members living there were forced to move to New Orleans to live with friends and relatives. Just before I began my research, I learned that Great- Grandma Lettie had also had a sister, Cecelia Grigsby. I was astounded to

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FIGURE 19.3. My great grandmother, Let- tie Bibbs Roberson (about 1850–1945).

FIGURE 19.4. My grandmother Cecilia Tureaud.

FIGURE 19.5. My mother, Ollie Bourgeois.

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learn that the name of my sister and grandmother went even further back. Cecelia Grigsby’s grandchildren turned out to have information about her and Lettie when they were children and slaves!

This was all I knew about my mother’s family when I began, though I knew my father’s family well. They often traveled from Louisiana to D.C., perhaps because they were more affluent, and we had many visits with them. I remember now a certain pride and even arrogance among my father’s relatives about the family and their achievements. When my father’s two brothers vis- ited, there was pride that three Drs. Brazier were together. My mother’s family and their history were far less familiar to me.

THE RESEARCH

I began my search by trying to locate Great- Grandmother Lettie Roberson and her family in the census records. I started with the censuses of 1900 and 1880, preparing myself for the likelihood that I would not be able to trace her further back; census records before emancipation did not record slaves as people but only by number as property of the owner, and I would have to find her owner, which wasn’t very likely. Because slaves had no identity except as property, they could rarely be traced by name except through slave sale deeds and owners’ wills. Legal documents of all other kinds were connected with the owner, not with the individual slave (Blockson, 1977; Herbert, 1976). To trace a Black family before 1870, one has to identify the slaveowner. Thus, unless I could locate Great- Grandma Lettie’s owner, my search would end before it even began. If I could find this information, I might trace the family through slave sales and probate records as far back as possible. If this worked, I could deduce from the information I gathered something about the family’s values, roles, and behavioral interactions that might shed some light on my family’s current lives.

The search for Great- Grandma Lettie’s owner took 5 weeks of work. I hypothesized that her maiden name might be a clue to her owner. So I sought her marriage license, death certificate, baptismal record, and information from persons in St. James Parish who knew her. I spent over 50 hours just reading census records in the National Archives. I read books about slav- ery in Louisiana in general and in St. James Parish in particular. I studied the records and private papers of White members of the Tureaud, Landry, and Bourgeois families, hoping to find her owner. My search took me to the New Orleans Public Library, Dillard University, the Louisiana State Library at Baton Rouge, and Louisiana State University. I did title searches of property and slaves in courthouses in St. James Parish, as well as in Natchez, Missis- sippi, and Woodville, Mississippi.

At first, most of my activity directed at finding Lettie’s owner was unsuc- cessful. I traveled to cemeteries, only to find records burned up. I fought with clerks, who denied the existence of death certificates that I knew were on

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file. After two skirmishes with the Louisiana Vital Statistics Office, I finally located Lettie’s death certificate when the librarian at the New Orleans Public Library found in a basement archive an undertaker’s record book that listed a Lettie “Robinson” as age 74. Because I knew Lettie was close to 100 years old when she died, I almost discounted this information. However, on a hunch, I sent for the record. It turned out that Lettie had been “passing” for 74 because of insurance regulations. The 5 weeks it took to trace one generation into slavery may be compared with the 1 hour it took to track the White Bourgeois line back five generations to 1719!

Among the documents I eventually found were the following (see Figure 19.6):

•• My mother’s death certificate, signed by her sister, Coralee, which stated her father’s name as Adolphe. I remember well the anxiety and pain I experienced on first viewing this document.

•• The census records of 1880, which listed Lettie, her husband, Alec Bibbs (then called “Alexander Bebe”), and her daughters, Mahaly and Cece- lia. The records indicated that Lettie’s parents were born in Maryland. Also listed in the household was a “Sara Clanton,” who was identified as “mother.” I assumed this to be Alec Bibbs’s mother.

•• The census of 1900, which listed Lettie (now calling herself “Lydia”) and Alec with Cecelia Tureaud’s children, Ollie, Eddie, and Coralee.

•• The deed to the Live Oak property, which revealed that the property, acquired in 1871, is still owned by the family. Lettie’s marriage certificate, dated 1875, which showed her maiden name as Clouden. I began to suspect that the “Sara Clanton” listed as “mother” in the 1880 census might actually be my great-great- grandmother and that her name had been misspelled in the census record.

•• Lettie’s death certificate, which stated her father’s name as Alexis Clouden.

•• Cecelia Tureaud’s baptismal record, located in St. Michael’s Church, Convent, Louisiana, which listed her as born in 1874 and named her god- parents but not her father. It read: “Marie Cecelia, de Hattie Clouden. Le 27 September, j’ai baptise Marie Cecelia, nee le 9 Mai de Hattie Clouden. Par- rain Camille Melancon; Marraine Coralie Lanoue.” The birth record of my mother, who was also baptized there, was missing.

•• The census of 1870, which listed Lettie with her mother, Sarah Clouden, and her daughter, Mahaly. Listed adjacent to Lettie was Bergondy LaPice, a planter, who I soon discovered was the son of the owner of the family.

•• Conveyance records in St. James Parish, which revealed that Lettie’s owner was Pierre LaPice, the father of Bergondy LaPice. These records listed the property of the LaPice family and recorded the sale of over 200 Negroes in 1855, among whom were Lettie, Cecelia, and Sarah, all the right ages.

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•• Records of slave sales involving Sarah Clouden, Lettie’s mother. These sales occurred in 1852, 1837, and 1833. The sale of 1837 listed Let- tie’s mother, Sarah, with a family group including her brothers, sisters, and mother, Eliza Scott, a mulatto seamstress. Eliza was sold for $1,000, and it was noted that she could pick 140 bales of cotton. Sarah, who was sold for $1,200, could pick 160 bales. Pierre LaPice had purchased Sarah, Eliza, and her family from Archibald Dunbar of Adams County, Mississippi. Dunbar, in turn, had purchased them from James Poindexter of Wilkinson County, Mis- sissippi, in 1833. Poindexter had come to Mississippi in 1808 from Goochland County, Virginia, bringing his family and chattel (“chattel” included animals and slaves).

I also received information from neighbors and friends who had known the Bourgeois family and Great- Grandma Lettie’s family when they lived in St. James Parish. I was able to trace the ancestry of my grandfather, Adolphe Bourgeois, back to 1719 in Nova Scotia and was told that there are data trac- ing the family from there back to France.

RE‑VISIONING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

My research has shown how racism has operated in the lives of African Amer- ican families (Figure 19.7). The domination and exploitation of African Amer- icans have created conditions that have caused ignorance, gaps, and confusion about the realities of Black people’s presence and existence— effects reflected not only in the difficulties of tracing Black people’s lineage but also in psycho- logical consequences that persist to this day.

Again, the sheer scarcity and inadequacy of information are remarkable in themselves. Although Blacks greatly outnumbered Whites in St. James Par- ish, far fewer data are available on Blacks. Lillian Bourgeois (1976), in her history of the parish, notes that “four thousand Whites owned eight thousand Blacks.” She says that the wealth of antebellum St. James was exclusively in land and slaves, but she devotes a mere four pages to slavery.

As noted earlier, the census records and other official/legal documents are also incomplete and confusing. I found that my family members, like oth- ers, were listed in pre–Civil War census records as numbers under their slave- owners’ names. It is often assumed that slaves took their owners’ last names, but I discovered that this happened less often than has been assumed. The few slavery- era documents that did give names indicated that none of my family members took their owners’ names or were related to them by blood or affec- tion. I also found in the census records of 1870, 1880, and 1900 that many Black families had children with different last names, in contrast to White families, in which the children usually had the same last name.

The confusion and ambivalence so typical of racism were seen also in the Catholic Church, which owned slaves and supported slavery but at the same

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time mandated that slaves be well cared for and that “accurate” records be kept (Herbert, 1976). However, there were glaring omissions in these records as well. During slavery, slave children were listed as born of the mothers and belonging to the owners of the mothers. There was no mention of the fathers, or even of the fathers’ owners. After slavery, fathers were listed only when the parents were married. Black children’s having many last names and the omis- sion of fathers from all slavery- era and many postslavery church records are simply the most prominent evidence of the widespread exploitation visited on Black families, reflected in the fact that children had many different fathers. Slaveowners frequently forced slave women into cohabitation and pregnancy (Franklin, 1966). The cohabitor might be the master himself or a White over- seer or a Black other than the husband— whomever the owner deemed suitable for fathering the babies he intended to sell. Whether the fathers were White or Black, fathers’ names in cases of cohabitation were simply omitted from

FIGURE 19.7. My mother’s family genogram showing skin color and the abandoning White fathers.

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birth records, both during slavery and after. Obviously, there were several such omissions in my family. As I have noted earlier, my grandmother’s birth record did not list her father’s name, and my mother’s birth record was miss- ing from the records at the church where she was baptized. I do not know whether these omissions occurred because of the need to hide White paternity, but this would be a reasonable surmise. In any case, this practice predicted the long- standing tendency in this country to nullify and neglect maleness in Black families. For all intents and purposes, the Black male was a zero; he did not exist.

As I pondered these findings— the absence of White fathers as well as Black fathers in the records— I came to the conclusion that the White man was the original abandoning father in this country. Throughout history, lower- caste women have been exploited by upper-caste men, who became the absent fathers of their children. These men were the models for the absent Black men in Black families. They persisted in having sexual relationships with Black women while being protected by their society from acknowledging their pater- nity or taking responsibility for their behavior, though the society knew of it.

I found this fact to be all the more ironic when I learned during a research project we conducted in Nigeria in 1974 that among the Yoruba tribe—the group from which probably the largest number of slaves was taken—there was no illegitimacy (Pinderhughes, 1978). Whenever a man impregnated a woman, he married her. Although this custom was facilitated by the practice of polygamy, it meant also that at the time the slaves were taken from Africa, every mother had a husband and every child had a legal father. I also pondered the fact that under polygamy the children in one family had several mothers and one father, whereas under slavery and the conditions that have since pre- vailed in the United States, children in one family may have one mother but several fathers.

This precedent of abandonment is illustrated in my own family, in which the absent and abandoning fathers were all Whites. The irresponsibility of such abandonment is compounded by the confusion, deception, and hyste- ria that have been and are still connected with the reality of miscegenation. According to a White librarian I spoke with, New Orleans “is very nervous about birth certificates” because of the large number of Whites who have Black blood, and their extensive records proving Black ancestry are kept under lock and key. It is estimated that 80% of the Whites of French descent in New Orleans have Black relatives and that 30% have Black blood of which they are unaware. Stories abound in the area about White politicians and well- known figures who have Black ancestors. During Reconstruction, many light- skinned Blacks in New Orleans altered records in order to identify themselves as White; however, copies of these records still exist unaltered. Exposure of the records validating the Black ancestry of one prospective bride led her to have a psychotic break. Another fled the country. The appalling fact is that in Louisiana until 1982, a person could only be considered legally White if he had no more than 1/64th “Negro” blood.

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Thus, the pervasive domination, exploitation, and abandonment of Blacks by Whites massively influenced the psychology, personality develop- ment, and interracial behavior of all involved. A major effect for Blacks has been the fragmentation of identity. My research has sought to address and correct this in my own life.

RESTORYING THE FAMILY: SEEING THE FAMILY IN CONTEXT

Restorying the family and placing it in the context of the times in which my ancestors lived facilitated my awareness of the cutoffs, secrets, fusion, and confusion caused by racism. I now understand that the abandonment by her White father, plus the poverty and desperation that followed the 1935 fire at Live Oak, were so painful to my mother that she could not mention them— and I did not dare ask.

I have learned via this research that there is much to be proud of in my mother’s family. They were hardworking people with a strong sense of respon- sibility. I discovered that Alec Bibbs and members of 10 other families bought Live Oak in 1871. Live Oak was thus owned by a cooperative of families, and our family still has a legal claim to the property. Neighbors recollected the sharing that had characterized family and community interaction. The sup- port among neighbors and extended family is well documented, especially in relation to the children. Although the White fathers were irresponsible and abandoned their children, other family members loved and cared for them. The household was well organized, and the farm flourished. Although life was harsh, these resourceful and competent people also had much love, abun- dance, and pleasure. I heard many stories of the efficiency of the farm, with its variety of crops and livestock; I also heard much about the warmth and good times, as well as hard times, that the family shared in the big old house with its encircling verandah. Neighbors still remember the wedding of Lettie’s daughter Carrie in 1906 to a young minister, as they remember the hardwork- ing and competent Lettie, my great grandma.

When Cecelia, my grandmother, died, leaving my mother a young teen- ager, others in the family provided nurturance and protection. After the fire in 1935, everyone rallied and worked to keep the extended family together. Families showed courage in naming their children after their fathers, no mat- ter who they were. And they had pride, courage to survive, zest for life, and strong religious beliefs.

I found myself remembering many things I had forgotten: pleasant gath- erings in the evenings at Live Oak on the few occasions when my mother, my sister, and I visited; being taken for horseback and buggy rides; being loved and cared about by these gentle, caring people; and their togetherness and enjoyment of one another. I see this now in great contrast to the more lonely, isolated existence of our nuclear family in D.C. And I understand better my mother’s eternal depression and longing for home, which she frequently shared

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with me. She greatly missed her family’s humor, loyalty, and sense of working together. Also, the family showed dedication to improving the quality of life for its members. Whereas Lettie and Mahaly were laborers (they farmed, cut sugar cane, etc.), Carrie and Ollie were educated to be teachers.

In exposing the family secrets and confronting the shame that entrapped the family, I have come to understand why they went to such lengths not to discuss the pain and humiliation of slavery and the sexual exploitation of women. But I have also come to understand that in trying to build a better life and attempting desperately to forget the past, their defensive behavior only reinforced the secrets— rigidifying costly emotional cutoffs, fragmenting personal and group identity, and creating for individuals within the family a nonauthentic sense of self. Undoing the secrets and facing the shame have opened up the emotional cutoffs, freeing family members from their negative consequences. And recognizing the family’s positive achievements has contrib- uted to the healing, as well.

HOW MY FAMILY ADAPTED TO RACISM

“Racism” is behavior, both individual and institutional, that is based on the belief in the superiority of one group of people and the inferiority of another because of national and ethnic origins (Pinderhughes, 1973). Family research can document some of the ways in which Black people have responded to the racism that has so dominated their environment in the United States. The slaves, when brought to this country from Africa, were forced to deal with Whites’ definitions of them as lazy, dumb, evil, sexual, dirty, and so on. Although some slaves simply adopted these behaviors in the course of play- ing a role (to “trick” or placate the slaveowners), others internalized these definitions. Probably those slaves who felt the most powerless assumed these behaviors in the most exaggerated form in an effort to turn their painful sense of powerlessness into some sense of power and initiative. (In many ways, this behavior has continued into the present: For example, some individu- als assume the pose of “superstud” or use manipulative, resistant, or oppo- sitional behaviors to convey some sense of control and counteract their sense of powerlessness; see Pinderhughes, 1983, 1990.) Others reacted to their slave roles by identifying with the aggressor— by mimicking the values of the slave master as superior, entitled, and supercompetent. It was paradoxical (and also somewhat “crazy- making”) for individuals who belonged to a group relegated to inferior status to perceive themselves as superior. This solution evidenced itself in a kind of elitism in my family, spanning generations right down to me.

The tendency toward elitism among African Americans caused me pain more than once, when my family and I have been seen by others as “stuck up.” I have always been uncomfortable with an elitist stance within myself, which I realized distanced me from certain people. Since I was young, I have found that, when I least expected it, I had unintentionally offended someone.

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I was always disturbed by this, and I worked hard to cope with this tendency in myself. Until I researched my family history, I had attributed it entirely to growing up in Washington, D.C., being the daughter of a well-known dentist, and attending Dunbar High School (that breeding ground of the old “Black elite”). However, understanding my family history has put me in touch with a more fundamental basis of elitism as a response to racism.

The story has an ironic twist, as my mother’s family was the part of the family of which I was ashamed. It is true that, as discussed earlier, I have come to view this family connection as a source of pride. However, it has also become clear that these strong, courageous, loving people were themselves racist and elitist— sometimes hating their Blackness, loving Whiteness, and feeling superior to other Blacks.

1. The first clue that turned up in my research was the fact that Great- Grandma Lettie had been a “house nigger” and a “mammy.” As her sister Cecelia’s grandchildren said, their mother and Lettie were well treated. They told me that after her master’s family ate, the “house niggers,” almost all of whom were light skinned, were allowed to have the pickings, whereas the dark- skinned ones were not. Cecelia was remembered as very loyal and pro- tective of her White employers, to whom she once claimed to be related. She protected their secrets, ran to them when angered by her own family, and seemed “to love them more than she did us,” as one of her grandchildren sadly stated. It was not rare that a Black child whose parents’ job it was to care for the children of White employers would possess such a perception. I can recall two clients whose memories of maternal deprivation were connected with feel- ings that their mothers were more loving and accepting of their White charges than of their own children.

2. The second clue concerns the issue of skin color: Lettie, I was told, had definite preferences based on skin color. My Aunt Mahaly’s grandchildren, who knew her well, told of how Lettie discouraged them from playing with dark- skinned children; the lessons of the “big house” had indeed remained with her. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding the origins of Mahaly and Cecelia, as well as Lettie’s two biracial granddaughters, it appears that she highly valued their skin color.

3. The third clue was the discovery that Eliza Scott, Lettie’s grand- mother, had been identified in the slave sale record of 1837 as a mulatto and a seamstress— two characteristics that may have caused the family to regard themselves as special in those days. Indeed, on my visit back to St. James Parish, Miss Lavinia, who had been Coralee’s childhood playmate and who knew the family well, remarked on what she perceived as the arrogance of the family.

4. I found a final source of such a response in attributes of the slaveown- ers themselves. In my readings on plantation life in St. James Parish during and immediately following slavery, I became aware of the sense of connection,

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both in history and in attitude, that many people entertained in relation to French royalty and privilege. Pierre LaPice— owner of Lettie, Cecelia, and their mother, Sarah—was actually the son of a nobleman in the court of Louis XIV (“Sword’s Plunge,” 1963). Archibald Dunbar, from whom LaPice pur- chased Sarah, her siblings, and their mother, Eliza Scott, was the son of a titled English gentleman, Sir William Dunbar. James Poindexter, Eliza’s for- mer owner (who, I believe, brought her to Mississippi from Virginia), had been the governor of Mississippi. Here is ample evidence for such expecta- tions of entitlement. Historians and others have pointed out how the identities and self-worth of slaves were often tied up with those of their masters: Those belonging to the wealthiest slaveowners felt the most superior.

Embracing such “identification with the aggressor,” which embodies self- negation and self- hatred, is only one example of the contradictions that characterized the lives of slaves as they attempted to cope. This identification was a consequence of the fused master– slave relationship that slave masters forged in the attempt to stamp out African identity, to create a slave identity, and thus to facilitate bonding to the masters. A dramatic example from Roots (Haley, 1976) was the slave master’s attempt to force Kunta Kinte to accept the name of “Toby.”

During our research sojourn in Nigeria, we had found people whose iden- tity and sense of themselves constituted the very antithesis of such a slave mentality. We met the Oba of Ekeri-Iketi, who knew his lineage for 30 genera- tions. Our research colleague, Dr. Akinsola Akiwowo, told us that when he was disobedient as a boy, his mother chastised him by reading his oriki, which was a recitation of his relationship to his ancestors back through time. The contrast here is extreme indeed between the clear and positive African identity and the situation in which slaves came to be known as “Mr. Henry’s gal” or “Miss Sophie’s boy.”

As I pondered these interrelated issues, I wondered: Did my family adopt an orientation of identification with the aggressor? As I drove through Mis- sissippi and saw the elaborate antebellum houses and Christian academies, I remembered my family’s passion for large houses, including the one in which I was reared (and, I thought with irony, the one in which I now reside).

Another issue related to the family’s sense of entitlement was my mother Ollie’s outstanding beauty. No one ever mentioned her without reference to her beauty. Her beauty had been a major issue in my battle for self- esteem. I also knew the pain it had brought her, for she had often shared with me ugly incidents of rejection by others who envied her beauty and her fair color. I learned one source of her pain when her brother, Henry, told me this story: When their mother, Cecelia, married Hypolite Nelson, a dark- skinned man, his relatives so abused my mother that she was forcibly sent away from her beloved family to an aunt in a distant city. I had known that my mother, despite her unusual beauty, was often sad and depressed. I knew this well, for she was my first “client,” as she shared much of her sadness and depression

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with me. I have often wondered whether, by becoming a “parentified child,” as family therapists label it, and listening to her pain and perpetual mourning, I may have saved her from a breakdown. Clearly, my mother’s fair skin had led to the loss of her mother, stepfather, friends, and family.

I also discovered that my grandfather, Adolphe Bourgeois, lived in the community and had a family, including other daughters, and that everyone knew him as Ollie’s father. Ever since, I have tried to imagine how she must have felt and been pained by the destructiveness of racism as it touched her life. Abandoned by her father because she was not White enough (or at least not White) and abused by her stepfather, in-laws, and others because she was not dark enough, she was in a poignantly tragic situation. She appeared to be the circuit breaker for the anxiety, hostility, and resentment of many others in the systems in which she was trapped.

My mother’s full reality, however, was that, though envied and rejected by some, she was also admired and adored by many others. Her unusual beauty was both a curse and a blessing. Though they sent her away, she still remained special to her mother, grandmother, aunts, uncle, and siblings. Reared by her Aunt Car- rie and Carrie’s husband, the Reverend David Price, a district superintendent of the Methodist Church, my mother lived a fairly privileged life—such as privilege was in those days. Never the parental oldest child (as is usual in a large family), my mother was rather the special, idealized one, playing a role that stabilizes a family just as the role of scapegoat can. It is not surprising that she loved fairy tales, “Cinderella” being her favorite. Only now do I understand why. And she sent me messages that I should achieve for her, so she could live through me at the same time that I would be her therapist. This elitism and specialness— basic values in determining behavior in the family for five generations— entrapped me also and further reinforced the partially nonseparate relationship I had with my mother. I worked hard to live up to her expectations.

Another of Mother’s favorite stories was Longfellow’s Evangeline, the story of French lovers in Nova Scotia who were tragically separated and, after the banishment of the French to Louisiana, doomed to search for one another in vain. Only after learning that the Bourgeois family was Acadian, having emigrated from France to Nova Scotia and then (involuntarily) to Louisiana, did I understand the appeal of this story for her. She never mentioned why this story of loss and sadness meant so much to her; nor did she ever speak of how it felt to see her father often, knowing who he was but never being acknowl- edged by him.

The family expectation of entitlement may have had other sources as well. Many in St. James Parish confirmed for me that Lettie was the family matri- arch. As a child, I both respected and feared her. As the initiator, decision maker, and authority, she held the power in the family; others were dependent on her and less able to exercise initiative. When all the power in any group is invested in one person, the power relationship is not very different from that between master and slave. Understandably, relationships in the families of former slaves who identified strongly with their masters were characterized by

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authoritarianism, unequal power, and imbalanced interactions. Nevertheless, Lettie’s superior power held the family together, keeping it functioning in sup- port of its members. When Live Oak burned down and forced the family to move to New Orleans, living on friends, other relatives, and the state, Lettie suffered great humiliation, and the family became disorganized.

Finally, the authoritarian nature of the relationships within the family can be viewed in terms of the male– female dyads in Lettie’s generation. Lettie had two children by White men who took no responsibility. Her Black hus- band, Alec Bibbs, helped her rear these White men’s children and, later, the granddaughters as well. How did Bibbs feel about this? Did he feel exploited, overwhelmed, and undermined as a man, or was he loving and protective of his wife’s children and grandchildren? Perhaps both. Whatever his feelings, the power and the sense of entitlement had belonged to his wife.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF MY RESEARCH FOR THERAPY

Understanding my family’s struggle to survive and thrive in a societal con- text of domination, oppression, mystification, and exploitation has been an act of liberation. It has enabled me to understand the residual effects of the past, which have reinforced the fragmented, often negative identity that has plagued African Americans. Through this experience, I was able to replace the shame, ignorance, and confusion that surrounded my heritage with pride, knowledge, and understanding— truly a transformative process.

As I have shared my experience with other therapists, many have had strong and immediate responses. They identify with different aspects— the sadness, the pain, the anger, or the guilt. My work both in my personal research and as a therapist has centered on the importance of being clear about who we are culturally. Whenever we find ourselves in the presence of the unfamiliar cultural adaptations and realities of persons who are different— whether that difference is one of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeco- nomic background— we need to try to understand and manage our responses so that they will not interfere with our work (Pinderhughes, 1989; Pinder- hughes, Hopps, & Shankar, 1995, Pinderhughes, Jackson & Romney, 2017).

I have found two concepts especially helpful in this process. The first is the telling of one’s story as a way of restorying the past (Laird, 1989; Griffin, 1992) and constructing a coherent narrative (Lifton, 1993). This highlights the significance of the meaning that people assign to their experience, both the past and the present, as reflected in their beliefs and perceptions. It can point the way to solving problems that have been created by the societal projection process. As Susan Griffin (1992) has put it, the restorying of our history involves:

moving beyond one’s own family and explicitly merging our story with the larger themes of connectedness between the personal and the political, the private and the public, the individual and all of history. Through telling

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seemingly unrelated story fragments and brief scenes from history, we can overcome the bifurcating, reductionistic process that dominates Western thinking and alienates us from each other and from an intimate relationship with our surround. (p. 5)

Another idea I have found very useful is Murray Bowen’s (1976) concept of the “societal projection process”—an expansion of his concept of the fam- ily projection process to the level of society. According to this concept, the dominant group in society may stabilize itself, relieving tension and anxiety for itself through the presence of a victim group, which it views as weak and less competent. Among the “victim groups” Bowen has identified are minori- ties and the poor. He says:

These groups fit the best criteria for long-term anxiety relieving projection. They are vulnerable to become the pitiful objects of the benevolent, over- sympathetic segment of society that improves its functioning at the expense of the pitiful. Just as the least adequate child in a family can become more impaired when he becomes the object of pity and oversympathetic help from the family, so can the “lowest” segment of society be chronically impaired by the very attention designed to help. . . . They automatically put the recipient[s] in a “one-down” inferior position and they either keep them there or get angry at them. (pp. 444–445)

This societal process has grave implications for both beneficiaries and vic- tims. As I have discussed elsewhere, Whites, upper- and middle- class people, males, and heterosexuals, as beneficiaries of the societal projection process, have been able to stabilize themselves and their communities by keeping large amounts of the tension, conflict, contradiction, and confusion of the larger social system confined to the victims (the poor, people of color, gays, etc.) of the projection process and their communities (Pinderhughes, 1989). I have questioned the impact on both victims and beneficiaries of their entrapment in their roles and the consequences of these responses for their interaction with one another. I have also questioned the significance of these entrapped soci- etal roles for the work of helpers who are seeking to empower their clients. In cross- cultural treatment situations, practitioners who are White, male, and/or middle class or who are positioned in any other ongoing power role are thus vulnerable to perceiving and handling clients who occupy subordinate soci- etal roles (such as people of color, women, the poor, mental patients, or those positioned in any other socially powerless roles) in a manner that is largely beneficial to the practitioners themselves. These notions give substance to the issues and themes that have emerged from my family research:

1. The nonexistence of African Americans in the consciousness of the larger society. Not existing has serious consequences. This is especially signifi- cant given the solid identity Africans had when they came here.

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2. The nullification of the Black male. Even when the mother was named in birth and christening documents, the father was always omitted, during slavery and often afterward as well. This was a systematic obliteration of his existence.

3. The vulnerability of slaves to development of a fused identity as a result of the enslavement process, which encouraged them to define them- selves through identification with the master, the oppressor, the dominant one. This was an invitation to poor self- differentiation. Thus does the “non- self” imposed by slavery and by the making of a slave (Elkins, 1976) become understandable.

4. The vulnerability of African Americans to emotional cutoff due to their inability to claim the White part of their lineage and to the absence of the White fathers, which placed yet more emotional burden on the Black families. The consequence of such cutoffs was an intensification of the emotional pro- cesses within the families. (The systematic, intentional splitting up of African American families under slavery by selling family members to other White slaveowners, of course, compounded this factor.)

5. The vulnerability of African Americans to the negative stereotypes of their masters (who perceived them as dumb, dirty, evil, sexual, etc.). They might develop a negative identity by internalizing these stereotypes or spend enormous energy trying to maintain a positive identity. They might take the role of victim, struggling to manage an extreme sense of powerlessness, or try to achieve some sense of power through manipulation, passive– aggressive or oppositional behavior, striking back, or becoming dependent (Pinderhughes, 1989). At times, developing exaggerated stereotypical behavior— becoming superdumb, a superstud, or superaggressive— has been a way to seize the ini- tiative and thus to overcome feelings of powerlessness.

6. The vulnerability to responding to the pain of oppression by sealing off the pain, not talking about it, not asking, not trying to understand. This leads to secrecy, which can cause serious disconnection from oneself. As Stiver (1997) has put it, “Secrecy’s pathological effects can have enormous ramifica- tions for how one develops a sense of reality, understands and trusts one’s own experience, and establishes relationships.”

7. The tendency for a behavior I have labeled “not knowing” to become one’s essential learning style. Child psychologists are more than familiar with children whose poor school performance and learning problems are linked to their efforts to keep hidden emotionally laden, overwhelming events of loss and abuse.

Undoing the negative consequences of these entrapped societal roles is an imperative for the mental health profession. In my search to give meaning to the facts that I have learned about my own and my people’s history, I was able

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to accomplish the following, which freed up enormous energy in the family and in myself personally:

1. To understand myself and my family in the context of history, as well as the present. I was able to develop a sense of continuity with the past, which made me more connected in the present. That sense of continuity brought with it a greater sense of clarity and confidence about who I am and from whence I came. My “I-ness” is now more secure and integrated. I can see my family realistically in all its complexities— strengths as well as weaknesses.

2. To label the complexities, contradictions, and gaps that, when unnamed and unidentified, have created confusion and entrapment for the family, becoming crazy- making and costly in energy. Filling gaps in informa- tion and revealing secrets have reversed the sense of disconnectedness, igno- rance, and not knowing.

3. To identify the myths, misconceptions, and distortions that have reinforced both my own and others’ “stuckness” in the family process and our entrapment in societal processes that maintain people in contradictory, even paradoxical positions. An example of such a position is that of so- called “elite” victims— oppressed persons who are treated as special and different from their group and who learn to seek solace in a perception of themselves as better than their fellow sufferers. I came to understand how people’s responses to racism, which are used to cope with pain and shame, can create even more problems: identification with the aggressor (elitism or domination of others), skin color prejudice, denial of family pain, cutoff from the family, and keeping secrets to deny the pain.

4. To undo the emotional cutoff from my extended family that was the result of poverty, racism, and shame. In learning about the strengths of my mother’s people and understanding their struggles, I could let go of the shame related to illegitimacy and poverty. In becoming more connected with them, I found that my present relationships became less burdened as well, because the intensification (fusion) of emotional processes caused by the cutoff was lessened.

As for our work as helpers, I believe that what I have learned can enhance our understanding of personal emptiness, meaninglessness, depression, family cutoff, fusion, intensified emotional processes, maladaptive beliefs— all con- sequences of entrapping societal roles. It can also provide a basis for develop- ing coping strategies.

All of us— African Americans, other people of color, and Whites, too— must take responsibility for finding ways to tell our stories responsibly. We who have been victims must help others to understand the true context of our shared existence— our struggles in the entrapping roles in which we have found ourselves. We must identify our strengths and realize why we may have embraced negative stereotypes and how we have coped with our status as

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victims in the societal projection process. This is our story and we must tell it. As the victims of the Holocaust have shown, not only can survivors and their descendants free themselves, but perpetrators (and their descendants) can also liberate themselves when victims are allowed to tell their stories and be heard. Thus, when the stories of African Americans, descendants of those who were entrapped in slavery and its destructive aftermath, are listened to by those who have been “beneficiaries,” the victims will really feel heard. And those who are beneficiaries must also tell their stories, examining how and why they may have been trapped in exploitative positions as beneficiaries, vulnerable to using the victims to relieve tension and reduce anxiety for themselves. In our work, this means that we must take responsibility for the way our personal need for the gratifying power role of helper, compounded by our aggrandized cultural group status in society, can make us doubly vulnerable to using our clients (who may well be victims in the societal process) to relieve our own anxiety or tension (Pinderhughes, 1989).

We must not let our society’s pressure for cost containment, brief therapy, and partialized goals divert us from the importance of this task. Only when we deal with such connection to our context, clarifying our societal roles as well as our personal need, will we become truly effective in our helping endeavors with those who have been victimized by these roles. This includes not only African Americans but also, indeed, any clients we want to help toward self- empowerment. Only through bearing witness to this history and these narratives can we join our clients in their struggles to reinforce the func- tioning necessary for a genuine change in their victim status. Then we will really be ready to help them develop the networks and communities that will support and nourish them as families and individuals. Then and only then can the social system of which we are a part sustain them instead of undermining them.

Our country is rapidly becoming a mosaic of many cultures. Our readi- ness to receive them all, to honor their cultures and their histories, will deter- mine whether or not our thrust toward pluralism in the 21st century will be for us all a tragedy or a triumph.

REFERENCES

Blockson, C. (1977). Black genealogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall. Bourgeois, L. (1976). Cabanocey: The history, customs and folklore of St. James par-

ish. Gretna, LA: Pelican. Bowen, M. (1976). Theory in practice of psychotherapy. In P. Guerin (Ed.), Family

therapy: Theory and practice (pp. 388–418). New York: Gardner Press. Elkins, S. (1976). Slavery: A problem in American institutional and intellectual life.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Franklin, J. H. (1966). From slavery to freedom. New York: Knopf. Griffin, S. (1992). A chorus of stones: The private life of war. New York: Doubleday. Haley, A. (1974). Roots. New York: Doubleday.

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Herbert, D. (1976). Introduction to Black genealogy. Southwest Louisiana Records, 13(2).

Laird, J. (1989). Women and stories: Restorying women’s self- constructions. In M. McGoldrick, C. Anderson, & F. Walsh (Eds.), Women in families: A framework for family therapy (pp. 427–450). New York: Norton.

Lifton, R. (1993). The protean self. New York: Basic Books. Pinderhughes, C. A. (1973). Racism and psychotherapy. In C. Willie, B. Kramer, &

B. Brown (Eds.), Racism and mental health. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pitts- burgh Press.

Pinderhughes, E. (1978). Affiliativeness in Western Nigerian social organization: Toward an understanding of modern Black American life. Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the National Association of Black Social Workers, 212–221.

Pinderhughes, E. (1983). Empowerment for our clients and for ourselves. Social Case- work, 64(6), 331–338.

Pinderhughes, E. (1989). Understanding race, ethnicity and power. New York: Free Press.

Pinderhughes, E. (1990). The legacy of slavery. In M. Mirkin (Ed.), The social and political contexts of family therapy (pp. 289–305). New York: Gardner Press.

Pinderhughes, E., Hopps, J. G., & Shankar, R. (2007). Power to care: Clinical prac- tice effectiveness with “overwhelmed clients.” New York: Free Press.

Pinderhughes, E., Jackson, V., & Romney, P. (2017). Understanding power: An imperative for human services. Washington, DC: NASW Press.

Stiver, I. P. (1997). A relational approach to therapeutic impasses. In J. V. Jordan (Ed.), Women’s growth in diversity: More writings from the Stone Center (pp. 288– 310). New York: Guilford Press.

Sword’s plunge introduced LaPice name to Louisiana. (1963, February). The Times- Picayune New Orleans.

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A fish is not aware of how it breathes in water until it attempts to breathe in air. This metaphor alludes to the phenomenon we have all experienced— the shock of seeing our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and sense of self in a radically new context, the result of which is that we are forced to understand ourselves differently.

This chapter evolved as an attempt to respond to the way the concept of “being politically correct” was being used by some White people to reference how they were being persecuted and their right to freedom of speech was being denied by those who decried their statements as hateful, racist, sexist, or misogynistic.

As I thought further, I realized that just as the concept of “being politi- cally correct” was perverted, so is the moral thinking which supports it. That led me to explore how the moral thinking which some White people employ is perverted by unacknowledged privilege and the racist assumptions which support that privilege. I began this chapter in the heat of passion that was a mixture of moral outrage, deep sadness, and hopeful protest— emotions familiar to me whenever I have felt the sting of injustice, whether directed at me or anyone else.

I grew up in a struggling White family in which there was violence, intimidation, mental illness, and eventually suicide. Whatever assumptions I had about who my parents are, what family is, and who I was in that fam- ily were altered by my father’s willingness to enforce his will through the use of physical force and violence. My mother was weaker and had to submit to

C H A P T E R 2 0

White Privilege, Pathological Shame and Guilt, and the Perversion of Morality

Robert Shelby

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domination or risk physical harm. The method by which he enforced his will upon me was by shaming me in public and spanking and shaming me at home.

My mother was from the third generation of a German- speaking farm community in Illinois. Her father died when she was 6, and she lived with relatives while her mother worked as a housekeeper for a family in St. Louis, 50 miles away. Reunited years later when her mother remarried, she was sent away when she was 14 because her stepfather said she was not earning her keep. After working for a family while she was in high school, she took classes in typing and shorthand and began working as an executive secretary.

My father was raised on the wrong side of the tracks in a small town in Indiana. His ancestors were Scottish, Welsh, and Danish, had settled in Appa- lachia, and over generations had migrated to Indiana. My father’s mother was taken away when he was 7, after she was seen attempting to put her baby in an open fire. She died in a psychiatric hospital when he was 14. His father was a laborer and a man about town who physically abused his children. My father was ashamed of his life circumstances and worked at odd jobs during high school to earn money and hide his poverty. Although he had the highest grade-point average in his class and was eligible for a scholarship to a univer- sity, the scholarship went to the better connected postmaster’s son. Rejected by the Army because of migraine headaches, my father did not serve in World War II but got a job as quartermaster in the Civilian Conservation Corps and from there began a career in bookkeeping, credit, and finance.

My parents each told me stories of their childhoods, and from those sto- ries I learned the impact that class and trauma have on the shaping of person- ality, theirs and mine. I learned it in my body as I absorbed the impact of my father’s shame and anger and the mood of my mother’s depressions. Later, in graduate school, I learned about the intergenerational transmission of trauma and about the use of violence, intimidation, and shame in the targeting of individuals and groups. At home I learned about the use of dominance to create fear, shame, rage, self- loathing, and submission, and later I was able to translate that into understanding the dynamics that are set up between the colonizer and the colonized.

At the time I was born to them, my parents had the appearance of being a middle- class white- collar family. They were buying their house, eventu- ally saved enough money to own a car, sent their child to a Lutheran school, attended church, managed their finances, and kept everything they owned clean and in good working order. But both were haunted in their own way by their emotionally impoverished backgrounds. Oftentimes I and they were being newly initiated into such experiences as eating at a “fancy” restaurant or shopping at an “expensive” department store. For me these first-time expe- riences were taken for granted, but for them they were exceptional, part of a covenant my father made with my mother to prove to themselves and others that they were just as good as anyone else. It was difficult to know whether they felt that they were “passing” or actually “belonging.” And for me it was odd because I was developing skills in passing at being their son, learning what

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it took to appease the narcissistic needs of my father and to be a confidant to my depressed, often suicidal, mother. While the drama of social acceptance played out on Sunday mornings, the drama of my parents’ discord played out on Saturday nights. Intimidation, guilt, and the threat of abandonment were the weapons they wielded. I awoke on Sunday mornings to find them sullen and standoffish. I witnessed how each of us went through the motions of eating breakfast, dressing for church, and riding in silence to the next per- formance of the “Shelby family acts normal.” And then I saw them shift into smiles, while I was the one who held the secret of what was really going on.

I went to a Lutheran grade school with one class for each grade. I had the opportunity to observe my fellow students as we confronted the reality of the circumstances we found ourselves in at home, in the classroom, and on the playground. With each passing year I witnessed the transformation each of us made as we were affected by how we were treated by teachers, fellow class- mates, and parents. I watched the layering of personality that is the inevitable result of adaptation driven by the need to survive in the interpersonal context in which one finds oneself and by the strategies we adopted to manage shame, guilt, and feelings of unworthiness. I witnessed the classmates I sang with in nursery school lose the innocence in their faces and the sparkle in their eyes. As they changed, so did I.

At age 9, I was one of several students in my Sunday school class who were taken into the inner city to lead a Sunday school class at another Lutheran church. I found myself sitting in a circle with my friend Mark and four African American boys who were a grade or two younger. As I was earnestly teaching from the lesson like the missionaries I heard about who went to Africa, I was emphasizing with a fervor that was even hard for me to believe that Jesus loves all of us. Looking at the open and beautiful face of the young boy across from me, I heard my thinking complete the sentence with “even if you are colored.” I was shocked by my thought and, to my recollection, I saw in that boy’s face the same expression of innocence that I had seen so many years before in the faces of my nursery school mates. I feared that I had the potential in what I said of causing harm, a harm I knew so well because of how harm had befallen me and how I in turn had been harming others. I fell silent and let Mark finish the lesson. That experience confirmed in me the need to radically accept that, just as it was my fate to be born to the two people who called themselves my parents, so it was for everyone else. No one could claim privilege or fault for the circumstances into which they were born. A seed of compassion began to grow in me, which, after years of freeing myself from my pain, I can now, at the age of 71, more frequently feel.

By the age of 12 I knew I had to find a way to escape, and college pro- vided the route. After college, I worked as a VISTA volunteer in a White ghetto, a teaching assistant in Upward Bound, an operating room orderly, a stock clerk in a hospital lab storeroom, a room service waiter and busboy, a laborer, a copywriter for CARE, a counterman at a deli, a woodworker in a cabinet shop, a food service worker, a rough-and- finish carpenter, a math and

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English tutor, a creative writing instructor, a massage therapist, a health food store clerk, a tai chi teacher, a landscape installer, and, for the last 33 years, a marriage and family therapist and supervisor.

My mobility was possible because of my being White and male. Each time I applied for a job, I was not worried that I would be rejected, because I was a White gender- conforming and middle- class- conforming male. I am a fish swimming in the water. Yet these life experiences have confirmed for me the evidence of the continual working of a system built on White privilege. In every work situation I was in, I could see how the life choices available to me were different from the life choices available to my fellow workers. I was White, male, college educated. That gave me access to resources denied to oth- ers. I worked jobs for which you did not need a resume or prior experience. I was not hired because of merit. I was hired because I was a White male who knew how to conform to the work environment.

From early on I became committed to the struggle for social justice. It is a struggle I began in my family, as I was enraged by my father’s dominance of my mother and me, and it is that same rage against injustice that I feel when anyone is treated in a way that disrespects their full human dignity. As I entered the workforce by working in a factory when I was 15, I began to see the effects of dominance in the work setting. I got help in understanding what I saw when I read about Marxism in a high school history book. I saw that the cost of labor was the one variable that was most able to be controlled by the employer and that the cost of rent, food, and other necessities of living were the costs least likely to be controlled by the worker. I saw that the power dynamics inherent in capitalism’s formulation of the relationship between capital and labor opened the possibility for exploitation of labor. Just as I had found that my father used the power he had of creating painful consequences to my mother and me when we thwarted his attempts to dominate us, so I learned that those in power positions in employment and government were willing to use power to create painful consequences for those who objected to their abuse of power. This was further confirmed as I resisted the draft during the Vietnam War, sat in a federal courtroom, and heard the bailiff announce the case as the United States of America versus the name of my friend.

Prior to the inauguration of our current president, as I was reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Ta- Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and, more recently, Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop, I felt that the anger and outrage expressed by them was akin to that which I have felt since the first time my father hit me. Using a resource I had to develop in my family, in which resistance brought only more abuse, I channeled my out- rage into an analysis of how the morality constructed by our White- dominated society is perverted.

A fish is not aware of the water it swims in until it is no longer in the water. A fish is not aware of how it breathes in water until it attempts to breathe in air.

Without building a historical argument to support the statements I am making (because I feel the truth of the statements is evident), let me say that

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White people in the United States swim in the waters of White privilege, a privilege bequeathed to them by the Founding Fathers, who, while espousing that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, were supporting a variety of practices— slavery, indentured servitude, rules of land ownership, rules on who could vote—that denied privileges, that they held as entitlements, to those who were not White, not male, and not landown- ers. Flaws in moral thinking— flaws imbedded in moral thinking because of the acceptance of White male superiority and the acceptance of discrimina- tion based upon species, gender, class, race, and ethnicity— are a part of the bequest and are apparent today in the thinking of those White people who deny or support White privilege.

Why is it so difficult for White people to acknowledge the privilege we have been given simply by the accident of being born to two White parents who are citizens of the United States? One answer is that we are born into a society that grants us privileges we did not ask to receive but requires us to accept those privileges and in return to not question the structure of the society that has bestowed those privileges upon us. Further, it asks of us to believe, without proof, that we are both superior to non- Whites and entitled, without demonstration of individual merit, to the privileges granted to all White people. The identification with White privilege is reinforced not only by myths of superiority and promises of access to privilege but also by the realization that the benefits of living in a White privileged society are not distributed evenly, not only between White and non-White but also among Whites. Whites and non- Whites are both exposed to discrimination based upon gender, able- bodiedness, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, financial status, class, and so on. We learn to accept discrimination based upon any categories chosen by the dominant culture for the purpose of retaining privi- lege and power. We learn to accept it because we see it in action. From early childhood on, we see who is targeted by the judgment inherent in discrimina- tion and who is not targeted. In relatively powerless states compared with the power over us exerted by the adults upon whom we depend, we seek to avoid being targeted and learn to accept passively the process of targeting itself. We are schooled to accept unfairness and discrimination in how the benefits of living in this society are unevenly distributed, and we learn to accept the ratio- nales that support this. We learn to accept as consolation that, although we may not have access to the same privileges and benefits as other White people, we do have greater access than non-White people. Thus begins the corruption of a moral sense among White people. A society based upon White privilege must corrupt the moral sense of its White membership in order to stay viable as a White- privilege- based society.

WHITE GUILT AND NORMAL, HEALTHY SHAME

Everybody knows that the killing of indigenous peoples in the Americas in order to obtain land and access to resources was wrong! Everybody knows

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that slavery was wrong! Why do we know that? Because we have a moral sense of what is fair, right, humane, kind, and compassionate. However, that moral sense must be corrupted to maintain a society based upon White privi- lege.

The first and most crucial step in corrupting a person’s or a society’s moral sense is the denial of shame and the denial of guilt through the conver- sion of normal, healthy shame and guilt into pathological forms of each.

Shame is a normal emotion, and the capacity to feel shame signifies us as being human. We feel shame when we see ourselves through the eyes of another as having, through attitude and behavior, betrayed or transgressed a bond that connects us to that person. We feel shame when we see ourselves through the eyes of our conscience and realize we betrayed or transgressed an agreement we made with ourselves not to harm another, not to always take without in turn giving. It alerts us to how we have abandoned something authentic in ourselves and in doing so lost integrity with ourselves.

Shame reminds us that we need others to survive, that we are part of a human community in which our dependence on others and their dependence on us forms a dynamic fabric of interconnectedness and interdependency that allows us to survive physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Shame introduces us to our sense of self, to the vulnerability we feel in our need and wish to be loved, liked, valued, and understood. Shame puts a check on our magical thinking that we are the center of the universe and deserve to have others grant us what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. Shame puts a check on our grandiosity and an inflated sense of ourselves as ideal, perfect, and flawless. Shame puts a check on our sense of entitlement. It tempers our immature and childish sense of narcissism by thwarting our magical thinking, our omnipotent fantasies about ourselves and our power over the world around us, our grandiosity, and our persistent exercise of will meant to bend the world to our wishes and needs. We give up that struggle as we learn that our self- centered and self- serving demands have harmful effects on others. In return for surrendering these aspects of our immaturity, we learn a form of empathy— to feel what another person might feel when as a recipi- ent of our behavior toward them. We learn to care—to act with the intention of affecting positive feeling in another person. Knowing that we are known, liked, loved, understood, accepted, and cared about by others and that we have the capacity to know, like, love, understand, accept, and care about oth- ers helps us to use the shame we feel as an important and vital measure of when we are living within the community of fellow human beings and when we are not.

Shame wakes us up to what we are doing, thinking, believing. It makes us examine, explore, question, and learn. Shame helps us define our limits realistically and, by alerting us to when we exceed or transgress our limits, it helps us accept that we are not greater than and not lesser than who we are. In short, shame teaches humility, proportionality, appropriateness, empathy, kindness, and compassion. Shame helps us on our way in becoming human.

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We depend on those around us to help us bear the disillusionment and dissolution of our immature and childish narcissism. They do so by accept- ing our abject dependence upon them when we are at our most vulnerable and by responding to those needs with empathy, kindness, and compassion. The extreme physical, emotional, and psychological vulnerability we feel as infants and children can develop into pathological narcissism and pathological shame when our expressions of need and vulnerability are ignored or attacked through belittling, devaluing, invalidating, ridiculing, and so on. Shame is an awakening of a sense of self, and our experience of self is influenced by the attitude of those upon whom we depend. We can develop a sense of self that is good or bad, deserving of needs being met or needy, appropriately self- centered or selfish, satisfiable and satiable or unsatisfiable and insatiable, wor- thy or unworthy, and so on. Shame becomes pathological when we identify with the negative judgments others have of us and when we identify with the feeling of being humiliated, considered less than, and not worthy.

The body-based feelings of shame are powerfully felt and are the most painful feelings a person can feel. People kill themselves because of feeling unremitting and unrelenting shame. The feeling of self is also a body-based feeling. When the feelings of shame are associated with the feelings of self, we become confused, conflicted, and dependent upon others to define who we are. When we identify feelings of shame as indicators that we are bad, unlovable, unwanted, and unworthy, we are fated to a life devoted to manag- ing those feelings by denying and behaving in ways that attempt to convince ourselves and others that we do not have those attributes. Or we identify with and act out those attributes.

Pathological shame disrupts us from forming a healthy relationship with a sense of self. We are deprived of feeling loved and lovable, liked and like- able, worthy and deserving. We cannot arrive at a healthy sense of humil- ity. Instead, we feel only humiliation. We cannot apologize, because apology is admitting to having done something bad. We cannot ask for forgiveness, because we focus only on how we have been harmed and not on how we have harmed others. We are stuck in a developmental stage in which immature and childish narcissism rules our emotional life.

Let’s look at how pathological narcissism and pathological shame are encouraged in a society that accepts White privilege as the means by which to organize status and the distribution of the resources under its control. At first glance, White and non-White members are subject to the same pathological effects. If feelings of shame can be evoked in a person when he or she is treated in such a way as to feel bad, less than, undeserving, unworthy, and so on, then both White and non-White members can be shamed by those who control access to the resources needed. But the compensatory behaviors each can take to mitigate the effect of being shamed are very different. The White person in a White privileged society that is organized around the principle that White is superior to non-White can counter pathological shame by identifying with the values expressed by White society. He or she will want to act White and

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will pledge loyalty to the values supported by Whiteness. Whiteness can define itself in terms of attributes and values a person manifests in behavior, but its most salient and lethal means of identification is in defining what not-White is. For that is where Whiteness gains and retains its privilege.

Non- Whites cannot mitigate the effects of being pathologically shamed by identifying with the values of a White privileged society for the very reason that those values are reserved for White people only. No matter how able a non-White person is at manifesting all the attributes and attitudes valued by a White privileged society, he or she will never become not-non-White. He or she is caught in a socially constructed trap.

Whites are caught in a slightly different trap, but a trap nonetheless. They cannot become White enough. Privilege in a White society is not accessible to all Whites. Hierarchies exist. Wealth and the ability to use economic and political power to effect results that benefit one or one’s group or one’s ideol- ogy are used as differentials in determining who has more privilege and access to resources than someone else. For privilege to be sought after as privilege requires that some are granted it while others are not. If privilege was granted to all, in the form of equal access to all resources, privilege would not be privilege.

A WELL‑KEPT SECRET: IT IS ACTUALLY SOCIAL CLASS THAT RULES DEMOCRACY

Whereas race is the first way that a White privileged society defines and separates the haves from the have nots, class is the second most potent way of determining who is given the privilege. In the United States, a country founded on the morally accepted principle of exploiting both human and nat- ural resources for personal financial gain, class is intimately tied with wealth. Class determines who has and who is allowed to amass individual money- based wealth. The perversion of morality that infected the thinking of the Founding Fathers was biased in favor of wealth in the form of land ownership and access to exploitable resources, both natural and human. In my opinion it is a very well-kept secret in our White privileged society that it is actually class that rules democracy. Race was used at the time of Reconstruction as a way to pit poor Whites against poor former slaves as a strategy to prevent poor people as an economically defined class from rising up against wealthy landowners. Today, any time anyone in a position of power mentions class, he or she is accused of fomenting class warfare. Then the familiar tropes get trotted out—we are a classless society in which anyone who believes in the American dream can work hard enough to make his or her dream come true. Then the flag unfurls and people recite “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- ness.” The vehemence by which any mention of class as an organizing feature of our society is denied speaks volumes in support of the truth that class rules democracy and individual citizens do not.

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If it is true that pathological shame is necessary for the maintenance of a White privileged society, then class must be used to further define and sepa- rate the haves from the have nots, the worthy from the unworthy. For when you can convince a White person that he is superior to a non-White person but is inferior to another White person, you can control his mind. You can stop him from thinking. You can condition him to react, and you can control his behavior. You can direct his anger and his aggression. You can protect the class-based structure of your society and enlist his loyalty in doing so.

Let’s look at how we, as shame-based White persons, react when we are confronted with information that we are the beneficiaries of a White- privileged society. We will begin to recite all the beliefs we have been taught. “I worked hard to get what I have. Nobody gave me any handouts. I got here because of my own merit.” When asked if we could understand why a non- White person feels that he or she has not had the same access to privilege, we will say, “That’s not my fault. They can do it if they truly wanted to. They are just complaining and making excuses.” The isolated thinking (“it is just me in the world and I have made it here without anyone’s help”) and the lack of empathy are signs of pathological shame. If we are pushed further, we will contact shame, but in its pathological form. The shame we feel will not bring us into awareness of how we benefited from the wealth gained by the seizure of land from indigenous Americans and the exploitation of labor from slavery. It will not cause us to look at how we have been the beneficiaries of institutional and systemic discrimination. Nor will shame urge us to seek remedies. We will not look at how beliefs we hold about non- Whites blind us from accepting our commonly held humanity. We will not be moved to join community with others who seek to understand how living in a White- privileged society has distorted our sense of self. What we will do is defend ourselves against feeling bad, attack those who make us feel bad, and seek out vulnerabilities in others in order to shame them. We can become hardened, a bulkhead against change, and a soldier of the White- privileged society. In our disparate reflex to avoid the pain of shame, we will find others upon whom to project our shame and then shame them for the qualities and attributes we have projected upon them. We will use what the dominant society has told us about non- Whites and we will target them.

If a White- privileged society can keep the majority of its White members concerned about overcoming the effects of pathological shame while main- taining a system that shames them, then it does not have to be concerned about being overthrown or changed.

GUILT, PATHOLOGICAL GUILT, AND THE PERVERSION OF MORALITY

Whereas shame is a feeling about who we are as people, guilt is a feeling about what we do, about our behavior. Whereas shame is concerned about my value as person, guilt is concerned about my morality, my ability to distinguish good

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from bad and to act for the good. Guilt holds us to a moral standard com- posed of the moral standards of the family and society we grew up in and by our own standards, which we modify as we have life experiences. Like shame, guilt informs us of our relationships with others and when we have broken agreements and bonds by our actions. Healthy guilt arouses pangs of con- science for the actions we have taken that have betrayed or transgressed and, in doing so, have hurt others. As a corrective, feelings of guilt lead to feelings of regret and remorse, which in turn lead to making amends and seeking to repair the damage our actions have caused.

Guilt becomes pathological, like shame, when we feel that we are bad, inferior, unworthy, and unlovable because of the actions we have taken. Not wanting to feel bad or morally reprehensible, we will defend against those feelings and will attack the person who is holding us accountable. Pathologi- cal guilt prevents us from feeling regret or remorse and from taking action to make amends and repairs. Our legal system is designed to determine guilt and assign punishment in lieu of supporting regret, remorse, and repair.

In a society that is organized on the principles of White privilege, healthy guilt must not only be pathologized but also perverted. As with shame, a sys- tem of White privilege benefits from its White members feeling pathological guilt and from their efforts to obfuscate and pervert morality. Such a society must construct codes of moral behavior that grant moral superiority to those who act in accordance with those codes, while at the same time limiting any moral development among its members that would lead them to question the principles upon which the dominant moral code is based.

We see this perversion of our collective moral sense in the evolution of the concept of “politically correct behavior.” For progressives who wanted to see the whole of society embrace the democratic principle of “all people are created equal with unalienable rights to access the full range and benefits of society,” the issue of how to change the hearts and minds of White people immersed in a society and culture that supports White supremacy and privi- lege led them to the realization that you cannot legislate changes of heart and mind, but you can legislate changes in behavior. The evolving codes of behav- ior that were considered to support politically correct thinking and feeling countered the codes of behavior that supported White supremacy and privi- lege. Just as the society became at war with itself over the issue of slavery, so it became at war with itself over the issue of moral behavior. Those who support codes of moral behavior based upon equality became the voice that attacked the basis of segregation as being separate but equal. Their voices called attention to racism, sexism, and homophobia and the moral codes that embed those prejudices deeply in a White- privileged society. Those White members who were adhering faithfully to the moral tenets of White superi- ority and privilege felt the sting of being accused of being racist, sexist, and homophobic in their attitudes, voiced thoughts, and behaviors. Because one must be at war with oneself in order to accept the contradictions inherent in

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a morality that assumes White supremacy, White members were faced with the dilemma of allegiance. Which moral code to accept and live by? If you are feeling pathological shame and guilt, if you are feeling superior to non- Whites and inferior to other Whites, you will attack the source that makes you feel bad and unworthy. You will stone the prophet.

Although political correctness was a poorly designed method of legislat- ing through law and social pressure a change in the behavior of White people, it was a method to raise conscious awareness among those White people who felt shame and guilt in healthy ways. For those White people, the process of self- examination could lead to social analysis, which could lead to social activism aimed at restructuring institutionalized racism and homophobia. As individuals, these White people could learn to become allies with people who are targeted by White supremacy and privilege and work toward ensuring full equality. But for those who felt pathological shame and guilt, it felt like they were being judged and condemned.

We are seeing the backlash of that today. Being politically correct is derided. Being politically incorrect is celebrated as an act of liberation and an exercise of free speech. Yet what is being said by those who are liberating themselves from the overbearing rule of political correctness are the racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, and xenophobic statements that convey the attitudes that form the emotional core of our White supremacist and privileged society. The per- version of morality is evident in the attitude of those who defend racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, and xenophobic values. They exude pride and righ- teousness, as if they are defending values of unquestionable worth.

When White privilege and its impact on Whites and non- Whites is denied, morality must be perverted in the thinking of White people who want to main- tain the economic and social advantages of privilege and the self- serving belief in their entitlement to privilege because of their inherent racial and moral superiority.

Pathological shame and guilt lead to defending the worth of oneself, attacking others through projections of shame, refusing to make apologies, and indignation at suggestions of reparation.

Political correctness, a product of moral thinking, must be attacked but done in a way that preserves the appearance of defending and preserving a moral stance. White privilege and supremacy pervert morality.

Conscience and conscious awareness become the enemies of those com- mitted to denying privilege. The process by which healthy shame and guilt are used by conscience to bring a person back into right relationship with him- or herself and others is usurped and perverted by a greater need—to maintain the distorted thinking that justifies White supremacy and privilege.

Shame and guilt, when prevented from bringing a person back into right relationship with self and others, become pathological. Shame cannot lead to a renewed sense of self-worth, and guilt cannot be expiated through making amends and taking right action.

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CLINICAL APPLICATION

As you might assume from how I described my experiences in my family, I am aware of power and the use and misuse of power and how that manifests in the therapeutic relationship. Of the harms done by a White privileged society, the two that I am most aware of as a clinician are the misuse of power to take away a person’s voice and subjectivity and the targeting of a person based upon attributes identified by the dominant culture as inferior. I feel that by modeling the use of authority in ways that help supervisees or trainees gain access to their voices and by respecting their subjectivity, the inherent wis- dom of their personhood, I am mitigating the effects of White privilege. And in my supervising of cases, I hope that, through the process of co- creating conceptualizations of the case and interventions, I encourage the therapist to honor the client’s subjectivity and support the client finding his or her voice. In my teaching, I make a strong case for understanding and appreciating the impact of interpersonal trauma. Whereas institutional forms of oppression support White privilege and supremacy, I have chosen to work in the realm where damage is done by how people relate to and treat each other. I empha- size the importance of understanding the social construction of identity and self through the lens of colonization. In our interpersonal relationships we are taught to accept the socially ascribed values assigned to what characterizes us. We are racialized, genderized, and so forth according to the hierarchy of values promulgated by White privilege and supremacy. Just as agents of a colo- nizing country carried out specific actions upon the people they intended to colonize, so do individuals representing their own internalized White suprem- acist values and the values of the institution with which they are aligned treat targeted individuals in such a way to convince them to accept the identities assigned to them. The psychological process is one of projecting upon the person socially laden attributes, then treating the person as if he or she is the possessor of such attributes and applying negative consequences when he or she refuses to accept those attributes. Although this process is most evidently seen in the way that White supremacist culture treated indigenous Americans in the form of genocide and in the psychological conditioning of Africans to force them into the acceptance of the role of slaves, so it also is at work in colonizing the minds of both Whites and non- Whites. I attempt to help super- visees and trainees become aware of when they are acting as agents of coloni- zation, when they are acting from a value system based on White supremacist attributions or from a psychological theory that blinds them to the nature and cause of a client’s suffering. For supervisees and trainees who have been targeted based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identification, or economic status, the concept of being colonized is more readily identifiable. For White males, the process of colonization is harder for us to recognize, because we have been conditioned to accept the differentiation of power over and power under that is the basis for White power hierarchies. Safety and status in that

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system depend upon the acceptance of submission to those males who are hierarchically above and the willingness to show dominating behavior toward those who are hierarchically lower. Another area for introspection by White males is inquiring into the conditioning we received regarding our fear of homoerotic feelings, which we project outward onto men who are sexually attracted to men. In both of these types of conditioning, we as White gender- conforming males can realize the water we are swimming in when we are confronted by men and women who have been targeted by the attitudes we hold and which support these forms of colonization. The opportunity for such encounters occurs among training cohorts, in supervisory dyads and groups, and in the consulting room. Although the concepts of colonizer– colonized have been imbued with images of mass political struggles, the manifestations are found in one-to-one interactions. I attempt to use the discovery process inherent in psychological inquiry to ferret out experiences of being targeted in the histories of supervisees and trainees and in the clients whose interests they serve. Formal history taking is one way to become familiar with the ter- ritory, but examination of the transference– countertransference relationships that develop between supervisee and supervisor, therapist and client, reveals the emotionally laden interpersonal interactions that carry the pathological shame and guilt and anger that keep ascribed identities intact. If a function of psychotherapy is to free a person’s mind so that she or he can feel, think, and act, then the process of learning to do psychotherapy carries with it the same obligation.

As a supervisor, consultant, and trainer, my authority is granted to me by the usefulness of the principles of theory and technique upon which I base my teaching.

•• My first test of my authority is this: Is what I am saying useful to my supervisee?

•• The second test it must bear is: Am I holding on to some privileged information that makes me feel secure or less anxious and that, in doing so, prevents me from understanding better the person who is in front of me and the clinical situation he or she is describing?

•• The third test is: Am I forming a relationship in which we both can do the psychological work we need to do?

I might be deceiving myself by slipping into the socially conferred author- ity given to me as a White gender- conforming male instead of having my authority rest on my own experience and training. So I attempt to discern the reactions I am getting from my supervisees to help me better understand how they are receiving my message and the authority with which my message is spoken. If what I am saying makes sense, has the ring of truth, and is useful, then it carries its own authority, separate from whatever authority I as the speaker am assumed to have. In supervising, I support the supervisees in using

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a theoretical orientation and implementation that makes sense to them. In doing so, I hope to reinforce the therapists’ assuming their own authority by acknowledging how they are learning to use themselves as therapists.

I pay attention to moments at which the supervisee is sensitive to and perhaps seeks out my approval, because that provides an opening for the con- versation to go in the direction of exploring the power differential in our relationship. The basis of that differential will vary depending upon the iden- tifiable differences between us, such as gender, sexual orientation, race, age, and so on. Should issues not arise in this area, they will arise in the area of the supervisee’s perception and degree of acceptance of my authority. Explora- tions in this area often reveal interpersonal abuses of authority and the oppor- tunity to explore how the relationship we are forming is similar to or different from those abusive relationships. It also provides me with the opportunity to demonstrate how I use my authority in the service of the supervisee, just as I would use it in the service of my clients. The aim of my use of authority is to increase the supervisee’s ability to think in ways that are freer of the effects of internalized forms of oppression.

The theory that I use when conceptualizing cases is an outgrowth of my understanding of the dynamics of White privilege and supremacy. The inherent inconsistencies in White privilege result in White- identified people attempting to justify morally untenable positions by asking themselves to believe what is not true, thereby perverting their moral sense. I believe a determining factor in this perversion is the degree to which people need to remain loyal to patho- logical feelings of shame and guilt in order to justify their own deserving of the treatment they received from others that resulted in a relational trauma. The teaching point to convey is the importance of understanding relational trauma and therapeutic work that needs to be done so that the person can understand the power dynamics that were at work in the traumatizing rela- tionship, the issues of dependency and loyalty that were at play, and how they were encouraged to adopt pathological forms of shame and guilt as a way to survive and maintain their relationship with another upon whom they were dependent. When such explorations are successful, people often feel that they did not deserve the treatment meted out to them. They understand how they wrongly self- identified with the attributions of the abusing other, are regret- ful of the pain and suffering they have had to endure, and are angry at the perpetrator yet are grateful to no longer be suffering under the oppression of pathological shame and guilt, realizing that forgiveness is their choice. They become more sensitive to the ways in which they can oppress others. In short, they revive the vitality of their moral sense.

I do my best to remember that almost everyone wants to feel they have a moral sense from which they are acting. Most everyone wants to think of themselves as good people, regardless of the impact their actions have on oth- ers. I find I must keep this in mind when talking with a client who acts in ways that harm others and does not take responsibility for doing so. This is especially noticeable in working with couples and families, when all members

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are in my consulting room, and I can see the use of shame, guilt, silencing, devaluing, blaming, projection, and objectifying as means of oppression and of family members maintaining their positions. Inquiry reveals core beliefs the oppressing person holds to be true. Given that core beliefs are formed out of interpersonal relationships in which the person attempts to explain to him- or herself what happened so that he or she can predict and either avoid or seek out a similar experience, the therapeutic work is to help the person under- stand what he or she experienced prior to the attempts to explain it to him- or herself and, by doing so, create a belief about him- or herself and his or her relationship to the interpersonal world around him or her that contains distor- tions. The work leads to increasing the person’s awareness of the distortions in his or her moral thinking, helping the person express regret and remorse and aligning his or her good intent with his or her attitude, behavior, and actions.

Although, as a Marxist, I would like to see the humanizing of capitalism, as a clinician I can perform a task much more doable— helping people regain a healthy sense of guilt and shame by working through the interpersonal trau- mas that resulted in the pathological forms of guilt and shame that support the perverted morality of White privilege.

REFERENCES

Baldwin, J. (1962). The fire next time. New York: Vintage. Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the world and me. New York: Spiegel & Grau. DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3).

Available at http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/249/116. Dyson, M. E. (2017). Tears we cannot stop: A sermon to White America. New York:

St. Martin’s Press. Herman, J. L. (2007). Shattered shame states and their repair. In J. Yellin & K. White

(Eds.), Shattered states: Disorganized attachment and its repair. London: Kar- nac.

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My sense of who I am has not come easily. My beginnings were shrouded by a mysterious tragedy that occurred at the time of my birth, the details of which were withheld from me for decades. I was raised in foster care, receiv- ing only a handful of cryptic visits from my father and completely cut off from my mother. I was given no sense of who my people were, where I came from, or even what my racial and ethnic background was. The defining struggle of my life has been to find the racial, ethnic, and cultural aspects of myself; to uncover the truth of the events that transpired at my birth; and to inte- grate these discoveries into my sense of who I am (Colón, 1973; Colón-López, 2006).

MYSTERY AND CONFUSION: MY LIFE FROM BIRTH TO 17 YEARS

I was fortunate enough to land in the care of wonderful foster parents. “Mom” was a Swiss- German immigrant to the United States. At 19, she arrived in New York, worked as a domestic, learned to speak Brooklynese English, mar- ried, and bore a daughter. After her husband died of pneumonia, she met my foster father— a cab driver in Brooklyn who was of English heritage; he had previously been married and then divorced after the death of his only child, also a daughter. He was 15 years older than Mom.

“Dad” was a good man. He and my foster mother built the house in which we lived, in spite of the fact that he had a stiff hip and a shortened leg from polio as a child. As I was growing up, he put together bikes and built toys for me. And at Easter he painted beautiful, European- style Easter eggs. He was a wonderful father figure and shaped my character in valuable ways.

C H A P T E R 2 1

The Discovery of My Multicultural Identity

Fernando Colón‑López

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Mom and Dad entered into what became a 25-year common- law mar- riage, which lasted until Dad’s death at the age of 72. After Mom’s daughter was grown and married, they began to take care of foster children. During the 15 years that I lived with them, I had 10 foster brothers, who stayed with us for varying lengths of time.

Our diverse household was the context in which I first began to wonder about my racial and ethnic identity. Although I didn’t yet know that my bio- logical parents were Puerto Rican, I was well aware that my skin, hair, and eyes were darker than anyone else’s in our home. Four of my foster brothers were German; three were English; one was Scotch, one Irish, and one a Jew. The contrast made me certain that I did not belong to my foster parents the way other children belonged to their parents.

The neighborhood was also quite diverse. An extended Italian family lived next door. Three generations of Italians would gather on weekends to eat, laugh, drink wine, argue, play music, and have great family times together. I was fortunate to have these Italian neighbors, because their hearty way of life, expressiveness, and darker skin gave me a hint of who I might be. Growing up within a family where most of the other members were of Northern European origin was an ever- present source of confusion and uncertainty.

While I was being raised under Mom and Dad’s care on Long Island, my biological father was a sergeant in the U.S. Army, stationed in New York City. Although his barracks were about an hour away, he visited me only occasion- ally. I was confused by his visits but filled with curiosity and respect for him in his impeccable uniform. Each of his infrequent visits brought up troubling questions about who I was, to whom I belonged, and what had happened to my mother. I had never seen her.

At about the age of 5, I began to ask questions about my real mother, to which Mom and Dad had no answers. It may have been at their urging that my father visited for the particular purpose of telling me about my mother. He suggested we go for a walk around the block, possibly so we would not be overheard by my foster family. It felt like he was letting me in on a big secret. He told me that soon after I was born, my mother got a fever and died. I real- ized that I would never get to see her. I felt very sad on hearing this, and also smaller somehow— diminished and less complete.

Not long after that, I was visited by my father’s youngest sister, her hus- band, and their daughter. They were very warm people and introduced them- selves as my aunt, uncle, and cousin. I was thrilled to discover I had more family. Their skin, hair, and eyes were the same color as mine. Although the excitement of their visit was tinged with the fear that they had come to take me away, we enjoyed our time together immensely. Sadly, they never visited again, and those feelings were fleeting.

On another occasion, I was visited by some more dark- skinned people. An old man named Isaac, a younger man, and a boy arrived and asked to see me but did not reveal who they were. It seemed as though they must be connected to me in some way, but they wouldn’t give any indication of our

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relationship. We talked awkwardly as Mom served them coffee and cookies in the living room. They asked to take some pictures of me, and I posed with my dog, Butch, in front of the house. They thanked us and left. The whole thing had a very strange air, and for decades it remained a mystery to me.

Meanwhile, I was enjoying school and getting along well with my peers, yet there were painful moments in elementary school that set me apart and deepened my confusion about who I was. When I was 10 years old, our music teacher decided my first name, Fernando, was too long. So he took it upon himself to give me a shorter, Anglicized name: “Ferd.” In front of the whole class, he announced that my name would now be Ferd. I was stunned. I couldn’t speak to object as my name was wrenched away from me. From then on, the other teachers, my classmates and friends, and sometimes even my fos- ter family called me Ferd. I experienced a deep sense of loss and shame, and, again, a feeling of being diminished.

Even though I had lost my Puerto Rican first name, I relished the His- panic nature of my last name, Colón. During one of his visits, my father took great care to explain the importance of putting an accent over the last “o.” If I didn’t, he warned, people would confuse my name with the large intestine. I consider this one of the few gifts my father gave me: He instilled in me a sense of pride about my name. And every time I accented that “o,” I felt a connec- tion to him and a family lineage.

Another incident I vividly remember was being verbally abused in the sixth grade. I got into an argument with a classmate when we both wanted to sit in the same chair. We started arguing, and he ended it by calling me a “nigger.” I was totally unprepared for such a thing. I never thought of myself as Black, but I knew I wasn’t White. In addition to the fear and anger I felt at being hit with this loaded word, I was deeply ashamed. The incident reopened the painful and still very unresolved question of who I was. Was I Black, or White, or both?

The next defining incidents took place when I was 15. Out of the blue, my foster father suffered a massive stroke and went into a coma. We were able to care for him at home until he died, several days later. I was devastated by this loss and grieved for his death as though he were my real father. Dad had given me his love and been a guiding influence for me on many levels. I would miss him very much.

Later that same year, my father was discharged from the Army. There was a lot of discussion, which I was not privy to, about whether I would go to live with him or continue to stay with my foster mother. This was a pivotal point in my life. My connection to my father was rather thin. Although he had helped me to some extent with the question of who I was, he had not been present enough for me to feel really connected to him. On the other hand, I felt profoundly connected to my foster home, where I had received love and continuity. I knew that I did not want to live with my father. I hoped he would stay nearby so that he might become more of a presence in my life, but that was not an option.

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My father decided that he would return to Puerto Rico and that I would stay in the foster home, finish high school, go on to college, and live “the good life” in the United States. I felt relieved and abandoned at the same time. It was a confusing time, but one thing was clear: My father’s decision meant the end of what little connection I had to him and to a sense of family.

MAKING MY WAY IN THE WORLD: MY LIFE FROM 17 TO 33 YEARS

In the fall of my junior year in college, one of my friends introduced me to his cousin, a freshman named Lois. Lois was very attractive and receiving a fair amount of attention from other men on campus. So I decided I had to do something different, which was to pay her no attention at all. It worked. When she invited me to a Sadie Hawkins dance, we began a serious courtship. And at the end of that year, we married.

Our wedding was a mixed experience for me, as it brought our differ- ing family backgrounds into sharp contrast. Lois’s parents (of Scottish, Irish, French, and English descent) were there, along with her two sisters, her extended family, and an abundance of long- standing friends from childhood, high school, and college. However, no one from either my foster family or my biological family attended (so the wedding didn’t really bring Lois’s and my families together). Two good friends from high school and five or six recent college buddies were there for me. I felt good about becoming a part of my wife’s family, but I also felt a void where my own family should have been. For me, the day was both joyful and somber.

I went on to graduate school in clinical psychology. I had considered med- icine and the ministry, but the idea of being a psychologist prevailed— perhaps because it was a natural extension of my childhood experience, in which I helped my younger foster brothers grow up. In the second year of graduate school, we had our first child, a beautiful brown- complexioned baby girl. It was an astounding experience for me, not only because I became a father, but because it was the first time that I felt part of an intact, biological family unit.

Throughout my high school and college years, my father and I hardly cor- responded. Through his rare letters, I accumulated bits and pieces of informa- tion about my extended families. When I was 18, I learned my mother’s first name, Margarita. When I was 19, I learned that both sets of my grandparents were farmers. In response to our announcement of our daughter’s birth, my father wrote that he was the fourth of 14 children, 10 of whom were still alive. I was amazed to discover that I had such a large extended family. My father also said he knew very little about my mother’s family, except that she had a sister who had three children.

In 1961, Lois and I had our second child, a son. His birth prompted me to write another letter to my father, in which I also asked more questions about my mother. In response, my father reported that after my birth, my mother got sick and was returned to her family in Puerto Rico. She was cared for on her

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family farm until she died, a year or so later. This was not what my father had told me when I was 5 years old, and it dawned on me that my father had been lying. I gradually became intent on finding some answers. I needed to learn more about my families, meet them, and reestablish face-to-face contact with my father. So, at the age of 33, I decided that it was time to visit Puerto Rico.

THE “IDENTITY SEARCH”: MY LIFE FROM 33 TO 37 YEARS

I made my first trip to Puerto Rico in 1968. Lois accompanied me, as did our children (we now had three, who were 10, 7, and 4 years old). By now I had obtained my PhD in clinical psychology, obtained a university position, and begun a private practice. It had been 16 years since I had seen my father, and I felt both elation and anxiety at the prospect of our meeting again. Upon hear- ing the news of our trip, my father wrote and informed me that he had remar- ried and included a recent photo of himself and his new wife, Lydia. With the help of this photo, we were able to recognize each other at the airport and reintroduce ourselves to each other.

It was not a warm greeting, but the mood became more comfortable over the 3 weeks we were there. The children’s natural warmth helped break the ice with my father; he even carried our youngest piggyback occasionally, a gesture of uncharacteristic playfulness. Despite my father’s reserve, his family welcomed me warmly. On countless occasions, we would all pile into the car and set off to visit another aunt, uncle, or cousin. In particular, I reconnected with the aunt and uncle who had visited me when I was 6 and began what has become a close friendship with them and their daughter, Nancy.

The trip was not the vacation we had naively hoped it would be. It was a very stressful experience for Lois, especially because of the unfamiliar and intense mode of relating that is so characteristic of Puerto Ricans. But the intensity of their interactions matched the intensity I felt in finally finding my extended family. I was one of them, and I belonged. It was exhilarating.

During one memorable visit, Lydia talked to my father and aunt in hushed tones. There seemed to be something important going on as she urged him to grant a request. Lois and I had no idea what was being said. My father looked ominously at them, then at me. Then he sighed and said, “Si.” My aunt hur- ried to get something, and I could tell from Lydia’s excitement that they had something to show me. My aunt brought out a dusty sack and laid it on the table. Carefully, she slid out its contents and produced a photograph. It was my mother and father’s wedding portrait. It was the first time I had ever seen a picture of my mother. I was dumbfounded. As I pored over every detail, it dawned on me that my face bears a striking resemblance to my mother’s face. Lois, Lydia, and my aunt all wept. My father stood there and said nothing.

My aunt and uncle gave me the wedding picture to take home and copy. It felt as if they were palpably giving me a missing piece of myself, and I felt very grateful. For the first time, I felt a satisfying connection to my mother. Yet the

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wedding picture raised still more painful and haunting questions. Where in Puerto Rico had she lived? Was her family still there? What was she like? And if she hadn’t died just after my birth, as I’d been told, why had she returned to Puerto Rico without me or my father? My attempts to discuss these issues with my father were difficult. He was tense, guarded, and evasive. He did reveal a few details: the name of my mother’s hometown, as well as the fact that she had an uncle named Isaac and a sister named Dominga, who had three chil- dren. He insisted that they had all moved to Washington, D.C., but he didn’t know their address. This made no sense to me—that my aunt, her children, and her uncle would all move to the States and stay there. It just didn’t ring true. But why would my father lie? I resolved to continue searching for the truth about my mother.

By the summer of 1971, I had prepared for my second trip to Puerto Rico by brushing up on my Spanish. I decided to go alone because it would not be a vacation. Relations with my father were still somewhat tense, but an increasing bond grew between me and Lydia. Although she could speak no English and we could barely communicate, she was very sympathetic to my cause. Lydia was an orphan herself and had grown up in very difficult circum- stances. I understood later that her gentle prodding behind the scenes often prompted my father to share more information with me. Probably as a result of her insistence, my father gave me two more photos of my mother. Although he had told me the name of her hometown on the earlier visit, when I pressed him on this occasion, he said he didn’t know how to get there. I understood this to mean that he didn’t know how to get there psychologically, and I real- ized I would have to go alone.

I headed to the western part of the island, toward my mother’s hometown. On the way, the weather suddenly changed, and I found myself in a tropical rainstorm that forced me off the road. At first I felt blocked and frustrated. But then I thought, “No, this is it! Nothing is going to stop me from getting to my mother’s home town, nothing.” When the rain was less intense, I drove on through the flooded roads. After a while, the VW’s battery conked out, but I persevered. I was able to replace the battery with the help of two locals, a father and a son who refused to let me pay them for their labor. I sensed my luck had turned.

Before long I arrived at my mother’s hometown. I had no idea where to begin looking for any of her family; I merely had her name written on a piece of paper. I remembered my father once mentioning that my mother was a Baptist, so I decided to begin looking at the Baptist church. Unfortunately, the minister had only recently moved to town and did not recognize my mother’s family name. He suggested that he and I go to the local hospital to see if there were any birth or death records on file. We did, but were unable to find any record of her.

Disappointed, we were about to leave when I happened to mention my great-uncle, Isaac—who was by now deceased, or so I assumed. The hospital clerk immediately recognized Isaac’s name and directed us to his house. There

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I discovered that Isaac was still living at age 92 but was in a coma. He was being cared for by one of his adult daughters, who invited us in and chatted with us at his bedside. For some reason, I felt a sense of gratitude and a deep connection to him. Not knowing how else to express this feeling, before we left I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

Isaac’s daughter knew my mother’s sister, Dominga, and gave us direc- tions to find her. When we knocked at her door, Dominga answered. The min- ister started to introduce us, but Dominga’s reaction interrupted him. Upon seeing my face, she gasped. Her hands flew to her mouth and she burst into tears, saying, “La cara! La cara!” (“The face! The face!”). She was seeing my mother’s face in mine and realized who I must be. She and the minister exchanged words, and it seemed that yes, finally, I had found my mother’s sister. All of this was happening so suddenly that it seemed almost too good to be true.

Dominga brought us into her living room and hurried to locate pictures. She found one in particular and handed it to me, shaking with excitement. In it, I saw myself at age 6 on the front steps of my foster parents’ house with my dog, Butch. This was the photo that those “mysterious visitors” had taken. I was amazed. And then the story came tumbling out. The whole family had been desperate to find out what had happened to Margarita’s baby. Uncle Isaac had visited me, along with her cousin Jaime and her son Frank. They reported that I was doing well in the foster home and showed the family this picture of me. Now I knew why I’d felt such gratitude toward Isaac: He had been instrumental in bringing news of me to my mother’s family.

After some time at Dominga’s house, she took us to the family farm where she and my mother had grown up. It was now owned by another of Isaac’s daughters and her husband. Excitedly, Dominga introduced me to them and to their children and grandchildren. It was my first glimpse of the extended family on my mother’s side, and the resemblance between these children and my own was striking. One of my second cousins was also named Fernando, and we even looked alike! Here, I felt I truly belonged— that I, too, had a place in a real, biological, blood familia.

At the farm, I also met Isaac’s son Jaime, who had introduced my parents when he and my father were both in the Army. I was thankful that his fluency in English enabled us to talk freely. He said he had felt some responsibility to check on me while he was stationed in New York during those years. “Your mother was my favorite cousin,” he said. He then told me what had really happened to my mother. After my birth she had become violently ill from the anesthesia. Although she got physically better, she then became emotionally depressed and started to hallucinate. She was transferred to a state psychiatric hospital on Long Island. When her condition did not improve, Jaime appealed to the welfare department for funds and made arrangements for her to return to the family farm. She stayed with her family for 9 months but could not emerge from the severe depression. Finally, she was admitted to a psychiatric

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hospital in San Juan, where she remained until she died—25 years later. She had died in 1962, from aspirating some food.

I was curious about my father’s role in this. Jaime said that on one occa- sion, after my mother had returned to Puerto Rico, my father sent her some money; after that, however, the family never heard from him again. It was Jaime who later arranged to visit me in the foster home with Isaac and little Frank. Jaime said that my father had only agreed to it on the condition that they would not reveal who they were, that my mother would not be men- tioned, and that I would receive no information about their family. Jaime believed that my father was afraid of my mother’s illness and that this was the reason he was never heard from again.

Jaime translated for Dominga, who said with tears in her eyes that my mother had always remembered me. Dominga had made the trip to San Juan to visit her every weekend, and during each visit, for 25 years, my mother had asked about me. Dominga believed that if my mother had been able to see me, her depression might have lifted.

Before I left, I called to let my father know that I was in my mother’s hometown and that I’d be back later that night. I thought he would be waiting up to talk to me when I returned, but he wasn’t; he had gone to bed. The next day I told my father that I had found Dominga, met some of the family, and visited their farm. He did not seem pleased about this and wanted to know exactly whom I had met. I told him and conveyed their invitation for him to join me in a family reunion on the upcoming Saturday. He was quiet and didn’t respond.

Despite his guardedness, I continued to seek out details of my mother’s life. I visited the psychiatric facility where she was kept and succeeded in get- ting to review her voluminous 25-year record. Now I had the facts: names, dates, events, and family information. The record corroborated exactly what Dominga and Jaime had told me. I felt more grounded; it was beginning to sink in that I had found the truth about my mother.

On Friday night, my father said he’d decided not to go with me to the reunion on Saturday. He said he couldn’t face Isaac. Although I told him that Isaac was in a coma and would not be there, he said, “No. They are all mad at me for not letting them see you. It has spread like a cloud through the family. No,” he said, “get me Jaime’s address. Then someday, on my own time, I’ll go back, look him up, and get him to talk to the family and make it right.” I was frustrated by my father’s decision. He had abandoned my mother when she, as he said, “went crazy.” He had allowed her child to be taken away from her and hidden me from her family. He had lied to me about what had hap- pened. And, finally, he hadn’t even kept me with him. It was clear that he and I needed to talk.

The next morning my father and I sat down together. I hoped that if I openly shared with him what I’d discovered, he might be truthful, too. I began by telling him that I’d discovered things about my mother that he didn’t know,

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and I wanted to share them. I told him about her being in the psychiatric hos- pital until she died in 1962. His immediate reaction was anger. He felt I had been investigating him as if he were a criminal. I replied that, although I could see why he might feel that way, I still had a right to know the truth about what had happened to my mother. Then he said, “I knew she was crazy. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t know how your mind would take it.” When I heard this, his behavior and secrecy began to make some sense to me: He was afraid that her mental illness might affect me in some way and wanted to protect me from it as best he could. He had truly believed it would be better for me to think that she was dead, and then he’d had to cut me off from her family to protect his lie. Now, finally, I had the whole truth.

I was deeply touched by the dilemma that he believed he was in, and with that knowledge I could begin to let go of my resentment and forgive him. Lydia later told me that after she and my father talked about all of these events, he wept.

I went on to spend the day with my mother’s family at their farm. Before we arrived there, Dominga, Frank, and Evelyn (my cousin Frank’s sister) took me to the cemetery where my mother was buried. It was an emotional experi- ence for all of us. As we stood before her grave, my aunt and cousins wept. I had a strange feeling come over my whole being. I didn’t understand what it was, but I felt a sense of resolution: I had somehow reestablished my broken tie to my mother, and not even the reality of her death could ever break it again. I felt complete, whole, and at peace. It was a very sacred moment for me.

We went on to the farm, where about 30 people came for the day— cousins, children, grandchildren, and some close friends who had known my mother in her younger years. Beer and wine flowed freely, and they all took great pleasure in introducing me to their family specialties: fried plantains, spicy rice and beans, roasted goat, and an incredible flan made with tropical fruits. We spent the whole day together, each member of the family recalling for me experiences they had had with my mother. It was their way of giving her back to me. Jaime said, “You know, Fernando— I had a feeling that one day you would come and find us. I have looked forward to this for a long time.”

At one point, Dominga went into the house and found a family photo- graph. It was a group portrait of several families: Isaac with his children and grandchildren, Dominga and her children. Everyone in the picture was some- one I had now met at this farm or heard stories about. Dominga gave me a huge, radiant smile and gestured that the picture was for me. Pressing it into my hand, she said “Tu familia,” and then enveloped me in her arms. It was, without a doubt, a homecoming.

Upon experiencing the open warmth of my mother’s extended family, I felt an even more complete sense of myself. I now had the fullness of the other half of my identity and could see, touch, and embrace my roots. At last I would no longer feel painfully different from other people who had close ties with

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their blood families. I would now be able to answer the once painful questions about my family background without shame, embarrassment, or confusion.

I feel like a whole person. I have a strong sense of being fully here, of having finally arrived. I am a living member of a blood family that extends into the past and future, over innumerable generations. I now know where my place is in the chain of humanity.

REFERENCES

Colón, F. (1973). In search of one’s past: An identity trip. Family Process, 12(4), 429– 438.

Colón-López, F. (2006). Finding my face: The memoir of a Puerto Rican American. Victoria, BC, Canada: Trafford.

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Although the phrase “illegitimate Polish Catholic orphan” is not exactly a Jungian archetype, it certainly was an abiding label for the personal and eth- nic heritage that informed my world from the time I was 4 years old. Even after I earned advanced degrees, became a college professor and later a thera- pist, and raised two children (now college graduates), the negative associations of these words, like flashbacks, often invade and render unreal whatever is going on in my life.

In recent years, this label has been taking on a much more manageable shape. Eileen Simpson (1987) described the difficulties of interviewing adults who had grown up in an orphanage. Many “were as furtive about their past as if they had been in reform schools, and were unable to rid themselves of the feeling that they were somehow responsible for having been institutionalized. Others were afraid of being discriminated against professionally or patron- ized socially” (p. 146). Becoming nonfurtive, and about my own past, has been a journey.

MY FAMILY BACKGROUND

I have pieced together most of what I know about my original family through arduous research over the past 35 years. I now know that my maternal grand- father’s name was Jan Folwarski, that he was a painter for a Chicago railroad, and that he died in the flu epidemic of 1918. His wife, Julianna Gasior, washed floors to support the family after his death and through the Depression. They

C H A P T E R 2 2

Going Home One Orphan’s Journey

from Chicago to Poland and Back

John D. Folwarski

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had seven children (I had thought there were only four). Their death certifi- cates listed Austria as the country of origin, and only a few years ago I dis- covered they came from Nowa Wies and Harklova Wies, small villages in the Austrian- occupied section of Poland. The four children who were around when I was born were my mother, Mary (Marianna); her two older brothers, Stanley (Stanislaw) and Frank (Franciszek); and her younger sister, Louise (Ludwika).

When I was 34, I got hold of my records from the Chicago Family Court, which told me the following: When my mother was 20, she had a relationship with a man named Tom Bieschke and became pregnant; he denied paternity. The family was poor and ashamed and petitioned the court to place her in a mental institution. I was left in the hospital until 6 months later, when the family was notified that I could stay no longer, so they took me home, receiv- ing $6.90 biweekly from Family Welfare for my care. Just before my fourth birthday, my grandmother died; the social worker interviewed the family, and my mother told her that they had no jobs and no money, that my uncle Stanley was abusive, and that my grandmother’s dying wish was for me to be placed. My mother was diagnosed “feebleminded,” committed to a state hospital and sterilized, and I was sent to St. Hedwig’s Orphanage. A social worker’s review for the court a few years later stated that she was surprised no one had visited me except to bring my clothes and toys, believing that I would be better off that way. I did not leave St. Hedwig’s until I was 17.

ST. HEDWIG’S ORPHANAGE

Our orphanage was Polish Catholic: the priests, the nuns, and the children. From its opening in 1911 to its closing in 1959, more than 7,000 children were cared for there. We gave money to support the Polish cause in World War II and dutifully thought of the “starving children in Poland” when we wasted food.

A sense of ethnicity, however, was not primary. The world was divided in our minds between Catholic and Protestant, as well as between orphans (us) and “city guys” (everyone else). We envied “new guys,” kids who came to us well past kindergarten age, who had a lot more information about the world outside the gates and who were not yet numbed by the rules of total obedience to authority that had become our way of survival.

The orphanage became our family. Actual parents were grouped for us under the heading of “visitors,” allowed to visit twice a month. The nuns wielded day-by-day parenting power, though the final authority lay with Monsignor Rusch. The various benefits and abuses of that power—the rules, roles, and relationships that developed— are part of our individual and collec- tive memory.

Although those at the orphanage became our closest relatives, I’m not certain it ever became my home. I recall that, as an 11-year-old returning from

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Confession, I was suddenly seized with an overwhelming terror that the build- ings could fall apart and crush me. It was like an awful nightmare that has recurred throughout my life. I would have defined “home” as a place where, when you ask questions, somebody actually responds. Later, given what is per- haps a universal feeling of children in orphanages that there is never enough to eat, I came to define “home” as a place with a refrigerator that you are entitled to open and take whatever you want from without asking.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Underpinning and overriding everything else in the orphanage was the tower- ing figure of the Catholic Church, Polish style. In that setting, something like martyrdom was a well- nourished daydream, a crowning goal of life if one were worthy and courageous, as real a wish as wanting to be a fireman, a pilot, or a cop. Devotionals about the lives of Polish saints and martyrs, sup- ported by daily rewards for wanting to be a good Catholic, shaped our most basic beliefs and our value system.

Of course, this is not uniquely Polish. Catholicism has its own life and detail in other ethnic Catholic cultures. Perhaps the uniqueness of Polish Catholicism lies in its historically greater fusion between ethnicity and reli- gion. Polish immigrants, in particular, have depended on the Church to a far greater degree than most other Catholic immigrant groups. Poland disap- peared from the map of Europe for 125 years! Identity rested with connection to the Church. Poles came to an America already dominated by Irish clergy. Poles’ need to preserve their identity even led at one point to a full-blown schism and the formation of the Polish National Catholic Church. Fears of the loss of Polish identity worked their way into Polish family life in many ways. In the orphanage, these fears intensified.

For our time there, the Church was the family. All the patterns that gov- ern family systems also governed the orphanage family, except that nuns were the mothers and priests were the fathers— certainly a peculiar psychic con- nection.

LATER CONTACTS WITH MY PARENTS

In the seventh grade, I learned that my mother was released from Dixon State Hospital. For many years afterward, I felt guilty for not wanting her out. What I knew consciously was that I would lose my status as a “pure orphan” (kids who had no “visitors”); I was also painfully aware that I did not know her and did not know what to say. Mainly, I had some notion that she was “crazy,” and I would be called “the kid with the crazy mother.” When she first visited, she had bandages on her legs that I thought covered scars from shock treatments (images from The Snake Pit), and I feared for years, in addition

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to everything else, that I had “insane blood.” Of course, I never told this to anyone. I did awkwardly try to make conversation with my mother. I once asked her who my father was, and she said he was a sailor who died in the war. I never asked about him again, nor about any of the other relatives. Years later, I was told that my mother had been in a fight in a kitchen where she was working; she had left, and no one had heard from her since. After many years of searching, I found out in 1988 through Social Security that she had died in a nursing home in Chicago in 1987. When I later visited the nursing home, one woman, who had been on the staff while my mother was there, told me she had never mentioned she had a son. That bothered me a lot. I felt somehow responsible for her dying in an institution.

In the late 1960s, I sought out my biological father. I found him in a suburb of Chicago and got him to agree to see me. I had all the pertinent facts from the court records. He told me he was married and had six children, none of whom were home at that moment. He looked like me; he showed me a picture of his eldest son, who also looked like me. In response to my story, he said, “I don’t remember no girl named Mary.” He then told me that he himself was adopted and that he “knew a lot about this stuff.” He would be glad to gather family information for me—“but, of course, it would take a little dough.” I did not go back to look for him until 1994 when, regrettably, I could not find him.

RECONNECTING WITH THE ORPHANAGE AND THE FAMILY NEIGHBORHOOD

In 1994 I was ready to take my 17-year-old son, David, on his first trip to Chicago. We went with two fellow Hedwigians, Tom Suchomski and Joey Popera, to old St. Hedwig’s. We traded memories of a frequent nighttime rit- ual: We would get into bed after saying our night prayers; the nun would say good night in Polish, and we would respond. Then darkness and silence would reign, and one was free to say, “Ah, now I can think anything I want!” And we did, except on those occasions when the lights would suddenly flash back on. Someone had talked! Then we would have to kneel with our arms in the air (the way Moses prayed) and keep them up until the talker confessed.

The only year I failed to carry out this ritual was the one year in the sixth grade when the reigning nun took me into her cell late each night and sent me back very early in the morning. I have wrestled with the meaning of that troublesome secret relationship for 50 years, viewing her secretly as my “Evangeline,” since our relationship started one night in the dark game room as she showed us slides of that great poem and gently touched my forehead. Despite much effort, I was never successful at “blaming” her. Recently, I have become aware that her first touches had promised to replace what I had lost by coming to the orphanage. I think I am ready to stop waiting for Evangeline to return.

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During this 1994 visit, an elderly man suggested I go to St. Adalbert’s Cemetery to find the Polish people who used to live in the surrounding area. I did. Almost all the Felician nuns who raised us are buried there, all with the same style and size tombstone. In the middle is the tombstone of Monsignor Francis S. Rusch, at least 20 times as large. The “family” is together.

RECONNECTING WITH MY POLISHNESS

For myself, I cannot differentiate how much of which element (illegitimacy, being a de facto orphan, religion, being institutionalized) explains the abid- ing sense of not belonging that I always felt. I do know that my being Polish is a key factor as well. Polish Americans, like orphans, have been members of a socially definable but disenfranchised class, with its sense of humiliation crystallized in Polish jokes and its deeper feelings of shame relegated for the most part to the realm of denial. Reconnecting with my Polishness, however, enlarged for me my sense of home and family. This included a new sense of the Felician nuns. In the United States, the Felicians “were recruited from immigrant peasant families most of whom were strangers to life in indus- trial cities and strangers to the high Polish culture of the upper classes” (Rad- zialowski, 1975, p. 22). In the early part of the 20th century, many Polish women faced a deck stacked against them: They were Polish, they were Catho- lic, and they were women. The order offered “social mobility . . . education, position, social status, travel” (Radzialowski, 1975, p. 22), not to mention family approval for their choice of “a vocation.” Joining a religious order pro- vided them with safety, purpose, and status. Re- visioning those caretakers as real young women with a real history helps locate me outside the emotionally charged vulnerability of our mutual life at St. Hedwig’s; it ameliorates my sense of the nuns’ absolute authority and of the hypnotic magic of religion.

MY LAST RELATIVE: THE END OF MY SEARCH FOR MY AUNT

I continued to search for my family. My last remaining relative was Aunt Louise. I first attempted to contact her by sending a letter through Social Security, but I never knew whether she got it, or whether they really sent it. In December 1994, I wrote another letter, but this time a kind Social Security clerk slipped me the information that she had changed her name (as many Poles did), to Louise Gerry Fowler. I pictured her as a distraught Polish bag lady somewhere in Chicago, so I had the clever idea of enclosing a check for $100, figuring that at least I could trace the check. I wrote what I thought was a moving letter to get her to want to see me.

Months went by with no response, and the check was never cashed. In the summer of 1995, I made another trip to Chicago, examining records at the library, the Polish Genealogical Society archives, voting records, and so

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on. The very day I returned home to New Jersey, I was stunned by a call from a Maryknoll priest in San Francisco, who told me that Louise G. Fowler had died and that he was the executor of her estate. He got my name from the county administrator’s office. My letter and check were found in her safety deposit box. She had died in a hospital, where she would not tell anyone anything personal about herself. When the doctor needed authority to pull life supports, the administrator went through her apartment and found a copy of a will she had made in 1965 (when she was turning 50), naming the Maryknoll Fathers as inheritors and executors. In her safety deposit box they found my letter to her. When I told the priest who I was, he said, “Are you a blood nephew?” and assured me she would have a good Catholic funeral. I said I would fly out that night. By the time I got there, he had hired the law firm that wrote the will to represent the Maryknoll order. The priest was out of town, and there was no one to talk to. I felt as if I were 4 years old and the walls were tumbling down. The hospital told me where the funeral was to be held.

I went to the wake. No one else was there. I met the priest and the pall- bearers at the church. My head was spinning. I had never fully decided what I thought about ethnic burial practices. However, on this occasion I gave deep thanks for wakes. There is no way I can adequately describe the importance to me of finding her actual body— looking at her, touching her, and in particular stroking her beautifully manicured, red- polished fingernails. I remarked on these to the funeral director. He, of course, had no way of knowing what all this meant to me, so he responded professionally, “Thanks . . . they weren’t like that when we got them.” Despite the emptiness of the occasion, touching my aunt’s body made me feel for the first time like a fully three- dimensional person, almost “at home.”

Soon after the service, the priest sent me a letter congratulating me on being a “fine, Christian gentleman.” In the letter, the priest continued with appreciation of my accomplishments, considering that I “was a child of shame and disgrace”—words written with no apparent awareness of their mean- ing, nor discomfort that they were still a part of his emotional and doctrinal vocabulary. I was not pleased. I sent another letter to him and to his superior, asking them to consider our family history and award some small portion of my aunt’s estate ($416,902.09) to my family or my children. That letter was never answered.

In piecing together the events of my aunt’s life, I made contact with a social worker who had played a large part in convincing her to go to the hos- pital during her last illness and was the only one I talked to who was privy to one of her personal statements. She told me that my aunt had once told her in confidence that she was from Chicago, that her sister was once raped and had a little boy the family had put in an orphanage, and that this “broke her heart.” That was important. It makes me terribly sad to think that she and I missed out on a connection because of her anxiety that I might blame her for having abandoned me as a child—the furthest thing from my mind.

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NO LONGER AN ORPHAN IN HISTORY

They say, “Nothing can change until it first becomes what it is.” An essential ingredient in dealing with unresolved mourning is to feel the loss, in overcom- ing denial to feel the pain, and in dealing with rage to feel the helplessness. As inheritor of the title “illegitimate abandoned orphan,” I have needed to feel and accept all three and move on. A common theme in my orphanage days was “going home.” Certainly for me, and perhaps for many other orphans, reconnecting with our ethnic roots is a way to go home, to be legitimate, to be grounded in history.

In the absence of real bodies, living or dead, information can be the fur- niture of home. Biographies need earthly details, and it is difficult to be a con- nected self with a disconnected history. Although information itself cannot, of course, protect orphans from the “exquisite vulnerability” that makes them “go numbly where they are told” (Simpson, 1987, p. 157), it can help provide them with a safe way to re-form their lives and to diminish the numbing hold of a time when that vulnerability made them open to being preyed upon by needy caretakers, ambitious benefactors, and other real predators (such as Al, the brother of one of our nuns, who seduced a host of young boys, grooming them with gifts and rides in his car). Of great help to me was finding positive information in early records. Later successes in life are far from unimportant, but in my experience they do not have the identity- affirming power of lines in the Chicago Family Court records such as “The little boy was clever and adorable,” or “The family said that nothing could persuade them to give him up” (R. Gordon, personal communication).

I do not view the Polish reconnection as a substitute for a family that might have been, but rather as a discovery of the fuller, and heretofore unknown, corporeality of the actual ocean of life from which I sprang. It is not as good as finding a village of relatives happy to see me, or finding my real live aunt. Still, it’s close!

THE LAST 10 YEARS

One of the unfortunate consequences of abandonment is the precarious, if not surrealistic, quality of all subsequent attachments. Although that aura never quite vanishes, its power can indeed be greatly subdued, allowing for normal resilience and fairly comfortable risk taking. Perhaps one way we can recoup at least a bit of our momentum is to reestablish connections to past, pres- ent, and future. It is difficult to overstate the importance of these rediscover- ies of my family’s experience. Someone once said a good story is one that is “able to hold children from play and old men from the fireside.” Stories about members of my Hedwigian family certainly do that for me. This history can surround and nourish my sense of identity, helping me feel safe and rooted through Chicago all the way back to Poland, modulating what has been called “the loneliness of the long- distance ethnic” (Gladsky, 1992, p. 249).

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Freed prisoners who want to go back to prison are not too dissimilar from long-term institutionalized orphans. The prison/orphanage becomes safe and familiar when the world is too threatening. Rewriting your history as a reinvention of yourself can be invaluable, but rewriting a narrative from the unearthed real stories of real siblings that you really knew in real time, all of whom really knew you, is another story indeed. What is often rewritten is the internalized script, the inner dialogue that can go on forever trying to right itself. Of course that is important. However, it is surprisingly easy to forget that the actual history matters, surprisingly easy to forego the option of find- ing those actual people.

I have the good fortune to have had at least 200 siblings. In 1998, I attended a St. Hedwig’s alumni reunion and began regular contact with a number of old classmates and a few of the nuns from our era. In addition to the great satisfaction of filling in the blanks about siblings unheard from in half a century, there is emotional substance to the biographical detail dis- covered. Each reconnecting contact is a way of going home again, enriching memory and solidifying identity. It would be difficult to overestimate the plea- sure of finding out about my siblings.

Joe Arendaczyk ran away and lived in a large Motorola carton, which he had set up in the big bushes along the gate that separated the orphan- age from St. Adalbert’s Cemetery. He lived on the “free” crabapple trees in the cemetery and on money he made by stealing wreaths in Cemetery #1 and selling them to ladies entering Cemetery #2 off New- ark Avenue.

Albin Zukowski joined the Air Force and taught at West Point until he retired.

Eugene K., who was abused by the same nun I was, “became an alco- holic” and later shot himself.

Sister Teresilla, the music nun and the absolute favorite of the kids, had herself been one of the original orphans at St. Hedwig’s. No wonder she was so special.

It turned out that it was not our fault that the nun on the girls’ side fell out of the window to her death when she was washing our windows. Many of the nuns later agreed that she would probably have fallen out even if we had been good.

Mr. Paul, the carpenter, didn’t just disappear. Father Elmer got rid of him for “disobedience” for making tops and giving them to the kids for free, without asking permission.

Sister Felicia and Sister Laudina had a fistfight in Laudina’s cell one night. It is not a mortal sin to beat a nun at checkers. I had pictures of my classmates Wally Prim and Billy Zelasko that their

families did not have, and they were thrilled beyond belief to receive them.

Robert Friedman sent me pictures his aunt and mother took on visiting Sundays, including one of me in fifth grade with a broken collarbone.

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John Biel had managed to get a video made in the 1940s containing many movies of our processions, events, and outings.

One autumn day when Eugene Cesarz was leaving St. Hedwig’s, he popped into class, raised his right arm dramatically, and said “In a little while you shall see me . . . then again a little while and you shall not . . . for I go to my Father.”

We used to caddy for Father Elmer Wojtanowski every summer. Our pay was a root-beer float (a “black cow”). For the last five summers since the reunion, a few of us have gone there to play golf. Ritualistically, we treat ourselves to the same pleasure.

Frances Nowobilska, who married our classmate Robert Yesokietous, came to the orphanage because her father had shot her mother, and her mother had previously told the parish priest that if she died he should give her children to Father Rusch at St. Hedwig’s so they could be raised as good Catholics.

At our reunion “disclosure” dinner, I had looked forward to telling my “siblings” all about our sixth-grade nun taking me in at night, not sure what to expect as their reaction. I had kept that secret for various reasons, not the least of which was fear of their rejection. Somehow, when I told the story I expected to hear the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the background. Instead, Mike Mieszala said, “Hell, we knew that. We used to wait every night for her to take you in, because we knew that once her light went out, she would never come back, and we could do what we wanted: talk, raid the Spizarnia (food pantry), walk around, and whatever.” When I reminded them I was the smallest kid in the class and I wondered why she chose me, Joey Popera said matter- of- factly, “Maybe she liked little boys.” The laughter that followed was disarmingly refreshing, and this unexpected new perspective has remained the definitive take on that episode.

Sometime prior to the reunion I had written to Sister Angelita, who I thought could validate my feelings regarding my experience in sixth grade. She wrote back saying that I was so needy back then I must have imagined it all.

At the reunion, we visited the graves of the nuns, and I noticed someone had placed flowers on the grave of Sister Laudina, the one who had abused me. Later, we visited the nursing home where several of the surviving nuns still lived. I was touched to see Sister Armella and Sister Aquinatta, whom I had always liked. I decided to talk with them about my experience with Sister Laudina and ask if they knew anything about it, wondering how they might respond. They said they knew nothing and seemed to become very uncomfort- able, as if they wanted to end the visit. They did not acknowledge the reality of what I had told them, but they also did not deny it.

About 3 months later, Sister Armella wrote me an extremely detailed letter about the nuns’ lives. It was as much of an acknowledgment and letter of accountability as one could write who did not know the particulars of a

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situation, and it was a great gift. She wrote about some of the difficulties the nuns had who worked there, isolated from their families and from the larger community. She stated that she was “glad there were no more orphanages.” We continued to correspond, and later she wrote me that the nuns played bas- ketball after we were asleep at night! I had already made my peace with Sister Laudina’s abuse, but the generosity of Sister Armella was a great gift I would never have received had I not dared to approach the topic. I am glad I did. Sister Aquinatta continues to send me good wishes in the form of novenas and special prayers, another indirect but nonetheless real validation.

I suspect that for many orphans who search out their roots, dead ends and disappointments are more common than “miracle endings.” Neverthe- less, next to spiritual transcendence, exploring one’s actual and ethnic history is a safety deposit box full of treasures— an earthly “home” and a way to becoming more fully the person you are. Simpson (1987) makes some pro- found connections between our country as a nation of immigrants and the concept of orphanhood: “The United States, which has been called the home of the persecuted and the dispossessed, has been since its founding an asylum for emotional orphans” (p. 221). She notes that many who have assimilated by changing their names and forgoing their roots “have no way of estimating their spiritual loss” (p. 225). For me, despite some heavy negative associa- tions with my Catholic experience, I like the basic idea that we all started out in paradise and that part of the explanation for the universal anxiety of humankind is that none of us is at home; we are all orphans, cut off from our original household.

My son, David, and his wife, Sona, have given us a granddaughter, Kar- ina Folwarski, a gorgeous enchanting girl with a great laugh. I will encourage that laugh. I believe humor reflects an openness to ourselves and each other, no matter what life traumas may require transcendence for us to feel a sense of “home.”

REFERENCES

Gladsky, T. S. (1992). Princes, peasants and other Polish selves: Ethnicity in Ameri- can literature. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Radzialowski, T. (1975). Reflections on the history of the Felicians in America. Polish American Studies, 32(1), 19–28.

Rathnow- Killips, R. M. (Ed.). (1994). The Hedwigian II (Vol. 13, No. 1). Blanchard- ville, WI: The Women and Men of St. Hedwig’s Alumni Association.

Simpson, E. (1987). Orphans: Real and imaginary. New York: New American Library.

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Raised in a Muslim household, my identity as a Muslim was organizing but not fundamental to my identity. However, at the time of writing this chapter, the events unfolding across the two lands I call home has centered the relation- ship I have with what it means to be a Muslim. I am forced to ask, How do I respond? How do I define rather than defend? How do I resist the margin- alization that threatens my focus and how do I seek to define myself? Is my identity primarily defined by nationalist movements against Islam in both my home countries, or is my identity a more complex web of stories?

The United States and India, the two countries I’m connected to by birth and residence, as well as many other countries in recent years, have been expe- riencing populist and nationalist movements that are not only about the poli- tics of nationality but also about the politics of identity and who is allowed to define it. These movements are also collectively shaping when, where, and how these politics are defined.

Typically, I don’t lead with my religious identity as a primary way of defining myself. However, these populist and nationalist movements are fore- grounding my identity as a Muslim by creating a context in which being a Muslim is questioned, threatened, and vilified. So I feel a call to respond. Such a call-and- response dance between one’s context and the performance of one’s identity can be understood by the notion of a hyperlinked identity (Bava, 2016), as illustrated in this chapter.

Born and raised in Delhi, India, I often say I came of age as a working woman in Bombay (Mumbai now). As a Delhite, I had access to what an urban capital offers its citizens. But the extent of the urban–rural divide was not obvious to me until I started working in the rural and tribal belts of India

C H A P T E R 2 3

Hyperlinked Identity A Generative Resource in a Divisive World

Saliha Bava

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after I graduated with my master’s degree in social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. I knew of the divide, but not experientially. The lived sense of disparity and gap developed as I traveled for over a year through various villages to help youth and women’s community groups organize and develop projects that would further their economic development. With the help of mentors from other villages, the local community would determine the kinds of economic projects to design and implement with financial and technical assistance from the international funding group I worked for. Economic devel- opment was the pathway to organize for civil rights— rights to land, water, wages, and dignity that we in the urban sector1 took for granted. I was struck by the disparity and understood the draw to better oneself in order to have a better life for one’s family and oneself. But I was equally struck by how gen- erations of oppression can make whole villages appear “complacent” about their living conditions. However, it was not complacency, it was the upper hand of an oppressive system that had won the battle against basic human rights. It was a painful lesson of how as a collective we can deny groups of people their dignity and dehumanize them. It was deeply etched in my soul to fight against an oppressive collective system.

Feeling good by putting others down is not just an individual act or an interpersonal act. Rather, it is a social act that comes dressed up as caste sys- tem, classism, colonialism, regionalism, racism, sexism, and fundamentalism and all the other possible oppressive systemic forms it takes. I learned early in my professional life that even though it is hard to fight against such a larger- than-life system or even “convince” people that they deserve more, it is not hard to “awaken” the human spirit when one is treated with dignity.

Even though I had this rude awakening in the early 1990s of how we, as a collective, structure our society to give ourselves advantages, I also learned other powerful messages. The most important of them was how to keep going on in the face of struggles, challenges, and oppression. The Indian spirit, espe- cially in the face of extreme poverty and in the wide chasms of the haves and the have nots, has taught me the art of making it up as you go along: how to improvise with limited resources. How it is not just the resources but the art of making it up that becomes the measure of one’s success. As I worked with women and youth from villages that were branded as “untouchable,” I learned about the human spirit, which, like water, finds a way to flow. Generations of oppression didn’t kill the spirit that seeks connection; these men and women were responsive to their fellow human beings who treated them with dignity. I saw no fear in their eyes during those moments of connections. As humans, we know how to survive. And our job as helpers, activists, therapists, and oth- ers is to look, listen, feel, and find that spirit (for the lack of a better word) and walk alongside it. We know how to go on.

On the one hand we, Indians, have structured a society (caste system) that is built on putting others down or “keeping people in their place” (as if there were a predetermined order other than the one we have created). On the other hand, we have also built a society of relationality. Trust and relationships

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go hand in hand. For instance, on a recent visit to Delhi, India, I observed that the local TV cable providers packaged competitive wireless Internet deals based on the needs of the local community (neighborhoods and apartment complexes) by being an enterprising intermediary between the larger service providers and customers. Such a business model is very similar to the “mom and pop” stores in the United States— a trade model that is based on the rela- tionships with the customer in which the provider adapts and makes up deals to fit the customer; a model also known as “hyperlocalism.” It is a model in which business is about community relationships (which creates its own checks and balances) rather than only about financial profit. This way of organizing and doing business is so common in India, like the air we breathe, that we might fail to conceptualize its inherent strengths. In this way of being, people don’t seek to organize to be a community. Rather, the relationships organize themselves to be a community; a classic self- organizing system. That is, it is not a higher power of a community leader that is organizing of the people, but rather the relationship is an organic element by which organizing occurs.

Thus India has taught me that this spontaneous, organic system produces processes that can be dehumanizing as well as socially supportive. It gave me an awareness not only of how power can operate as a “feel-good” sys- tem at the expense of other human beings, but also how relationships and creativity are central to making up a meaningful life and finding ways to go on. There is a link here between power and relationship.2 There is also a link between adversity and creativity. Often Indians conceptualize power inequalities as adversities rather than as oppression and find ways to go on living. This organic process gives rise to what is known in Hindi as “jugaad,” or hack. Jugaad means an innovative work- around or a fix, based on limited resources, often signifying creativity (Prabhu, 2017). Today the word is used in the English language to signify “a low cost solution to any problem in an intelligent way” (“Definition of Jugaad Innovation,” n.d., para. 1). I view it as patching it together, making it up as we go along— improvising— creating a bricolage of relationships, systems, and patterns. And that is my story of identity— both as a concept and my own journey of making up the concept of hyperlinked identity.

ARRIVING IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In 1995, when I arrived in the United States from India, even before I could understand and articulate my experience for myself, I was labeled and catego- rized based on how I looked and sounded. I was a “minority.” I was a “person of color.” My skin color was defining.

When it comes to skin color, I’m familiar with it from my experience in India. Having been colonized, Indians are socialized to idolize Whiteness. Everything from a skin care product to a matrimonial ad for brides emphasizes

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Whiteness. Similarly, my students from the Caribbean Islands at Mercy Col- lege, where I teach, describe how openly the lighter skin tones are privileged over the dark skin tones. I see this not only as a legacy of colonization but also as a form of present- day colonization.

So, though I grew up experiencing my identity being shaped by inequali- ties based on skin color, I didn’t experience the degree of binary making until I got to the United States. Skin color in the United States is reduced to Black and White. So, as an immigrant Brown Muslim woman, married to a White American man who advocates for “remaking manhood” (Greene, 2016, 2018), I have this triple consciousness3 of not belonging, of being externally labeled as a person of color, and of being invisible, as I reside outside the Black–White binary while also experiencing double silencing. And, mind you, that is just based on my skin color. Yet I refuse to be marginalized, as I elucidate below.

MY SOCIAL LOCATION IS NOT MY IDENTITY

I have spoken about living in between spaces (Bava, 2001) and understand- ing what it is to be in the margins, even enjoying that liminal positional- ity. When does living in the margins become marginalized? I wonder, does it become marginalized because of hegemonic practices in the United States against immigrants and people/women of color? Sandoval (1991) states that the “hegemonic feminism of 1980s” marginalized the writings and theoreti- cal activities of “U.S. Third World4 feminists” (p. 1). Did my arrival in the mid-1990s in the United States drop me right into this divide for which I had no words at that time? I felt cautious of faculty voices that conducted social power analyses in terms of gender relations. Was my resistance because I had been inducted by a patriarchal society, or was it a form of opposition (Sando- val, 1991)? As a person who had not chosen marriage as a route to come to the United States to further my studies, I doubt I was fully under the trance of patriarchy. Rather, I had chosen to position my education ahead of getting married, as I had already been shaking off the social induction of India’s patri- archal script of how to perform as a woman for a few years. This was thanks in part to my mother, who ironically was both a conduit for the oppressive system and the liberator from it. Even as she told me that I couldn’t wear a sleeveless blouse unless my husband was okay with it, she also ensured that we attained the educational status to be financially independent before seeking marriage. The irony of these juxtapositions was not lost on me.

Back to my story in the United States: Even as I felt drawn toward feminist discourses, I pushed back against them. The gender analysis definitely spoke to my lived experiences in India, but it also felt incomplete. Though I did not lack the lived awareness that a gender- based power analysis did not fit my experience fully, I lacked the language for intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) and the interconnectedness of my experiences at that time. However, I had no

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way of making meaning then other than, “it doesn’t fully fit for me.” I was surrounded by White feminists, and none of them looked like me or was an immigrant from a colonized country in which religious fundamentalism was on the rise. I didn’t want to choose one of these other categories to make sense of my lived experience. I wanted for all of it to be present as I moved through the activity of sense making. Making meaning as an activity is what drew me toward dialogic practices (Anderson, 1997; Bakhtin, 1981), social con- structionism (Gergen, 2009), and communicative approaches (Lemke, 1995; Pearce, 2007). I wanted to be able to step in and out of the different streams (of meaning making), as my contexts and stories moved me (Bava, 2016). This was a beginning of hyperlinked identity with no conceptual naming for it, but rather it was an embodied, felt experience that was conceptually emerging as I worked on my dissertation (Bava, 2001, 2005). I locate this mindfulness within Sandoval’s (1991) “oppositional consciousness” (p. 11). Such an aware- ness is “a mapping of consciousness in opposition to the dominant social order which charts the White and hegemonic feminist theories of consciousness . . . while also making visible the different grounds from which specific U. S. third world feminism rises” (Sandoval, 1991, p. 11). I agree with Sandoval that such oppositional consciousness is not necessarily “feminist” in nature; rather, it is a positionality that refuses to be dominated by the current hegemonic order when it does not fit.

Thus my social location is not my identity. My stories define my relation- ship to my social location. Stories are social activities of making meaning. My identity is fluid, forming and reforming in my stories as they relate to the contexts and relationships I engage in, both constituting them and being reconstituted in turn. My identity is plural and emergent not only from the intersection of these evolving stories but also based on how I perform them against the backdrop of the historical and social narratives. I have come to call this hyperlinked identity (Bava, 2016).

HYPERLINKED IDENTITY

Due to the Internet, we can all relate to the concept of hyperlink, which means linking from one textual space5 to another by clicking on the embedded links. Imagine you are surfing the Web in search of understanding of a concept and, as you are reading an article about it, you click on a link within the article that transports you to another textual space. So it is with identities. Each is affected, modified, and constructed in relationship to the larger web of our stories, contexts, and conversations. It is this dynamism and interconnected- ness that shapes our identities to be intertextual, fluid, plural, emergent, and constitutive/performative, as explained below (Bava, 2016; Combs & Freed- man, 2016).

Hyperlinked identity is intertextual, meaning that every text makes sense within the web of other texts. According to critical social theorist and

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social semiotics thinker Lemke (1995), “this implies, of course, that it is very important to understand just which other texts a particular community con- siders relevant to the interpretation of any given text” (p. 23). The notion of intertextuality is more common in the fields of literary studies than in mar- riage and family therapy (MFT), though I was introduced to it in the mid- 1990s during my doctoral program in MFT at Virginia Tech. Intertextuality conceptually expands on the notion of context and multiplicity. It does so by locating texts in relationship to other texts in which each text’s meaning is shaped by the other texts—what comes both before and after it. Every social context is a communal space made up of multiple texts that are cir- culated by the people who occupy/engage that space. Thus, over time, these communal spaces might become prescriptive about how to perform one’s identity. For example, social scripts about how to be a man, woman, dad, mother, student, and so forth inform how we perform our identities. Over time, these social scripts take on a life of their own, become shared common values within a community, and travel as shared stories and practices of that particular community. They appear in terms of the words, gestures, actions, and invisible rules of that particular community, that is, community of prac- tice (Wenger, 1998). Such communities are known as discourse communi- ties, and their shared social stories are referred to as dominant or preferred discourses. A community of practice becomes a discourse community. And over time these discourse communities give rise to larger social systems that in turn shape the discourses (see Figure 23.1 on p. 331). Lemke (1995) states that Bakhtin, a philosopher, literary theorist, and critic, developed the view that discourse is

always implicitly dialogical, as always speaking against the background of what others have said or written in other times and places. He describes the struggle to make a word or utterances one’s own, to place it in a new context as a new social event, so that its meanings are as much our own as another’s. (p. 23)

Thus every text has a social context and provides context to other utter- ances and texts. We all live within multiple discourse communities. Thus our identities, metaphorically seen as texts, are inherently embedded in discourse communities that are dialogical and interpretive, as illustrated by cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa:

“Your allegiance is to La Raza, the Chicano movement,” say the members of my race. “Your allegiance is to the third world,” say my Black and Asian friends. “Your allegiance is to your gender, to women,” say the feminists. Then there’s my allegiance to the gay movement, to the socialist revolution, to the new Age, to magic and the occult. And there’s my affinity to litera- ture, to the world of the artist. What am I? A third world lesbian feminist with Marxist and mystic leanings. They would chop me up into little frag- ments and tag each piece with a label. (in Keating, 2009, p. 2)

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Hyperlinked identity allows for the fluidity and plurality of identities, which are centered and decentered, within the shifting relational contexts we engage with, as illustrated by Anzaldúa. It is inclusive of intersectionality, as it speaks to the idea of how intersectionality is intertextual. Moreover, it places interconnectedness or interrelatedness, the original spirit of family therapy, in the foreground. Hyperlinked identity foregrounds relationality.

As a relational metaphor, hyperlinked identity refers to our interlinked stories of self (texts) that emerges from within a discursive process with very real effects. It is like the sense that emerges when we surf the Web by clicking on one link after another in search of an understanding; where the links are symbolic of the dynamic conversational linkages we make within the dialogic process. And the clicking of a link is equivalent to our curiosity to follow up on these linkages. Curiosity appears as questions and reflections from within the conversation. Such a stance of curiosity elevates the linkages from within the relationship and conversations (Anderson, 1997; Shotter, 2004). It throws light on the activities of relating and making within a discursive process (McNamee, 1996). Thus our emergent identities could be viewed as relational performances made up— improvised or hacked— in the process of relating to one another within constantly changing contexts. As McNamee (1996) states:

The emphasis on performance is in keeping with Wittgenstein’s (1963) notion of language games. To Wittgenstein, words do not represent a world “out there” nor do they represent the nature of the speaker’s mind. Rather, words gain their significance through their use in social interplay. Con- sequently, the construction of a world, a reality, an identity is contingent upon how language is used in particular contexts. How language is used is dependent, in turn, upon how others respond to (supplement) each action. The forms of action and supplementation in any given context or relation- ship are themselves contingent upon the discursive traditions (i.e., histories) and discursive communities (i.e., cultures/relationships) with which the par- ticipants are engaged. (p. 150)

Hyperlinked identity is performative, that is, in interaction and utter- ances we make up each other (Anderson, 1997; Pearce, 2007). For example, when a therapist issues the utterance “she is depressed,” the therapist’s utter- ance gives life to the story that the client is depressed. Unlike a search for understanding of a concept on the Web, the material nature of these emergent texts/stories can range from being harmful to liberating and thus can create a sense that ranges from being unsafe to safe depending on the varied contexts and the responsiveness (Shotter, 2004) of the other. Our own responsiveness draws on what Sandoval (1991) refers to as differential consciousness in order to position ourselves within these varying contexts, thus performing a hyper- linked identity that is constitutive. It is a way of shape shifting to be responsive within a context while also shaping the context as we assess the conditions for/ of oppression. For instance, in an antiracism context within the United States, to be included, I might deemphasize my gender or immigrant narratives. Or in

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a religiously oriented context, I might bracket my racially gendered identity to work across our differences. It is a survival skill, not a skill of assimilation; nor am I a victim of internalized oppression. It is a skillful dance of a “relational being” (Gergen, 2009, p. xv). There is an element of consciously choosing to perform certain stories of my identity to be responsive within a context that demands the performance of a particular identity to participate, be heard, or be seen. That doesn’t mean I give up other stories of myself. Rather, when the contexts are limiting, I find an agentic way to participate within it. The differ- ence between internalized oppression and the relational stance of differential consciousness lies in the sense of agency when one is performing his or her identity. Whether such a performance includes one’s sense of agency rather than the loss of one’s sense of agency depends on the context and one’s dif- ferential consciousness, among other factors. Thus an agentically performed hyperlinked identity provides the larger web of interconnected stories to move through the various limiting contexts by recognizing these contexts as specific social stories or discourse communities.

In an age in which texts are constantly being recontextualized and recon- stituted, it helps us to examine intertextuality in the making of social identi- ties. As family therapists, through our activities of theorizing, researching, and writing, we are active participants in textual constructions that have very real effects on people’s lives and relationships. As clinicians and supervisors, when we promote the discourse of socially locating ourselves, how are we participating in the codifying of our identities as text? How do intersectional utterances alter the codification of our identities? Aren’t we still categorizing? What is the context created through our theories? How might we explore our intertextual participation in the making of social identities and contexts? How do we participate in the critical conversations of personhood as we invoke the complex network of narratives that make up our intersectional identities?6 Thus, in practice, I find it useful to remind myself that our MFT theories are metaphorical texts (Rosenblatt, 1994). In fact, family therapy historian Lynn Hoffman’s (1998) statement, “models are heuristic fairy tales, holders of com- plex realities” (p. 98), reminds us that we need to hold our theories lightly as maps or guides (Bava, 2017; Imber-Black, 2014).

SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE

Race is organizing in the United States. Race discourse is divisive not only because it serves the dominant order but also because its binary analysis plays right into the hands of this divisiveness. As stated, the mainstream United States speech of race is in terms of White and Black. As a Brown person, I don’t belong in the White or the Black categories. However, I do belong when I’m categorized as a “person of color.” And often at that juncture I experience a double silence that I am unable to break even in this writing. And thus, with my words below, I come close to speaking of this experience as:

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SILENCED

If I speak, I’m a sell out If I don’t speak, I’m silent Silenced Those who I fear hurting, fear for themselves

How to speak my truth?

Speak not to be universalized Or silenced I fear the division The master’s tool Enslaved by Our in- fighting While he wins on

Fear to speak out Yet fear keeps us in Fear keeps us fighting each other And we fear not the silence that kills us

We fight our own Fearing the master’s hand We serve Keeping disorder within Silently we move

Disconnected Fearful Silent In- fighting Enslaved

Just as the language of gender analysis didn’t fully fit me, the same was true with race analysis. Race was definitely organizing in India, both in terms of its colonizing and its partition. However, we never spoke of it as such. We spoke of it in terms of skin color, the Aryan and Dravidian divide, and the colonization of the East by the West. So I was steeped in dualisms, but not in the same sense as the racialized United States.

HYPERLINKED IDENTITY A GENERATIVE RESOURCE

A Paradoxical Resource to Transcend the Divisive (Dis)Order

Whose voice and whose stories count? And who does the counting, telling, and listening? And more so, how is it (re)told? In a world of colonizing there are only two sides—“ours” and “theirs.” It is central for the colonizers to have

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their story win; an order built on dominance— who is able to keep an upper hand. And even more important, it doesn’t serve the colonizer to have plural- ity or multiple stories. What’s the use of plurality if only one story is allowed to dominate? Why even entertain plurality; let’s just stick to the binary. Colo- nizing creates a call and response for polarization, a binary induction.

And the moment we respond with a dualistic response, we buy into the binary. I’m referring to those that are in binary opposition, that is, an either– or position. Not only are we a slave to the binary, but we are also its tool when we respond from the space of binary opposition. In that moment we are serving the very “master” whose house we want to take down. As Audre Lorde (2015) states, “for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (p. 94). It is for us to see what processes are set into motion that keep us reaching for the master’s tools and thus keeps us prisoners of the very sys- tem we are attempting to change.

The ways we make meaning are our tools as therapists; they construct realities and identities (Anderson, 1997; Bava, 2017; Combs & Freedman, 2016; McNamee, 1996, 2009). By the way we use the language, we might be continuing to use the master’s tools. Why do we continue to talk about domi- nance and not liberation? I believe it is because we are afraid of the unknown, when it will turn the world on its head. We will then have to truly give up the privilege of knowing. Our theories and ways of knowing give us, rather grant us, privilege. The ways we track, categorize, and name phenomena not only create our theories but also, more importantly, create the context of people’s lives and our practice of therapy. For instance, calling racism a “Black issue” leaves the other people of color and Whites off the hook. Further, the word “issue” is not spoken from a liberating or power- giving perspective but gen- erates a problematic picture affecting Blacks. And in that instance we fail to create a context of interconnectivity. Rather, we continue to play into the field of divisiveness. We are playing right into the hands of colonization. Similarly, the use of the word “dominance” continues to preserve the dominant group as the “one with power” and as the starting point of analysis. Further, when we continue to be spoken of as the oppressed, our power continues not to be seen. However, if we are seen as resisters, liberators, creators of differential consciousness, we start to see the world anew. At the event “Apollo Uptown Hall: 50 Years after MLK: A Dream Deferred,” Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, stated, “Black folks are still here. . . . It takes a level of cre- ativity and genius to still be alive when something continues to try to kill you” (Lehrer, 2017). Sandoval (1991) similarly illustrates that there is power in our differential consciousness as it “requires grace, flexibility, and strength” (p. 15). How would we act differently if these were our starting points for engagement? As seductive as it is to choose one or the other utterance, there is power in each utterance, and each of these utterances is located within dis- course communities— or, rather, identity (in)forming communities— to which we belong.

By drawing on hyperlinked identity, we can move fluidly among various communities that shape our identities. It allows for polyphony (Anderson,

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1997; Bakhtin, 1981). For instance, at the personal level, I choose a libera- tory frame, as it is more generative and hope giving for me. At the social level, it is helpful to look at analysis from the perspective of who holds the power institutionally. At the interpersonal level, I draw on the hyperlinked identity frame, as it helps me maintain a differential consciousness (Sandoval, 1991). Although I speak of myself as being at the personal, social, and/or interper- sonal levels, each is embedded in my identity- forming discourse communities.

In India, we have our own form of “second- class citizens,” based on the caste system7—one of the oldest forms of social stratification, designed over 3,000 years ago. The lowermost strata— the “shudras”—and those outside of the caste system— the Dalits— were seen as the untouchables, because they often performed menial labor such as cleaning the bodies of the dead, taking out the trash, cleaning out the sewer system, and so forth. However, as a Mus- lim, I was personally raised “outside” the caste system but within the social milieu of a community that retained vestiges of the system. On a recent visit to India, I asked a relative of mine why we use separate “water glasses” for people who come to do any repair work at home or for the maid. I sensed the discomfort in our conversation as she spoke about “cleanliness,” because the repair person and maid lived in shacks made of corrugated metal sheets and tarps (juggies) and thus were more than likely to have limited access to clean water. She also noted how the man who gave daily massages to her dad was a local sweeper, who most people wouldn’t allow into their homes, as he repre- sented the untouchables. The notion of “cleanliness” was not lost on me, as it represents both issues of hygiene and the untouchables. I left the conversation feeling that perhaps she felt judged by me. And yet it is in these uncomfort- able conversations that we also experience moments of raising consciousness of how we organize our lives, through rituals and practices that denote who is ingroup and who is outgroup— and, over time, learn how an outgroup gets constructed as “less than” to give members of the ingroup a sense of domi- nance and privilege.

Thus, irrespective of gender, race, caste or class, and so forth, the binary induction is present. It is a dominant way to make sense of our experiences. It is how dominant order is made. To engage the complexity of our identities we have to resist the making of these oppositional, polarizing binaries. Para- doxically, hyperlinked identity opens up the space for plurality of identities as multiple stories. Rather than choosing between our identity scripts, one can access multiple, contradictory scripts that we creatively link or patch together— as in jugaad— as we navigate the various contexts with which we are engaged.

A Shift toward Intersectional Stories and Our Interconnectedness

The identity categories, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and so forth, constitute one’s identities even before we gain consciousness of their existence, thus indicating their social presence. Rather than pitting the social identity against the subjective identity, we need to adopt a relational frame

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by holding the tension between them both, as not all dualisms are polarizing. Rather, some are in a dialectical relationship— that is, the presence of each is defined by the other. For example, the concept of “rich” doesn’t exist without the concept of “poor.”

In attempting to understand our identities as intersectional, we have ele- vated the social categories of our identities, which is problematic. We have reduced our identities to categories. Labels for social categories are shells without the stories. Without the stories we cannot connect. Social categories keep us in our silos. But stories keep us connecting.

Generating awareness of social categories of identity was a much- needed political action, and yet it also played politically into another aspect of social categorizing, which is to keep people boxed in by being reductionist in identi- fying who people are. They are thin descriptions, and, without the stories, they distance us from each other. When we assign labels, such as men, women, lib- erals, conservatives, Black, Brown, White, lesbian, and so forth, we adopt a knowing stance about people’s stories and/or are resistant to hearing people’s stories, as stories are often complex and cannot be neatly categorized. Hyper- linked identities break down these categories and labels and, instead, bring forth the narratives in the interlinked texts.

Thus not only do we need to think of the intersection of social identi- ties to engage one’s complexity, but we also need to shift our attention to the intersection among the stories. The intersection among our stories often sheds light on our interconnectedness. When we shift our focus to the inter- section within our stories and between the stories, we breathe more life into the origins of political action of our identities. We rediscover our intercon- nectedness, our compassion, our care for each other. Whereas labels create abstractions, stories create connection and compassion.

IMPLICATIONS OF OUR POSITIONALITIES AND PRACTICE

How one uses words and utterances locates oneself and others socially. For instance, the statement “I live in Manhattan” locates me differently than does the statement “I’m from India” in terms of access and privileges within a par- ticular social context. So these statements not only locate me geographically but also position me socially, depending on the meaning we give to “Manhat- tan” and “India.” So it is with our questions, such as “Where are you from?” as illustrated by writer Taiye Selasi in her TED talk “Don’t Ask Me Where I’m from, Ask Where Am I a Local.”8 Davies and Harré (1990) conclude that “position is what is created in and through talk as the speakers and hearers take themselves up as persons” (p. 62).

Thus one’s stories, formulated in our utterances and our use of words, not only are carriers of our interconnections but also frame our social positionali- ties. How one reads these stories of positionalities might be reflective of the speaker, but it is more so reflective of the listeners’ activity of making mean- ing and the intersection with their own positionality. As Davies and Harré

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(1990) state, positioning is “the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another. And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself” (p. 48).

Thus we can pose the question, Whose expertise defines one’s positional- ity? And what are the implications of answering this question within the con- text of therapy? For instance, in clinical practice, does the therapist define the client’s positionality, or is it defined by the client, or jointly? Meaning making is a coordinated activity that lies within the relational and cultural repertoires we have co- created (Gergen, 2009; Lemke, 1995; Pearce, 2007).

Dewery (2005) notes that “different ways of speaking offer different pos- sible effects, and these effects include different possibilities for future actions” (p. 315). So what effect am I producing when I am suggesting the positionality of interconnectedness alongside intersectionality? What effects am I produc- ing when I speak of myself as a Brown woman from Delhi (intersectional- ity)? And which of my identity narratives resonate for you or touch you, thus highlighting our interconnectedness? How might you as a reader notice both intersectionality and interconnectedness in my stories? I raise these questions as a segue to our clinical practice. As practitioners, if we noticed both the intersectionality of the clients and our own narratives and how we are inter- connected, then how might we practice therapy? The clinical implications of hyperlinked identity are as follows:

1. We approach our clinical conversations as meaning- making spaces where both the “therapist’s” and the “client’s” identities are co- created through dialogue and the context of our relationships.

2. We imagine these identities as interlinked multiple texts and remain curious how they are interlinked by attending not only to the identity narratives but also to the relationships among them.

3. We engage in joint inquiry with our “clients’ ” emerging narratives, actively noticing with them how the identity narratives are being made and remade through the conversations. We also attend to our creative process of relating and making meaning to promote collaboration (Anderson, 1997; Bava, 2017; McNamee, 2009).

4. We notice that our understanding of any one of these texts is depen- dent on our lived experiences, theories, and the stories of larger social systems that we bring to make sense of these texts. Simultaneously, we are coordinating with the “client’s” text and context.

5. Consequently, we need to hold our theories of practice lightly, as a map or guide, rather than as a certainty about our “clients’ ” lives, because they also have their own maps by which they are making sense of their own lives. Thus the “therapists’ ” and the “clients’ ” maps are among the many multiple texts from within which to find generative resources to design our lives.

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In summary, what I’m offering as a guide for clinical and everyday con- versations is a reflexive practice that is built into the notion of hyperlinked identity. We have to stay reflexive about our utterances/interactions, actions/ discourses, and the larger social systems/processes as they make up our identi- ties (see Figure 23.1). We need to notice how our interactions and utterances (circle 1) make up our actions and discourses (circle 2), which in turn make up our social systems (circle 3). And over time these larger social systems provide context to the social discourses and actions, which in turn provide the context for the utterances and interactions. Each of these circles consists of multiple interlinked texts. And so the process of making it up goes on. For instance, returning to my question in the opening paragraph about how I respond to increasing nationalist and populist movements in my home coun- tries, I found that the larger discourse of populism and nationalism (circle 3) foregrounded dominant oppressive social stories (circle 2) of “who is a Mus- lim.” The responsiveness I felt (circle 1) took on many forms of activisms. One of these was writings and conversations with colleagues— men and women of different religious faiths and nationalities (Arora & Bava, 2018; Trimble, 2018)—in which we discovered our interconnectedness and intersections. I authored these chapters to add my voice to the growing alternate discourse of what it means to be a Muslim (Bava, 2016) and how do we do “social justice” (Bava, Gutiérrez, & Molina, 2018). By participating with these members of a responsive community, I experienced “reasonable hope” (Weingarten, 2010, p. 6) and found an agentic way to go with my everyday life in the midst of ris- ing nationalism and populism.

The implications of hyperlinked identities exist not only in our practice as therapists but also in living. They help us to accompany clients’ story arcs within the various textual spaces they enter and exit, just as we do when we

Larger Social

Systems

Actions and

Discourse

Utterances and

Interaction

1 2 3

FIGURE 23.1. The interlinks between utterances, actions, discourses, and social sys- tems.

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are surfing the Web. Textual space is any one of the identity stories, situated narratives of the person and stories of the larger social system. And by stay- ing “locally” curious about the foreground and the background textual ele- ments and their relationships, we center and decenter other textual spaces. It is through such curious inquiry that we may find ourselves transported to another textual space, seemingly unrelated, but very much internally linked, based on the person’s hyperlinks and those created within the conversation. By maintaining a curious and not- knowing stance (Anderson, 1997), we continue the process of inquiry, which helps us to notice and/or develop the linkages and to clarify them. It is through the process of making sense of these link- ages that new frames (meanings) for ways to go on in life emerge. Thus con- versation or therapy becomes a space to make sense—“a transient order”—in what might feel like random leaps between various hyperlinked spaces of our lives. For instance, by hyperlinking my stories of arriving in the United States with my stories today in the United States, linking back with my life in India 25 years ago and then linking back to the present, giving background on the various discourses of power analysis, differential consciousness, and intertex- tuality, I can explore and make up (jugaad) threads of identity that I had not constructed 20–25 years back. These threads of identity continue to be fluid, emergent, and constitutive of what comes next, just as they are of what came before.

CONCLUSION

Each of the stories I have shared in this chapter about skin color, religion, gender, class, caste, and so forth are based on my experiences in India and the United States. They may be read as social identity stories across contexts. But I offer them as hyperlinked stories of identity that shift as the foreground and background shift. For instance, any reading of my relationship to gender discourses shifts based on whether you view me as a woman from India, as a Brown woman (intersectional), as a theorist critically reflecting on discourse construction, as a family therapist raising questions of practice, and so forth. Making sense of my stories lies at the intersection of the stories you bring to this reading. In that moment we are in an intertextual conversation, creating a hyperlinked identity of you and me. Your reading of this text is what Bakhtin (1981) refers to as hetroglossia: the practice of joining (and/or disjoining) dif- ferent voices within the same text. No readers ever come to an interaction without their own texts and the embedded discourse community they bring to the text at hand. The intersection of these texts is the intersection of our stories. And, if nothing else happens, that intersecting moment gives rise to our interconnectedness. So it is with therapy space, where our conversations (public and private) are stories. The texts we bring to this intertextual space intersect and in the process create our clients’ and therapists’ hyperlinked identities and meanings.

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Hyperlinked thinking grants us the freedom to leap between various sto- ries without a categorical bias about a particular narrative. Our stories and actions make up the collective. They are our collective tools. They are not reactions, but very much in response to the world we want to create; not in defense of our positionality but in definition of our stance of dignity.

NOTES

1. For the purposes of this chapter, I am drawing upon a simplified thread to contrast the urban–rural divide, though the story of civil rights is far more complex both in the urban and rural sectors, respectively.

2. Power grows in relationships. And in relationships there is power, for example, a people’s protest march. Exploitation is power over the other. Creative collabora- tion is power with the other.

3. Triple consciousness also refers to not only how I see my Brown self, but also how the others from outside—Blacks and Whites within the U.S. context— see me (or do not).

4. I use “Third World” as used by Sandoval. But it is not my preferred way to refer to myself or India because of the connotations. To learn more, read If You Shouldn’t Call It the Third World, What Should You Call It? Available at www.npr.org/ sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/04/372684438/if-you- shouldnt- call-it-the-third- world-what- should- you-call-it.

5. Textual space on the Internet can be a website, Web page, or paragraphs/multi- media within one page that are interlinked. Within the context of hyperlinked identity, textual space refers to lexias or text composed of blocks of text, where texts can be our situated narratives— historical, social, and cultural stories— and/ or relational, familial, or personal narratives or fragments.

6. These were some of the questions raised by Jackie Hudak, Eli Nealy, and me in our 2017 American Family Therapy Academy plenary titled “The Politics of Person- hood and Clinical Work: Reflecting on Our Fluid, Emergent, and Performative Identities.” I thank Jackie and Eli for being my early conversational partners and reflectors about hyperlinked identity.

7. There are many theories about the development of the caste system in India; most date it to pre-Vedic times. There is a linguistic debate over the term “caste” as the Vedic (religious) scriptures of the Hindus used varna and jati to refer to social groupings of people. However, for thousands of years, this social stratification system organized people, by birth, along economic and occupational lines. Peo- ple born into these groupings were segregated. Over time, the reification of this system kept people from choosing their lives, food, marriages, and work to keep them from moving outside their social status. Thus this hierarchical system limited access to education, equality, and resources for people in the lower levels. Under the British, this dehumanizing system was further exploited based on the divide- and- conquer colonizing practices. Today, though the caste system is illegal in India, it is still socially and politically organizing.

8. Her talk is available at www.ted.com/talks/taiye_ selasi_don_t_ ask_where_i_m_ from_ ask_where_i_m_ a_local.

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This chapter weaves the stories of two Semitic family therapy professionals who led somewhat parallel lives, which then intersected and became more complex after a challenging interaction. Linda is a Jewish professor teaching in a marriage and family therapy (MFT) graduate program, and Donna is Palestinian and was a student in the program. We are both mothers whose children went to high school together, although we did not know each other until Donna became interested in exploring graduate studies in MFT. We give a brief history of our cultural and familial backgrounds and then detail how our relationship intersected and the difficult dialogue that transformed that relationship. We end the chapter with a discussion about how negotiating our cultural differences enhanced our personal and professional lives.

LSF: As a person who has benefitted and continues to benefit from mul- tiple privileges, I try to interact with students in ways that do not perpetuate oppressive practices. Until Donna entered our training program, I believed that I was, although a work in progress, pretty good at understanding, as much as one can understand another, how it feels to be marginalized. I am Jewish. I grew up with White and financial privilege and in the shadow of the Holocaust. Most of my family were lucky enough to get out of Eastern Europe before the Nazi invasion, and they worked tirelessly for the creation of the state of Israel so that we would have a homeland and a refuge for the misplaced Jews of the world who had nowhere else to go.

C H A P T E R 2 4

The Semitism Schism, Revisited Jewish–Palestinian Legacies

in a Family Therapy Training Context

Linda Stone Fish Donna Dallal‑Ferne

Jewish–Palestinian Legacies 337

I have a framed letter on my wall at home written to my grandfather from Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, typed on December 5, 1947. He wrote the following:

My dear Judge Stone:

I heard to my deep regret that you are not well and laid up in the hospital as the result of the strain which you went through during the sessions of the UNO. I feel very deeply with you because I realize what it means to work incessantly for a cause and find oneself in a tense condition for a long time. But it is now over and I am sure you have the satisfaction of knowing that your great work was not in vain, and this I am sure will help you get better in the shortest possible time. It is certainly my ardent wish and I send you my cordial greetings. I know that you don’t need my thanks, you did it like all of us for the sake of the cause.

The cause, of course, was the state of Israel. With great pride, I grew up, and with an omnipresent reminder that they

did not really like us, so we had better stick together. I grew up in a large extended family in a Jewish neighborhood in the suburbs of Boston. Because I grew up in an environment in which I did not interact with many non- Jewish people until I went to high school, my first conscious experiences of being “othered” did not occur until I was a young adult. In college and graduate school, I had many classmates who had never met a Jew before and asked me innocuous questions, such as what kind of music Jews listened to, if I believed in Santa Claus as a child, and if calling someone a Jew was a bad thing to do. A classmate asked me, quite sincerely, having learned that Jesus was the way and I was going to hell, how could I not believe in him and how could I still be Jewish. I had many encounters with people joking about Jews and money and overheard countless conversations about the Jews slyly taking over the world and being untrustworthy. Recently, I heard a man tell a German trav- eler visiting New York that Hitler got it right and it is too bad he lost the war. When our first son was born and we named him Isaac, I wanted to make sure I moved to a community with a significant Jewish population so that when I called his name at the playground, I was not given the looks I perceived as staring at the other.

The moments of anti- Semitism I have experienced, heard, and read about have made me a stronger Jew. Before them, I was Jewish- identified by birth. After them, I became Jewish- identified by choice. When people I care about, whom I have warm relationships with, say hateful things about my beliefs, my religion, and my people, I have a couple of choices. I can cut off from them and risk losing my integrity as a person and as a family therapist, or I can learn about myself in relationship. I choose to look at the anti- Semitic remarks and ask myself what I believe about the Jewish religion and about Jews. This pro- cedure has helped me develop a stronger devotion to Judaism and a more com- plex understanding of myself. This understanding helps me stay connected to

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all types of people. I experience the violent rage that makes me want to harm another, which helps me understand perpetrators of violence. I experience the devastating hollowness of the invisible and the hurt of the victimized, which helps me understand the oppressed.

I have also experienced the unearned privilege and responsibility that come with being a White, educated, class- privileged, able- bodied person. Before meeting Donna, I identified those parts with the oppressor and held onto the Jewish part of me as the part of me that identified with the oppressed. Anti- Semitism and the ways in which some people hate and fear Jews rears its ugly head enough for me to live with some underlying chronic anxiety about my safety and that of my family. At the writing of this chapter, I take notice of the word “anti- Semitism” and the ways in which it is used about Jews and not other Semites. According to Wikipedia, a Semite is someone who speaks Semitic languages, which historically includes Jews and Arabs. The term “anti- Semitism” was first coined in Germany, specifically about Jewish people. The term continues today, certainly in the United States, to connote anti- Jewish people. Yet its use has the potential to alienate us from other Sem- ites and furthers the invisibility of the Palestinian people.

DDF: As a woman who has in turn felt the benefits of a mostly privileged life, I also have had plenty of occasion to feel marginalized by the significant demographics of being a woman and being Palestinian. I am aware of a per- sonal challenge to both advocate for the parts of my demographic that are easily marginalized and also to pause in recognition of the ways I am mostly privileged. When I first met Linda, the relationship between us was one of professor to prospective student. Though we have both grown, and the dif- ferential between us has changed in the interim, it is not lost on me that Linda still carries hierarchy in our relationship. Our reconnecting to share in the effort toward writing this chapter has posed an opportunity to further nar- row the hierarchy differential and to create a deepening of our mutual under- standings through witnessing, yet again, the inevitability of how much more we have in common than we have differences. Mothers and professionals, we are both women who come from families whose legacies are fraught with historical and personal tragedy. Our personal and cultural paths intersect, however, such that we cannot help but notice that we are sisters and neighbors first. Though we both come from Semitic origins, at this juncture in modern history, Linda’s connections to her Semitic origins are recognized more often than not, in our shared academic world, as something to be protected and respected. My personal connection to Semitism is not yet understood or seen and is likely to confuse people.

There are some significant contrasts between my upbringing and Linda’s. I grew up in the suburbs of Utica, New York, a very small, conservative, and mostly economically challenged city in Central New York State. What I came to realize as a graduate student in a program that emphasized understand- ing diversity is that my parents had a “mixed marriage.” My father was a

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Palestinian immigrant, my mother a Central New York WASP. There are fam- ily stories that will elicit laughter, describing what happened when my young, handsome, socially clumsy Palestinian father first met the people who would later become his mother- and father- in-law. However, it was not until our first trip to visit my Palestinian family that there was much discussion of where my father was from. In the spring of 1969, as I was about to turn 11 and my brothers were 5 and 13, my family made our first trip to the Middle East. My dad gave us a crash course in Arabic food and some very basic pleasantries of the language before we left. Neither went over very well. That trip was to Jed- dah, Saudi Arabia, where my grandmother and the vast majority of my closest aunts, uncles, and cousins were living at the time. My grandfather had passed away about 10 years prior to that trip. That summer we tasted what it means to live in the desert of Saudi Arabia. Despite that large exposure to my father’s side of the family and to the place they had fled to under duress less than 10 years prior to our visit, I still returned to my suburban small-town home life without much consciousness of what Palestine is and who the Palestinians are. The bigger recollection and impressions I came away with had to do with how different family relationships are. There is a closeness and kinship of the extended family not to be matched by anything that I had or have ever wit- nessed in my mother’s family.

After that initial trip to meet my Palestinian family, the next time we trav- eled to the Middle East was in late August of 1972, this time to Kuwait City, Kuwait, where I was about to enter ninth grade at the American School of Kuwait (ASK). There were more members of my large Palestinian family liv- ing in Kuwait whom we had not met in 1969. By this time, most of the family, whom we had met in Jeddah in 1969, were now living in Amman, Jordan. My father, having accepted a position with the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), had preceded our arrival to Kuwait by about 5 months. The next several years, taking me all the way through high school, would entail a lot of back and forth, living and going to school sometimes in suburban New Hartford, New York, and sometimes at ASK. My teen years deeply intersected with my father’s life struggle of straddling continents and loyalties. Yet even with such a significant exposure, for a decade or more, to this part of the world and to my family as they were living in exile from their homeland, my father’s specific and unique Palestinian story was never emphasized. Despite this lack of emphasis, I did begin to understand that the Palestinians were often closely associated with the word terrorist and felt the discomfort and confusion of that association. I recognize now an internal angst that distanced me from my Palestinian origins from childhood continu- ing through most, if not all, of my adolescence.

My father left Palestine by himself in 1949, at the age of 17. That period of time in Palestinian history, when he left, is extremely significant and had never been pinned down for me until shortly before he died in 2016. The Palestinian tragedy was never central to family conversation or spoken of as a historical tragedy that desperately needs attention. On the occasions when

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my father’s being Palestinian did come up, there was never any discussion about who the Palestinians were and the circumstances of his departure. It was more about the contrast between U.S. life and life in Kuwait, or the con- trast between my father’s and my mother’s families. My father would spin stories about his father, whom we never met. He would tell and retell the story of his journey to the States and of meeting my mother at Cornell University. Until, all of a sudden in the mid-1980s, my older brother and I began produc- ing grandchildren. Now there comes a reckoning with his and our Palestinian heritage, the stories, the history, and the importance of what it means to be a Palestinian. Only now is the tragedy to be passed on, so the grandchildren can bear witness to their grandfather in a way that my brothers and I did not as young children.

When I was choosing where to go to college, I wanted to leave Central New York, and ended up at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. My freshman year roommate was Jewish. There was a large Jewish population at this somewhat elite institution of higher learning, and it was more likely than not that any random selection of roommates would offer me a Jewish room- mate. My time at Washington University was probably the first significant experience of understanding not only that being Palestinian was an important piece of who I am but also that somehow I did not know or understand the history, or even my family story, all that well and that this was not a good thing. On occasion I would find myself in conversation with people who were articulate and well versed in the Zionist argument, and I would feel defeated before I could even begin to think about what I might say, yet I always under- stood that the Palestinian story was never fairly represented. This sense of feeling like an inadequate source of information about my heritage and the people and the land that my father fled has haunted me throughout my adult years.

OUR LIVES INTERSECT

DDF: Years later, as I began to think about entering graduate school to become a therapist, friends of mine in the community told me that I needed to speak to Linda Stone Fish, and did I know her? She was an important person in the marriage and family therapy program at Syracuse University, and her children were in the same school district as mine. Being so involved with my children’s lives, I was surprised that I had not known of her, but I did a little research, and it did not take long until we put together a meeting for lunch. She listened to me well and was curious about my story and to know how I had become interested in entering the graduate program for marriage and family therapy. Before we finished, she advised me about my next steps and offered me encour- agement. I left that meeting excited and ready to do all the things I needed to in order to get myself into graduate school. As an older student in Syracuse’s master’s program, I arrived in my early 40s as a single mother of four children,

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ages ranging from 10 to 18 years. Though an adult in many obvious ways, I was at the precipice of a developmental path that would lead me through another, and very significant, adolescence. There was a naiveté within me that was about to be awakened and that would launch me into a new and exciting world at the intersection of my personal and professional lives.

Before entering graduate school, without adequate language for it, I had a vague understanding of Jewish privilege and a felt sense of its capacity to keep me, as a Palestinian, always one down. I also recognize now that I had, and to this day still operate with, quick defenses that allow me to feel safe in a relationship that carries some importance for me. After our initial lunch meeting and before I actually began the MFT program, I made a point of running into Linda on a couple of occasions when I was on campus. On one of those occasions I brought up the topic of the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, very gently testing her. Her response was thoughtful and nonthreatening. All seemed well. At this time, as I was getting ready to become a full time grad student, our sons were classmates and seniors in high school. In one of the school newspapers that would come out that year, they wrote point– counterpoint opposing opinion pieces about the Palestinian– Israeli conflict. I was proud of my son’s piece and his articulate expression of the Palestinian struggle. When I read Linda’s son’s piece, I all of a sudden did not feel quite as safe about Linda. I saw his piece and heard strong language that carries the standard Zionist perspective that is taught to young American Jews.

In the first days of my graduate program, I was happy and excited to be starting this new chapter for myself. I was stepping into graduate school as now my son and Linda’s son were beginning their freshman years in college. Linda’s son was at one of the major Ivy League schools, my son at one of the “small Ivys.” Not more than a couple of weeks into my first term, I had an encounter with another professor, who marked me down for something that at the time seemed trivial to me. I did not understand it. It was fresh in my mind that my son had recently been rejected at his top- choice Ivy League schools and that I had encouraged him to write a personal essay telling of his Palestinian heritage, the story of his Palestinian immigrant grandfather, and the influence his grandfather had on his still-young life. Linda was the director of the pro- gram at that time, and all of a sudden, I became flooded with anxiety about speaking to her about my issue. I remembered the opposing essays with what now became horror of her son’s Zionist language and expressed views against the Palestinian people, with no apparent understanding of an occupation or of his own privilege. My son’s rejection by his first- choice schools, despite being at the top of his class, now felt as though I had put him in front of a firing line by encouraging him to expose his Palestinian heritage. As I conversed with family members about these things, I began hearing warnings about what it means to be Palestinian in the academic world and what I needed to be pre- pared for. Suddenly, this new academic experience began to feel very scary. New to this setting, as a student returning to school in my early 40s, I now

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recognize my experience in the first few weeks of entering graduate school as a panic attack. I did not understand it at the time, but when I entered the mas- ter’s program in marriage and family therapy, feeling threatened had a lot to do with my unintentionally breaking an unspoken, unwritten invisibility rule about Palestinians and Palestine. My father had been following the rule most of my young life, no doubt to protect his children.

LSF: I met with Donna before she enrolled in the MFT program. She and I also had children who went to school together. Both of our sons were seniors in high school at the time. Though not friends, they were in many of the same classes together. I knew of her son, and therefore of Donna, because he was a talented musician and a well- respected member of the school community. Both of our sons also periodically wrote commentaries for the school newspa- per, though I had never read any that her son wrote, being interested only in my son’s commentaries and quite proud of his talent in articulating his point of view. One of those points of view was pro- Israel during a time when the Middle East conflict was heating up in the news.

Donna contacted me before applying to the program, and we went to lunch. She told me she was interested in applying, and we spent the time talk- ing about the program and getting to know one another through stories about our families and the similarities and differences between us. I remember dis- tinctly leaving the meeting with intense and strong positive feelings for Donna, thinking that she was wise, warm, and intuitive. I also remember thinking that our lives intersected in so many ways and that she was my polar opposite. I lead with my head, she with her heart; my four children work around my schedule, she worked around her four children’s schedule; she spoke poeti- cally and I was blunt; and the list went on. She eventually applied to the pro- gram, and I was enthusiastic about her entering. As we meet and write about our experience of each other at the beginning of our relationship, I recognize now the invisible privilege that hierarchy afforded me in our initial meeting. Because I knew of Donna’s successful children and she seemed so bright and relaxed when we met, I experienced us as equals.

THE DIFFICULT DIALOGUE

LSF: As part of my responsibilities as chair of the department, I helped facili- tate the dialogues among students and between students and faculty when issues came up in which a student was hurt by an inadvertent and/or con- scious violation or oppressive practice. So, for example, when a fundamen- talist Christian student was challenged by a lesbian whom he was trying to befriend, I helped them work on their relationship, while gently and persis- tently helping him hold himself accountable for the power imbalance in their relationship and the ways in which his position violated her very being. This

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was the easy part— holding someone else accountable for the ways in which they are hurtful. More difficult, as any entitled person knows, is holding your- self accountable when you have done something hurtful or when you have benefitted from the hurtful things that have happened before. Even more dif- ficult is holding yourself accountable when you do not believe you are! This is where Donna came in.

When I was in a program retreat before my interaction with Donna, a crisis occurred between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians. A faculty member voiced his outrage at the injustice he witnessed on TV as he watched the Israeli soldiers armed with guns and the Palestinian civilians armed only with rocks. I froze and then said, with the rage of generations behind me, “Don’t go there. This is really dangerous territory. The media is biased, Israel is misunderstood, everyone hates the Jews, and this is just another example of anti- Semitism.” My strong and intense protective response came from some primordial place in me, and I thought to myself, Linda, you’d better take a look at that rage before you alienate others and cut off more conversation. Because of my position of hierarchy in the program, no one challenged me. For the time being, I effectively cut off all conversation and we moved on. Or so I thought.

The next week was the week Donna had called on the faculty to listen to some of her concerns. When she applied to the program, she informed us that her father was Palestinian and that he was, though now a U.S. citizen, publicly speaking and teaching about the Palestinian– Israeli conflict. She periodically talked about her Palestinian heritage in class, and I was eager to hear more about it as I learned more about her. Previously I had thought her Palestinian heritage was just that, a heritage that was something that came before her, that it was in her past—not considering the current climate of hostility toward Arabs and Arab Americans, the current Israeli– Palestinian conflict, nor the impact it might be having on her.

The meeting began with Donna, who asked, quite bravely, whether she could talk with me about concerns that she had. She let me know that she did not feel safe talking about these concerns alone and appreciated being able to engage the support of the faculty. She went on to share that she was concerned about the discrepancy between what she perceived as an intolerant and preju- dicial commentary from my son about the Palestinians and what was being taught so vigorously in the program. The largeness of the discrepancy was confusing to her and created fear about what the implications might be for her in the broader context of prejudicial politics in this academic setting. She referred to my son’s commentary in the school newspaper as violently anti- Palestinian. She spoke of her brother and other family members and shared a similar concern for her son who had applied to and was rejected by two Ivy League colleges after writing a fervent essay about the Palestinians and human rights violations. She was articulate and passionate, and I was com- pletely dumbfounded.

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I listened carefully to what she was saying and did my best to hold her tenderly with my heart as she spoke. At the same time, I was balancing my intense internal reaction to what she was saying. This is the “difficult” in the difficult dialogue— that is, balancing new and profound information about oneself while remaining lovingly engaged and accountable in relationship. My internal reaction, at first, was shock and certainly considerable defensiveness: Everyone blames the Jews, we’re such an easy target, we are only trying to stay alive, and how about all the injustices that the Arab world perpetuates against Israel, and so forth and so on. But then, as I stayed focused on listen- ing intently to what Donna was saying about herself and her experience of me, it was like having the wind knocked out of me. I saw and experienced her truth for the very first time: that I, my offspring, and my ancestors, in our hypervigilant necessity to defend ourselves, had violated her ancestors, her- self, and her offspring. And then it hit me that maybe, just maybe, I had never addressed the complexity of the stories I was told and continued to tell. It was always in front of me, but I had not let it in.

I expressed tremendous appreciation for her courage and shared what an honor it was for me to bear witness to her pain. I apologized. My apology came from a place of utmost compassion for her position. My strong Jewish identity, my Zionism, and the pride with which I educated my children about our heritage and their great- grandfather’s legacy had clearly violated Donna’s and Donna’s children’s sense of safety and fairness. My wounds from anti- Jewish sentiment and my hypervigilant protectiveness of Israel had prevented me from recognizing the way my power and privilege inadvertently intimi- dated and silenced Donna. I believe this apology allowed Donna to feel heard and protected, and we moved on. I have, however, not been the same.

After this meeting, Donna gave me a book (Dallal, 1998) that her father had written that detailed the loss of his homeland at the time that my grand- parents were fighting for theirs. The book was painful for me to read, and I had to put it down a number of times, but read it I did. I felt the same pas- sion from her father that I used to feel when hearing my grandfather and my Hebrew School teachers speak about Israel.

Before Donna, I had not been taught, nor had I sought to learn, some of the consequences of my grandfather’s fight toward justice and a respite from the death of so many of my relatives. Before Donna, I had not considered the parallels of racism, discrimination, and struggle that are her and her family’s experience. It is only in the last couple of years that Arabic has even been a language you could find in a college course book. Her father’s first language was Arabic; though, growing up in middle- class, White, suburban America, it was not until she was approaching her adolescence that her father began to bring some of his heritage into the fabric of his children’s upbringing.

DDF: In recent years I have become immersed in the internal family sys- tems (IFS; Schwartz, 1997) model of therapy. My thinking through conflict and personal dilemmas is informed, and comforted, by my understandings

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of our collective internal systems of parts. I did not know or understand any- thing about witnessing “parts” and was ill equipped to soothe my system as I felt myself in crisis in those first early weeks of graduate school. Much less conscious of the dynamics of my internal system then, I definitely had a part who wanted to offer my unique Palestinian diversity to my student cohort and professors, but then quickly another part, feeling vulnerable, threatened, and at risk, panicked in my new academic setting. I remember watching Linda as she spoke to me during that important meeting and myself personally feeling the shift in her body and affect as she took in what I was saying to her; her defenses relaxing, allowing her to show up for me. I felt tremendous relief, recognizing her genuine interest and openness to what I was saying and to what was, evidently, being conveyed. I was able to recognize that a corner was turning. Uncertain at the time exactly what it meant, there was a clear sense of authenticity and what felt like new possibilities for greater safety ahead of me.

As I have immersed myself in my own internal system, I have a deeper understanding of the collective systems of relationship and hence feel an increased capacity to offer compassion to myself and also to have a great deal of humility, understanding, and compassion for the internal systems and struggles of the “parts” of people with whom I am closely engaged. As I read and write this chapter, I cannot help but be tuned in to Linda’s internal sys- tem, particularly the part of her that is telling the story. My parts respond in a variety of ways—with defense, with deep tenderness, with curiosity, inter- est, and respect. I recognize Linda in her humanity, initially being caught off guard and then offering me, her student, for whom she understands her place of higher status, not only compassion but an active shifting and changing; offering herself with an openness to understanding how she and her family and the Zionist agenda have affected me, my children and family, and an entire people.

Placing myself in the IFS community, which has a strong Jewish demo- graphic, has offered me repeated experiences of feeling that pulsation between being other and outside, while simultaneously being intimately connected and very much a part of that same community. I now also understand a deeply engrained part in my system that has been taught to collude with many external messages of the importance of keeping the Palestinian story unseen. Today, as my voice becomes stronger and more aware, I am able to move closer to having the confidence to create a difference and to offer my experi- ence and story to an audience who, precisely because of their strong Jewish demographic, carries privilege and whose privilege may easily be lost on them. It has become an important part of my professional struggle to find my voice, which I know has been quieted. The quieting of my voice certainly comes from gender and from some of the same shaming that most of us have expe- rienced as young children of clumsy parents, but also from being Palestinian in a world that turns away from the humanitarian crisis that is the Palestinian experience. This is a historical quieting that I feel compelled to challenge, yet recognize as being much bigger than I am.

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LSF: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality” is a Dante quote that greets my family and me as we walk in the door to our home. The inherent dilemma, which I still struggle with today, is how to fight for what we believe is just in a time of great moral crisis without violating others’ justice. Hardy and Laszl- offy (2002) eloquently detail the psychological response to oppression. Hori- zontal violence is a response to oppression in which marginalized groups use violence against their own or other marginalized groups. How have I taught my children to be proud, Jewish- identified citizens of the world, hypervigi- lantly fighting against their own self- hatred, which may occur from subtle and not so subtle anti- Jewish sentiment that they experience, while also teaching them to be just with others?

LSF and DDF: To prevent ourselves from maintaining a sense of neutral- ity in times of great moral crisis, we must enter difficult dialogues with people whose worldviews, historical legacies, and current life situations are different from ours. Healing of the conflict between these Semitic communities and eliminating their power differentials means courageously moving toward new levels of curiosity and compassion that are unfamiliar to us. The Jewish expe- rience of being targeted and reviled can and should be used to keep us curious about the humanity of all others, particularly those whom we have dehuman- ized. Particularly compelling and invisible is the horizontal violence between members of the same tribe; we are all Semites. There has absolutely been a historical quieting of the Palestinian voice and experience in the last 100 years. Recognition of this, the human rights violations, and the humanitarian crises that have emerged because of this, challenges those whose conscious- ness has been otherwise focused. The task of challenging and bringing what is unconscious to consciousness becomes possible as we allow our focus to move toward the Love that is at the essence of our shared humanity.

DDF: The IFS model guides us to respond to the insults that come toward us from a place of self- leadership. “Self,” as I have come to understand it, is the universal Love, Compassion, and Wisdom that we all share. Self- leadership means that we lead from a place of openheartedness and that there is respect and recognition for the evolution of all of our inner wounds and for the humanity that is carried in protective patterns that we have learned in our own lifetimes and from legacies that come down to us over many generations. Significantly here, these two Semitic peoples both suffer from generations of feeling existentially threatened. Self- leadership brings a humane understand- ing to the healing that is being sought between communities of conflict and unbalanced power differentials.

LSF and DDF: Difficult dialogues are difficult when our consciousness is compromised by strongly held belief systems that we have not become suf- ficiently curious toward. Our healing, therefore, will begin through difficult

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dialogues in which we deliberately allow ourselves to become vulnerable enough to learn something significant both about ourselves and about the other. This will happen externally when and if we begin our dialogues inter- nally first. Those internal dialogues may and often do begin with external experiences, such as having challenging conversations with others. As such, successful dialogues are those in which hierarchy, power, and privilege are acknowledged and those who hold privileged positions in these dialogues hold themselves accountable. This accountability is one in which our compassion for ourselves and others leads not toward shame or pity but toward under- standing and knowledge. There are no simple solutions, but we must be will- ing to enter into the process with open minds, open hearts, compassion, and the humility that comes through deepening our understanding of our shared humanity.

REFERENCES

Dallal, S. J. (1998). Scattered like seeds. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (2002). Couple therapy using a multicultural per-

spective. In A. S. Gurman & N. Jacobson (Eds.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy (pp. 569–593). New York: Guilford Press.

Schwartz, R. (1997). Internal family systems. New York: Guilford Press.

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During the fall of 2015, I was lying in bed late at night reading Facebook posts by friends and colleagues chronicling the ongoing reports of police brutal- ity against African Americans. I watched the dash cam video of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer (Husain, 2017). I read about white supremacists opening fire on five Black Lives Mat- ter members in Minneapolis (Neyfakh, 2015). I listened to then presidential candidate Donald Trump say, “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” in reference to Mercutio Southall, a Black man attacked and beaten by Trump supporters at a Birmingham, Alabama, campaign rally (Johnson & Jordan, 2015).

About 11 P.M., I went to get a late-night snack in our kitchen. Our young- est daughter, Kaj, was sound asleep in her bedroom, and our adult son, Alex, was crashed out on the sofa bed in the living room. We all had the stomach flu that week. Alex had been vomiting for the past 24 hours. With him finally able to rest, I didn’t want to turn the lights on and risk waking him. Instead, I used my cell phone flashlight to find the peanut butter, some crackers, and a glass of milk.

As I sat down at our kitchen table, bright light lit up the kitchen. Feeling a bit anxious, I walked over to the back door wondering who could be here this late at night. It was two police officers. A neighbor had called 911 because they saw someone in our house with a flashlight and thought it was a break-in.

C H A P T E R 2 5

No Single‑Issue Lives Identity Transitions and Transformations

across the Life Cycle

Elijah C. Nealy

There is no such thing as a single- issue struggle, because we do not live single- issue lives.

—AuDre lorDe (1984a, p. 138)

Identity Transitions and Transformations 349

The officers wanted to see my ID. They wanted it to have the address of our house on it—which it didn’t. We had moved here 4 months prior, and I still had a New York driver’s license. I got my business card to show I worked at a local university. The officers called in my driver’s license number. My report was clean. I was admonished that my license should have been switched within 2 weeks and my car registered in 30 days. Then it was over. They left, suggesting I should introduce myself to my neighbors.

What happened to me would have been radically different if I were a Black man opening the door that night. There is good reason to believe I would have been spoken to harshly and treated with much more suspicion and that my word about living there would not be accepted.

There’s every reason to believe I would have been pulled out of my door- way onto the back porch, handcuffed while they searched the house. I would have been roughed up at the least, taken down to the police station— or maybe shot, especially if I was at all “upset” about being pulled out of my own house and handcuffed.

They never would have allowed me to go back into the house by myself, into our bedroom, out of sight, to get my wallet to show them my ID. No, I definitely would not have been allowed to go back into my house, leave them on the porch, and close the door behind me.

There are many painful ways I experience marginalization and discrimi- nation as a transgender man, but what mattered that night was that I was a White man.

If they had come in, and our young adult Puerto Rican son, Alex, had awakened suddenly, the situation would have escalated.

Because I am White and my son stayed asleep, there were no handcuffs, no intrusion, no escalation, no ticket for not having my car registered in Con- necticut, or having a Connecticut driver’s license. I received a petty admoni- tion.

We sat on Kaj’s bed and talked about what just happened— about the privilege both Kaj and I have as White people— about the privilege my son Alex doesn’t have. I told them about the expression “driving while Black,” and how different a traffic stop is for Black and Hispanic people than for White people.

I told them about Fay Wells (2015), whose neighbors called the police when she lost her keys and hired a locksmith to help get back in—how 19 police officers showed up with guns drawn and dogs because she was Black. The police refused to explain why they were forcing her out of her own apart- ment despite her repeated question: “What is going on?”

Fay Wells, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Mercutio Southall, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and so many more, did not have White privilege.

I answered my door while White that night, I spoke with the police offi- cers while White, I went back in my house, closed the door, and left them on

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the back porch while I got my ID—all while White. That’s the only difference between my story and the story of Fay Wells (2015). In her words:

It didn’t matter that I told the cops I’d lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID. It didn’t matter that I went to Duke, that I have an MBA from Dartmouth, that I’m a vice president of strategy at a multinational corpo- ration. It didn’t matter that I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. It didn’t matter that I calmly, continually asked them what was happening. It also didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for—my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911. What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment— in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city—and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before.

The next morning, Kaj asked why things were like this—why her best friend around the corner, an African American girl her age—didn’t have the same privileges we had. It wasn’t the first conversation like this. We had yet another teachable moment about the real American history. She discussed African people being brought to the United States as slaves. I shared the Con- stitutional clause that counted slaves as three- fifths of a human being. We recalled watching the Jackie Robinson movie a few years ago and discussing Jim Crow laws. She remembered images of police using fire hoses and attack dogs against Black civil rights activists simply because they wanted the same rights White Americans had.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? The privilege I have as a White person— not to live in terror that a police encounter could mean prison or death, not to worry that my White students will dismiss what I say about racism because, in their eyes, I am an “angry Black man,” not to pray night and day that Kaj will come home alive each time she leaves the house. These are not “privileges”; they are basic human rights every human being deserves.

That evening is a window into the complexity of my multiple identities— and how my experience of power and privilege, or marginalization and oppression, can vary depending on the immediate context— complexities also shaped by the ways my identities have shifted and changed over time.

In thinking about the transitions and transformations in our identities across our life cycle, some shifts are chosen, welcomed, and embraced. Some are assigned to us or imposed upon us. Some emerge as the by- product of other changes in our lives.

Our identities (and identity transformations) are also profoundly shaped by, and reflect, how we see and are seen in the world. Erving Goffman (1959) believed our “Self” is entirely a socially constructed self. It is not a self created in isolation within ourselves. And it is not a static self. From Goffman’s (1959) perspective, our Self is a complex intersection of identities that are continually

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co- created and re- created in the context of our day-to-day interactions with other human beings. Jackson (2007) puts it this way:

A better metaphor for the self as ongoing might be a complex, many- stranded cord running through our lives, but one which does not necessarily stay the same since the threads that comprise it can be frayed or strengthened and are continually being spliced or woven in with other threads, remade over time. So, while we have a sense of our self as continuing, that self is never unchanging. I would suggest that our “going on being” derives from social experience, constructed and reconstructed through everyday social prac- tices, rather than being lodged deep in the psyche. (p. 7)

CONTEXTUALIZED AND EVOLVING IDENTITIES

No aspect of our identity exists in a vacuum. Who we are emerges within our relational contexts— both historical and present. In discussing this dynamic, Saliha Bava (2016) posits the varied aspects of her identity as linked and “in constant motion, as is my life in relationship to the contexts I inhabit and the people I am relating with. . . . [Each aspect] is a performance of a particu- lar relationship and the fluidity of my identity within that relationship, both being shaped and shaping each other within every interaction” (p. 2). Each aspect of our identities is also shaped and reshaped by our social locations and thus contextualized along dimensions of power and privilege and/or margin- alization and oppression.

Assigned female at birth, being able to become a man in the world was, and still is, an identity transformation that brings me tremendous joy. For months I woke up wanting to laugh out loud when I looked in the mirror because I could finally see myself. The first time I went to the barber shop, the first time I sat down in a men’s 12-step meeting, the first time I wore a t-shirt and my chest was flat—each was marked by an overwhelming sense of right- ness, belonging, and joy.

At the same time, this identity transition has been accompanied by shift- ing dynamics of power and privilege. Before transitioning, I always walked my dog on the upper level of the park if it was late at night. One night after I was consistently read as a man, I went out to walk my dog and the thought came to mind, “You can go down into the park after 11 P.M. now. You’re safe now. You’re a man.”

Another night I was walking home after dark, and there was a woman about 100 feet ahead of me on an otherwise empty sidewalk. I realized she was paying attention to my presence behind her. My transition meant my gen- der identity was now perceived as a threat to women.

Before my transition, there were two occasions when I left a job and the man hired to fill my position received a significantly higher salary than what

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I had been paid. Now as a male social worker— even in a female- dominated profession— I will likely earn more and be promoted more often than my female colleagues— simply because of the shift in this aspect of my identity.

The first time I met my wife’s then 5-year-old daughter, we went for a walk around a nearby pond. Having known her daughter for all of an hour, I was immediately accorded parental status. At least five times people called me “Dad” and spoke to her as my daughter. In 8 years of parenting in a prior lesbian relationship, I was never publicly accorded the parental status that automatically accompanies heteronormative same-race relationships.

I am still sometimes caught off guard by the ways my “male” anger dif- ferently affects the women in my life today. And I have been painfully aware of how my anger is perceived differently today as a “White” man than when I was seen as a White woman.

VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE IDENTITIES

The nature and impact of my visible and invisible identities has also shifted with my gender identity transition. Other people were often uncomfortable around me as a genderqueer butch dyke. When I was dressed in a suit and tie, from the other end of the subway car they couldn’t always tell whether I was a man or a woman. In response, people sometimes stared at me, moved their young children away from me, or rudely asked, “So are you a man or a woman?”

This never happens today. Today people are more at ease because they assume they know exactly what box I belong to. Visible man. Invisible trans man.

As I move through the world today, I am consistently read as straight. The first time I went to an LGBT 12-step meeting outside New York City, a gay man asked, “Why are you here?” Visible man. Invisible trans man.

A woman I dated and I were on New York City subway. It was a Saturday afternoon. The train was full but not crowded. People were talking and laughing. We had dated for a couple months now and were still caught up in each other. As we talked, her hand rested on my leg.

Across from us I noticed two Latino men in their early 30s. With years of being in the Queer community, my intuition said they were gay, but they were busy talking, and I didn’t pay them much mind. The train lurched on, the public address system announcing each stop. She moved her hand to hold mine. We whispered to each other and kissed.

Across from us, one of the men began to raise his arm to place it around his partner’s shoulder. Just then, he and I made eye contact and just as quickly, he pulled his arm back down.

I wanted to scream, “No! You don’t get it. I’m one of you.” But it was too late. He had already read me for a straight White guy—read “unsafe”; read “too risky for public homo affection.”

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On the subway that day I was just a regular guy with my girl. There was tremendous relief and joy in finally being a man in the world. My transness was invisible. My stigma was invisible. I could relax.

However, at play in this experience is that my Queerness as a man is also invisible. When I moved through the world as a genderqueer butch dyke, I was always visibly Queer. I was used to people “reading” me as part of the lesbian and gay community. I worked in LGBT organizations. My friendship circle was largely LGBT people. But that day on the subway, it was clear my Queer identity and history is no longer clearly visible. In a heteronormative world, I am seen as just another straight guy.

In that moment on the subway I held male privilege and power, straight privilege and power, and White privilege and power. Visible man. Visible White man. Visible straight White man. Invisible Queer man. Now danger- ous to women, dangerous to Latino men and other men of color, dangerous even to LGBTQ people— my own community.

The concept of passing has a different context within transgender com- munities. In the context of race and sexual orientation, passing is often viewed as hiding. It can be perceived as a sign we are too afraid, or ashamed, to be our authentic selves in the world. In contrast, for trans people, “passing” is about finally being seen as our authentic selves. It reflects our earlier longing for those around us to acknowledge and validate our knowledge of who we are, to recognize our authentic gender identity.

The degree to which my trans identity is disclosed or visible alters my places of privilege or marginalization. Read as a man, I am safer going down into the park late at night. But men do get jumped, and if it was discovered that my current body parts did not match my male presentation, the unleashed rage could have been deadly— as it has been for so many transgender people who are sexually assaulted, beaten, and killed for what their attackers per- ceive as their “deception.” With my sex assigned- at-birth “discovered,” being transgender erases my male privilege and likely trumps even my generally trustworthy White privilege and power.

MARGINALIZED IDENTITIES

The recent repeal of human rights ordinances sweeping anti-LGBT laws mov- ing through state legislatures, and rhetoric about trans people as a threat in conversations about bathrooms (Broverman, 2015; Kralik, 2017; Miller, 2017; Ritchie, 2016)—these all scream at me and every other trans person that your life does not matter. Even your need to urinate does not matter. The heteronormative dominant culture controls and dictates the very basic func- tions of our bodies.

Discrimination in housing, employment, and health care is magnified across intersections of gender, race, and poverty (James et al., 2016). In addi- tion, for trans women, trans women of color, and low- income trans women,

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the visibility of their gender transition, coupled with the intensity of pervasive misogyny and racism, not only jeopardizes their ability to make a living, but also puts them at ongoing risk of harassment, violence, and murder.

Twenty- seven transgender individuals were murdered in 2016; most were trans women, and almost all were trans women of color (Schmider, 2016). Six months into 2017, 14 transgender individuals were already reported murdered (“These Are the Transgender People,” 2017). These numbers scream that trans lives do not matter, and Black trans lives, in particular, do not matter.

Trans people, poor people, Black people, Brown people, Native people, people with differing abilities, all live the daily reality that Butler (2004) names so unequivocally:

[Human] lives are supported and maintained differentially. . . . There are radically different ways in which human physical vulnerability is distrib- uted across the globe. Certain lives will be highly protected, and the abro- gation of their claims to sanctity will be sufficient to mobilize the forces of war. And other lives will not find such fast and furious support and will not even qualify as “grievable.” (p. 24)

The statement “Black Lives Matter” emerged because Black people knew that Michael Brown’s life and their lives were not even “grievable.” The “Black Lives Matter” movement intensified because Black parents understand from the moment their children enter this world that not all lives count as human. Black families know some lives count as more fully human and worthwhile than do those of their children. As Kenneth Hardy (2015) notes, urban Black youth “understand the terms of the contract negotiated at their birth—you’re unseen, faceless, without value . . . forever defined by others, losing the free- dom to define yourself, to declare for yourself who you are” (p. 19).

These risks are mediated in my life by the privilege and safety I can gener- ally rely upon as a man and a White man. This is clear in the incident in which the police appeared at my back door. In sharing this story with my students, I realized a deeper level of privilege not recognized when I first told it: Answer- ing the door while White, I assumed I could close the door and go back inside out of the officers’ sight. No Black man in America holds that illusion.

The fact that I assumed I could safely step out of sight reflects how deeply embedded my understanding of my privilege has become. I not only answered the door while White, I knew the officers would not perceive me as threaten- ing. I wondered if I might be fined for having a New York driver’s license and car registration, but I did not fear for my safety or well-being. I didn’t need to consciously think about this; I knew being White mattered. I trusted my race to keep me safe.

Recognizing our places of privilege and challenging our complicity in how they oppress those on the margins is challenging work. It is also a task with no point of completion. A few months after the police came to my door, I made two racial microaggressions in two days. Both occurred in public— one

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while leading a training, the second in my classroom. Each time I had to be accountable for my embedded White privilege/supremacy, my continued inability to sometimes see this, and how my embedded privilege can affect the people of color around me. Each time it was essential for me to take responsi- bility for the impact of my words, regardless of my intentions.

White students sometimes tell me they want to participate in conversa- tions about racism and White privilege but worry they might say the wrong thing and offend someone. My response is, “You will.” It is impossible to have authentic conversations across our places of privilege and oppression without this risk. Yet Audre Lorde’s (1984b) admonition is as true for those of us who are White as it is for Black people: “Our silence will not save us” (p. 41). It only reflects our complicity in the forces of power and oppression.

THE IMPACT OF TRAUMATIZED IDENTITIES

In the context of my fundamentalist upbringing, you were male or female, nothing in between, and being “transgender” was not recognized as a pos- sible reality. In this world, my identity as a Queer man and a trans man was understood to be an abomination not only to those around me, but also to the Creator of the Universe “himself.”

Add to these messages experiences of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault as an adolescent, depression, and alcohol abuse, and it’s no surprise I, too, became part of the 41% of transgender adults who attempt suicide at some point in their lives, compared with only 1.6% of individuals within the general population (Clements- Nolle, Marx, & Katz, 2006; Grant et al., 2011; Grossman & D’Augelli, 2007; Haas & Rodgers, 2014; James et al., 2016; Maguen & Shipherd, 2010). These disproportionately elevated numbers reflect the way my trans siblings and I internalize the messages that who we are is “not OK.” These numbers also suggest far too many moments of despair and hopelessness about being able to be who we are in the world safely and/ or productively.

It takes persistent effort to heal the trauma that lies within these wounds of rejection, discrimination, and oppression— particularly when that trauma so often persists in the present.

Each year I teach a session on transgender awareness in a colleague’s diversity course. The first time I visited, the department chair sat in on my class. Several years later, my colleague told me that the department chair uses female pronouns when speaking about me. The chair met me as Elijah Nealy, posttransition, in a man’s suit and tie, with facial hair and male pattern bald- ness. What reason could there possibly be for using female pronouns?

Simply because I once moved through the world seen as a woman, the chair is unable, or unwilling, to recognize my identity despite the clarity of my male presentation. The use of female pronouns diminishes my identity. It conveys the message, “You are not Elijah Nealy. I don’t believe you are who

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you say you are. You are not a man. You are still a woman.” The refusal to acknowledge me as I am reflects the pervasive disrespect transgender people routinely encounter.

Kenneth Hardy suggests that emotional regulation can be challenging for those forced to live with sustained and sometimes violent invalidation, degra- dation, trauma, and oppression (Hardy & Qureshi, 2012). In discussing the particular ways the identities and humanity of Black men are invalidated and dismissed, Hardy (2013) describes his work with a young Black male client, noting:

His fury with President Obama, the cops, and me, effectively hid his sense of powerlessness, hopelessness, and despair. Behind the stony expression I could finally see the scared, overwhelmed child whose life had been hijacked by losses, rejections, insults, and disappointments. For him, the ever- increasing list of unarmed young black men killed by the police repre- sented a vicarious trauma— almost as if he’d taken a bullet to his soul with each one. The only choice he saw was between remaining imprisoned in a cauldron of rage or occasionally finding some way, however self- destructive, to let the world feel the fury he can no longer contain. (p.14)

Despite my privilege as a White man, the trauma associated with my his- tory and identity as a transgender man at times contributes to my own strug- gles to manage my emotional reactions. When someone dismisses or discounts me, talks to me like I’m stupid, or suggests I am not a real man, my own rage often erupts internally. Although I’ve learned to manage this emotion rela- tively well, the intensity of its acceleration still astounds me. On occasion it can catch me off guard and erupt out loud. I know I am not alone in struggling to navigate and modulate the emotions that accompany experiences of trauma and marginalization in our lives.

Our histories of invalidation, trauma, and oppression and the resulting challenges with emotional regulation contribute to increased rates of depres- sion and substance use within trans and many other marginalized communi- ties (Grant et al., 2011; Hardy & Qureshi, 2012; James et al., 2016; Meyer, 2003; Pachankis, 2007). In the past, within professional settings, I rarely disclosed my history of alcoholism— despite now celebrating many years in recovery. Being an alcoholic or an addict— even a sober one— remains highly stigmatized within both the mental health profession and academia. Profes- sionally, it is often riskier to be out about my recovery than to be an out transgender man.

The same is true for my history of clinical depression beginning by 12 years of age— depression that is generally in remission today, but not always. In the face of present- day experiences of disrespect and invalidation, my history of trauma can be reactivated, and the ensuing rage and concomitant depression may still flare up with all of its hopelessness and despair, even if briefly. Given the impact of stigma, these invisible identities are generally unacknowledged.

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Yet they shape our presence in the world and the lens through which we view ourselves and others, including our clients.

Keith Berry (2013) suggests that for some people identity is not so much a matter of formation but of negotiation. As I reflect on my own journey, there has never been a time when I was not negotiating my gendered identity in the world, whether it was during my childhood years as a “tomboy,” my early adult life as a genderqueer “butch” dyke, the beginning of my gender transi- tion, or my more recent years living as a (transgender) man.

EMBRACING OUR INTERCONNECTED IDENTITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Audre Lorde (1984a) was right: There are no single- issue lives. All of us have multiple aspects of identity that make up who we are to each other and how we are seen in the world. Some aspects are visible, whereas others may be invisible. Within these varied aspects of ourselves, we hold places of privi- lege and power and/or experiences of marginalization and oppression. The salience and valence of these identities often varies depending on our current context. In addition, our intersecting identities are fluid, shifting, and evolv- ing throughout the life cycle. All of this, indeed all of who we are in the world, has impact on our role and work as clinicians, as well as how our clients may experience us.

In contrast with individualistic notions of clinical practice, Kenneth Hardy (2017) insists, “therapists, supervisors, and educators have a role in promoting social justice, equity, and fairness in the wider community” (p. 25). And as Audre Lorde (1984a) reminds us, because there are no single- issue lives, no singular or isolated identities, there are also no single- issue struggles. Despite being written over three decades ago, her analysis remains powerfully resonant and relevant today:

Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. . . .

Decisions to cut aid for the terminally ill, for the elderly, for dependent children, for food stamps, even school lunches, are being made by men with full stomachs who live in comfortable houses with two cars and umpteen tax shelters. None of them go hungry to bed at night. . . .

Can anyone of us here still afford to believe that efforts to reclaim the future can be private or individual? Can anyone here still afford to believe

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that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of any- one particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class?

. . . We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others. (Lorde, 1984a, pp. 139–141)

In light of our common humanity and shared struggles, Hardy (2015) urges clinicians to embrace a professional identity as both activists and therapists. It is essential that we partner with clients in their efforts to heal the negative effects of internalized trauma and oppression and join forces in dismantling the larger structures that contribute to these experiences.

Embracing our role as activists/therapists necessitates a keen understand- ing of our own complex and evolving identities, as well as the impact of their concomitant privilege and power and/or marginalization and oppression. Effectively engaging in this work demands the willingness to employ the var- ied aspects of ourselves to confront the societal systems and structures that pit our own intersecting identities against ourselves and each other, and thus perpetuate the pervasive realities of inequity and injustice.

REFERENCES

Berry, K. (2013, May 18). Spinning autoethnographic reflexivity, cultural critique, and negotiating selves. Ninth International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, IL.

Broverman, N. (2015). Houston votes to go backwards on equal rights ordinance. The Advocate. Retrieved from www.advocate.com/election/2015/11/03/houston- repeals- lgbt- inclusive- hero.

Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge. Clements- Nolle, K., Marx, R., & Katz, M. (2006). Attempted suicide among trans-

gender persons: The influence of gender- based discrimination and victimization. Journal of Homosexuality, 51, 53–69.

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. Grant, J. M., Mottet, L. A., Tanis, J., Harrison, J., Herman, J. L., & Keisling, M.

(2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the national transgender discrimina- tion survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Grossman, A. H., & D’Augelli, A. R. (2007). Transgender youth and life- threatening behaviors. Suicide and Life- Threatening Behavior, 37, 527–537.

Haas, A., & Rodgers, P. (2014). Suicide attempts among transgender and gender non- conforming adults: Findings of the national transgender discrimination survey. New York and Los Angeles: American Society for Suicide Prevention and The Williams Institute. Retrieved from https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp- content/uploads/AFSP- Williams- Suicide- Report- Final.pdf.

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Hardy, K. V. (2013). Healing the hidden wounds of racial trauma. Reclaiming Chil- dren and Youth, 22(1), 24–28.

Hardy, K. V. (2015, November/December). The view from Black America: Listening to the untold stories. Available at www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/ article/958/the-view-from-black- america.

Hardy, K. V. (2017). “Naming it and claiming it”: Embracing your identity as an activ- ist (supervisor, educator, therapist). In K. V. Hardy & T. Bobes (Eds.), Promoting cultural sensitivity in supervision: A manual for practitioners (pp. 25–28). New York: Routledge.

Hardy, K. V., & Qureshi, M. E. (2012). Devaluation, loss, and rage: A postscript to urban African American youth with substance abuse. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 30(3), 326–342.

Husain, N. (2017, June 27). Laquan McDonald timeline: The shooting, the video, and the fallout. Retrieved from www.chicagotribune.com/news/laquanmcdonald/ ct- graphics- laquan- mcdonald- officers- fired- timeline- htmlstory.html.

Jackson, S. (2007). The sexual self in late modernity. In M. Kimmel (Ed.), The sexual self: The construction of sexual scripts (pp. 3–15). Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

James, S., Herman, L., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Ana, M. (2016). The report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality.

Johnson, J., & Jordan, M. (2015, November 22). Trump on rally protester: “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/ news/post- politics/wp/2015/11/22/black- activist- punched- at- donald- trump- rally-in- birmingham/?utm_term=.ee325fee484b.

Kralik, N. (2017). “Bathroom Bill” legislative tracking: 2017 state legislation. National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved from www.ncsl.org/ research/education/-bathroom- bill- legislative- tracking635951130.aspx.

Lorde, A. (1984a). Learning from the 60’s. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches (pp. 134–144). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

Lorde, A. (1984b). The transformation of silence into language and action. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches (pp. 40–44). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

Maguen, S., & Shipherd, J. C. (2010). Suicide risk among transgender individuals. Psychology and Sexuality 1(1), 34–43.

Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 674–697.

Miller, H. (2017). 100 anti-LGBT bills introduced in 2017 (Human Rights Campaign). Retrieved from www.hrc.org/blog/100-anti-lgbtq-bills- introduced- in-2017.

Neyfakh, L. (2015, November 24). Black Lives Matter protesters shot in Minneapo- lis. Retrieved from www.slate.com/articles/news_ and_politics/crime/2015/11/ black_lives_matter_ activists_ shot_in_minneapolis_what_next.html.

Pachankis, J. E. (2007). The psychological implications of concealing a stigma: A cognitive– affective– behavioral model. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 328–345.

Ritchie, J. (2016, July 30). Ten reasons why transgenderism is the family’s worst enemy. Retrieved from www.tfpstudentaction.org/blog/10-reasons- why- transgenderism- is-the- familys- worst-enemy.

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Schmider, A. (2016, November 9). 2016 was the deadliest year on record for trans- gender people. Retrieved from www.glaad.org/blog/2016-was- deadliest- year- record- transgender- people.

These are the transgender people killed in 2017. (2017). Retrieved May 25, 2017, from www.advocate.com/transgender/2017/5/25/these-are-trans- people- killed-2017.

Wells, F. (2015, November 18). My white neighbor thought I was breaking into my own apartment: Nineteen cops showed up. Retrieved from www.washing- tonpost.com/posteverything/wp/ 2015/11/18/my-white- neighbor- thought- i-was- breaking- into-my-own- apartment- nineteen- cops- showed- up/?utm_ term=.84f5dcbbb318.

P A R T V

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IMPORTANT CONCEPTS AND VOCABULARY

Even though 17-year-old Jason had begun to socially transition and his parents were supportive, his father still sometimes worried about whether or not his son really was transgender. Maybe it was “just a phase,” or maybe it was part of Jason’s adolescent exploration of his identity. In one family session Jason’s dad brought this up again. He told me that when they were at the mall that week, Jason insisted on getting a pink sweater. His father looked at me and asked, “How can I be sure he’s transgender? If he really is a boy, why doesn’t he dress like a boy?” As we discussed this together, Jason said, “I’ve always liked pink. And even though I’m a guy, I still like pink.”

Working effectively with LGBT families requires a clear understanding of several basic terms and concepts. These include sex, gender identity, gen- der expression, and sexual orientation. In this vignette, Jason was clear that his gender identity was male, even though others might perceive his gender expression as feminine. His choice of gender expression did not negate his affirmed gender identity as a young man. Parents of LGBT individuals often conflate these different aspects of who we are, as do many in the general pub- lic. Clinicians must both understand and be able to explain these concepts in working with LGBT people and their families.

Sex is about our biology. It refers to the “sex assigned at birth” based on the infant’s anatomy. If an infant’s genitalia are ambiguous (an intersex con- dition), chromosomal makeup and internal reproductive organs may also be included in the doctor’s assignment of sex.

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Elijah C. Nealy

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While sex is about our biology or anatomy, gender identity is about what’s in our mind; it reflects our internal understanding of who we are as a man or a woman—or both or neither— regardless of specific body parts. Historically, sex and gender identity were assumed synonymous. Today we know that, although most people’s gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth (called cisgender), the gender identity of transgender individuals varies in some way from the sex they were assigned at birth.

K E Y T E RM S

Transgender: Individuals whose gender identity varies from the sex they were assigned at birth; umbrella term that includes all gender- diverse, nonbinary, and [transitioning] trans- gender people; these persons may or may not choose to transition.

Trans(s)exual: Individuals who choose to socially and medically transition to live in the affirmed gender identity; rarely used today because of its psychiatric origins.

Trans/transgender man: Individuals assigned female at birth whose gender identity is male.

Trans/transgender woman: Individuals assigned male at birth whose gender identity is female.

Cisgender: Term describing all nontransgender persons; people whose sex assigned at birth aligns with their gender identity.

Gender expression reflects the ways we express our identities as men or women (or both or neither) to ourselves and in the world. This may include choice of clothing, hairstyles, physical mannerisms, whether we wear jewelry and what kind and on which body part, and the gendered roles we assume in day-to-day, leisure, and work life. Although expectations about gender expression vary across time and place, most cultures have norms for what is considered normative or “acceptable” gender expression for boys/men and girls/women (or additional genders in some cultures).

Gender identity and sexual orientation are two distinct aspects of who we are as human beings. Whereas gender identity reflects who we are, sexual orientation is about our emotional, social, and physical attraction to other people: Are we attracted to people of the opposite sex/gender, people of the same sex/gender, or those of both/all sexes/genders?

Every human being— cisgender and transgender— has both a gender iden- tity and a sexual orientation that may be experienced as fixed or fluid. Trans- gender women attracted to other women may identify as lesbian; transgender men attracted to other men may identify as gay; trans women attracted to men and trans men attracted to women may identify as straight; and trans people attracted to others of both or all genders and/or gender expressions may iden- tify as bisexual or pansexual.

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K E Y T E RM S

Straight/heterosexual: People attracted to others of the opposite sex/gender.

Gay: People attracted to others of the same sex/gender, as in “gay men and women”; more often used for men attracted to other men, as in “gay men.”

Lesbian: Women attracted to other women.

Bisexual: People attracted to others of both sexes/genders.

Pansexual: Newer term describing people attracted to others of any sex, gender identity, or gender expression; broader than bisexual.

Asexual: Individuals who do not experience themselves as being sexual, or experiencing sexual attraction.

Celibate: Individuals who choose not to be sexually active for a specific purpose or period of time.

FAMILIAL, CULTURAL, AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The past 10–20 years have brought greater visibility of LGBT individuals, couples, and families; increased societal acceptance; the safety for many LGBT individuals to come out at younger ages; the passage of antidiscrimina- tion legislation in numerous cities and states; and the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. These seismic shifts have altered the lives of many LGBT people and their families for the better— though these benefits are disproportionately actualized across varied social locations, such as race and class (James et al., 2016).

LGBT identity has historically been labeled a crime, a sin, a psychiatric illness, a developmental aberration, the result of dysfunctional family dynam- ics, and the absence of appropriate gender- role modeling. Homosexuality was not removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disor- ders (DSM) and declassified as a mental illness until 1973. Gender dysphoria remains a psychiatric diagnosis within DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Associa- tion, 2013). In the past, when lesbians and gay men described their childhoods and early adolescences, they often expressed a profound sense of difference. Given the stigma surrounding LGBT identity, this early feeling of difference was often followed by a sense that this difference was somehow wrong, shame- ful, and not to be spoken aloud.

Much like immigrants in a new country, lesbians and gay men found themselves surrounded by a heteronormative history and culture that was not their own. Intimate relationships (heterosexual male– female) and the language used to describe them (boyfriend– girlfriend, husband– wife) did not reflect their partnerships. Associated rituals (courtship, engagement, bachelor parties, wedding showers, marriage) were disconnected from their experience

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of themselves. From an early age, lesbians and gay men often knew their lives and choices (children, careers, partners, religion) would play out differently from the paths of those around them.

Unlike ethnic immigrants, their own families are also different, adding to a sense of being a stranger in a foreign land. Most LGBT youth cannot rely on their families to teach them how to respond to or manage harass- ment and discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity/ expression (Harper & Singh, 2014; Newton, 2014). The fact that homophobia and transphobia often exist within families means that LGBT young people may find themselves dealing with harassment, discrimination, invisibility, and even violence at school, on the streets, and at home (McConnell, Birkett, & Mustanski, 2016; Mustanski & Liu, 2013; Ryan, Russell, Huebner, Diaz, & Sanchez, 2010).

Whereas many immigrants often chose to live within their own ethnic communities, queer people historically had little visible community. Relegated to “gay ghettos,” such as the Castro in San Francisco or Greenwich Village in New York City, or to gay bars and clubs, queer life and connections remained hidden from mainstream heterosexual society. Despite increased visibility in the media and other areas of public life, this subaltern world often still exists in more conservative, less urban, or religiously isolated communities. These LGBT families and adults remain isolated from mainstream heterosexual society, from their own culture, many times from families of origin, and from peers and friends who resemble themselves (DeLonga et al., 2011; DiFulvio, 2011; Fish, 2010; Gray, Gilley, & Johnson, 2016; Hubach, DiStefano, & Wood, 2012; Li, Hubach, & Dodge, 2015).

Many gay men have a sense of their sexual orientation by the age of 10 years, and lesbians often do by 12–13 years (Pew Research Center, 2013). Yet LGBT youth in many locales continue to have few visible role models in their immediate communities while growing up. In addition, LGBT history has been largely absent in most K–12 school curricula. The resulting isolation can be pervasive and profound.

COMING OUT

There is no definitive endpoint to coming out. Each time an LGBT person moves to a new neighborhood, changes schools or jobs, or needs a new medi- cal provider, the need to come out may reemerge. Consequently, it is an ongo- ing stressor throughout the life cycle (Charbonnier & Graziani, 2016; New- ton, 2014). Coming out occurs on multiple levels: to oneself, to other LGBT folks, to family, friends, coworkers, professionals, and neighbors. Although coming out is generally considered healthy, disclosure to parents is often the most stressful experience an LGBT person faces (D’Amico, Julien, Tremblay, & Chartrand, 2015; LaSala, 2010; Todd, Oravecz, & Vejar, 2016).

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Coming- out experiences vary. Robert, a 40-year-old African American gay man living with HIV, remains disconnected from his family of origin because they view HIV/AIDS as his punishment from God. CJ is a Latina les- bian who raised two girls with her partner of 20 years, yet they only recently spent Christmas together because CJ’s partner is not welcome at her family’s home. Esther, a 20-something Jewish bisexual woman, spent undergraduate school in a relationship with a woman that was closeted not only from her family but even from her closest college friends; 5 years later, she is still deal- ing with the trauma of falling in love and going through a divorce in isola- tion. Pauline, a 65-year-old African American woman, spent Thanksgiving as usual with her extended family; for the first time, she talked openly about a 15-year relationship with a woman that had recently ended. She was not invited back for the Christmas holidays.

Despite the gains made, when LGBT people speak the truth about their lives and loves in some families and communities, it can still lead to harassment and discrimination, loss of family connections, loss of friends and coworkers, loss of jobs or custody of children, or loss of ethnic community connections. Ongoing discrimination in housing, employment, and health care is magnified across intersections of gender, gender expression, race, and poverty, as is the threat of harassment and violence (James et al., 2016). Twenty- six transgender individuals were murdered in 2017; most were trans women, and almost all were trans women of color (Adams, 2017). Transgender women of color con- sistently face the highest rates of violence and abuse (Waters & Yacka-Bible, 2017).

The recent repeal of human rights ordinances, the wave of anti-LGBT laws moving through state legislatures, and rhetoric about transgender people as a threat in conversations about bathrooms make it likely that experiences of loss, harassment, discrimination, and violence will increase (Kralik, 2017; Weaver, 2017).

LGBTQ YOUTH

Research indicates that 98% of LGBTQ students report regularly hearing homophobic remarks in school, with 56% hearing such comments from teach- ers and other school staff members. Similarly, 96% report hearing negative remarks about gender expression in school, with 64% hearing these state- ments from teachers and other school staff members. Over 70% of LGBTQ youth have experienced verbal harassment based upon their sexual orienta- tions, and over 54% experienced verbal harassment based upon their gender expressions. Twenty- seven percent report being physically harassed (pushed, shoved, etc.) based upon their sexual orientations, and over 20% report being physically harassed based upon their gender expressions. Thirteen percent report being physically assaulted (punched, kicked, injured with a weapon,

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etc.) because of their sexual orientations, whereas over 9% report being physically assaulted because of their gender expressions. Additionally, 88% reported feeling as though they were deliberately excluded or “left out” by peers, and 76% reported that mean rumors or lies were told about them at school (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network [GLSEN], 2016).

Being home is not necessarily a safer place, nor is foster care. Some one- third of LGBT youths report abuse from family members as a result of their sexual orientations or gender identities, and 78% of LGBTQ youth in foster care in New York City alone experienced hostility toward their sexual orien- tations or gender identities and were consequently removed or ran away from their placements (Durso & Gates, 2012; Lambda Legal, 2017).

Most studies indicate that approximately 20–40% of homeless youth identify as LGBT, with transgender youth disproportionately represented among this population (Durso & Gates, 2012; Shelton, 2015). An estimated two- thirds are youth of color (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2014). However, despite these challenges, most LGBT youth exhibit tremen- dous strength, courage, and resilience, as Isaiah’s story reflects.

While serving as the Director of Adolescent and Adult Mental Health and Social Services at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan, I met the mother of a 16-year-old African American young man who had recently come out to her. She was angry he was at the Center and had called the police to remove him from our youth program. Isaiah’s mother insisted he was too young to know he was gay, telling me, “He’s never even had sex yet. How could he know he’s gay?”

As I engaged with his mother, I learned her son had come out to her the day before by slipping a note in between some school permission slips. He had written that he was gay and was participating in after- school programming at the Center. We talked about her being a single parent, how close she and Isaiah were, and her inability to understand why he had never talked to her about this. She felt hurt her son told others before telling her.

When the police and Isaiah emerged, his mom began yelling at him, insisting he come home with her immediately. A few minutes later, she demanded his house keys and told him to “find somewhere else to live” if he refused to come home then.

Isaiah responded that he did know he was gay and he knew this would not change. He told his mother he loved her but said she needed to accept him as he was, a young gay man. Then he handed her his house keys and went back inside to finish his group.

His mother and I talked a while longer. I empathized with her feel- ings, shared some of the fears and challenges of coming out for teenagers, as well as what her son might need from her. In a moment of parental strength and love, she gave me Isaiah’s house keys and asked me to return them to him. We arranged for an older cousin (who happened to be a lesbian) to take him home with her that evening so both Isaiah and his mother could have some space to process the day.

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A few weeks later, I ran into Isaiah in the lobby. He gave me a big hug as I asked him how things were going at home. He told me conversations with his mother were improving, and then proudly showed me a gold medallion she had just given him. It said, “Number 1 Son.”

Isaiah’s story and the stories of many others remind us of the truth of the tremendous loss LGBT people sometimes carry— spiritual, emotional, and sometimes literal disconnections with family; the truth about the pain LGBT people of color may encounter as they struggle to embrace the complexities of their multiple identities; the trauma Queer youth often experience day in and day out being bullied in schools, in their families, and in their neighborhoods. Yet these same stories simultaneously reflect tremendous strength, courage, and resilience (Dickinson & Adams, 2014; Follins, Walker, & Lewis, 2013; Singh, 2013).

Reflecting on the resilience of Queer youth of color, Munoz (1999, p. 37, as cited by Saketopoulou, 2011) states:

I always marvel at the ways in which non-white children survive in a white supremacist U.S. culture that preys on them. I am equally in awe of the ways in which queer children navigate a homophobic public sphere that would rather they did not exist. The [psychic] survival of children who are both queer and racially identified [as nonwhite] is nothing short of staggering.

LGBT FAMILIES

Markus and Nurius (1986) suggest that whereas individuals are free to create any combination of possible selves, the “pool of possible selves derives from the categories made salient by the individual’s particular sociocultural and historical context and from the models, images, and symbols provided by the media and by the individual’s immediate social experiences” (p. 954). With few narratives before the 1980s that reflected parenting within same-sex rela- tionships, becoming a parent was a role that many lesbian and gay people sim- ply could not imagine. Many transgender people, as well, have not envisioned parenting as a realistic, appropriate, or even possible option (Downing, 2013).

In recent years, the available cultural narratives have significantly increased. When it comes to parenting and families, many policy discussions assume American families are composed of married heterosexual couples raising their own biological children. However, fewer than a quarter of all American households fall into this category (Movement Advancement Project, Family Equality Council, & Center for American Progress, 2011).

The 2010 Census reported that at least one out of three lesbian couples and one out of five gay male couples were raising children (Gates, 2013). Les- bian and gay parenting is more prevalent among racial and ethnic same-sex couples than White same-sex couples: an estimated 40% of non-White women

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in same-sex couples have children under age 18 in the home, as do 20% of comparable non-White men; these figures are almost double that of their White counterparts (Gates, 2013).

LGBT couples living in the South are more likely to be raising children than gay couples in other regions of the country, with Mississippi having the highest percentage of LGBT couples raising children (Movement Advance- ment Project et al., 2011). Despite media mythology of LGBT affluence, chil- dren being raised by gay and lesbian parents are “twice as likely to live in poverty as children being raised by married, heterosexual households” (Move- ment Advancement Project et al., 2011, p. 1).

LGBT people form families in many ways. Reproductive technologies using known or unknown donors, or surrogacy, enable many lesbians and gay men to become biological parents. Others become foster or adoptive parents, raise extended family members’ children, or form other types of kinship fami- lies. Some LGBT people have children from previous relationships.

Definitions of what “family” looks like are expanding— including mul- tiple lesbian and gay couples raising children together, polyamorous parents, and larger family groupings raising children collectively. In the past few years, an increasing number of transgender men have become pregnant while living as men, and many gender- fluid or nonbinary individuals are choosing to par- ent (Glazer, 2014; Obedin- Maliver & Makadon, 2016; Sheff, 2014; Stotzer, Herman, & Hasenbush, 2014; Watson, 2014).

Historically, LGBT relationships and families were excluded from socially recognized and affirmed rituals or rites of passage, such as wedding show- ers, marriage, and faith-based rituals around new children. Affirmation and support from families of origin and community institutions was also often absent. Although these realities created multiple stressors, they simultane- ously sparked the development of new strength and resilience, as LGBT indi- viduals created their own life- affirming rituals with their children, families of choice, and extended kinship families (Glass, 2014; Oswald, 2002; Hanke, van Egmond, Crespo, & Boer, 2016).

It’s not surprising, then, that research consistently indicates that chil- dren raised in LGBT- headed families are as healthy and well adjusted as their counterparts raised by heterosexual parents, despite persistent myths and ste- reotypes to the contrary (Adams & Light, 2015; Lavner, Waterman, & Pep- lau, 2012; Rosenfeld, 2010). In fact, most research indicates that the sexual orientation or gender identity of the parent is far less significant than is the quality of the connections between parent and child (Bos, Knox, van Rijn-van Gelderen, & Gartrell, 2016; Lick, Patterson, & Schmidt, 2013; Movement Advancement Project et al., 2011; Tasker, 2013).

The 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage intro- duced new possibilities for rituals of affirmation and celebration and provided essential legal recognition and security for lesbian and gay families (DiGre- gorio, 2016; Sakimura, 2016). The earlier absence of legal recognition cre- ated insecurity for LGBT families in numerous ways. Without legal marriage,

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establishing joint legal custody was challenging, cost prohibitive for many couples, and impossible in some states. This meant that if a birth parent died or became incapacitated, the nonbiological parent did not have legal right to custody of their children (as a heterosexually married spouse would), even if that parent had raised the children from birth.

The economic impact of being unable to legally marry was often stagger- ing. Because same-sex partners were not legally recognized as spouses, LGBT families were less likely to have access to health insurance than their hetero- sexual counterparts. When one parent died, the surviving partner and chil- dren were not entitled to the deceased parent’s federal Social Security benefits (Wolfson, 2009).

Even with the legalization of same-sex marriage, the absence of federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression allows individual states to continue discrimination against LGBT families. Recent state legislation and directives from the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice made specific allowances for agen- cies and institutions with “religious or moral objections” to prohibit foster care and/or adoption by LGBT couples, as well as to refuse housing, public accommodations, and other services to LGBT couples and families (Cooper, 2017; Family Equality Council, 2017; Movement Advancement Project, 2017; Weaver, 2017).

The absence of federal nondiscrimination legislation leaves child custody and visitation rights uncertain for LGBT families and allows discrimination in employment and health insurance coverage even among legally married LGBT couples (Williams, 2017). These laws continue to undermine financial stabil- ity for many LGBT families. In addition, LGBT parents continue to have dif- ficulty finding medical providers who support the formation of their families (Baldas, 2015; Chapman et al., 2012; Shields et al., 2012).

INTERSECTING IDENTITIES

I often believe that being LGBT-POC (people of color) we are often not rec- ognized in the same light as a typical LGBT person. The Orlando incident in some ways made me feel disassociated with the LGBT community, because I feel that in conversation I often feel excluded from the LGBT commu- nity. . . . In short I always feel that I have two separate identities. I am either a black male or an LGBT individual, but never feel that I am viewed as both at the same time. (Gay, cisgender man, Black/African American, age 25, in response to the mass shooting incident at the Pulse nightclub, Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 [in Ramirez, Gonzalez, & Galupo, 2017, p. 13])

Youth of color are significantly less likely to have disclosed being LGBTQ to their parents. In one study, whereas about 80% of White youth were out to parents, only 71% of Latino, 61% of African American, and 51% of Asian

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and Pacific Islander (API) youth had shared their identities with their parents (Grov, Bimbi, Nanín, & Parsons, 2006). The phenomenon of coming out, as historically defined, is in many ways a modern White Western cultural phe- nomenon that is often framed and experienced very differently in queer com- munities of color and in more postmodern contexts (Sanchez, 2017; Villacana, Delucio, & Biernat, 2016).

The family and larger racial/ethnic community often serve as significant sources of support for people of color navigating the realities of racism in the world. Families of color typically socialize and equip their children with the tools needed for staying safe in the world, as well as teaching them how to not internalize the negative attitudes and beliefs of the dominant culture.

LGBTQ youth of color do not always experience the same support in terms of their Queer identity. However, in accepting families of color, parents often connect the dots between their lived experiences of racial/ethnic oppres- sion and encounters with LGBT discrimination. This strengthens the support they are able to offer their LGBTQ children (Follins et al., 2013; Walker, 2015).

Communities of color are not more homophobic or transphobic than White communities. There are individuals and families within all racial/eth- nic communities that do not understand the differences between biological sex, gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Many times family rejection may be rooted in a lack of education, and providing accurate information can facilitate greater understanding and support.

Lack of acceptance among families of color can be rooted in fear. Although White families certainly worry about their LGBT children’s life pos- sibilities and safety, research consistently indicates higher risks of harassment, discrimination, and violence among low- income LGBTQ persons, LGBTQ people of color, and especially trans people of color (Waters & Yacka-Bible, 2017; James et al., 2016). Forced to continually navigate racism, homopho- bia, and transphobia in the context of the dominant culture, Queer people of color typically face day-to-day realities that vary significantly from the lived experiences of White Queer youth and adults (Diaz & Kosciw, 2009; Dunn & Moodie- Mills, 2012; Ramirez et al., 2017).

Middle- and upper- income White LGBTQ individuals generally experi- ence one marginalized identity. This typically results in greater privilege to be openly queer, with fewer risks of discrimination (Nealy, 2017). A White gay man or a White genderqueer teenager may not be hired for a job because of discrimination against LGBT people. Yet a Black or Latinx queer individual may encounter discrimination in terms of their LGBTQ identity, their racial identity, or both. A low- income African American trans woman may experi- ence negative stereotyping or stigma on four levels— her racial identity, socio- economic status, transgender identity, or her gender as a woman. In situations such as this, it may be difficult or even impossible for her to determine which aspect of her stigmatized identities led to the discrimination or marginaliza- tion (Addison & Coolhart, 2015; Nealy, 2017).

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Intersecting aspects of identity means the salience of any one social loca- tion varies based on the immediate context. A midlife African American transgender man who transitioned during college may no longer experience routine discrimination due to his transgender identity. Being seen consistently as a man at this point likely renders his transgender history or identity invis- ible. However, his racial identity is never invisible, leaving him open to ongo- ing experiences of racial microaggressions, stigma, and discrimination. Being consistently read as a man in the world, he can choose to be stealth (not out about being trans and/or having a transgender history), but he cannot choose to be stealth as a Black man.

The reality of systemic racism and White supremacy throughout U.S. society means LGBTQ families of color often also experience a sense of dif- ference and isolation, as well as racism and discrimination within mainstream LGBTQ communities (Galupo et al., 2014; Harris, Battle, Pastrana, & Dan- iels, 2013; Ramirez et al., 2017). Historically, and even today, the visible LGBT community has been predominantly White. White LGBT individuals experience White privilege and internalize negative stereotypes and beliefs about people of color in the same way White cisgender individuals do. Given this, personal racial prejudice and structural racism within LGBT organiza- tions are frequently as prevalent within LGBT communities as they are in the larger culture.

Varied norms about sexual orientation and gender identity and expres- sion across culture can create challenges for LGBT couples (Addison & Cool- hart, 2015). For example, one White gay man felt upset because his African American partner wouldn’t hold hands in public. He interpreted his partner’s reluctance as being ashamed about their relationship and being gay. In reality, their conflict was not about intimacy and/or rejection but about intersections of race, ethnicity, and safety. The White gay man inherently felt, and was, safer on the streets than his African American spouse.

In another situation, a Latina lesbian felt rejected because her Asian American partner was not more physically affectionate. In actuality, their struggle reflected cultural norms across Queer racial/ethnic communities. Dif- ferences in cultural norms and values, alongside intersecting and compound- ing experiences of oppression, often place LGBTQ people of color at higher risk for external and internal stressors, as well as isolating them from avenues of affirmation and support (Irazábal & Huerta, 2015; Singh, Hays, & Wat- son, 2011; Singh, 2013).

GENDER IDENTITY

Most adults in the United States today know someone in their social networks— family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, faith communities— who is lesbian, gay, or bisexual. It is less typical for adults to personally know someone who is transgender. The absence of information and connection

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contributes to a lack of understanding and acceptance and heightens the ways transgender people are perceived as “other” and thus stigmatized.

In addition, most adults grew up with a Western cultural belief that gen- der is a binary construct consisting of masculine men and feminine women whose sexual orientation is normatively heterosexual. Until recently, most transgender people who challenged this assumption transitioned from liv- ing as the sex they were assigned at birth to living in their affirmed gender identity— in essence, moving from one gender box to the other, still within a binary construct.

Adolescents and young adults are challenging these assumptions and increasingly identifying in ways that move beyond the binary gender con- struct. They may view gender identity and expression more as a spectrum or as millions of possible points throughout a gender universe. They often describe their identities with language such as nonbinary, gender fluid, gen- derqueer, agender, or bigender.

K E Y T E RM S A N D PR O N O U N S

Gender- diverse; gender- expansive; gender- creative: Most often used to describe chil- dren whose gender expression and/or gender identity varies from the expected norm; older, less used terms include gender variant, gender nonconforming.

Gender queer: Individuals whose gender identity is more fluid and/or blurs the binary male– female gender construct.

Agender: Individuals for whom sex, gender, or gendered terms and ways of thinking seem irrelevant to who they are.

Bigender: Individuals who identify as both male and female.

Nonbinary: Individuals who do not identify with the binary sex/gender construct.

Note that transgender individuals use varied pronouns in reference to themselves.

Trans men often use masculine pronouns (he/him).

Trans women often use feminine pronouns (she/her).

Some trans people use gender- neutral pronouns, such as zie/hir in place of he/him or she/her. Some trans people use plural pronouns as a non- gendered singular pronoun, such as they/them. Some trans individuals simply use their name and prefer no use of pronouns in reference to themselves.

As a clinician/ally, it is appropriate to use the pronoun a trans person uses to refer to themselves. If you are unsure which pronoun to use, simply ask politely and respectfully what pronoun that individual uses and/or prefers.

During 2017, courts in several legal jurisdictions acknowledged these realities. The District of Columbia became the first jurisdiction in the United States to make gender- neutral driver’s licenses and identification cards

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(Grinberg, 2017). Oregon became the first state to legally recognize nonbi- nary, intersex, and agender people by offering more than two gender options on identity documents (O’Hara, 2017). California’s SB-179 (also known as the Gender Recognition Act of 2017) now allows a third gender choice on driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and other state identification cards (Brooks, 2017; California Legislative Information, 2017). By the end of 2017, lawmakers in New York and Massachusetts were considering similar legislation to issue gender- alternative identification cards (O’Hara, 2017; Rosenberg, 2017).

COMING OUT AND TRANSITIONING

Imagine realizing that you identify as a gender different from the sex you were assigned at birth and that you plan to begin using a new name and new pronouns.

How would you feel?

What concerns would you have?

Imagine sharing this information with your family.

Imagine telling your friends and neighbors.

Imagine telling your colleagues, classmates, and/or clients.

How might these various people respond to your news?

Coming out for trans persons is similar, but not identical, to the process for LGB persons. It, too, often begins with an awareness of difference, specifically that gendered self- perception varies from the perception of others. In addition, although LGB persons sometimes have the ability to “pass” (be perceived as straight), gender transition is an inherently public process.

Gender transition generally begins with social transition, meaning the trans individual begins to live in the affirmed gender without any medical interventions. This is often, but not always, followed by a medical transition. For trans women, this involves hormone therapy with an antiandrogen and estrogen; it might include breast augmentation and gender- confirming genital surgeries. Transgender men take testosterone, often pursue chest reconstruc- tion surgery, and may pursue gender- confirming genital surgery.

Sometimes people erroneously use the term “full transition” to describe trans people who have had hormone treatment and both top and lower sur- geries, implying that any step short of this is not a “complete” transition. The truth is that transgender people make varied choices about the steps in their transition for many reasons— socioeconomics, access to health insurance, individual health considerations, or simply personal comfort or choice. It is critical to acknowledge that none of these decisions invalidates a transgender person’s affirmed gender identity.

Coming out as transgender requires tremendous internal energy and cour- age. Naming and maintaining one’s own sense of identity in the face of invis- ibility and oppression can both elicit and amplify inner strength and resilience

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(Singh et al., 2011). Although the diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) was changed to “gender dysphoria” in DSM-5 (removing the term “disorder” was an improvement), it remains true that seeking any transgender- related medical intervention con- tinues to require the diagnosis of a psychiatric illness. This perpetuates stigma and discrimination within families, schools, workplaces, and the larger world.

Transitioning can lead to disconnection from social supports. For exam- ple, a lesbian who transitions may lose existing friendships within the les- bian community; a cisgender heterosexual woman in relationship with a trans partner may find herself excluded from previous heteronormative friends and coworkers; trans people of color may feel forced to choose between their racial/ethnic communities or community or newer transgender friends. Rac- ism within mainstream trans communities contributes to isolation among trans people of color.

Insufficient information and understanding often contribute to the absence of affirmation and support from a trans person’s immediate fam- ily and/or their family of origin. Furthermore, transgender people have only recently begun to create rites of passage to mark their gender transitions and their impact on their relationships (Bogle, 2017; Keshet, 2017; Pulitano, 2014; Tigert & Tirabassi, 2004; Transtorah, 2017).

TRANSGENDER COUPLES

Trans couples may consist of two transgender individuals or one trans- identified person and the person’s cisgender partner. In light of all our cultural baggage and binary notions, trans couples are forced to develop extraordi- nary strengths and concomitantly face enormous stressors on multiple fronts (Giammattei, 2015; Malpas, 2012; Raj, 2008).

When both partners are trans identified, they may encounter particular stressors. If one person is able to pass (be perceived as cisgender), and the other partner is more visibly trans, this may create tensions within the couple, as well as having an impact on how they are perceived socially. Financial inequalities and/or tensions can arise as increased employment discrimination is linked to a more visible trans identity (James et al., 2016). Differing levels of comfort with their own and each other’s bodies may disrupt sexual intimacy and satisfaction. Another area of struggle may emerge when one partner has access to gender- confirming surgery and the other does not, or chooses not to do so.

When one partner is transitioning, couples often experience a destabili- zation of their relationship (Malpas, 2006, 2012). The gender transition can raise questions about sex and sexuality, sexual orientation, intimacy, and iden- tity (Addison & Coolhart, 2015). For example, a heterosexual woman whose spouse transitions may find herself questioning whether this “makes her a

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lesbian” now that she is partnered with another woman. Physical changes due to hormone therapy and gender- confirming surgery can create new challenges for couples. Sometimes couples discover that, although they continue to have a strong partner bond, they may have difficulty with sexual attraction and intimacy. Even when physical changes result in positive experiences for the individual and the partner, the transition itself, for a time, destabilizes the center of intimacy.

Throughout this process, the couple need support to reconnect, internal- ize the changes, and recenter their relationship. Although it might seem obvi- ous that the individual who is transitioning needs resources and support, it is important to remember that partners of trans individuals also need support and recognition. Even when cisgender partners have knowledge about transi- tion, their lived experience may include unpredictable emotional responses to the physical changes occurring to their trans spouse or the way the “new” couple is perceived and/or responded to socially.

TRANSGENDER PARENTS

A review of existing research on transgender parenting indicates that numer- ous transgender individuals are parents. The National Transgender Discrimi- nation Survey (NTDS; Grant et al., 2011) indicated that 38% of respondents reported being parents: 52% of trans women, 17% of trans men, and 20% of gender nonconforming respondents. Native American trans individuals had the highest rate (45%) of actively parenting (as opposed to having a dependent child), followed by respondents who were Latinx (40%), White (40%), Black (36%), multiracial (29%), and Asian (18%; Grant et al., 2011). In the more recent U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS) with nearly 28,000 respondents, 18% reported having children, with 69% of these individuals indicating they were out as trans to at least one child (James et al., 2016).

When a couple has children and one partner transitions, fear about the children’s response and adjustment is often a major concern and may require significant support to navigate. However, numerous studies of children with transgender parents indicate that having a transgender parent does not affect a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation development, nor other devel- opmental milestones (Stotzer et al., 2014). In fact, several studies indicate that the primary stressor for children during their parent’s transition was tension between the parents and processes of divorce/relationship dissolution that may ensue, rather than stress about the gender transition itself (Freedman, Tasker, & di Ceglie, 2002; Haines, Ajayi, & Boyd, 2014; Pyne, 2012; White & Ettner, 2007).

Despite this information, transgender parents are particularly vulner- able in family court proceedings, especially those transitioning from male to female (Downing, 2013; Perez, 2009/2010). The Nevada Supreme Court

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terminated a transgender parent’s parental rights after she began her transi- tion. The court blamed her for the loss she was enduring, stating “Suzanne, in a very real sense, has terminated her own parental rights as a father” (Daly v. Daly, 1986).

More recently, the Washington court of appeals granted primary residen- tial custody to a nontransgender spouse over the transgender spouse because she intended to transition. This ruling was made despite testimony from the court’s guardian that the transgender spouse was more nurturing and engaged and recommended that the child be placed in the transgender parent’s care (Magnuson v. Magnuson, 2007).

Transgender parents frequently face challenges in child custody and visi- tation when a relationship ends. A substantial percentage of transgender par- ents (29%) who were in a relationship that ended report that their former partners limited or stopped their relationships with their children (Grant et al., 2011). Thirteen percent report that a court or judge stopped or limited their relationships with their children due to their status as transgender or gender nonconforming. Other studies similarly document transgender parents’ rela- tionships with children being restricted or ended by the nontransgender par- ent (Freedman et al., 2002; Green, 2012; Green, 2006; Pyne, 2012). Racial/ ethnic minority transgender parents were particularly vulnerable to having a judge or court limit their contact with their children (Grant et al., 2011).

Despite these challenges, there is a richness and resilience in the ways transgender parents disrupt historical hetero- and gender- normative defini- tions of what it means to be a man/father or a woman/mother. In the domi- nant culture, fathers don’t have vaginas and mothers do not have a penis. Yet in transgender- headed families, parents can and do have varying male or female body parts.

Both transgender men and transgender women destabilize traditional definitions of what it means to be a “father” or “mother.” For example, in the dominant narrative, to be a father means to provide the sperm necessary to create offspring. However, transgender men routinely parent as fathers with- out having a biological connection to those children, and other trans men increasingly choose to biologically parent by becoming pregnant. Transgender parents demonstrate that being a mother, father, or nonbinary parent is much more about social constructs rather than traditional biological relatedness. In this sense, transgender individuals open up whole new dimensions of parent- ing.

Ryan (2009) argues that what trans fathers must juggle most skillfully is not how someone born female could possibly be a father. Instead, the real challenge for trans men lies in the rigid rules of gendered family life estab- lished by the dominant culture. Hetero- and gender- normative understand- ings of what it means to be a father or a mother, and how one goes about creating families, are turned upside down by transgender parents. Even the most gender- conforming, heterosexual trans man or woman challenges the gender binary when they choose to parent.

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CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS AND INTERVENTIONS

Work with LGBT families requires integrated clinical interventions, community- based peer support, and advocacy. Family therapy interventions are essential given the pivotal role family acceptance plays in diminishing risk factors and enhancing mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being (Harvey & Stone Fish, 2015; James et al., 2016; Ryan et al., 2010; Walker, 2015). All family therapists— straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, cisgender, nonbinary— must acknowledge our specific social locations and engage in ongoing self- reflection about how our internalized heteronorma- tive and gender- normative assumptions and biases shape who we are and our work with families.

Specific clinical implications and interventions include:

•• Incorporating questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in your intake and assessment with all clients— not just those you think “look” like they are LGBTQ. Include these questions in your research as well.

•• Acknowledging the DSM-V diagnosis of gender dysphoria for what it is—a stigmatizing, pathologizing diagnosis by the traditional mental health system that seeks to control and dictate the lives of gender- different persons.

•• Validating emotions and challenging situations, while also normaliz- ing emotions and situations that all human beings experience, for example, “There are unique challenges for transgender people who are dating. At the same time, dating is anxiety producing and puts your self- esteem on the line for all human beings.”

•• Being proactive in working with partners, children, parents, siblings, and extended family members of LGBTQ individuals and couples, in person or virtually, so LGBT persons are not forced to choose between their families and their lives.

•• Increasing skills in work with less supportive or rejecting families, as well as families from more conservative faith traditions, who may struggle offering acceptance and/or support to LGBT family members. Risk factors are especially high for LGBT adolescents in nonsupportive families (Family Acceptance Project, https://familyproject.sfsu.edu). However, LGBTQ adults often also struggle with ongoing pain, distance, or disconnection related to family rejection (James et al., 2016).

•• Not being deterred by what appears to be family rejection. Lack of sup- port is rarely the entire story. Look for what may lie beneath the “rejection,” such as lack of information, fear for their child’s safety, life opportunities, or loss and grief surrounding their child’s transition.

•• Drawing on the power of reframing what appears to be rejection; for example, a parent’s anger may mask their fear for their child’s safety. This can be reframed as a parent’s deep love and longing for their child’s well-being. If parents

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feel guilt because their child did not come out sooner, this can be reframed as a reflection of effective and successful parenting: regardless of the child’s age, the parent raised their child with a strong enough sense of self to know, name, and disclose their own gender, even when everyone told them differently.

•• Initiating conversations with trans individuals and families about inter- secting aspects of client and clinician identities and how these contribute to varying experiences of privilege and/or oppression and the therapeutic rela- tionship (Addison & Coolhart, 2015; Day-Vines et al., 2007; Nealy, 2017; Watts-Jones, 2010).

•• Recognizing that LGBT adults coming out in midlife or later may have years of internalized homophobia or transphobia that diminish their self- esteem, hinder personal growth, interfere with personal relationships and intimacy, sabotage professional development and success, and contribute to higher risk of suicide ideation and attempts.

•• Incorporating cognitive- behavioral therapy approaches to identify, challenge, rewrite, and heal internalized homophobic or transphobic beliefs and concomitant shame (Austin & Craig, 2015; Nealy, 2017).

•• Integrating narrative therapy approaches that enable LGBTQ individu- als and families to rewrite problem- saturated stories of failure, being a disap- pointment, being unloved and unlovable, or even being an “abomination” to God. The very survival of LGBTQ people can be transformed into new narra- tives of strength, creativity, and resilience (Elderton, Clarke, Jones, & Stacey, 2014; Frost, 2011; Saltzburg, 2007).

•• Do not assume that every dynamic or challenge LGBTQ couples or families face is related to their gender identity/expression or sexual orientation.

•• Establishing relationships with local/regional LGBT resources, groups, community activities, and events. Beyond clinical interventions, increased social interaction, relationships with other LGBT people, and connection to LGBTQ communities are often essential in decreasing internalized stigma and facilitating a positive sense of self and self- esteem (Bockting, Miner, Swin- burne Romine, Hamilton, & Coleman, 2013; Gamarel, Walker, Rivera, & Golub, 2014; Kubicek, McNeeley, Holloway, Weiss, & Kipke, 2013).

•• Building alliances with supportive faith communities and leaders, given that much homophobia/transphobia has been rooted in particular reli- gious beliefs.

•• Incorporating LGBTQ content into curriculum development in educa- tional and community settings.

•• Challenging oppression and discrimination in the broader social con- text. Advocating for legal protections locally, nationally, and globally.

•• Participating in LGBTQ pride events, Transgender Day of Remem- brance programs, National Coming Out Day, or Spirit Day. Your visibility makes a difference.

Working with LGBT Families 381

Recent increases in overt homophobic and transphobic attitudes, along- side a silencing and oppressive political climate, demand that family therapists and other mental health providers speak the truth about the value of LGBTQ lives as friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and community members. Our commitment to seeing families “in context” demands engagement in advocacy efforts that ensure that all LGBTQ families can live safe, rich, and meaningful lives. We need to educate families with whom we work, challenging them to confront their own stereotypes and prejudices so they can embrace the whole- ness of their LGBT family members. Only then can we fulfill our mission to build a world that is safe, just, equitable, and affirming for all families.

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In this chapter, I focus on three interrelated aspects of minority stress for same-sex couples: (1) prejudice and discrimination; (2) relational ambigu- ity; and (3) obstacles to creating a cohesive support system. In addition, I describe typical problems and effective interventions related to each of these three sources of stress.

PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

In a relatively short period of time (2003–2015), a stunning sequence of legal events transformed the social context of same-sex relationships in the United States:

•• 2003: The U.S. Supreme Court struck down all remaining state laws that criminalized sexual behavior between same-sex consenting adults.

•• 2004: The State of Massachusetts performed the first legally recognized same-sex marriages in the United States (and several other states— particularly in New England— followed suit over the next 12 years).

•• 2015: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all states must provide mar- riage for same-sex couples as they do for male– female couples (U.S. Supreme Court, 2015).

As a result of these court decisions, many same-sex partners literally went from being outlaws to in-laws in their states starting in 2004, and all of them could marry legally in their states by 2015. Married same-sex partners could

C H A P T E R 2 7

Same‑Sex Couples Successful Coping with Minority Stress

Robert‑Jay Green

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now benefit equally from the legal and economic advantages of marriage, most notably— inheritance rights, hospital visitation privileges, automatic legal and health care power of attorney for an incapacitated spouse, the right to inherit the surviving spouse’s Social Security benefits, tax advantages when spouses’ incomes are unequal, simplified second- parent adoption of children, and (in many states) community property rights.

Perhaps more important than the legal and economic advantages was the more general message the U.S. Supreme Court decision sent to the larger soci- ety, and especially to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, about the equal value and future possibilities for their same-sex relationships. By being willing to enter into a legal marriage with each other, same-sex partners can signal to each other and their communities that they have the strongest possible intent to commit to a relationship for life, which provides an important foundation for the mutual responsibilities and many sacrifices that long-term marriage entails. LGBT youth now can imagine marriage in their future, the same as their heterosexual counterparts do. Ironically, rather than destroying the institution of traditional marriage, as anti-LGBT groups feared, the inclusion of same-sex couples under marriage’s umbrella may have given the society the chance to form a clearer view of what is meaningful about marriage and why most human beings still prefer marriage over other arrangements, even though many marriages end in divorce. In spite of the very dramatic and positive changes in the legal standing of same-sex partners, however, there remains much discrimination against LGBT individuals, as well as continuing legal challenges to their relationships.

For instance, in 28 U.S. states, same-sex partners can marry, but they also can be fired from their jobs, denied housing, and refused credit just on the basis of having married a same-sex partner. Get married today, get fired at work and kicked out of your apartment tomorrow! The reason is that the 28 states have no LGBT antidiscrimination laws covering employment, housing, or credit, nor does federal law offer this protection except for LGB people in the U.S. military. Although, under federal law, persons applying for jobs that entail religious “ministerial duties” may legally be turned down for employ- ment or dismissed for not adhering to some churches’ theological positions on LGBT issues, most of the employees who have been fired for marrying a same-sex partner have not been in religious ministerial positions. Rather, they were schoolteachers or school administrators (see, e.g., the cases cited in Ring, 2014).

In addition, at the state level, there recently have been more than 100 pro- posed laws and regulations seeking to legalize discrimination against LGBT people under the guise of “religious exemptions” (Bendery & Signorile, 2016). Religious exemption laws permit denial of services to LGBT customers whose sexual orientations and gender presentations are disapproved for religious rea- sons by the discriminating organization or person. The argument put forth for these laws is that prohibiting a person’s or organization’s discrimination against LGBT people is a restriction on religious freedom. These religious

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exemption laws also allow religious entities and other “closely held” organiza- tions, business partnerships, corporations, and smaller businesses to discrimi- nate against LGBT employees in hiring, promotion, retention, and benefits if the business’s leaders claim that their religious beliefs include disapproval of homosexuality or of transgender identity/expression.

It is not clear how far such religious exemption laws will be allowed to go. For example, can they be used by medical personnel and hospitals to deny treatment to LGBT people or to permit grocery stores to refuse to sell food to LGBT people? If businesses can claim that they are using their religious beliefs to deny service and employment to LGBT people, why would they not be allowed to use religious beliefs as a rationale to deny services and employment to members of other groups that have historically been disenfranchised (e.g., to African, Latino, or Asian Americans; or Mus- lim, Jewish, or Catholic Americans; or interracial couples)? Obviously, such laws have the potential to return the United States to a situation analogous to the “Jim Crow” era (a codified system of apartheid that governed the American South’s treatment of African Americans for three- quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s). This exclusionary ideology could thrust LGBT people in very conservative communities into a situation similar to what Jewish people experienced in Nazi Germany from about 1933, when Jews started being denied access to even the most basic services, such as medical and dental care.

Moreover, there are signs that state- sponsored discrimination against LGBT people is being legalized in certain parts of the country. For example, the Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that the city of Houston was not required to provide the same spousal benefits to married same-sex partners as to married heterosexual partners, giving the rationale that although the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down all remaining state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage in the United States, it had not issued specific guidance on whether work- related benefits for spouses had to be provided to same-sex and heterosexual married couples alike. This case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which turned it back to a lower court in Texas to resolve (Wray, 2017), leaving the decision in limbo for now. Are same-sex married couples in Texas to be treated equally under all laws applicable to marriage in that state or equally only in terms of being entitled to having the legal status “married”? And what would it mean to be “married” if that legal status did not include the same benefits and obligations conferred upon “married” het- erosexual couples?

On the national level in 2017–2018, federal legislation has been circu- lated that would allow sweeping exemptions enabling widespread discrimina- tion against LGBT people based on the perpetrator’s “sincerely held religious or moral beliefs” (Posner, 2017). Most revealing, the president is attempting to reinstate a ban that President Obama had removed on transgender people serving openly in the military.

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LGBT citizens are feeling, once again, extremely vulnerable to being used as pawns in political conflicts at all levels of government. The ambiguous social and legal status of same-sex couples continues to create great anxiety among LGBT people, most of whom are closely following the developments described above. Despite the definitive ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on inclusion of same-sex couples in marriage, LGBT individuals’ and couples’ equal citizenship and basic safety in the United States can easily be unsettled once again as the political winds change.

In spite of our living in a context in which a decreasing percentage of Americans disapprove of homosexuality, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that LGBT people are more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other minority group in the United States, and these data did not even include the terrorist attack and loss of lives at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando (Park & Mykhyalyshyn, 2016). Although same-sex partners can marry in the United States, it still is the case that their connection to one another makes them more of a target for hate crimes, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, disparities in health care treatment, and even murder. These risks are much more serious in some other countries, where incarceration and execution of LGBT people is officially carried out by governments and where extrajudicial vigilante groups engage in beatings or killings of LGBT people. In some of these countries, family members murder their LGBT kin without fear of punishment (so- called “honor killings,” in which the family handles its shame about having an LGBT family member by executing him or her).

Thus we are still on a seemingly unending roller coaster of events con- cerning LGBT people’s civil rights in the United States and around the world, and the consequences are negatively affecting LGBT people’s mental health and relationships. Research has shown, for example, that in those states that faced ballot initiatives to prohibit same-sex marriage before same-sex mar- riage was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, LGBT people experienced sig- nificantly higher levels of anxiety and depression in the run-up to the vote and afterward if the state voted to prohibit same-sex marriage (Rostosky, Riggle, Horne, & Miller, 2009; Hatzenbuehler, McLaughlin, Keyes, & Hasin, 2010). Similarly, a recent report showed that rates of LGBT adolescent suicide prior to 2015 decreased significantly in states that permitted same-sex marriage versus in states that continued to prohibit such marriages (Raifman, Moscoe, Austin, & McConnell, 2017). In terms of LGBT people’s psychological well- being, the political and personal are very closely intertwined. Although most heterosexuals seem only marginally or episodically aware of the various con- tinuing threats to LGBT people in the United States, most LGBT people are acutely attuned to such developments every week in their local and statewide communities and nationally through the news media.

The overarching difference in the lives of same-sex versus heterosexual couples is that the former must continually cope with the special risks of

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claiming a socially stigmatized identity. Although same-sex couples do not encounter intolerance at every turn, they experience enough of it personally, vicariously (by identification with other LGBT victims of discrimination), and through anti-LGBT political initiatives to remain constantly vigilant for its occurrence (Lewis, Derlega, Berndt, Morris, & Rose, 2001; Meyer, 2003; Russell & Richards, 2003). It is impossible for an LGBT person to grow up in this society without internalizing some negative attitudes and fears about homosexual feelings and the risks of gender nonconformity.

Most relevant to the formation of couple relationships, the difficulty in accepting one’s homosexuality (termed “internalized homophobia”) and/or the fear of negative social and economic consequences of coming out still discourage many LGBT people from forming lasting couple bonds. In many local contexts in the United States and throughout most of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, it remains much safer to remain closeted and to restrict one’s sexual/romantic encounters to brief interludes than to increase one’s visibility by living in a shared residence with one’s committed same-sex partner and being seen together repeatedly. To reach the latter level of “out- ness,” LGBT partners must have successfully challenged in their own minds the negative views they were taught about homosexuality and overcome their fears of being seriously harmed by discrimination.

Therapy Techniques for Coping with Prejudice and Discrimination

Successfully countering internalized anti-LGBT attitudes requires attributing them to societal ignorance, prejudice, fear, and the human tendency to con- form to dominant norms. It also requires exposure to and social support from other LGBT people whose behavior counteracts negative stereotypes about homosexuality.

In a sense, all of the techniques discussed in this chapter can help clients cope with external or internalized anti-LGBT prejudice. However, I present some very specific strategies here. In this aspect of the work, therapists make use of feminist, LGBT- affirmative, multicultural, and narrative family sys- tems therapy principles.

The two central ideas in applying feminist theories of therapy to same- sex couples are the notions of cultural resistance and subversion (Brown, 1994). In terms of cultural resistance, therapists must start with an awareness that by loving someone of the same sex, LGBT people are violating the most basic gender norms of the society. The therapist collaborates with clients in an exploration of all the oppressive social influences in their lives, influences that pressure them not to engage in same-sex love and to regard their capacity for same-sex love as bad, sinful, mentally disturbed, inferior, and so forth. This exploration includes a careful deconstruction of all the various messages they have received about homosexuality in their families, in school, in their neighborhoods, in their religious institutions, through the media, and more

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generally from members of their specific racial/ethnic groups, both as they were growing up and currently.

Most important, the therapist should counter these oppressive messages, neutralizing society’s condemnation of same-sex love and framing homosexu- ality as a normal human variation, not reinforcing its disapproval by some segments of the larger society. The therapist thus serves as a “culture broker,” validating same-sex relationships simply by viewing the partners as a legiti- mate couple and affording them equal care and respect.

In some couple therapy cases, partners are at markedly different levels of accepting their sexual orientations or may face different levels of acceptance at work or in their families. These discrepancies may create couple conflicts over whether and when to be “out” in their communities. Individual therapy may be indicated for the partner who suffers from a great deal more internalized homophobia than the other, especially if he or she seems ashamed to explore these aspects of self in the presence of the partner.

In addition to the work of deconstructing internalized homophobia in the sessions, therapists should encourage clients to engage in various forms of participation in LGBT community organizations, including political activism if it fits their sensibilities (i.e., the cultural “subversion” aspect of feminist therapies). These acts of LGBT community participation are a form of chal- lenging the heteronormative status quo in society, implicitly naming society’s homophobia (rather than the self) as the problem that needs to be fixed (Mad- sen & Green, 2012).

Depending on the kind of discrimination same-sex partners face, helping them cope successfully and resiliently with anti-LGBT prejudice may require (1) working actively for change in one’s current social environment; (2) chang- ing to a different social environment (literally relocating geographically or quitting one’s job to escape an intransigent or dangerously homophobic situ- ation); (3) reattributing the cause of one’s distress to different factors (e.g., attributing one’s distress to external prejudice and ignorance rather than to personal inadequacy); or (4) recognizing that some discriminatory situations cannot be changed and then focusing on other areas in one’s life.

RELATIONAL AMBIGUITY

In contrast to heterosexual couples, for whom there is a traditionally pre- scribed way of being a couple with explicit and implicit rules, there is no pre- scribed way of being a same-sex couple— no relational “template” to follow. For example, some of the socially prescribed rules of traditional heterosexual marriage include expectations of sharing responsibility for taking care of each other’s aging relatives, maintaining monogamy, combining financial assets, dividing instrumental/expressive and household roles somewhat along gender lines, having and raising children together, relocating for each other’s career

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advancement, and caregiving for one another in times of serious disability or illness. It is not clear that all of these same normative expectations exist for many same-sex partners. For example, about half of gay male couples agree to be nonmonogamous (Gotta et al., 2011); many same-sex couples are rejected by one or the other partner’s aging relatives; and all same-sex couples must share instrumental/expressive and household roles based on some principles other than gender. Elsewhere, I have termed this kind of uncertainty relational ambiguity, and it tends to play a central role in same-sex couple relationships, especially in the early years of couple formation (Green & Mitchell, 2015).

Lacking a preordained prescription for what being a same-sex couple means, the partners must develop their own basic parameters as a couple. Inevitably, they will rely to some extent on earlier observations of successful and unsuccessful heterosexual marriages. However, the same-sex composi- tion of the couple and the unusual position of LGBT people in society throws into doubt how relevant these heterosexual models might be. At the very least, same-sex partners cannot conform to traditional sex-typed gender roles with- out encountering the special problems (“emotional fusion” in lesbian relation- ships or competitive conflict and emotional distance in gay male relationships) that are likely to emerge when both partners try to enact the same gender roles in the relationship (Greenan & Tunnell, 2002).

Furthermore, the greater variety of relationship arrangements that are acceptable within the LGBT community (e.g., many such couples never live together; others are nonmonogamous by agreement; shorter relationships are normative; fewer are raising children) leaves open the possibility that the same-sex couple’s commitment could be quite different from that of most het- erosexual married couples. This acceptance of nontraditional couple arrange- ments of all sorts seems to thrust each same-sex couple into a longer period of uncertainty and negotiation regarding its definition of personal couplehood. However, legal marriage tends to reduce much of the relational ambiguity for couples who choose it because of the legal codification of many aspects of the relationship (e.g., community property) and certain normative expectations basic in most marriage vows (taking care of one’s spouse during episodes of serious illness).

Therapy Techniques for Reducing Relational Ambiguity

There are no easy ways to resolve the remaining ambiguities in same-sex couple relationships. Nor should their resolution necessarily look like hetero- sexual marriages, in which many of these uncertainties are settled by law and tradition. In general, however, a couple tends to function best when they have clear agreements about their commitment and boundaries and when the couple’s relationship is given higher priority than any other relationships (in terms of emotional involvement, caregiving, honesty, time, and influence over major decisions). Asking the following kinds of questions and arriving at clear

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answers can be helpful to many same-sex couples in reducing relational ambi- guity:

•• “How do you define being ‘a couple’ (what does it mean to you that you are a ‘couple’)?”

•• “What has been your history as a couple?” •• “How did your becoming a couple affect your relationships with other

family members, friends, the LGBT community, and the straight com- munity?”

•• “What are the rules in your relationship regarding monogamy versus sex outside the relationship? What are the rules in terms of safer sex practices with each other and/or with others [being explicit in terms of exact sexual practices to prevent HIV transmission]?”

•• “What are your agreements with one another about monthly finances, current or future debts, pooling versus separation of financial resources, ownership of joint property, and other financial planning matters?”

•• “Who does what tasks in the relationship and the household, and how is this division or sharing decided? Are you satisfied with the current division or sharing of these tasks?”

•• “What do you see as your obligations to one another in terms of caring for one another in illness, injury, or disability?”

•• “Are you viewing this as a lifetime commitment? If so, have you pre- pared legal health care power of attorney documents and wills to protect one another’s interests in case of serious illness, disability, or death?”

For partners who view their relationships as entailing a lifetime commit- ment but do not want to get married, therapists can encourage drawing up appropriate legal documents, especially health care power of attorney and wills or trusts (see Doskow & Hertz, 2016, for examples). If it is in keeping with their sensibilities and values, many committed same-sex couples nowa- days are seriously considering marriage because of the many legal and finan- cial benefits it provides. It often turns out that the main barrier to marriage is not either of the partners’ personal reluctance but, rather, the prospect of generating open conflict with one or both partners’ families of origin mem- bers who are perceived as unaccepting or in partial denial of the relation- ship and would not attend a wedding ceremony (Lanutti, 2008). If a partner’s internalized homophobia is a barrier to same-sex commitment and marriage, that partner may need individual therapy sessions to resolve internal conflicts before thoughtful discussions of marriage can begin.

Any intervention that helps the partners clarify expectations and agree- ments in contested areas or in areas that have never been discussed (such as finances or monogamy) will help reduce relational ambiguity. This, in turn, will increase partners’ feelings of secure attachment and belief in the

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permanence of their union, anchoring their relationship in tangible definitions of what it means that they are a couple.

OBSTACLES TO CREATING A COHESIVE SUPPORT SYSTEM

Unlike members of racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups, children who are LGBT rarely have parents who share their same sexual or gender minority status. Being different from other family members in this way has profound consequences for the development of almost every LGBT person. For example, because heterosexual parents have never suffered sexual orientation discrimi- nation themselves, even the most well- meaning among them is not able to offer the kind of insight and socialization experiences that would buffer their child against anti-LGBT prejudice and its internalization.

By contrast, when children and parents mutually identify as members of the same minority group (e.g., African Americans, Jews, Muslims), the children are explicitly taught— and parents implicitly model—ways to coun- ter society’s prejudice against their group. Typically, such parents and chil- dren are involved together in community institutions (religious or social) that are instrumental in supporting the child’s development of a positive minority identity, and parents take a protective stance toward their children’s experi- ences of oppression.

However, parents of LGBT children are frequently unaware of their child’s minority status and therefore unlikely to seek out community groups that would support the development of a positive LGBT identity. In fact, rather than protecting their child against prejudice, parents often show subtle or not-so- subtle signs of anti-LGBT prejudice themselves. Instead of being on the same side as their child against the external dangers, the parents’ own anti-LGBT attitudes and behavior may be the greatest external danger of all for the child.

Large numbers of LGBT adults in the United States, especially members of conservative religious families or first- generation immigrant families with traditional values, still remain closeted from one or both parents who are per- ceived as homophobic. In terms of couple relationships, this secrecy requires either distancing from family- of- origin members lest the secret be revealed or limiting couple commitments in order to stay connected with family of origin.

Although most parents do not completely reject their LGBT children after the disclosure, the level of acceptance offspring receive is highly vari- able and usually somewhat qualified. As a result, same-sex couples frequently turn to their LGBT friends for greater levels of mutual support and identifica- tion. Ideally, these friendships are woven together into a so- called “family of choice”—an interconnected, cohesive system of support (Green & Mitchell, 2015).

In general, it seems that same-sex couples tend to have less intercon- nected social networks than heterosexual couples. The tendency toward

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social segregation of the straight and LGBT worlds generally— and between the straight and LGBT segments of an individual’s social network— usually requires that same-sex couples have to expend more deliberate effort to cre- ate an integrated social support system that has family- like qualities. The ideal would be to integrate family members, LGBT friends, and heterosexual friends into a cohesive support system.

Therapy Techniques for Creating a Social Support System

In assessing family- of- origin support, the following kinds of questions have proven useful:

•• “When did you first become aware that you might be LGBT?” •• “How do you think this ‘differentness’ may have affected your rela-

tionships with family members as you were growing up?” •• “If you have not come out to certain family members, what factors

led to this decision? Are there any ways in which your remaining clos- eted with your family is affecting your couple relationship positively or negatively?”

•• “If you have come out to certain family members, describe the process, including what preceded, what happened during, and what has fol- lowed the disclosure up to the present.”

•• “If you have introduced your partner to your family- of- origin mem- bers, how have they treated your partner up until now? How have you responded to their treatment of your partner and of the two of you as a couple?”

•• “Have you introduced your family- of- origin members to your LGBT friends, and how have your family members related to your friends?”

Although a full discussion of family- of- origin interventions is beyond the scope of this chapter, the first step in any effort to elicit more family support involves helping the LGBT person work through any residual internalized homophobia (as described earlier). When the adult child can accept his or her own sexual orientation and choice of partner, dealing with the family is emo- tionally much easier. Clients then can cope with familial homophobia more dispassionately and assertively, with advance planning and fewer setbacks.

Therapeutic interventions with families of origin can include: Bowen- type coaching assignments in which the client takes steps toward differen- tiation of self in the family of origin without the therapist present (Iasenza, Colucci, & Rothberg, 1996; McGoldrick & Carter, 2001); conjoint family therapy sessions with all family- of- origin members together in the therapist’s office (Framo, 1992); or a combination of both methods. Therapists should be cautious about doing any coaching assignments or conjoint sessions with family of origin until the LGBT person has reached a fairly solid level of self- acceptance.

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In helping couples build a “family of choice,” therapists should encourage couples to take a very proactive, deliberate stance toward the goal of develop- ing an ongoing social support system consisting of about eight to ten indi- viduals or couples. There are two basic steps the couple has to take in build- ing a personal support system: first, developing or maintaining a reciprocally supportive relationship with each individual who would be a member of the couple’s support system; and, second, “knitting” these individuals together into an integrated system of support. The best strategy is for the partners to become very active in a well- established organization together, attend its events regularly in order to become familiar fixtures in the organization, and take on positions of leadership or active committee involvement that require repeated interaction with the same people frequently and over months or years. In smaller or rural communities with fewer LGBT organizations, the Internet may be the best venues for starting friendship networks.

The great advantage of meeting new people through existing LGBT orga- nizations is that those organizations already will have some degree of “group- ness” to them, so that the couple may be able to become an integral part of an already existing social support system. Therapists who work with same-sex couples should therefore be knowledgeable about relevant LGBT organiza- tions in their communities.

If the couple’s closest relationships arose at different times from dif- ferent settings, more effort has to go into weaving these disparate relation- ships into a more cohesive unit. The only way to increase the cohesiveness of a fragmented support system is for the couple to actively, frequently, and persistently take the lead in physically bringing together the disconnected individuals or subgroups. It generally takes about 2–6 years to knit a dis- connected collection of about 8–10 individual relationships into a functional social support system with family- like properties (a family of choice), but this long-term effort is worthwhile in terms of the couple’s long-term stability and couple satisfaction.

CONCLUSION

The therapy framework described here is summarized in Table 27.1. As a caveat to everything in this chapter, I wish to emphasize that these gener- alizations do not apply uniformly to all same-sex couples in therapy, many of whom enter treatment for problems that are unrelated to LGBT minority stress. Also, because of space limitations, this chapter could not cover spe- cialized therapeutic issues for same-sex couples of color, interracial couples, couples in which one or both members are bisexual or transgender (for more on these topics, see Addison & Coolhart, 2015; Firestein, 2007; Giammat- tei, 2015; Malpas, 2006; Lev, 2004; Wilson & Harper, 2013), or same-sex partners who are raising children together (Gartrell, Bos, & Koh, 2018; Gold- berg & Allen, 2013; Green, Rubio, Rothblum, Bergman, & Katuzny, 2019).

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TABLE 27.1. Same‑Sex Couples in Therapy: Risk Factors, Potential Problems, Interventions, and Goals

Risk factors Potential couple problems

Therapeutic or preventive interventions

Outcome goal/ resilience

Prejudice and discrimination

•• Internalized homophobia—fear and ambivalence about committing to a same-sex couple relationship

•• Partner conflicts over how out the couple will be with family, at work, and in the community

•• Depression and anxiety about discrimination in one’s community and the larger society

•• Externalizing the homophobia— viewing societal ignorance and prejudice (not sexual orientation or gender identity) as a problem

•• Negotiating any outness conflicts between partners based on realistic constraints/dangers

•• Encourage political activism for LGBT equality

•• Self-acceptance of LGBT identity; comfort in committing to a same-sex couple relationship

•• Maximizing involvement in social contexts where the couple can be out

•• Pride in contributing to social equality for LGBT people

Relational ambiguity

Unclear couple commitment, diffuse boundaries with others, undefined mutual expectations and obligations; insecure–anxious attachment in the relationship

Exploration and collaboration about what being a couple means to them (roles, boundaries, shared obligations); consider creating couple legal documents or getting engaged or married

Commitment clarity, operating as team, primary commitment to each other, shared vision of the relationship, longer- term planning ability, secure attachment in the relationship

Obstacles to creating a cohesive support system

Social isolation; lack of couple identity in a defined community; inability to get emotional support, advice, and instrumental help from a support system

Coaching to build “family of choice” (cohesive social support system with interconnections among network members)

Embedded couple identity and community of care (social network density, reciprocity of support, higher levels of emotional and instrumental support)

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Same-sex partners who are members of racial/ethnic minority groups and/or first- generation immigrant partners from very traditional families often are subject to much higher levels of anti-LGBT discrimination from their fami- lies and their communities and usually experience significantly more diffi- culty integrating the different segments of their social network into a coherent whole.

In all cases, therapists should keep in mind that the most important prerequisite for helping same-sex couples is the therapist’s personal comfort with love and sexuality between same-sex partners. Therapists who are not comfortable with such love and sexuality may inadvertently increase same- sex couples’ minority stress and exacerbate their problems. Working with same-sex couples requires familiarity with LGBT culture, genuine personal ease (“comfort in your bones”) when dealing with partners’ emotions for one another, and an ability to ask and talk about same-sex sexuality in explicit terms with couples who are having sexual difficulties (American Psychologi- cal Association, 2012). Although readings are valuable, attitudinal learning is just as important. Given that mental health graduate programs provide mini- mal preparation, I recommend that therapists seek at least one expert con- sultation (in person or remotely) about every new same-sex couple they treat until they feel competent to provide culturally- attuned care independently.

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Park, H., & Mykhyalyshyn, I. (2016, June 16). LGBT people are more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other minority group. Retrieved from https:// nyti.ms/2jSzpDG.

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This chapter offers perspectives from our experience working with immigrant and refugee families. For some, the journey to the United States has involved a transnational migratory pattern. Some of these refugees have lived in at least one other country before securing entry into the United States. Most refugees are escaping wars and internal conflicts in their home countries. Most are young, with no professional skills except those that would give them access to low-paid service- sector jobs. Many live in substandard housing, are underem- ployed, subjected to racism, and may suffer mental health problems including anxiety and clinical depression (Arthur, 2000). Many refugees, however, do make it. The struggles they encounter before coming to the United States often increase their resilience in the face of the problems they encounter here.

All too often, therapy supports the pathologizing, disempowering stories rather than focusing on strength and resilience and exploring how the chal- lenges of migration affect refugees and immigrants.

SOME KEY ISSUES

At the core of the immigrant and refugee story are a number of issues. One major issue is attachment disruption. Immigrants and refugees suffer a disrup- tion in their lives as they leave their countries, cultures, and families of origin. It creates a sense of disconnection from their own relationship to themselves

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Working with Immigrant and Refugee Families

Hugo Kamya Marsha Pravder Mirkin

All cases are composites or altered significantly to protect privacy.

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and to their communities. Immigrants and refugees may lose contact with loved ones as they search for new places of safety.

The attachment disruption unfolds in several ways and often includes many layers of loss. They may lose their relationship with their language, their country of origin, a sense of home, of what is culturally familiar, their profes- sional or educational and societal status, their cultural values and beliefs, their history, religion and spiritual practice, ability for self- expression, their sys- tems for mutual cooperation, and extended family support and go- betweens.

Violence and separation also cause disruption. Immigrants and refugee families are often escaping war, political turmoil, and violence. They often have witnessed horrible events in their migration journeys or even been sub- jected to participating in horrifying experiences. Long separation between family members creates a sense of isolation. Furthermore, attachment disrup- tion, often exacerbated by survivor guilt, collective guilt, and confusion over the safety of the host society, threatens one’s sense of security. The dominant U.S. culture often views them as a threat to the status quo, disrupting social cohesion, order, culture, traditions, and economic well-being. These issues are exacerbated for undocumented immigrants, who fear deportation and may not have the finances or access to legal and mental health services. Their chil- dren may be at significant psychological and developmental risk as citizen children of parents at risk for deportation (Zayas, Aguilar- Gaxiola, Yoon, & Guillermina, 2015).

Clients who present with depression or anxiety may be better understood as experiencing acculturation- based presenting problems (American Psycho- logical Association, 2013) and bicultural- development issues. These problems may include changes in gender roles and generational status, figuring out fam- ily and individual identification with and loyalty to culture of origin and new culture, and/or loneliness and isolation (American Psychological Association, 2013). Older immigrants and refugees may suffer major functional limita- tions, experience isolation and depression, and lose their status as wisdom bearers. Children are often at risk of acting out with aggressive behaviors. Often trauma symptoms are confused with aggressive behaviors.

Therapists’ response from a systemic perspective, focusing on strength and resilience, while expanding our lenses to become more culturally aware, is key to practice.

OUR IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE STORIES

Hugo Kamya

My (HK) immigrant experience embodies several identities. I was born in Uganda at a time when the country was vested in the political colonial patron- age of Britain. Postcolonial Uganda witnessed tyrannical brutal regimes that forced many to flee their homeland in search of safety. The brutal rule of Idi Amin led me to flee Uganda for Kenya, where I pursued a university

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education. My family had been targeted by the government simply because my father belonged to one of the ethnic groups that had opposed the govern- ment policies.

I traveled at night, hitching rides from strangers and walking on foot as I crossed into Kenya with very few belongings. The journey across the border would not allow me to carry much for fear of detection and because of the uncertainty that lay ahead.

I remember sitting on a minibus with at least 13 or 14 fellow travelers. None of us said a word to each other. Although it was clear we were all escap- ing Uganda, none dared to mention our final destination or why we were traveling at that time. We sat motionless, staring into the space that lay ahead of us. As we carefully unwrapped notes of paper currency that we were carry- ing with us to pay the driver, we dared not mention that we were crossing the border into Kenya. I still vividly remember sitting nervously in that minivan without daring even to make eye contact with another passenger. Everyone was suspect. No one could be trusted. As much as I wanted to connect with someone on that bumpy ride, our distance from each other, tightly squeezed in such a tight space so close to each other, felt like a necessary protection.

At various roadblocks, soldiers would pull us out of the vehicle and yell at us in Swahili, a language none of us spoke but that many of us identified with intimidation and brutality. Our fate depended on the whims of the soldier who manned a checkpoint. Some people would be hauled out of the vehicles, inter- rogated, pushed around, and eventually released back to the vehicle before it took off. Others were not as lucky. Guns were pointed at them. They were hit with gun butts and threatened with barrels pointed at their heads. The name on one’s identification card often sealed one’s fate. If you belonged to a tribe that was not in favor of the government, you were a prime suspect.

My journey brought me to Uganda’s neighbor, Kenya. There I began to put my life together. I breathed a sigh of relief because I had just escaped the marauding soldiers of a dictatorial regime, but I was immediately plunged into something new and unfamiliar. I could not speak Swahili, the language used in Kenya. Being male, I became suspect again in Kenya. The first people I encountered wondered whether I had been a collaborator with the regime in Uganda.

Survival was paramount. I needed to be strong. I needed to let my host country embrace me even as I knew very well that they detested me. I needed to balance a range of emotions to survive. I could not present papers that qual- ified me for any work. Employers knew well what was going on in Uganda, but they needed to “protect” themselves from the “bad guys.”

As I found my footing in Kenya, I began to reevaluate my life. I did menial jobs. I looked forward with hope that things would change in Uganda. I began school as soon as I could secure my academic records. There were a lot of peo- ple who needed to be convinced that I was who I said I was. As the war raged in Uganda, it became harder to stay in Kenya. We were all suspects. With more people escaping Uganda, Kenya put Ugandans under surveillance. One

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such program was the so- called Kipandilisho, a Swahili term that referred to being “documented.” All Ugandans had to carry a large 4″ × 6″ identity card that had to be stamped regularly to authenticate their legal status.

Leaving Kenya and traveling to the United States brought mixed feel- ings. On the one hand, there was excitement to come to a country that was previously presented to me as embracing diversity. But on the other, the move brought to the surface old images and feelings of alienation. I needed to assert myself, to prove myself every step along the way. Many things I took for granted did not matter. I found myself in a place where I needed to name who I was.

I was reliving the trauma I was leaving behind. It colored my perception of my new home. I met several people whose stories were different from my story but who nonetheless suffered from the effects of general exposure to the devastation of wars. I spoke a language that I thought was English, but my pronunciation raised eyebrows as people often made comments about my accent.

Marsha Mirkin

Even though I am the child of an immigrant mother and the grandchild of four immigrant grandparents, it is only recently that I began to look at the cultural experiences that defined my family and shaped my childhood. Unlike Hugo, I was born in the United States, and I am white. I was born into white privilege and a lower- middle- class family. I never had to leave loved ones in another country, probably never to see them again, struggle to learn the lan- guage spoken around me, or tolerate insults because of my accent and immi- gration status. But my mother and grandparents did, and I am the recipient and now molder of the intergenerational transmission of their experience. With time, my family entered the world of white privilege, but not before experiencing the trauma of leaving family behind, mourning the murders of family members who had not been able to flee, coping with the ambiguous loss of those whose fate remained unknown, and living in rat- infested tene- ments while being taunted for their accents and discriminated against for being Jews.

The legacies passed on to me were complicated, a mixture of hope and fear along with a deeply ingrained mandate to work for tikkun olam (repair- ing the world through social justice). When my mother was an immigrant in her early 20s, she joined an organization whose mission was to save European Jewry during the Holocaust. When the war ended, she worked in Germany and France to resettle refugees in the United States, a country that a few years earlier had refused them entry. She was arrested once during this process and was a community activist throughout her lifetime. I was born into this trans- generational story, and my hope is that through this chapter we can challenge the larger system and support the strengths that immigrant and refugee fami- lies bring with them and develop throughout this process.

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THE THERAPIST’S POSITION

To work with immigrants and refugees and their descendants, we as therapists must be able to bear witness and to send the message that we can tolerate hearing the story. We need to be humble: We cannot possibly know as much about the culture of origin of the families we see as they do themselves. We need to challenge ourselves to hear the larger context— including, for example, experiences related to race, gender, class, religion, and anti- immigrant posi- tions within the United States and its leadership. We need to be able to take a proactive stance to connect families with the resources they need, whether that means culturally compatible places to worship, an advocate within the school system, or social services.

As we hear their stories, we need to pay attention to both the relational costs and gains of immigration and listen for places of disconnection, as well as places of healing and strength. We need to become aware of the “cultural fit” between the family and ourselves, as well as between the immigrant and U.S. society (Breunlin, Schwartz, & MacKune- Karrer, 1992; McGoldrick & Giordano, 2005). We do not know in advance where this road toward bicul- turality will lead; each family’s journey is unique, and different aspects and degrees of the old and new come together in their journey. Indeed, bicultur- ality has complex facets as well. It is always dynamic and evolving (Laird, 2000).

For those of us who are entrenched in the dominant culture, our cultural imperatives are likely invisible to us. We need to recognize and challenge our assumptions. They are not universal.

THE PREMIGRATION EXPERIENCE

First, we need to look at the degree of trauma experienced in premigration: the terror and multiple losses that have been experienced by many immigrant families (e.g., Alvarez, 1995; Hernandez & Inclan, 1993; Lee, 1990; Llerena- Quinn & Mirkin, 2005). Why and how did the family leave the old country? What happened to them before they left? Who was left behind and why? This premigration experience encompasses not just the events prior to the immi- grants’ departure but also the remote history and context for these immi- grants. Suppression and oppression continue to haunt many immigrants.

Engaging in this work means being able to bear witness to the trauma experienced by many families pre- and postmigration. Can we hear our clients who, like myself (HK), escaped from a traumatic situation, migrating through another traumatic experience, and arriving finally in a country to face yet other traumatic situations? Can we hear our clients who, as we are writing, were finally able to leave refugee camps with visas to settle in the United States but had to leave some children behind, as did my grandparents (MPM) so many years ago?

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Consider Mot, a 19-year-old child I (HK) have worked with for several years. Mot was forced to leave his home at the age of 10 because of the civil war that was raging in his country, Sudan. He trekked from Sudan to Kenya, where he lived in a refugee camp. He had many traumatic experiences, which included seeing fellow marchers die from drowning and being told to kill a girl who had tried to escape. He described long journeys and crossing many rivers:

“Sometimes, we crossed the same river two or three times to escape being noticed by the enemy. We kept running. We did not know who we were running away from. We could not trust anyone. It was very scary. Some of the children belonged to the enemy, and they reported us. We were too scared to sleep at night. We wondered what would happen to us.”

In my work with Mot, I have increasingly become aware of how much he fears the dark. Daylight does not bring any comfort or consolation. He is constantly hypervigilant. Any slight change in the routine overwhelms him. His suspicion of others has become a coping strategy for him. Recently, he has begun to talk about losses in his life. But some of these losses have also reawakened the terrors of his past.

Even when a family does not emigrate to escape from terror, it is impor- tant to gather the pre- emigration information. This includes getting as broad a picture as possible of the clients’ culture of origin and of what each family member values about that culture. It is important to hear how and by whom the decision was made to leave and the repercussions within the family of the differing opinions. Also, even when a family arrives intact, they have still experienced the loss of friends, the familiar culture, the familiar neighbor- hood, schools, and way of life. It is important to pay attention to those losses, even if they feel less gripping and traumatic to us as therapists than do the accounts of terrorized immigrants. Indeed, one client has told me (HK) that what he misses most is the shared history with his family members whom he left behind (Kamya, 2005b). He misses growing up together with his siblings, sharing in jokes and games with them.

Many families do not arrive intact. Suarez- Orozco, Todorova, and Louie (2002) report that 85% of children are separated from at least one parent dur- ing the immigration process and that 49% were separated from both parents. They report that children who immigrate separately from their parents show more symptoms of depression, which can be masked by irritability, anger, rage, and aggressive behaviors.

When mothers immigrate first in an effort to support their families back home, many become domésticas, household workers, receiving very limited pay (Hondagneu- Sotelo & Avila, 1997). When children and mothers are reunited in the United States after years of living apart, the adjustment can be very difficult for both the child and the mother (Llerena- Quinn & Mirkin, 2005). The mother has spent years dreaming of the reunion, working hard under often difficult and low- paying conditions to create opportunities for

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her child. Over the years of living without the parent, the child has developed other strong bonds with caretakers, who are often grandmothers, aunts, or larger extended family. The child has friends, a familiar language, comforting foods, and a way of life that is suddenly disrupted by migration, including liv- ing with an unfamiliar parent in an unfamiliar country speaking an unfamil- iar language. The adjustment is often difficult, but it can help to contextualize the situation as a normal response to loss and to life cycle transitions that are out of sync rather than as a parent– child conflict particular to that family.

Nannies who care for other people’s children are caught in a painful con- tradiction of raising other people’s children while being unable to raise their own. One Ugandan woman described to me (HK) the struggle she feels:

“Much as I would like to hold and cuddle my daughter who lives many miles away . . . I cannot . . . and I miss my daughter . . . but I must con- tinue to hold my employer’s kid because I need the job and because she reminds me of my own daughter.”

Such experiences underscore not only the emotional turmoil immigrants experience but also the hard daily choices they have to make. The losses aris- ing out of the premigration experience often characterize key aspects of the postmigration experience that require clinicians’ attention.

THE POSTMIGRATION EXPERIENCE

Cultural Bereavement

Cultural bereavement is central to the lives of refugees and immigrants. They continually seek to make meaning of their lives, especially as they negotiate the numerous losses of migration. Any meaningful clinical intervention must take this into account. This profound sense of loss is often exacerbated by stressors in the United States. Immediate resettlement issues are key to build- ing these cultural meanings.

Therapists may be well advised to explore opportunities for immigrants to use their native languages. At times, practitioners mistakenly seek to delve into the trauma when refugees are not prepared to engage in such conver- sation. Rather than asking the client questions, the therapist may instead offer clients whose native language is not English an opportunity to speak in their native language and then share with the therapist only what they want to share. Emotions and thoughts may be processed more meaningfully in a native language. If therapists do not know the language, which is often the case, we can learn from nonverbal cues and from what, if anything, the client chooses to translate.

A clinician may also begin to develop trust by sharing that many immi- grants and refugees have stories that are difficult to tell. The timing of when and if the client wants to tell the story is up to the client. The therapist can

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continue gathering information about the migration experience and the cur- rent experience, focusing on areas of resilience, hearing stories of home, and developing culturally syntonic plans with the client.

Anti‑Immigrant Sentiment

Silva (2015) argues that anti- immigrant sentiment should be understood as an extension of racism. People who are white and whose accents are privileged have entered the United States with fewer restrictions than people of color and those with nonprivileged accents. The term “illegal” is a racist term, as it has been applied to groups that have less access to legal immigration. There have been serious immigration obstacles for non- whites throughout U.S. history based on race, religion, and country of origin.

The increase in anti- immigrant sentiment seems due to racial bias and to scapegoating of oppressed groups that is often triggered during and after recessions, when the income gap is large and many people are struggling eco- nomically (Ybarra, Sanchez, & Sanchez, 2016). Many immigrants and ref- ugees work at underpaid agricultural, home care, and elder care jobs that would otherwise not be filled; yet these same groups are often blamed for taking jobs from citizens (Ybarra et al., 2016).

Scapegoating immigrants can also be a response to threats of terrorism, even at a time when homegrown, citizen- perpetrated violence has been more frequent and destructive than activities by immigrants and refugees (Berg, Ford, Sims, & Sterman, 2017). Although anti- immigrant sentiment was high at the time of Berg et al.’s (2017) writing, they reported that all post–9/11 lethal attacks by jihadists were committed by U.S. citizens or legal residents and that about one- quarter of the perpetrators were converts. Aly and Striegher (2012) noted that an individual’s social and economic conditions and reactions to U.S. foreign policy play a role in the development of homegrown terrorism. Massacres perpetrated by white citizens are understood within dominant society as individual crimes rather than as reflecting activities of societal hate groups (Berg et al., 2017).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (2016) reported that 59.2% of hate crime victims were targeted because of race/ethnicity/ancestry bias: A surge in hate crimes was reported against immigrants and people who are Black, as well as a 67% increase in incidents directed against Muslims, from 2014 to 2015. The majority of incidents are directed at people who were categorized as a member of any of the following groups: Black, Muslim or Jewish religion, lesbian or gay sexual orientation, or transgender sexual identity. In 2016 the Southern Poverty Law Center (Potok, 2017) identified 917 hate groups in the United States, the vast majority of which are white and include the Ku Klux Klan, White Nationalists, neo-Nazis, and antigovernment groups.

Most therapists do not receive training for working with immigrants and refugees, so we recommend continuing education courses either in person or online to increase our therapeutic sensitivity and effectiveness. It may be

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helpful to form groups of therapists born in the United States to process con- tinuing education programs, raise awareness, hold themselves and each other accountable for their biases, and explore ways to more effectively work with immigrant and refugee clients. Supervisors should address these issues with supervisees and include the xenophobia that is becoming even more prevalent and that affects immigrant and refugee therapists and clients.

Therapists who are immigrants and refugees may be retraumatized by this work. Client immigration stories can open up old wounds for immigrant and refugee practitioners. Self-care and support from others are key.

Class and Race

Central to the experience of many immigrants of color is the degree of rac- ism and shortage of opportunities in their new country. Many immigrants have experienced overwhelming forms of alienation in their home countries, in the countries through which they have migrated, and finally in the United States, where one of the most pernicious forms of alienation many experience is the racism that pervades American culture (Miller & Garran, 2017). They lack power in most areas of their lives. For African immigrants who come as professionals and then decide to stay, over 76% have doctoral or master’s degrees (Apraku, 1991), but many are unable to secure jobs in their area of skill or profession. This population sometimes ends up doing low- status jobs for which they are overqualified (Kamya, 2005a). Downward mobility is a painful reality for most immigrants (Kamya, 2005a; Arthur, 2000). A taxi driver trained as an architect struggled with the knowledge that he could not do his respected and valued job in this country. A woman who advertised her housecleaning services had been a psychologist in her country of origin. Both recognized that their accents, race, difficulty with English, along with nega- tive stereotypes about their countries of origin, and licensing requirements made employers discriminate against them.

Most of the professional immigrants who search for commensurate work are confined to positions that are below their education and skill levels. The zeal for education appears to drive their interest. They may sometimes pursue another degree as they seek to compete in the American enterprise. Writing about African immigrants in the United States, Arthur (2000) notes that Afri- cans’ engagement in American life is often restricted to educational and eco- nomic activities that promote survival. Education, especially in the American context, becomes the avenue to upward mobility and economic advancement for Africans (Kamya, 2005a; Apraku, 1991) and other immigrant groups.

Others are confined to nonprofessional or blue- collar jobs. They often have limited opportunities with no health benefits and may be exploited by employers. They become worker bees, often taking on more than one job to survive. Nanny work is very common for women, who work long hours out- side the home or who may be living with families while their own children must live elsewhere.

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Health

Refugees often develop persistent health issues due to lack of services and stress during their time in refugee camps. These are exacerbated by difficul- ties with health care access once in the United States that include finding culturally syntonic treatment, dealing with language barriers, and difficulty finding providers and completing forms (Morris, Popper, Rodwell, Brodine, & Brouwer, 2009) Immigration is associated with a decline in health for Lati- nos (Hummer & Rogers, 2004), including depression among children sepa- rated from their families (Suarez- Orozco et al., 2002). Buddington (2002) has shown that Jamaican college students may experience depression and stress as they acculturate. Second- generation Mexican American mothers tend to have babies with lower birth weights (Guendelman, Gould, Hudes, & Eskanazi, 1990; Rumbaut & Weeks, 1996). Jancin (2017) reported that 31.5% of Syrian civil war refugees who lived in Detroit experienced PTSD, while almost half had anxiety symptoms and 58% experienced depressive symptoms.

Depression and anxiety are not the only mental health threats: Cantor- Grae and Selton (2005) believe that “social defeat,” or the never- ending stress and marginalization of being an outsider, can contribute to serious psycho- logical dysfunction.

The immigration system itself may contribute to health- related dilemmas for families. Vargas (2015) reports that as the risk of deportation increases, undocumented family members become less likely to use Medicaid and do not get needed treatment. For many immigrants, earnings barely cover basic expenses, leaving little “extra” for health maintenance. Indeed, personal med- ical care usually gets little attention, often to their detriment, and they may see doctors only in emergencies.

Therapists may become case managers and advocates for health care par- ity and assist immigrant families in navigating an often impenetrable health care system. Those whose status is unclear are naturally fearful of seeking medical attention for themselves and their families, worried that giving medi- cal staff answers will compromise their safety in the United States.

Encountering Different Cultures

Therapists from the dominant culture may assume that the norms they grew up with are universal, though this is far from the case. The clash of cultures may threaten a family’s existence.

A Cape Verdean family was referred to me (MPM) because the parents reportedly beat their children. The parents responded that corporal punish- ment was regarded as useful discipline in their village. If they hadn’t reacted to their children in this way, they would think of themselves as negligent par- ents. They felt demeaned, disempowered, and confused by intervention from the Department of Children and Families. In that case, it was helpful to look at corporal punishment not in terms of right and wrong but in terms of U.S.

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law. We explained that this law is based on ideas of raising children that differ from ways they believe are best to raise children, yet it is the law. We wondered aloud how we could be resources to the family as they developed other ways of being responsible parents that would not cause law enforcement agencies to intervene.

With another client from Nigeria that I (HK) worked with to address issues of discipline that had led to intervention by Department of Children and Families, I spent time exploring his cultural understanding of discipline. This Nigerian man talked about his own upbringing. He began to show more comfort as he told stories that reminded him about how he was raised. After several meetings, he was able to lament the loss of his home culture, not so much concerning discipline as concerning his hopes and dreams.

When our clients share ideas that are different from our own, and they also come from a culture that is unfamiliar to us, we often attribute their belief systems to their culture of origin. But sometimes clients have had trouble in their culture of origin as well, and it is useful to find out whether a family’s values and behaviors reflect their culture of origin’s norms or whether they are idiosyncratic.

We also need to understand that in the United States, mental health pro- fessionals are sought for healing, whereas people from other cultures might look for healers from a range of religious leaders and elders. Who are their healers? What types of healers are avoided? Who do we and the family then include in our treatment team? Questions about religious beliefs and whom the family wants included in the therapy from the religious community might be helpful. These “go- betweens” (Kamya, 2005b) are often consulted, espe- cially at key moments in people’s lives.

Intrafamilial Cultural Differences

There are times when couples seek treatment because of conflicts that could be better understood as differences in the lifestyle and values between their cultures of origin (Kliman, 1994). Kliman reported that a couple came into therapy because the woman felt that the man was “too needy” and was plac- ing excessive demands on her, whereas he felt hurt and angry at what he called her unresponsiveness. As his immigration history was explored, the therapist began to understand that he had lived in a tribal village where at least 20 family members were available for consultation on issues as they arose. The discussion and advice seeking that was valued by his culture of origin was now focused on his one relationship with his wife, whose ancestors came from Ger- many and who viewed her husband’s behavior as “needy” rather than engaged and collaborative. By clarifying and respecting the values of both cultures, the therapy focused not on his “neediness” but on seeking out a larger, culturally syntonic support system and placing cultural values at the center of the mari- tal conversation.

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Kliman (1994) recommends Just Therapy approaches to “heal families and rectify gender-, culture- and class-based power differentials . . . with a humaniz- ing respect for each family member, oppressor and oppressed” (p. 44). At times, respected religious leaders, ethnically compatible religious institutions, and informal ethnically and culturally familiar neighborhood groups can also be useful support systems and mediators, but they are often difficult to find. Mar- riages can be challenged and at times disrupted due to these cultural differences, and therapists must recognize and address the centrality of cultural issues.

Parent–Child Struggles

A common cause of parent– child struggles concerns issues of acculturation. For example, children are often more savvy around technology than their parents, which can create resentment, misunderstandings, and sometimes challenge the hierarchy. Children often learn English more rapidly and have greater exposure to the norms of the new culture through school, media, and friendship. As parents count on their children for language- related tasks the adults used to do, the roles may be reversed, which is particularly problematic for families from cultures with clearly delineated hierarchies.

Another issue that emerges as families navigate the two cultures, is what the dominant U.S. culture calls “enmeshment,” and sees as unhealthy. That same family relational pattern can be identified as healthy in other cultures. For example, adolescence in some Latino cultures can be a time of bring- ing young women into the women’s circle, allowing them to be included in adult conversation (Llerena- Quinn & Mirkin, 2005). This “bringing in” rather than supporting separation can be mistaken by U.S.-born therapists for unhealthy enmeshment rather than understood as culturally syntonic mature connection.

CASE EXAMPLE

A therapist asked for a consultation with me (MPM), reporting that she was having difficulty working with a truant 14-year-old teenager, Ana, and her mother, Mrs. Benítez, who had emigrated from Mexico 2 years earlier, with two younger brothers and a mother- in-law, not long after her husband’s acci- dental death. The therapist reported that Mrs. Benítez was never home to supervise the children and refused the suggestions she made. Mrs. Benítez had found a small apartment. Ana was responsible for caring for her siblings and grandmother after school while her mother worked and on the evenings that her mother went to school. After about a year, Ana became truant, staying out late without informing her mother where she was going. The school referred the family for therapy.

The therapist had met with Ana and her mother and recommended that Mrs. Benítez give up one of her two jobs and her evening courses to be more

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available. She suggested that Ana was a parentified child and recommended that the caretaking burden be lifted from her.

The therapist was looking at the family through a white, middle- class, Northwest European lens, whereas Mrs. Benítez’s world was a very different one, and Ana was straddling both. I attempted to enter the mother’s world, where daughters were expected to assume major household responsibilities at early ages. She did not understand why this was so problematic for Ana. Mrs. Benítez knew she needed her jobs and courses to make a difference in her life and in the lives of her children. Yet the experts told her to give these up. She felt doomed. Ana was in public school, where she more quickly acculturated and yet remained loyal to her family and her sense of duty and responsibility. When she stopped going to school, she maintained her household tasks but also stayed out late to do what she thought American girls did.

The therapist made recommendations based on her assumptions and a traditional model of family therapy. She tried to restore the hierarchy, develop boundaries between parent and child– sibling subsystems, and noted Mrs. Benítez’s “resistance.”

Acknowledging the difficult situation the therapist was helping the family contend with, I gently challenged the therapist’s assumptions so that the fore- ground became the immigration experience, family and cultural strengths, biases against low- income Latino immigrants, and the need to counter per- sonal and cultural isolation. I urged the therapist not to accept the ageist exclusion of the grandmother. Although she could no longer contribute to physical household tasks, it was clear that she was the matriarch in this family, the banner carrier for tradition and a clear voice about child rearing.

The therapist connected mother and grandmother with a culturally familiar church so that they could begin to feel more connected and at home. Ana contributed to the household by being responsible twice a week for an informal church member– based babysitting cooperative. On the other days, other families would watch Mrs. Benítez’s younger children, which gave Ana some time to keep up with schoolwork and be with friends.

POLITICS, CRITICAL ISSUES, AND NASCENT TRENDS

The lives of most immigrants have been profoundly influenced by the political relationship between their home countries and the United States. Immigrants may have come out of complicated war and conflict situations that they can- not explain or understand (Kamya, 2005b), yet they are often asked to be spokespersons for their home countries. Indeed, for many their trauma may have shut them off from the day-to-day politics of their home countries. In working with unaccompanied minors from Sudan, I (HK) have heard these young men’s concern that they have become targets of ridicule and contempt from their peers simply because Osama bin Laden was said to have lived in Sudan at one time. Many of them report not having had any knowledge

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of his terror group before coming to this country but now feeling that they have to explain to Homeland Security and their peers that they had no ties to this terror group. At times, they feel targeted for conditions and events over which they have no influence. If they have supported groups that are no longer favored by the United States, they may experience any discussion about their home country as a threat to their existence. Indeed, they may seek to provide a “party line” as a way of saving face. Family therapists must listen attentively to the emerging stories.

The trauma of arrest and family separation is a nightmare under any circumstances, but for some immigrants this may be a replication of previous trauma in their countries of origin. One man from Sudan, age 29, described the situation created for him and his family by the executive order attempting to ban immigration from specific, primarily Muslim, countries. I (HK) had known him earlier in his late teens, and for the past 10 years he has worked to establish himself and his family. Since the announcement of the executive order, this young man has experienced a new wave of trauma. He finds him- self crying uncontrollably and unable to sleep. He has reported how much he worries for his children and for himself. He is unable to concentrate on his job or take care of his family. Once again, everyone is suspect, and he does not know how, after living in the United States for so many years, he could find another country open to receiving him. The executive order has created a deep sense of anxiety and disruption in his life.

Immigration reform is often on the political table, and family therapists need to be aware of how the political and legal spheres affect the psychological lives of families. Advocacy may therefore become part of our work as family therapists and may include advocating for policy change to increase access to health care, providing novel insurance options, expanding safety net services, training providers to better care for immigrant populations, and educating undocumented immigrants on navigating the system (Hacker, Anies, Folb, & Zallman, 2015). We also recommend including issues concerning immigrants and refugees in the teaching and supervision of preprofessionals (undergrad- uate and graduate students), as well as placing students in internships that involve this population.

SUMMARY

Working with immigrant and refugee families challenges us to move beyond the cultural norms and imperatives that we take for granted, to allow in the strength, resilience, and richness of families of other cultures. We need to understand the immigrant experience in its broadest context, which includes the premigration life of the family, the experience of the migration, and the benefits and obstacles that families face in the United States. This involves exploring experiences of loss and trauma, and it also means being able to look at discriminatory policies, racism, classism, and xenophobia, which cause

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pain to so many immigrant families. It is a privilege to accompany immigrant families along that road.

REFERENCES

Alvarez, M. (1995). The experience of migration: A relational approach in therapy (Work in Progress No. 71). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, The Stone Center.

Aly, A., & Striegher, J. L. (2012). Examining the role of religion in radicalization to violent Islamist extremism. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 35, 849–862.

American Psychological Association, (2013). Working with immigrant- origin clients: An update for mental health professionals. Retrieved from www.apa.org/topics/ immigration/immigration- report- professionals.pdf.

Apraku, K. (1991). African émigrés in the United States. New York: Praeger. Arthur, J. A. (2000). Invisible sojourners: African immigrant diaspora in the United

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America after 9/11. Retrieved from www.newamerica.org/in-depth/terrorism- in- america.

Breunlin, D. C., Schwartz, R. C., & MacKune- Karrer, B. (1992). Metaframeworks: Transcending the models of family therapy. New York: Jossey- Bass.

Buddington, S. A. (2002). Acculturation, psychological adjustment (stress, depres- sion, self- esteem), and the academic achievement of Jamaican immigrant college students. International Social Work, 45(4), 447–464.

Cantor- Grae, E., & Selton, J. (2005). Schizophrenia and migration: A meta- analysis and review. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162, 12–24.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2016). 2015 hate crime statistics. Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015.

Guendelman, S., Gould, J., Hudes, M., & Eskanazi, B. (1990). Generational differ- ence in perinatal health among the Mexican- American population: Findings from HHANES 1982–84. American Journal of Public Health, 80(12, Suppl.), 61–65.

Hacker, K., Anies, M., Folb, N. B., & Zallman, L. (2015). Barriers to health care for undocumented immigrants: A literature review. Risk Management and Health- care Policy, 8, 175–183.

Hernandez, M., & Inclan, J. (1993). A conceptual framework for therapy with ethnic minority families. In Honoring and working with diversity in family therapy [AFTA resource packet]. Washington, DC: American Family Therapy Academy.

Hondagneu- Sotelo, P., & Avila, E. (1997). “I’m here but I’m there”: The meanings of Latina transnational motherhood. Gender and Society, 11(5), 548–571.

Hummer, R. A., & Rogers, R. G. (2004). Nativity, duration of residence, and the health of Hispanic adults in the United States. International Migration Review, 38(1), 184–212.

Jancin, B. (2017). Almost one-third of Syrian refugees in United States meet PTSD criteria. Clinical Psychiatry News, 4.

Kamya, H. (2005a). African immigrant families. In M. McGoldrick, J. Giordano, & N. Garcia- Preto (Eds.), Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed., pp. 101–116). New York: Guilford Press.

Kamya, H. (2005b). The impact of war on children and families: Their stories, my

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own stories. In J. Kliman (Ed.), Touched by war zones, near and far: Oscillations of despair and hope (AFTA Monograph Series, Vol. 1, No. 1). Washington, DC: American Family Therapy Academy.

Kliman, J. (1994). The interweaving of gender, class, and race in family therapy. In M. P. Mirkin (Ed.), Women in context: Toward a feminist reconstruction of psycho- therapy (pp. 25–47). New York: Guilford Press.

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McGoldrick, M., & Giordano, J. (2005). Overview: Ethnicity and family therapy. In M. McGoldrick, J. Giordano, & J. Pearce (Eds.), Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed., pp. 1–27). New York: Guilford Press.

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Vargas, E. (2015). Immigration enforcement and mixed- status families: The effects of risk of deportation on Medicaid use. Children and Youth Services Review, 57, 83–89.

Ybarra, V. O., Sanchez, L. M., & Sanchez, G. R. (2016). Anti- immigrant anxieties in state policy: The great recession and punitive immigration policy in the Ameri- can States, 2005–2012. State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 16(3), 313–339.

Zayas, L., Aguilar- Gaxiola, S., Yoon, H., & Guillermina, N. R. B. (2015). The dis- tress of citizen- children with detained and deported parents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24, 3213–3223.

419

For many Black heterosexual couples seeking therapy, race is an unexplored issue intricately interwoven into the presenting problem and in their request for treatment. More often than not, the race- related issues are tightly threaded into the couple’s functioning, the presenting problem, and their ongoing expe- riences with racial trauma and oppression. Although few Black couples seek therapy with race specifically defined as the presenting problem, it is virtually always connected either directly or indirectly to their overall experiences as a Black couple (Awosan & Hardy, 2017).

Black heterosexual couples are like all other couples in the types of rela- tional issues that bring them into therapy. Communication, infidelity, inti- macy, in-laws, child problems, and so forth are common presenting prob- lems; at the same time, issues of race and racial oppression present them with a unique set of circumstances that warrant constant attention and scrutiny. Many Black couples are faced with stressors and experiences of cumulative racial oppression that can affect their desires and efforts to cultivate and maintain enduring loving relationships. In many ways, the normal everyday struggles and challenges that are characteristic of most intimate relationships are exacerbated when compounded by racial oppression. According to Hardy (2013), “racial oppression is a traumatic form of interpersonal violence which can lacerate the spirit, scar the soul, and puncture the psyche” (p. 25). The constant imposition of whiteness on Black lives, ever- growing structural ineq- uities, and widespread societal devaluation of Blackness inflict hidden racial trauma wounds on the emotional and relational lives of many Black couples

C H A P T E R 2 9

Therapy with Heterosexual Black Couples through a Racial Lens

Kenneth V. Hardy Christiana I. Awosan

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(Awosan & Opara, 2016). Invisible racial trauma wounds are the silent effects of generational and present- day encounters with racial oppression. Hardy (2013) has discussed extensively elsewhere an array of racially based trauma wounds experienced by Blacks that affect all spheres of life, often in ways that go unacknowledged. These trauma wounds can have a long-term and life- altering effect on all aspects of life, including one’s romantic and intimate relationships.

INVISIBLE WOUNDS

Internalized devaluation, assaulted sense of self, and voicelessness are three common wounds that are experienced by many Black people (Hardy, 2013). Because of space limitations, this chapter focuses on two of these wounds: the assaulted sense of self and voicelessness, examining how they contribute to a variety of subtle and often misunderstood dynamics that occur within Black heterosexual couple relationships. (For a more comprehensive discussion of the wound of devaluation, the reader is referred to Hardy, 2013.)

Assaulted Sense of Self

The pervasiveness of racial oppression throughout society ensures that the core selves of Black people are under constant assault. Whether it is the por- trayal of Black people as intellectually limited, unsophisticated, scary, intimi- dating, thuggish, or being relegated to positions of invisibility, the assault on the sense of self is unrelenting.

An assaulted sense of self is connected to the constant exposure to racial devaluation and oppression that negatively shapes the ways in which one sees oneself and obscures one’s ability to see oneself clearly (Hardy, 2013). This poignant, but often hidden, racial trauma wound affects not only how one sees oneself but how one believes one is seen as well. This wound has far- reaching implications for couple relationships because it can influence inti- mate partners’ perceptions of themselves and each other.

The racial context of the United States is one in which Blacks, as well as other people of color, are constantly indoctrinated into the centrality and superiority of whiteness. In the case of Black people, the centrality and impo- sition of whiteness is compounded by a concomitant widespread anti-Black sentiment that is pervasive throughout U.S. society. The constant imposition of whiteness and the ever presence of an anti-Black sentiment experienced by Blacks, especially in the formative years of the life cycle, take an emotional, psychological, and relational toll on the growth and well-being of many Black people. Both adult development and coupling processes become entrenched in “a process of consolidating self- definition in spite of, because of, and inclusive of” white superiority and Black inferiority (Franklin & Boyd- Franklin, 2000, p. 35).

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The unrelenting promulgation of messaging that perpetuates the percep- tion of Blacks as inferior, along with the imposition of white standards to measure our humanity and normalcy, contribute to daily invisible assaults at every stage of the life cycle (Watson, 2013). Internalized racial feelings and views of “not being good enough” do trickle over to the belief that one may not be adequate as a romantic partner. This, coupled with internalized nega- tive views of Black romantic relationships as “too difficult and full of drama,” can have a crippling effect on intimate relationships while never garnering attention (Awosan & Hardy, 2017). One of the ways that the assaulted sense of self affects a couple’s emotional connection to each other is through under- mining their efforts to be fully present in the partnership and to effectively communicate, support, and relate to each other. For instance, as with any other couple, the betrayal of infidelity is a devastating blow to the love and connection of the couple. However, for a Black couple suffering from the bro- kenness triggered by infidelity, the messages of anti-Black stereotypes such as “Black women are not worth the commitment of their male counterparts” or “Black men are cheaters” compound the difficulty. Sadly, this dynamic can also propel the partners to question their personal worth as individuals and of each other as a Black man or a Black woman. These deeply held feelings and internalized beliefs seldom get expressed overtly. The critical point here is that no matter what “normal crises” heterosexual Black couples experience, they are often “colored” and exacerbated by issues of race and the devaluation of Blackness.

It is virtually impossible to discuss Black heterosexual romantic relation- ships without generating an array of negative racially based stereotypical ref- erences, such as “Black relationships/marriages don’t last”; “Black men and women don’t desire relationships with each other”; “all Black men cheat on their partners”; and a host of other similar claims. Whether intended or not, these racially based negative valuations assault and stigmatize the coupling experiences and romantic unions of Black people. The internal struggle of whether one is “good enough” as a partner, the intense fear that one’s partner may view one as a negative racial stereotype or that one’s relationship will succumb to the stereotype of “Black relationships don’t last” can quietly erode the love and stability of many Black romantic relationships. Even in situations in which it may not completely harm the couple bond, it is nevertheless a constant, nagging, and underlying stressor for many couples. It is often dif- ficult for Black heterosexual couples to insulate themselves from the plethora of negative, anti-Black, invalidating messages about Blackness and Black love relationships.

As a Black heterosexual couple on full public display, it was hard to imag- ine that former U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama ever spent a single moment not being consciously aware of themselves as a Black couple. It is unimaginable and would defy the rules of racial oppression if they didn’t have to think about how their behavior had to counteract and dismantle the prevailing stereotypical notions about what it means to be a

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Black man, Black woman, and ultimately a Black couple in a racially oppres- sive society that claims that race is insignificant while never failing to demon- strate just how significant it is.

Many of the negative valuations that silently assault the sense of self of Blacks and their romantic relationships are saturated not only with damaging racial messages but with damaging gender messages as well. The compound- ing of racial and gender assaults contribute greatly to fracturing Black couples’ bonds in ways that often remain unexplored by couples and by the therapists who treat them. Black manhood and womanhood have always been entan- gled within destructive and degrading racial stereotypes. Black men have been perceived as the quintessential animalistic creature that was only a partial man because he lacked other humanizing attributes. The persistent racial nar- rative of Black men as “not real men” is deeply rooted in the American psyche. The common historical practice of referring to Black men of all ages as “boy” is emblematic of this notion. I (KVH) still have vivid memories of this practice dating back to my childhood years, as I often observed White men, several years my father’s junior, demand that he refer to them as “Mister” while they comfortably, casually, and disrespectfully referred to him by his first name or made “boy” references to him. Writing this now reignites the pain and fury that I felt as child as I watched him painfully endure the blatant indignity. The unyielding assault on Black men often places them on a path to hypermas- culinity, embracing the sentiment that expressions of vulnerability are to be avoided as a sign of weakness.

Black women similarly are the victims of negative gender messages. They are often the targets of even more vicious claims at the intersections of race and gender. Michelle Obama, during her tenure as First Lady of the United States, was often insultingly portrayed as animalistic, “savage,” and “manly.” Black women are frequently likened to apes, monkeys, mules, and other ani- mals while simultaneously being oversexualized and perceived as physically unattractive whores or sluts.

In a society that attaches deity and supremacy to whiteness, darker- skinned Black women often find themselves further stigmatized and devalued based on their skin tone. Dark- skinned Black women are often hypersexual- ized but rarely considered as beautiful or desirable as their white and lighter- skinned counterparts. As a dark- skinned Black woman, I (CIA) have expe- rienced the painful effect of colorism from a very young age. The statement “You’re beautiful for a dark- skinned girl” not only confused me but often made me question my beauty as a young, dark- skinned Black girl. From a young age, I learned that being dark- skinned meant “not beautiful.” The rejec- tion of dark skin as attractive is not only an experience that I often encounter as an adult in the United States; it is also a painful practice that I sadly had to witness in my country of origin in Nigeria, West Africa, where bleaching or lightening creams are prevalent in the reinforcement of the belief that white or lighter skin is “perfect” and dark skin is undesirable.

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Many Black men unabashedly declare their preference for the light- skinned Black woman with “the good hair,” which is often code for white-like. These images, as if not poisonous enough in their own right, are often exacerbated by the negative personality attributions that are often assigned to Black women. Black women are widely labeled as intimidating, aggressive, and lacking in emotional warmth. All of these dehumanizing and proracist claims are curious and fascinating for a group of women who have historically been sought out by white women and families as nannies to care for their white children.

One’s sense of self as a woman or a man is further assaulted as many Black women and men unconsciously evaluate and view romantic partners from these negatively gendered racial stereotypes. Sadly, these stereotypes can calcify adversarial tensions within Black male– female romantic relationships. Once the sense of self has been assaulted, self-doubt can gradually chip away at one’s confidence and ability to cultivate and maintain close relationships, especially couple relationships. Self-doubt often contributes to other relation- ship difficulties, such as keeping secrets, emotional disengagement, and infi- delity. Efforts to conceptualize the dynamics of Black couple relationships without devoting attention to the deleterious effects of racial oppression are not only ineffectual but also shortsighted.

Voicelessness

Perpetual experiences with degradation and scorn unfortunately force people to silence their voices, meaning their authentic selves cannot emerge or thrive in relationships. Considerable energy must be diverted into self- protective behaviors, which further assaults the sense of self. “Voicelessness is a coping mechanism developed to guard against the constant daggers of devaluation and assaulted sense of self; but it erodes the ability to defend against a barrage of unjustified negative messages” (Hardy, 2013, p. 25). Although voiceless- ness is a self- protective coping and survival strategy employed by the racially traumatized, it is emotionally debilitating. At its core, voicelessness hinders self- advocacy and impedes emotional engagement. In couples, it often contrib- utes to a dynamic in which one partner shuts down emotionally, becoming increasingly isolated, while the other overfunctions and pursues engagement incessantly.

The constant devaluation of Blackness breeds an assaulted sense of self that evokes feelings of humiliation, shame, fear, and anxiety. The sense of “not being good enough” or that “something is wrong with me or my rela- tionship” fractures confidence and severely compromises expressions of inti- macy in relationships. These dynamics contribute to voicelessness, which can be easily mistaken for volitional “quietness.” To be quiet is something one chooses, a choice to exercise, while to be “silenced” is involuntary, the result of being stripped of one’s ability to speak, denied by virtue of others’ acts of domination, degradation, and/or devaluation.

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CASE EXAMPLE

The following vignette of a couple I (CIA) worked with for several months illustrates how racial trauma and the invisible wound of assaulted sense of self and voicelessness can be intricately intertwined with a presenting problem that ostensibly has nothing to do with race.

Tia and Dave were in their late 20s. Both were college educated and sought couple therapy because they were “having communication issues” and were contemplating “taking a break” from their relationship and each other. This was their first time in couple therapy, and they were looking for a thera- pist who would understand them. This was more of Dave’s concern than Tia’s. When I asked how they decided to be in a relationship with each other, they both said they appreciated their friendship and were attracted to each other because they felt understood by the other. However, over the preceding few months, they had begun to feel like they didn’t understand each other and couldn’t communicate without arguing.

To better understand their estrangement, I inquired about their lives and relationship. Tia thought Dave was depressed because he was having trouble at work. With melancholy, Dave expressed, “I’m not depressed; life is just difficult.” I invited him to expand on what he meant by “life is just difficult.” He said that practicing as an accountant was a dream come true for him. He expressed that he was really proud of himself when one of the best account- ing firms in the city hired him, although he was unprepared for “the racial undertone” he had to deal with. Tia added that Dave used to talk to her about his experiences at work, because she struggled through similar “racial under- tones” in her MBA graduate program. She said they tried to support each other through the pain of “people second- guessing your work, treating you like you don’t deserve to be there. But he just stopped talking to me about it.” Dave added, “It’s hard for me to keep talking about all the dreadful ways that I had to prove myself. John and I were hired at the same time, but he got pro- moted. I got ‘You just need to bring more clients in.’ I brought in more clients than John, but no one noticed that.”

At this point, Dave’s face was filled with pain and sadness under a dis- guised expression of confidence. With strained affect, he continued, “I’m tired of putting on a face just to prove to people that I’m a team player, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough. I worked hard for a promotion, too.”

I validated his pain and asked whether his references to “people” and his comments about being “smart enough” were racial. I asked him whether these were coded references to white people and issues related to race. With a slight smile and some initial hesitation, he acknowledged “yes.” I then asked what made him reluctant to name whiteness and to speak in code instead. He seemed surprised by the notion and simultaneously relieved to receive an invi- tation to speak more candidly. Dave’s speaking indirectly about race and his experiences with whites on his job was a clear manifestation of voicelessness. I wanted to highlight it early in our work together.

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I applauded Dave for his honesty and then asked him what it felt like to be “required” to “put on a face just to prove yourself to (white) people?” He expressed that it was “exhausting and humiliating.” He continued to add, “exhausting because I have to hide how I really feel and humiliating because I know deep down, that no matter what I do and how much work I put in, I know they aren’t going to promote me to partner.”

To help Dave connect the pain and sadness that he was expressing from the racial discrimination he encountered at work to his connection with his girlfriend, I asked him how this feeling of exhaustion and humiliation affected his relationship with Tia. After a long pause, he said, “I don’t want to keep talking about this with Tia. I feel like I’m bringing her down every time I talk about the craziness that goes on at work. She’s understanding . . . but it’s just exhausting talking about it.” I validated Dave’s vulnerability and his ability to name the experiences of implicit racism he experienced at work. I praised his skillful efforts in protecting himself and his girlfriend from these humili- ating experiences by not discussing them with her. He quietly and soberly expressed, “I’m just tired of being down about it all. . . . I don’t want to bring her down too. . . . I don’t want to bring us down but I can’t control it.” In tears, Tia expressed that it was very difficult for her to watch her partner look for another job without much success. She recalled: “The other day, I was excited, angry, and sad because I had to tell him that I got the job I interviewed for last week . . . he has been looking for over 3 months now . . . and nothing!”

I asked Tia why she felt angry and sad about telling Dave that she had gotten the job. She indicated that she was not completely sure, “but I just felt sad and angry.” I acknowledged Tia’s awareness of her emotions and encour- aged her to explore what she thought her anger and sadness were connected to. She attributed her anger to the fact that Dave was experiencing covert rac- ism at work and was blaming himself for the lack of promotion. With deep sadness, she voiced, “Most times, I feel guilty because we both experience racism . . . but sometimes it seems that we focus on his pain more than mine.”

Both Dave and Tia were completely unaware of their shared gender social- ization that makes it acceptable for both of them to elevate his plight above hers and the racial socialization that requires a “good Black woman” to be selfless and unconditionally supportive of her man. Instead of grappling with this complexity, Tia instead suffered with deep feelings of guilt. She admitted, “I feel really guilty because I’m able find a job quicker than he is. . . . ”

As a Black woman, I was somewhat familiar with Tia’s anger, sadness, and guilt from the many experiences of witnessing Black men in my life silently labor in the trauma of implicit and explicit racism. As a Black woman, the poignancy of racial oppression has often made it difficult for me to fully appreciate the clashing tension between race and gender socialization, which in turn made it hard for me to initially recognize it in the relationship between Tia and Dave. I asked Tia whether she had ever expressed her guilt feelings to her partner before. She replied, “This is my first time saying it out loud. . . . I feel guilty but I’m also afraid.”

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I began to explore with Tia how her guilt showed up in her relationship with Dave. She replied that she often feared that “he will leave.” Shocked by this statement, Dave asked, “Why do you think I’ll leave?” With a sad calm voice, she continued: “The other night we went to dinner. I just wanted to pay for the dinner, and we got into an argument and by the end of it, you said I was showing off and not letting you be a man.” Once again, I am sure that as a woman she has been socialized not to outshine her male counter- part, to downplay her accomplishments, even to silence her voice. On the other hand, racially she has been socialized to be mindful of the myriad ways in which Black men have been emasculated historically. Like so many Black women partnered with Black men, she has to navigate both racial- and gender- induced silence.

I asked what meaning she made of her partner’s statement. She felt that Dave was essentially letting her know that he thinks she is better than he is and that she is controlling him and not letting him be the (strong Black) man in the relationship, “just because I wanted to pay for dinner.” With agitation, Dave added, “I just need her to fall back and stop asking me how I’m doing. . . . I don’t need to be reminded that I’m not taking care of my responsibilities.”

This was a big step for the couple. They were pushing themselves to chal- lenge their voicelessness and to risk sharing some difficult emotions. In an effort to get them to delve more into their deeply entrenched race- and gender- laden couple dynamics, I encouraged Dave to ask Tia why she seemed to focus so much on his emotions and how he perceives her. He turned to her and ner- vously and guardedly posed the question. Tia responded by confiding in him that she was fearful that he saw her as “the controlling Black woman, who emasculates her man.” I then encouraged her to think about and then share with Dave where is it that she believes this fear comes from. She responded, “You hear people say it all the time. You hear the ridiculous number of ‘70% of successful Black women are not married’ because Black women are too aggressive and Black men are intimidated by our success.” She added, “I don’t want to be that ‘Black woman.’ ”

Once again, I (CIA) recognized all too well Tia’s impossible dilemma: She has to be assertive as a Black person to combat the daily slights associated with racism. However, “gender scripts” would suggest that she should be pas- sive and nonassertive as a woman. Now in tears, Tia continued, “I know that woman . . . she is my aunt, who was too bourgeois and bossy for her man, and they got divorced . . . and my single Black friends who have the ‘I can do it by myself’ attitude that makes Black men run the other way.”

I explained to Tia how she is trapped between what it means to be a woman and what it means to be Black. It was also an optimal moment to point out how race and racial trauma were silent assassins in their relationship. I asked her to give serious thought to which Black woman she ideally wanted to be if not “that woman.” She replied, “The woman who works so hard to not let her sadness, anger, fear and guilt show. . . . I’m just so worried he will think I don’t care about him.” After a long pause, staring at her partner, she added,

Therapy with Heterosexual Black Couples 427

“To be really honest, I’m afraid that you’ll resent me because I’m doing well in my career and you’re not.”

Halfheartedly, Dave indicated that he does not resent Tia. He just did not appreciate that she was “doing too much” and focusing on him “too much. . . . I just need her to chill and give me space.” She pushed back with slight annoyance. “I can’t chill or fall back, you don’t talk to me. Then you make comments like ‘you’re showing off’. . . . I’m not trying to control you. I’m just trying to be supportive.” Now looking at Dave, she added, “We went to school together . . . we worked hard.” Reaching out to him, she said, “You work hard . . . it’s hard to see my career moving ahead, while yours is in limbo. ‘Corporate America’ may be a bit kinder to me because they see me as less threatening, but I feel your pain, I see it, and I don’t know what to do with it.” With tenderness, Dave replied, “I don’t want you to do anything with it . . . that’s why I don’t talk to you about it anymore, but I do fear that you will leave me behind.”

Dave, like Tia, is combatting internalized demons of racial degradation and trauma that are interspersed with his patriarchal male socialization. Dave’s day-to-day functioning never seems free of recurring negative racial stereotypes that haunt him and his relationship. He expressed that he was happy for Tia but that sometimes he was afraid that she would think he was not working hard enough to find another job. In a slightly angry tone, he said, “Sometimes, I’m afraid that she thinks this whole thing is my fault—not get- ting a promotion, can’t find a job . . . she sees me as the typical Black guy.” I asked him what he meant by “the typical Black guy.” Gazing away from Tia and looking down at his feet, “the lazy Black guy who just sits around, com- plains that the system is holding him down and he can’t find a job. . . . I don’t want to be that person, and I’m afraid she sees me as that person.”

I made explicit Dave’s courage in identifying his fear, as well as his unex- pressed worry that Tia saw him as “the typical Black guy.” I validated Dave and Tia for their openness and willingness to share their thoughts and emo- tions. I also made it a point to emphasize their support and care for each other in their efforts to navigate an insurmountable experience with implicit racism and negative racial stereotypes about Black women and men. I pointed out to them that it seemed both of them had been having a conversation with their respected assaulted selves, but not with each other.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY

Working effectively with Black heterosexual couples requires therapists to possess the same knowledge, experience, and clinical skills that are vital for treating all couples and families, the ability to empathize with multiple per- spectives while clarifying spouses’ different positions and encouraging part- ners to listen and negotiate openly and honestly with each other. Additionally, therapists treating Black couples must also be able to “think racially” and

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have the tools to effectively conceptualize, uncover, and manage a host of underlying issues that are connected to race. The process of thinking racially means that the therapist is always mindful of how race is a major organizing principle in the everyday lives of the couple and the therapist, as well as in the therapeutic process. When we are working with Black couples, we are always thinking about race and its widespread impact, whether we are overtly talk- ing about it or not. It is always informing how we see things, the questions we ask, and our understanding of how it informs how the couple makes sense out of their lives. Even when race is not identified as the presenting problem, it is always a powerful backdrop against which the lives of Black couples occur. For instance, Tia and Dave came to therapy ostensibly for “communication issues.” But intertwined with their presenting problem was how internalized racial and gender- based messages made the couple’s relationship to the pre- senting problem more complex. Layers of these complexities can also be seen in Black same-sex couples and Black poor and working- class couples in that these couples have to deal with the effects of heterosexism, heteronormativity, and/or classism, respectively, that many Black middle- to upper-class hetero- sexual couples don’t have to encounter.

In addition to the skills and knowledge that all therapists need to work with distressed couples, they need a strong racially informed meta- framework for working with Black couples to effectively address issues of race and racial trauma.

We recommend the following steps and procedures for integrating race into the therapeutic process. Close adherence to these guiding principles enables therapists to develop a racial lens that is another prism through which the couple, their seemingly idiosyncratic couple dynamics, the therapeutic process, and the vision and wisdom of the therapist might be perceived.

Phase 1: Affirmation and Acknowledgment

During the early stages of treatment, it is important for therapists to overtly affirm and acknowledge the potential influences race has on the lives of Black couples and families. In explaining one’s therapeutic framework for working with Black clients, it is important for therapists to acknowledge the signifi- cance of race as an organizing principle and its effects on the mental, emo- tional, and relational health of Black people. This objective may be achieved either by the therapist conducting an explicit conversation with the couple about the role and significance of race or by including issues of race as part of the customary intake and assessment. For white therapists, these processes can afford the opportunity to discuss, when appropriate, the therapeutic process and how cross- racial issues might be relevant in the therapy. For Black and other therapists of color, it could be an opportunity to discuss racially based similarities or differences. The acknowledgement and affirmation of race can be instrumental in creating a therapeutic milieu in which couples can feel a greater sense of freedom and permission to discuss challenging race- related

Therapy with Heterosexual Black Couples 429

issues that are often difficult to acknowledge and address, both inside and outside of therapy.

Phase 2: Creating Space for Race

Once the significance of race has been established, it is important for thera- pists to continue to “create space” for race and related conversations, even if or when they might appear tangential to the therapy process. Many Black clients will seldom directly name race or identify their experiences with race- related stressors overtly and explicitly. The recurring experiences of having race- related conversations routinely denied, dismissed, and discouraged often teach Black people to suppress direct expressions about race as a tactic of survival. Thus it is imperative for therapists to closely listen and attend to the unspoken words, gestures, affect, and other subtle indicators of race- related stressors and pain. It is critical for the therapist to pay attention to both what is said and what is not said about race. Validation of the client’s disclosures and utterances about race is crucial— not whether the therapist agrees or dis- agrees with the experience or what he or she is expressing, but rather overtly affirming that what is being expressed constitutes a legitimate perspective for the client. With humility, curiosity, and patience, therapists have to be con- scientious and proactive in pursuing and encouraging detailed conversations about race. It is extremely helpful when the therapist can be intentional about engaging with clients about details of the ways in which race informs their experiences with the stressors and difficulties they are encountering in their romantic relationships.

Phase 3: The Process of Naming and Validation

Creating space for race allows therapists to make explicit the implicit expe- riences of racial oppression. This process of making the implicit explicit requires the therapist to name and validate specific influences that the con- stant exposure to racial oppression has had on the mental, emotional, and relational well-being of each partner and on the couple. During this process, it is important for the therapist to be acutely attuned to the influences of other contextual factors, such as gender, in naming and validating the experiences of clients suffering from racial oppression. For example, due to patriarchy and gender oppression, Black men and women may experience the invisible trauma wounds of racism differently. The case vignette with Dave and Tia was a poignant display of how race and gender oppression can be so intricately entangled within the dynamics of a couple’s relationship and undergird the presenting problem.

Moreover, within most heterosexual relationships, the experiences of Black males often inadvertently receive greater focus and attention than those of Black females. Therefore, it is crucial that the therapist not replicate societal patterns by an unbalanced focus on naming and validating each individual’s

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experiences or not recognizing the different needs of the man and woman in naming their experiences.

The therapist must support the couple in identifying and verbalizing the emotional effects of coupling within the contexts of racial oppression and trauma. This is often achieved by assisting each individual to give voice to the buried emotions, such as anxiety, fear, sadness, guilt, shame, rage, loneliness, humiliation, indifference, and so forth, that they each experience with racial oppression.

Phase 4: Unmasking Invisible Racial Trauma Wounds

To help clients understand the effects of living in a racially oppressive con- text, explicit conversations about important issues— such as white superiority, Black inferiority, and internalized negative stereotypes— must be a fundamen- tal component of the process of therapy. Confronting these issues requires therapists to carefully listen for and pay close attention to implicit and explicit statements, gestures, or vibes of comparing oneself, one’s partner, and one’s relationship experiences with those of whites or other racial groups. Often, these comparisons generate fault finding in oneself, one’s partner, or in all Black relationships (e.g., “all Black men [or all Black women] are X and Y”; “Black relationships are filled with pain”). Additionally, these experiences of racial trauma can also bring about unspoken anxieties of being associated with negative racial stereotypes attached to Black people, as the case vignette with Dave and Tia illustrated (e.g., “I don’t want to be the lazy Black man” or “He thinks I’m a controlling Black woman”). Experiences with racial trauma can also lead individuals to turn inward rather than to their partners for sup- port, creating an unexpressed sense of inadequacy or an assaulted sense of self (e.g., “I’m not a good enough . . . ”). Careful confrontation of these indicators can help to externalize invisible wounds of shame, guilt, blaming (self or oth- ers), hopelessness, powerlessness, and worthlessness. The therapist’s attun- ement to clients’ emotional reactions during this process must provide ample space for the therapeutic “holding” of their wounds. Providing the space to “hold” clients’ wounds requires that the therapist validate clients’ experiences and not reject or shame them for the negative racial stereotypes or the deval- ued sense they have internalized. A nonshaming space allows for acknowl- edgment and further validation of the client’s ability to identify other, more deeply rooted negative messages. The process of acknowledgment allows the therapist to highlight the damaging effects that race- related trauma wounds have had on the couple relationship. In accomplishing this, the therapist is able to gently challenge the ways in which negative internalized racial messages and the assaulted sense of self prevents the couple from being their authentic selves and thus impedes their efforts to cultivate the relationship they desire. The process of unmasking may also require the therapist to explore the fol- lowing issues:

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•• “Where did you receive the negative internalized racial messages about yourself, your partner, and/or Black relationships?”

•• “In what ways do internalized racial messages define you, your behav- ior, and how you communicate and interact with your partner?”

•• “What are the recurring emotions that your experiences with racism and racial oppression evoke in you? How do you manage these emo- tions when they appear?”

•• “How do the two of you support each other when you have been hurt by racial slights in other areas of your life, such as work, school, and so forth?”

Some clients may deny the existence of any internalized negative racial messages, even when they are unconsciously voicing devaluating messages or minimizing their experiences with racial oppression. In such instances, it is important for the therapist to be sensitive to the ways clients may be attempt- ing to protect themselves from the painful emotions of racial trauma. It is also important for the therapist to explore with clients how they were able to safeguard against the internalization of negative racial messages that are per- vasive for anyone living in a context of racial oppression. Extolling clients for the coping strategies they have developed to contend with these subtle forms of bigotry and oppression can be a pivotal component of this stage of the treat- ment process. The therapist can also simultaneously encourage and challenge clients to be curious about whether there might be internalized negative racial messages that they are hesitant to explore.

Phase 5: Fostering Emotional Support and the Legacy of Connection to Heal Racial Trauma Wounds

The major focus of this phase is to highlight the ancestral instincts and the enduring fortitude that Black people have demonstrated in the struggle to survive against seemingly insurmountable odds. Racially based expressions such as “having each other’s backs,” “together we are strong,” and “we shall overcome” speak to the legacy and African heritage of interdependency in relationships, including male– female romantic relationships. These strongly held beliefs are deeply anchored within the experiences of our ancestors and our continuous experiences with racial trauma and oppression. It is impor- tant for clinicians to draw on the strengths of the Black experience to help Black men and women maintain enduring romantic relationships that allow them to communicate and listen to each other with empathy and compassion. One of the most devastating effects of invisible racial trauma wounds is that they often alienate Black men and women from each other. They create a shame-based relational context in which women and men perceive each other as enemies instead of as romantic partners (Awosan & Hardy, 2017). Facili- tating experiences in therapy that promote connection and emotional support

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is essential in helping Black couples communicate, listen, and empathize with each other’s struggles, pain, and trauma. Assisting Black men and women to affirm their emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs with each other aids them in protecting their love from the invisible wounds of racial trauma.

Self‑of‑the‑Therapist Considerations

We believe that self-of-the- therapist work is essential to the development of therapists for effective clinical work with all clients. As Black clinicians and educators, we are keenly and painfully aware of how Eurocentric and white- oriented clinical training is in virtually all clinical disciplines. The central- ity of whiteness permeates every dimension of clinical education, training, and practice. It is designed to produce good, well- trained white therapists regardless of their respective racial backgrounds. Thus not only is self-of-the- therapist work necessary for general clinical competency, but it is also manda- tory for working effectively with Black and other couples of color. Therapy training must attend specifically to the therapist’s racial self. We believe it is unethical to entrust the hardships of Black couples to clinicians of any race who have not spent considerable time exploring how race shapes their views of themselves and of the racialized world in which we all live.

A therapist’s racial self informs what one sees or does not see with regard to race. One’s racial lens is further hampered and/or enhanced by whether he or she is racially privileged or subjugated. It also informs the types of ques- tions therapists ask or fail to ask and provides a powerful prism through which much of the therapy process is viewed.

REFERENCES

Awosan, C. I., & Hardy, K. V. (2017). Coupling processes and experiences of never married heterosexual Black men and women: A phenomenological study. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 43(3), 463–481.

Awosan, C. I., & Opara, I. (2016). Socioemotional factor: A missing gap in theorizing and studying Black heterosexual coupling processes and relationships. Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships, 3(2), 24–51.

Franklin, A. J., & Boyd- Franklin, N. (2000). Invisibility syndrome: A clinical model of the effects of racism on African- American males. American Journal of Ortho- psychiatry, 70(1), 33–41.

Hardy, K. V. (2013). Healing the hidden wounds of racial trauma. Reclaiming Chil- dren and Youth, 21(4), 24–28.

Watson, M. F. (2013). Facing the Black shadow. Unpublished manuscript.

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In family therapy literature, a focus on multiculturalism has enabled practitio- ners to develop culture- specific practices when working with persons from dif- ferent ethnic groups, other than those of the dominant culture (McGoldrick, 2005). The term “multiculturalism,” as a societal orientation and concern, points to an emerging moral sensibility of the public in diverse contexts and orients its citizens to a more open, pluralist, and participant society. Implicit in this concern is the recognition of the potential for the silencing of marginal groups by the politically and culturally dominant. At the level of theory, it challenges cultural stereotypes and attributions of otherness and difference as “a view from nowhere” and relocates the latter view as a colonizing posture. Therefore, as a requirement of justice, the value aspirations and needs specific to a particular cultural group are accorded moral recognition within a multi- cultural stance. However, a multiculturalism that proliferates an endless fall- out of stories without acknowledging their interplay with the dominant cul- tural narratives with which they coexist will ultimately fail in its moral quest.

For the purpose of this chapter— subtitled “Marginal Illuminations”1— we are using an intracultural account to elaborate the particular story of one family that lives on the margins of Irish society. Like other welfare recipients, they are eminently vulnerable to state interventions.

C H A P T E R 3 0

A Fifth‑Province Approach to Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context

Marginal Illuminations

Imelda Colgan McCarthy Nollaig Byrne

The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intent, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention.

—MikhAil BAkhTin (1981, p. 293)

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COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND THE EMERGENCE OF A FIFTH‑PROVINCE APPROACH2

In an attempt to redress this top-down stance of state services, community development and other associated projects, politically and spiritually informed by narratives of justice, speak to the possibility of an authentic cultural part- nership with marginalized groups. Campbell, Tamasese, and Waldegrave (1998) of the Just Therapy group in New Zealand refer to the ethical respon- sibility of dominant groups to enter into a decolonizing awareness and that of practitioners as “a sacred task to bring health and welfare to the people.” In their work, as in our own, the coauthoring of new stories (White & Epston, 1990) is simultaneously addressed to the particular cultural experiences of the people we work with while remembering the overarching dominant cultural narratives that constrain them.

Since the mid-1980s, we have worked under a team name of the Fifth Province Associates (FPA). During this time we have collaborated with a col- league, Sister Jo Kennedy, who has undertaken a key role in forwarding com- munity action– education– therapy projects in a deprived community (Ken- nedy, 1994). As an experienced professional family therapist and a member of a religious community, she was sharing housing with the people in a high- density public housing project. Her presence there was a sign and a witness to the inception of noncolonizing practices addressed to the dire needs of this community. Initially, as an “outsider,” she had to sustain much hostility and suspicion from the community. With time, her witness to the hardship of the day-to-day life of the people made her an acceptable community member. In turn, our team was given the opportunity by Sister Jo to develop a more refined, focused political and spiritual orientation for our own practice. We have learned much from her ongoing work marked by the love implicit in com- mitment, creativity, and physical endurance.

Out of our many collaborative conversations with Sister Jo and her work in developing community initiatives and becoming kindred in that commu- nity, we were privileged to an “insider’s” perspective drawn from the weave and tangle of many stories told to her, events she has witnessed, and the advo- cacy she articulated as a member of the community.

The Metaphor of the Fifth Province

The issues of intracultural diversity and silenced voices have been concerns for us since we began to work together in 1981. The story we tell in this chapter is the story of just one particular kind of intercultural marginalization: the story of a family who lives in poverty. Due to processes of marginalization that occur in our society when those who are poor are socially excluded, the stories of their lives on the edge are often silenced. Thus in our work we have imag- ined that listening to these silenced accounts becomes an ethical and political act of no small significance. Out of these concerns and imaginings we adopted

Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context 435

the metaphor of the Fifth Province (Byrne & McCarthy, 1995; Colgan, 1992; Kearney, Byrne, & McCarthy, 1989; McCarthy & Byrne, 1995; McCarthy, 1994). The metaphor is taken from Celtic mythology and the work of two Irish philosophers, Mark P. Hederman and Richard Kearney (1977). It is in itself a metaphor for multicultural perspectives, as it refers to the possibility of holding together multiple stories and social realities in dialogue. As such, for us, it is a province of possibilities, of imagination, and of ethics.

Toward an Ethics of Imagination

Imagining another calls for an ethic of care. To imagine the life of another is to adopt a stance of ethical responsibility toward the other. Placing such a stance within a therapeutic domain that features issues of social justice is also a political act. Thus, imagining a Fifth- Province dis- position3 in systemic therapies is, for us, about occupying a borderline territory between one’s own world and that of those we are in conversation with. Richard Kearney (1996) has outlined an ethics of imagination that is underpinned by three main prin- ciples. The first is the acceptance of the other. The second principle refers to the right of all to be heard and to have the testimony to their experiences witnessed. The final principle beckons the imagining of future possibilities. We incorporate these principles when we utilize the Fifth- Province metaphor. As a province of possibilities in language and imagination, it also becomes a province or domain of ethics. If those from marginalized groups are to be able to tell the stories of their lived experiences in a context in which normative compliances are expected, then we must also recognize that there is a dan- ger of subjecting them to silence and co- option (Byrne & McCarthy, 1995). We would hold that imposing normative expectations on marginalized clients without reference to their contexts of adversity constitutes a colonial thera- peutic stance that distances us from the subjugated “other.”

Intercultural Marginalization and Systemic Therapy

With a history of long periods of colonization behind us, we as Irish therapists wanted to honor our long oral tradition of storytelling of survival. We also imagined that life on the edges would produce stories that might not reside comfortably within many of our normative discursive frames. As such, we held strongly that it was the responsibility of therapists from Western tradi- tions to reflect upon their own practices and theories and not to expect clients to fit to the norms of their professional practice. If this latter occurs, there is a danger that both the therapist and the clients will blame the client for the lack of fit. In culture- blind practices, therapists can become nonconscious oppres- sors in the guise of helping (Kearney et al., 1989; Byrne & McCarthy, 1995; Lorenz, 1994). Under such a regime, clients have little choice but to subjugate themselves further in order to avail themselves of help. As such, they are in danger of being caught up in their own betrayal.

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STORIES AND CONVERSATIONS IN THE FIFTH PROVINCE: A FAMILY–PROFESSIONAL NETWORK

In our collaboration with Sister Jo, we have had the opportunity to have con- versations with families judged to be incorrigible or inaccessible by an array of professional services. In convening family– professional network meetings in which Sister Jo’s community alliance with the family provided cultural safety for the work, it was possible for families to assert their concerns and reclaim responsibility for culturally fitting solutions. We have experienced these emer- gences from a process in which the family’s particular account could be spo- ken of without fear of correction or censure. Furthermore, we as profession- als, previously limited by an outsider’s view, sometimes heard for the first time stories that were crucial in the family’s self- understanding.

The work we re- present in this chapter includes a paternal grand- mother, Chrissie; a separated father, Joe; a single mother, Mary; and their six children— Tricia, 21 years; Brendan, 18 years; Jack, 16 years; Margaret, 14 years; Peter, 12 years (severely mentally and physically disabled and not pres- ent at the interviews); and Joseph, 10 years.4 Also included are the probation officer, a school attendance officer, Sister Jo, and the Fifth Province Team (ourselves and our colleague Philip Kearney,5 who conducted the interviews).

Throughout the excerpts that follow, we highlight a Fifth- Province dis- position in which a family’s tale of outrageous and harmful acts, for which State censure is never far removed, is transformed. In its place, through a con- versation or inquiries pitched at the extreme edges of risk, a story of struggle involving family dismemberment and death facilitates an authentic expression of this family’s tragedies, to be told in their own words. In our experience, this opportunity to speak in this way creates possibilities for new and less harm- ful connections to emerge. The image of an injured child becomes at first the herald of guilt and later the liberating symbol of innocence (see Figure 30.1).

In the first meeting with us, Mary, Sister Jo, the school attendance offi- cer, and the probation officer attended. Mary explained that she had met with and listened to the train of professionals who advised her on the merits of con- trolling and supervising her children, all to no avail. Of immediate concern was the fact that Margaret and Joseph had absented themselves from school and would soon become subject to a placement in a residential school by the courts. The older children, Tricia, Brendan, and Jack, were experiencing grave difficulties with drugs and violence, whereas Peter attended a special school for children with serious intellectual disabilities.

Despite the inventory of difficulties as described by Mary, her status as protector of her children was not in question. The clarity of her stance, voic- ing her care and love for her difficult children, was the familiar story of many mothers in that community for whom Sister Jo was a resource person. By anchoring ourselves to this mother’s concern, it became possible for us to imagine the possibility of speaking to the children on the mother’s behalf, not by way of displacing her or inserting societal authority. In this way, it became

Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context 437

possible to speak with and listen to the children in a way that honored their mother and did not threaten her position. This professional acknowledgment of the mother’s perspective provided an area of cultural safety for the chil- dren, in which they might not be constrained from speaking to a group of listeners (client– professional system) about what most mattered to them.

We went on to suggest that the second network meeting might also include the children. Mary and Sister Jo agreed. To everybody’s surprise, there was no difficulty in assembling them all, apart from Peter. Although their day-to-day lives suggested harmful activity, dispersal, and disconnec- tion, it soon became clear that the possibility of family connection and con- tinuity held a much more precious place in their lives. Using excerpts from the second meeting, we attempt to show how our inquiry, which we refer to as “questioning at the extremes,” threaded together a family narrative of tragic desperation, in which forces of extinction and survival coexisted in an uncommonly close partnership. Questioning at the extremes is a mode of inquiry that directs questions toward revealing the extreme possibilities of a presented story. As an example, in this scenario, killing oneself was the assumed extension of drug and alcohol abuse. The word “harm” was intro- duced by Mary in the first session, as she expressed her ongoing concerns about her children’s dangerous actions. It thus became the “motif” that pro- posed danger to, if not extinction of, individual family members. As Mary’s central concern for her children, it guided the inquiry to a point at which the children could give an account.

38 38

21 18 16 14 12 10

Tricia Brendan Jack Margaret Peter Disabled

Joseph

Probation Officer

School Attendance Officer

Sister Jo

Fifth- Province Team

Joe Unemployed

Married 11 yrs., Sep 10 yrs.

Mary Housewife

FIGURE 30.1. The family– professional network.

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A Question of “Harmful” Extremes

TherApisT: Who is it that has taken overdoses in this family?

BrenDAn: Me and Jack.

TherApisT: Just the two of you?

BrenDAn: Yeah. Me and Jack, mostly.

TherApisT: (to Tricia) Have you taken overdoses?

TriciA: I have.

BrenDAn: One.

JAck: Two.

TriciA: I take a lot of tablets in the day.

TherApisT: Yeah, but have you taken deliberate overdoses?

TriciA: Yeah. Twice.

TherApisT: Twice. You tried to kill yourself?

TriciA: (looking confusedly to Mary) No.

BrenDAn: No, he [Jack] is the only one who tried to kill himself.

TherApisT: He is the only one who has tried to kill himself (Jack nods agreement) . . . using tablets or what?

JAck: Tablets and drink.

What is surprising here is the willingness of the three older children to give first- person accounts of their involvement in acts of deliberate self-harm through drug and alcohol abuse. As is seen in this segment, the children cor- rect a common professional assumption that overdoses refer to deliberate self- harming behaviors. Rather, there is a whole range of behaviors involving the abuse of intoxicants that is a structured feature of their community. However, they insisted on the distinction between intentional (Jack) and nonintentional (Tricia and Brendan) effects of self- harming behaviors.

The Risk of Suicide: A Mother and Son

TherApisT: (to Mary) And which of them do you think is most likely to harm themselves, through overdosing or whatever?

MAry: I think mostly Jack. He can be about the most depressed, in that . . . he is inclined to . . . Brendan will take tablets but it might not be with the intention to kill himself— but he [Jack] would just keep on taking them. He has often walked over to the flats, where there are drugs around, and he was 3 days out of his mind, and I had him taken out of the flats and home.

TherApisT: So would you think that Jack is the most likely candidate for suicide?

MAry: Yeah.

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TherApisT: And after Jack?

MAry: Brendan or Tricia, but I don’t know if they would just take them at the moment, but not think that they are going to . . . not really wanting to kill themselves.

TherApisT: Would you say that your mother might commit suicide, Bren- dan?

BrenDAn: If we keep on going on the way we are, she will.

TherApisT: You think so?

BrenDAn: Yeah.

TherApisT: When did you first think of that as a possibility?

BrenDAn: The last 4 or 5 months.

TriciA: I would say my mother would have taken her life long ago if my brother wasn’t the way he is today. She knows he is depending on her, you know.

TherApisT: Which brother, Peter?

TriciA: Peter, yeah. Peter is brain- damaged, too.

TherApisT: Yeah.

TriciA: He can’t walk or anything.

philip: So you think if it weren’t for him, your mother would have killed herself a long time ago?

TriciA: Ah, yes, if it weren’t for him she wouldn’t be here today or neither would we, you know.

TherApisT: I see. What would have happened?

TriciA: She would either have killed herself or left us.

TherApisT: I see, yeah.

BrenDAn: And we would be after driving her to do it.

Joseph: And if she had died, we would have killed ourselves.

BrenDAn: Then if she died, we would have killed ourselves, and if she went, everything would have been worse and worse and worse.

JAck: And we probably would have followed her.

TherApisT: Yeah, OK. . . .

Joseph: If she left us there would be nothing left of the family.

The theme of suicidal risk was developed by Mary in response to the therapist’s question, as she made distinctions among her children and con- firmed declarations already made by them. Staying within the thematic frame of suicide, the therapist raised the question as to whether Brendan, as the old- est son and commentator on family issues, considered his mother to be in this risk category. What followed from the children is an acutely stark and con- densed reply to an extreme question. This dialogue, which has the structure

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of a chorus, drew on and focused the question on the shared tragic experience of the family. Of cultural interest here is the fact that these barely literate chil- dren with poor attention skills and much intergroup aggression and conflict could produce in language a synchrony of voices of dramatic structure and intensity. Each response added to the emotional charge of the founding family narrative drawn from their shared experience— guilt and innocence.

From the children’s point of view, their mother as protector and caretaker was the most tragically affected by Peter’s injury, and this was the thread that maintained her tenuous presence in the family. This is the story that con- demned and bound the children to a guilty stance toward both their mother and Peter. In addressing this interminable self- condemnation, the team, through the therapist, referred to it as a “spell” cast over their lives from which they must be released. To discuss their liberation from this “spell,” we suggested a new convention of adults. At Mary’s suggestion the father and paternal grandmother would also be invited.

Sacrificial Losses: A Father and Son

The following excerpt of a conversation occurred in the third family– professional network meeting. The children’s father, Joe, and paternal grandmother, Chris- sie, attended, as Mary had considered them to have a powerful influence on the lives of her children. As the session progressed, it emerged that Peter’s accident, his disabilities, and his place in the family related not only to the children’s spell- bound state but now also to father’s helplessness and desperation. Peter, when he was 2 years old, fell through a refuse chute in the government- subsidized apartment block where the family lived. He was in the company of Brendan, then 8 years old. Joe wanted to wipe away the event by killing either himself or Peter. In recognizing Peter’s importance to Mary, he decided to “give up every- thing that meant anything to me” and leave the family.

TherApisT: We talked a little the two previous times we have been here about other major events, like Peter’s accident. . . .

Joe: That was just . . . that was . . . I wouldn’t even go into that now, you know what I mean? (Voice breaks.)

TherApisT: It is too upsetting?

Joe: I think I would still be at home today if that had not happened to Peter, you know. Because I know for a fact and she [Mary] knows as well if I was to stay in that house for 3 days with that young fellow, I would smother him.

TherApisT: I didn’t know that. (to Mary) Did you know that?

MAry: He came in one night and (to Joe) you were drunk and I was put- ting Peter to bed and you came up and you did say that to me.

Joe: I had the pillow and I was going to do it and I was crying and I said to her the only way I can. . . .

Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context 441

MAry: And I nearly lost my reason . . . I have never really forgotten that, you know. . . .

Joe: I mean you are looking at a child who was perfect and running around. It was unfortunate that it had to be him that it happened to.

MAry: But he is so lovable.

Joe: Like you see kids now running around with their toys and everything, know how wild he was and seeing him now . . . I mean that. . . .

TherApisT: Did you hear what Mary has just said, that he could be so lovable? Because I was very struck by your kids’ talk about how important Peter is in the family.

Joe: I mean Peter is everything, I mean, if anything happened to him now, I don’t know, like, but there is no way I could live with the guy, you know. I couldn’t live in the same house as him. I can’t even bear to look at him. Don’t get me wrong, every time I go up there and I see Peter, I think of the way he was. I cannot accept what happened to him.

TherApisT: Is that the hardest thing for you to accept?

Joe: Well, you put yourself in my shoes.

TherApisT: Sure . . . well, I can’t even begin to. . . . You have had many things to accept, I imagine.

Joe: I just will never accept that. That is just one thing I will never accept. I was praying that he would not even come out of the hospital. Like when they told us about the damage that was done to him and every- thing.

MAry: Well, I wanted him back no matter what way I got him back. I just wanted him.

Joe: We did not get Peter back.

TherApisT: And you are saying that that is the reason why you are not in the house, that is why you left?

Joe: Well, that was really the breaking point between me and her. She took a nervous breakdown. I was running to the hospital to her, I was running to the hospital in the morning, at dinnertime, and in the evening to Peter, and she was in hospital 6 or 7 months, whatever it was, and I was trying to manage the kids on my own, by myself. It was just too much. I just couldn’t cope, and that was it. I ended up cracking up myself then as well.

TherApisT: What happened?

Joe: Ah, well, I took a couple of overdoses (voice trembles) and that myself. Then I said to myself I would be better off getting rid of him rather than getting rid of myself. And I think I would have anyway.

TherApisT: And that is still the same for you?

Joe: Oh, yeah, I still feel the same way about it, yeah, even to the present day. I mean I have talked to her [Mary] of this before.

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MAry: No, I never heard those points so much before, I really didn’t.

TherApisT: Which ones?

MAry: About Peter, regarding him dead and that. Just one night he did it and I thought it. . . . I overlooked it because I thought you were just drunk that night. You were crying and that. I think I said it to you, and I have never forgotten it.

Joe: Yeah, I know, yeah.

MAry: But I didn’t think you felt that strongly. I thought it was because you were just drunk that night.

Joe: It is just like having a building, and you go away on holidays for a week and just looking, and your building is just condemned. I mean it is the same way with Peter. I mean Peter is going to need to be lifted around for the rest of his life. I mean there is no way he is ever going to be able to live a life.

TherApisT: Has it anything to do with the circumstances of his accident?

Joe: How do you mean?

TherApisT: How he got injured. Or is that irrelevant? Is the fact that he is now handicapped. . . .

Joe: How he got injured . . . and there are still an awful lot of lies being told about how Peter got injured, and I don’t think anybody has been able to face up to it, even up to the present day . . . exactly what hap- pened to Peter. It has never really come out into the open what really happened to Peter.

TherApisT: And who is most affected by that?

Joe: I don’t know, to tell you the truth, I don’t know.

TherApisT: I mean is it the two of you, or is it the children, or is it. . . .

Joe: Oh, I mean I know she was broken up something terrible about it. I mean I was broken up, but what could we do?

TherApisT: What I am asking about is the circumstances of the accident. You say that has never been dealt with. Is that right?

Joe: Oh, no, it was dealt with and all that in courts and everything like that, if that is what you mean.

TherApisT: No, no, I mean in terms of the way you get on with each other as people. Who gets blamed for it?

Joe: Who gets blamed for Peter’s accident?

TherApisT: Yeah.

Joe: Well, I always blame Brendan for Peter’s accident, and I always will.

TherApisT: And how does that affect your relationship with Brendan?

Joe: It doesn’t affect my relationship with Brendan now, because, I mean, he was only a child himself.

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The Peter who was remembered— the one who didn’t come back, the one condemned to “uselessness”—is an allegorical symbol of the family’s histori- cal experience of slum clearance.6 In cleaning up eyesores, did official culture forget their obligation to the people who, for generation after generation, gave birth, lived, and died in this place? It is as if Joe was here reminded of that abrupt transition from a home to a useless and condemned building when he thinks of his injured son. However, in his telling, part of the responsibility for Peter’s accident also resides within the family. It is this latter catastrophe that pushes him to further displacement. His leaving can then be seen not only as a separation from his wife or abandonment of his family but rather as a sacrifice to protect Peter’s life.

The therapist invited exaggerated comparison (a questioning at the extremes) between these two losses for Mary—Joe’s leaving and Peter’s injury. Chrissie, by way of validation, was in no doubt about the greater loss—“the injury to her son.” In this validation and her further statement—“because I think more of my sons than I would of my husband any day”—she cited the position of mother and child as central to “family.” Following this affirma- tion, Mary then found a way to include herself in a story of motherhood that again included a father.

TherapisT: (to Chrissie) Which do you think was the greater loss for Mary, the injury to Peter, what happened to him, or Joe leaving?

Chrissie: The injury to her son.

TherapisT: Was more than her husband leaving?

Chrissie: Um.

TherapisT: You are very clear about that.

Chrissie: Um.

TherapisT: (to Mary) Do you agree?

Chrissie: Because I think more of my sons than I would of my husband any day.

TherapisT: Did I catch that right?

Chrissie: I think more of my sons than I would of my husband any day.

TherapisT: Yes, that is what I thought you said, yes. Would that be the same for you, Mary?

Mary: Yes, well, I brought them into the world, you know. He is part of both of us, really, but still I love them all, if it happened to any of them I would have still felt the same way. It wouldn’t have been important.

Joe: I think I would still be in the home today if that had not happened to Peter, you know.

In a confessional autobiographical mode, Joe, Chrissie, and Mary made manifest to a group of listeners the criminal and the tragic narratives that

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authorize their lives. The unity of this account stands in stark contradiction to the moral sensibility of normative conventions. It draws together the “jus- tice” exacted from father’s “choices” in the family and a pathos of failure and weakness in his exclusion. A self- justificatory appeal moved between lived experience and anticipated evaluative judgments. Joe’s remark, “Well, you put yourself in my shoes” and the therapist’s rejoinder, “Sure . . . well, I can’t even begin to,” speaks to an acknowledgment of the incommensurability of discourses and an authentic distance of positions between the two speakers in this instance.

The Injured and the Innocent: A Connecting Narrative between Statutory Mandates and a Family’s “Guilt”

From a position of distance and the expectation of normative evaluation, the team was called upon by the family’s story to register a response beyond a passive and condemnatory listening. The image of Peter, everywhere evident in the family’s account, as the injured and the innocent was the resonant key that opened the many- layered narrative of guilt and innocence. This is the centripetal image that held the personal and political narratives of injus- tice, guilt, and innocence. Peter, the unspeaking one, became the allegorical lodestone for both the professionals and the family members. His innocence pointed to possibilities for reauthoring, through which the family members and professionals might move beyond blame and counterblame and in which the innocence of the family might be glimpsed by all. We in the team began to ask ourselves, “What is it that Peter might see when he looks at his fam- ily? What is it that Peter asks for?” He was the bearer of the most injury and yet did not blame or accuse. We imagined that he saw the family members as they would wish to see themselves if they were not blighted by adversity, failure, and self- condemnation. Here is our attempt to incorporate an ethical imagining.

The Team’s Message

TherApisT: (to Joe) The story you have told us about Peter is absolutely central . . . it seems that the family’s possibilities . . . in a sense stopped with Peter’s accident. That the possibilities of people in this family going on to a life of happiness and fulfillment stopped because of Peter’s injury and his handicap. . . . It is as if when you look into his face you say something like, “I cannot enjoy my wife, my kids, my family because of what happened to you.” It almost comes across that everybody in the family is under a spell. That because this child was injured and handicapped, “we are not free.” In a sense it is as if he has all the innocence. . . .

Joe: (Nods.) Yeah.

Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context 445

TherApisT: And everybody else has all the guilt. So that is what we now see as the spell your family is under and that it is for you people to decide whether that is going to continue or not. Because if you don’t, there is no doubt but that the outside society (pointing to profession- als) will intervene.

Joe: Um.

TherApisT: And they will come and place your kids in care, and they will be doing it for the best reasons in the world. But somewhere in there, there is the possibility to change that for yourselves. We imagine that, if we could see the world, see the family, through Peter’s eyes, we would see only the good side—being taken care of, people smil- ing at him, people doing things for him. I would say he would see an awful lot of good about the people in this family.

Joe: Ah, yeah, I would agree with that all right, like if it was Peter look- ing out and, like, the way he is, yeah, of course he would, yeah.

TherApisT: He had an extraordinary powerful influence in this family. It is as if everyone is going around under a sentence since his accident, really.

Joe: Well, that is what the priest said to us. He said it to us . . . the priest in the hospital. “This is going to change your lives completely. When you walk outside the door now, after you know the news, you know how bad things are, it is going to be a completely different world out there. Even the road you walk on is going to seem different.”

TherApisT: OK, well, I am saying that I believe it doesn’t have to be like that always. . . . It seems to me that you have made a huge sacrifice since then. You gave up a lot.

Joe: I gave up everything that meant anything to me.

TherApisT: Yeah. I think Mary gave up a lot, too.

Joe: She did, of course, yeah.

This is the team’s acknowledgment that a professional stance is never “innocent” (McCarthy, 1991; Andersen, 1995). Most professional discourses are shot through with normative and professional judgments that inevitably collide with marginalized personal accounts (Byrne & McCarthy, 1995). Peter’s transformation was a blight cast on the family, cutting Joe adrift and spellbinding the children in self- destructive and violent disarray. Mary’s remark, “I wanted him back, no matter what way I got him,” expressed a mother’s valuing of a life, however disabled, as the deepest affirmation of an ethics of care. The therapist addressed Joe, as the bearer of guilt.

TherApisT: Maybe you have paid whatever dues have to be paid and maybe for your kids’ sake you need to . . . perhaps . . . stop paying

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them. I don’t know, it is just a thought, because otherwise the kids may think they have to go on paying them forever.

Joe: I know, yeah (rubbing his eyes).

TherApisT: And that is the way they are behaving.

Joe: I know what you mean, like they feel guilty, as well.

TherApisT: Yeah, and they maybe think that the only way that they can be in the world is to continue to pay those dues, and they don’t have to. (Joe nods.) Because Peter is not asking it of them.

Joe: I know that, yeah.

In this inclusive move, Joe reconnected himself with his children in their mutual, but invalidating, narrative of guilt and failure. These family members were the invalids beyond Mary’s reach. Only Peter, standing outside condem- nation, was able to recognize them and asked nothing of them except care.

CONCLUSION

To sum up the views we have expressed in this chapter, a narrative of a unique family or personal situation will remain exotic and incomprehensible if it is isolated from the larger social and cultural context that pervades it. There- fore, the contextual interplay between the larger narratives of injustice that simultaneously and tragically penetrate the lives and the personal stories of the marginalized everywhere is constantly acknowledged. It is within this multilayered, resonating interplay that meaning is extended beyond the iso- lated words of both clients and professionals through the actions of speaking, inquiring, exaggerating, listening, and reflecting. What emerges, we believe, within this personalized and politicized co- creation is the possibility of an authentic emotional encounter.

In the years since this series of meetings, this family, for their part, has continued to exhibit their archetypal shape, although its members now hold themselves somewhat more aloof from professional intervention. Sister Jo remains as a neighborly resource to members of this family and to others in the community. The probation and school attendance officers reported a dramatic decrease in tension and experienced a release from the impossible double agendas of and contradictions between social control and therapeutic support in the ensuing period.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is dedicated to Sister Jo and the family. We also acknowledge Philip Kear- ney, our colleague and dear friend of many years.

Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context 447

NOTES

1. It is a feature of Celtic manuscripts, such as the eighth- century Book of Kells, to have major illuminations in the margins.

2. The Fifth- Province approach takes its name from the ancient Celtic myth and metaphor of the Fifth Province and its orientation from the work of two Irish philosophers, Mark P. Hederman and Richard Kearney (1977). In the work of this team, the metaphor of the “Fifth Province” enables a re- viewing of the issues of power, justice, and language in relationships. In the words of the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, the Fifth Province is that place of us which is open to the other. The Fifth Province may have existed, or it may not. There are many ver- sions. Some say it was a province of imagination and possibility that was “other” to the pragmatic concerns of the “real” world. Others site it as a druidic place at the center of Ireland where the four provinces met and where kings and chieftains came to receive counsel and resolve conflicts through dialogue. Today, its only remaining trace is in the Irish language, in which the word for “province” is coiced, which means “fifth” (Byrne & McCarthy, 2007; McCarthy & Byrne, 2001).

3. “Dis- position” is a term we use to illustrate movement between the taking of a position and the nontaking of one by a therapist. The term was first used by Sea- mus Heaney in the foreword to and issue of the Irish journal The Crane Bag, edited by Hederman and Kearney (1977).

4. The names of all family members have been changed.

5. Philip Kearney worked with us until 1995 and collaborated in the development of the ideas and practices outlined in this chapter.

6. The area in which this family lived had been originally built as a barracks for the British Army in the last century. During the 1960s, this housing had been demol- ished, at which time the families were abruptly dispersed, disrupting their commu- nity identity and sense of place. Some of the original families were rehoused here in what is now an area constructed of concrete blocks, courtyards, and towers.

REFERENCES

Andersen, T. (1995). Reflecting processes; acts of informing and forming: You can borrow my eyes, but you must not take them away from me! In S. Friedman (Ed.), The reflecting team in action: Collaborative practice in family therapy (pp. 11–37). New York: Guilford Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed., & C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Houston: University of Texas Press.

Byrne, N., & McCarthy, I. (2007). The dialectical structure of hope and despair: A Fifth Province approach. In C. Flaskas, I. McCarthy, & J. Sheehan (Eds.), Hope and despair in narrative and family therapy: Adversity, forgiveness and recon- ciliation (pp. 36–48). New York: Routledge.

Byrne, N. O’R., & McCarthy, I. C. (1995). Abuse, risk and protection: A Fifth Prov- ince approach to an adolescent sexual offense. In C. Burck & B. Speed (Eds.), Gender, power and relationships (pp. 46–68). New York: Routledge.

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Campbell, W., Tamasese, K., & Waldegrave, C. (1998). Just therapy. In M. McGold- rick (Ed.), Re- visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice (pp. 197–201). New York: Guilford Press.

Colgan, F. I. (1992). The Fifth Province model: Father– daughter incest disclosure and systemic consultation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University Col- lege, Dublin, Ireland.

Hederman, M. P., & Kearney, R. (1977). Editorial. The Crane Bag, 1(1), 10–12. Kearney, P. A., Byrne, N. O’R., & McCarthy, I. C. (1989). Just metaphors: Marginal

illuminations in a colonial retreat. Family Therapy Case Studies, 4, 17–31. Kearney, R. (1996). Narrative imagination: Between ethics and poetics. In R. Kearney

(Ed.), Paul Ricoeur: The hermeneutics of action (pp. 173–189). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Kennedy, J. (1994). Living and working in a poor community. In I. C. McCarthy (Ed.), Poverty and social exclusion [Special issue]. Human Systems, 5(3–4), 209–218.

Lorenz, W. (1994). Social work in a changing Europe. London: Routledge. McCarthy, I. C. (1991). Colonial sentences and just subversions: The potential for love

and abuse in therapeutic encounters. Feedback, 3, 3–7. McCarthy, I. C. (1994). Abusing norms: Welfare families and a fifth province stance.

In I. C. McCarthy (Ed.), Poverty and social exclusion [Special issue]. Human Systems, 5(3–4), 229–239.

McCarthy, I. C., & Byrne, N. O’R. (1995). A spell in the fifth province: It’s between meself, herself, yerself and yer two imaginary friends. In S. Friedman (Ed.), The reflecting team in action: Collaborative practice in family therapy (pp. 119–143). New York: Guilford Press.

McCarthy, I. C., & Byrne, N. O’R. (2001). Resisting daughters: Father– daughter child sexual abuse disclosure. In A. Cleary, M. Nic Ghiolla Phadraig, & S. Quin (Eds.), Understanding children: Vol. 2. Changing experiences and family forms (pp. 185–204). Dublin, Ireland: Oak Tree Press.

McGoldrick, M. (2005). Irish families. In M. McGoldrick, J. Giordano, & N. Garcia- Preto (Eds.), Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed., pp. 595–615). New York: Guilford Press.

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.

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Songs are pervasive across cultures and serve a myriad of functions in the human experience. They are often used to express and evoke thoughts and emotions. Songs can connect people to each other and to places, things, and ideas (Levitin, 2008). They may promote a sense of group identity, transmit group histories, values, and behavioral expectations, or communicate opposi- tion to existing norms. Through songs, people share, reflect on, and some- times critique what has been and what is and envision what could or should be. Given the many functions of songs, they can serve as valuable tools in therapeutic practice and organizing with individuals, groups, and commu- nities, especially those who are targets of historical and emerging forms of oppression and marginalization.

Using song to promote human well-being is not a new phenomenon. Social workers in 19th- century settlement houses incorporated song in their practice. Chicago’s Hull House served German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Rus- sian immigrants who faced hardships due to prejudice, marginalization, and discrimination in housing, employment, and education (d’Appollonia, 2012). Settlement house workers composed and taught immigrants songs to unify them across their diverse cultures and to raise consciousness about social jus- tice issues, such as sweatshops, child labor, and women’s suffrage (Smith, n.d.).

C H A P T E R 3 1

The Power of Song to Promote Healing, Hope, and Justice

Lessons from the African American Experience

Salome Raheim

This chapter is dedicated to the countless people of all racial/ethnic, cultural, religious and spiritual backgrounds— past and present— who have raised their voices in song for social justice.

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(Go to http://hullhousesongs.org to hear songs composed by settlement house worker Eleanor Sophia Smith.) Workers also encouraged singing culturally familiar songs among children and adult immigrants to support retention of their own cultural heritage while promoting respect for the heritage of others (Smith, 2016). Hull House cofounder Jane Addams advocated for including immigrants’ folk songs and stories in public school curricula to develop more effective and culturally responsive teaching methods (Addams, 1908/2017).

Despite social work’s early integration of song in professional practice, the therapeutic use of music developed as a separate and seemingly unrelated field (Horden, 2000). Beginning in the early 1900s, U.S. veterans’ hospitals used music to support the physical, emotional, and psychological healing of soldiers (American Music Therapy Association, 2017). The professional field of music therapy emerged from these applications and the numerous stud- ies that documented the effectiveness of this approach (Rorke, 1996). Music therapy and the use of singing are now recognized as among the many expres- sive arts therapies used by counseling professionals (Knill, Levine, & Levine, 2005).

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONER EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Despite contemporary applications and documented benefits of song, espe- cially in pursuing social justice aims, standard curricula of education and training programs for counselors, family therapists, psychologists, and social workers do not commonly include content on the therapeutic use of song. Consequently, outside of specialized training in music therapy and expressive arts therapy, focus on song is not as widespread as its value would suggest. Several factors may have limited the inclusion of song in professional educa- tion and training programs. One factor may be the Western commodification of culture that promotes a perception of song as primarily entertainment to be performed by artists— whether live or recorded— purchased, and consumed. Singing as part of spiritual and religious rituals may be an exception.

The relegation of song to the sphere of entertainment has led to largely ignoring the therapeutic value of song in “professional” spaces, especially in work with adults. I have often used recorded songs with students to explore responses to injustice. I have had a student call the use of songs in a gradu- ate course inappropriate. I suggest that this opinion may reflect a widely held view that songs are not appropriate in professional education and practice.

A starting point for preparing practitioners to use song in their work is, of course, to use song as a pedagogical tool in the classroom. Because songs can immediately connect the listener with the perspectives, experiences, and feelings of others— their joys, sorrows, delights and yearnings— songs are an effective and time- efficient classroom tool to promote perspective taking and development of empathy, as well as to provide a window to the experiences of others. Case studies may engage readers only cognitively, whereas a narrative

The Power of Song 451

song can convey a clear and compelling story and its related emotional content (Sartwell, 2006).

It is important for educators to anticipate the powerful feelings that songs can evoke for students (and for themselves) and to be prepared to process these feelings after listening to evocative songs. When sharing songs that include themes of oppression and trauma, educators must be mindful of the poten- tial for triggering students who have been directly or indirectly affected by similar experiences. Before playing songs with this potential, educators can alert students in advance and provide options for students to select alterna- tives to listening in class. Buffy Sainte- Marie’s (1966) “My Country ’Tis of Thy People You’re Dying” is an example of a song for which taking such care is important. This painfully evocative song provides a vivid narrative of U.S. oppression of Native Americans and its effects. In advance of the class ses- sion during which I planned to play this song, I would meet individually with Native American students enrolled in the class to discuss my plans, describe the song, and inquire about their level of comfort with being in class when the song was played. Students who were unfamiliar with the song had the option of listening to the song in advance, either with me or alone, to make their decision. Because it is impossible to know all of the possible trauma trig- gers among a class of students, a general announcement at least one class in advance is advisable for sensitive song content.

Engaging learners in reflecting on the value of song in their learning pro- cess is another pedagogical strategy to support and encourage them to develop the knowledge and skills needed to employ song in social justice practice with clients. The insights they gain through these reflections can be invaluable to their understanding of how powerfully songs can serve to expand perceptions, promote insight, link people, and other therapeutic aims.

Finally, educators can explore ways to incorporate songs at various stages of the counseling process. Elligan’s (2000) rap therapy is discussed later in this chapter and illustrates how using songs can support initial relationship forma- tion, assessment, intervention, and termination with urban youth. Similarly, as students are learning these stages, they can be invited to identify songs that are meaningful to them at each stage, as well as explore how they might invite clients to include songs toward therapeutic and supportive ends. In addition to the uses of song in professional practice explored in this chapter, students and clients may benefit from exploring other approaches, such as using song in couple therapy (Sherman & Fredman, 2013) and in dealing with grief and loss (Duffy, 2015). Although the traditions of counseling professions privilege talk, the power of song to promote healing, hope, and support social justice aims make it much too valuable to omit from clinical training and practice.

This chapter aims to illuminate ways that song has been used to pro- mote healing and hope while pursuing social justice aims, using the African American experience as an example. The goals of clinical intervention must go beyond personal insight and solving immediate problems to recognition of the effects of dominant systems of power on the issues that clients face.

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Otherwise, the experiences of individuals, families, and communities are decontextualized and perceived within a limiting framework of individual strengths and deficits. I use a narrative framework to analyze the role of song in the African American struggle against oppression and injustice, illustrating practice approaches that employ song as an important part of intervention.

A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON SONG

Narrative theory provides useful analytical tools to examine how songs serve to support people who are experiencing oppression and its effects. Because many songs are stories set to music, a narrative perspective is ideal for under- standing how songs may operate in people’s lives, because it emphasizes the principle that multiple realities exist and are socially constructed through our narratives (Combs & Freedman, 2012; White, 2011).

In their seminal work on narrative practice, White and Epston (1990) outlined the fundamental concepts of this collaborative, nonpathologizing approach:

•• People’s narratives or personal stories shape their lives and identities. •• People’s lives are multistoried, and they have multiple identities. •• People experience problems in their lives, but the person is not the

problem. The problem is the problem. •• When people experience problems or limitations, there is an accompa-

nying dominant narrative that supports a problem- saturated identity while marginalizing other identities.

Narrative theory recognizes that some broader narratives promote the dominance of particular social groups and institutions while marginalizing and subjugating others (White, 2002). Germane to this chapter are the domi- nant cultural narratives (i.e., dominant discourses) of racism, which construct identities of African Americans and other people of color as culturally, intel- lectually, and morally deficient (Omi & Winant, 2014).

The aim of narrative practice is to support people to restory (i.e., reau- thor) their lives, constructing narratives that enable them to confront and resist oppressive forces and their effects. Narrative practitioners engage in reauthor- ing conversations with individuals, families, and communities to assist them to construct empowering stories and to shape preferred identities. Reauthor- ing conversations link people to their knowledge, skills, abilities, and values and support development of “alternative story lines [that] are thickened and more deeply rooted in history” (White, 2005, p. 12).

Songs can accomplish several strategies to promote the agency of people who are targets of individual and institutionalized oppression. When songs resonate with our hopes and dreams, they can transport us and help us imag- ine a wider field of possibilities (Duffy, Lumadue, & Woods, 2001). As Duffy (2015) notes, “the music we carry within us also influences the dreams we

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create for ourselves” (p. 18). Narrative strategies that are particularly relevant to understanding the benefits of using song in the reauthoring process are: (1) naming, externalizing, and mapping the problem; (2) “re- membering”; and (3) documenting particular skills and local knowledge of individuals and com- munities. Each of these strategies assists in the development of a thick and rich narrative of a preferred, more empowered identity, in opposition to the problem- saturated narrative advanced by the dominant discourse.

Naming, Externalizing and Mapping the Problem

In many therapeutic approaches, problems are commonly viewed as internal to people (White, 2002). This perspective leads to interventions that focus on changing the person. By contrast, the narrative approach aims at addressing the effects of the problem rather than transforming the person (Combs & Freedman, 2012; White, 2002; White, 2011). Vital to this approach is the externalizing process of giving the problem a name and persona that exist outside of the person. Next, the mapping process identifies how the problem is affecting the person and others.

Unlike therapeutic practices that focus exclusively on the individual and family system, externalizing conversations facilitate examination of problems in the broader context of discourses of domination, including racism, sexism, classism, and other systems of oppression. Carey and Russell (2002) explain that such conversations open up “a range of possibilities for action that are not available when problems are located within individuals” (para. 5).

Naming, externalizing, and mapping engage people in understanding the power dynamics that affect their lives and in working toward their liberation from oppressive forces (Freire, 2000).

Re‑Membering

The Western discourse of the solitary self promotes isolating and limiting problem- saturated identities for members of marginalized groups. The nar- rative practice of “re- membering” conversations facilitates the construction of thick and rich stories of connection to significant figures. These figures (people, animals, or even inanimate objects) may be part of a person’s current or earlier life, known directly or indirectly— ancestors from many generations ago, historical figures, or even characters in movies. Re- membering conversa- tions explore the details of these connections. As people construct alternative narratives of expanded capacity, competence, and connection, dominant nar- ratives of limitation and isolation are contested, and their power in people’s lives is diminished.

Documenting Knowledge and Skills

Creating a record of what individuals and communities articulate as impor- tant during consultation sessions and community meetings is a critical aspect

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of the reauthoring process. These documents record “sparkling moments, val- ued stories and skills and knowledge . . . that are relevant to them addressing the current challenges they are facing” (Denborough, 2002, para. 1). This process enables people to become more aware of local knowledge and skills that have been discounted or rendered invisible by dominant discourses, fur- ther supporting the construction of thick and rich alternative and empowering narratives (Denborough, 2002).

Songs are an extremely useful way to support these narrative strategies. Enabling people to gain insights far beyond the intellectual level, the com- bination of music and story can elicit rich and powerful affective memories, dreams, and reflections (Neal, 2013). Songs may name, externalize, map, and frame problems in historical and societal contexts, supporting processes of re- membering and serving as narrative documents of local knowledge and skills.

Song and the African American Struggle against Racism

Sharing my reflections on the role of song in the African American struggle against oppression is deeply personal for me, as well as an important profes- sional endeavor. Many of the songs presented here are part of my lived experi- ence and my inheritance from African and African American ancestors. These songs connect me to them and keep our stories alive in me.

Understanding the role of song in the African American experience is inextricably linked to knowing our history. Although our long and proud his- tory begins in Africa, this discussion begins with the period of human chat- tel enslavement of Africans. During this shameful period of history, Africans were stolen from our homeland and held in chains in the underbelly of ships in deplorable conditions during the long voyage to the Americas. For the 12.5 million Africans who were kidnapped (Eltis & Richardson, 2010) and for their families and communities who lost them to the transatlantic slave trade, this was a time of great despair. The 10.7 million Africans who survived were sold at auction like cattle, forced to breed like livestock, and held in captivity as property to be used, abused, or sold at the buyer’s pleasure. We were power- less to protect ourselves, our children, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, parents, and partners from abuse and sale by those who enslaved us. We were forbid- den to keep our own names or speak our own languages and were forced to work for no compensation and usually with no legal route to freedom.

Under these inhumane conditions, my ancestors created songs. We sang to express our grief and our hopes. We sang to comfort ourselves and encour- age one another to have faith that conditions would change. We sang to share information, and we sang as an act of resistance.

The lives of enslaved Africans were very tightly controlled. Perceived resistance and attempts to escape were brutally punished with whipping, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, and other forms of violence. Some- times Christian conversion was encouraged, which created opportunities to construct and share messages of hope and resistance that were encoded into hymns that came to be called spirituals.

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Some songs named, externalized, and mapped the problem, using biblical references as metaphors for the oppression of slavery. The song “When Israel Was in Egypt’s Land,” popularly known as “Go Down Moses” (Johnson & Johnson, 2002) is an enduring example:

When Israel was in Egypt’s land, Let My people go; Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let My people go. Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh: Let My people go.

The song is a retelling of the Old Testament account of the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt and the divinely inspired message Moses delivered to the pharaoh, “Let my people go” (Exodus 9:1). It is an unmistakable allegory of slavery in the United States.

The Lord told Moses what to do, Let My people go; To lead the children of Israel through, Let My people go. Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh: Let My people go.

The lyrics name and externalize slavery as the problem, defining it as a morally low system of “bondage” (“Go down . . . way down to Egypt’s land”). The lyrics map slavery’s effects (“oppressed so hard they could not stand”) and serve as a re- membering process, linking enslaved Africans to the histori- cally enslaved Jews who were divinely led to freedom.

Oh, let us all from bondage flee, Let My people go; And let us all in Christ be free, Let My people go. Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh: Let My people go.

The song contributed to a reauthoring process for enslaved Africans. In opposition to the dominant discourse that defined us as inferior and slavery as morally acceptable because of our subhuman status, the lyrics created an alternative story and preferred identity as God’s people, who God had com- manded to be free, and who were being called out of bondage like the Jews. This alternative narrative supported efforts to escape and help others to escape from slavery, contesting the dominant construction of such acts as illegal.

Enslaved Africans resisted through rebellion and escape. Some resistance songs were calls to meetings to organize or communicated plans to escape. These encoded hymns could be sung in the hearing of White overseers while their meanings went undetected. The spiritual “Steal Away to Jesus” is a well- known example (Johnson & Johnson, 2002):

Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus Steal away, steal away home I ain’t got long to stay here

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This song issued an invitation to come to the secret place to meet. “I ain’t got long to stay here” signaled to fellow captives the intention to escape.

My Lord, He calls me He calls me by the thunder The trumpet sounds within my soul I ain’t got long to stay here

This narrative contests the problem- saturated identity of would-be fugi- tive slave status and supports reauthoring an empowered identity as one to whom God is speaking through the elements—“He calls me by the thun- der”—and calling toward freedom.

Oppression of African Americans did not end with the abolition of slav- ery in 1865. For the next 100 years, racism operated through laws and domi- nant cultural practices to create an apartheid America that subjugated Afri- can Americans politically, socially, and economically. During this era, some of our songs constructed alternative stories of hope and agency. “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” written by James Weldon Johnson in 1899 (1899/2000), is a hopeful song that served to name and externalize oppression as a persistent problem to be resisted:

Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the listening skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won.

Sung now for more than a century by at least four generations, this song is recognized as the Black National Anthem and stands as an exemplar of a narrative document. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” serves to re- member us to our ancestors’ lives—the hardships and violence they endured, their faith, and their successes. This re- membering supports a thick and rich description of how far we have come and our ability to move forward despite the continued operations of racism.

Postslavery dominant discourses continued to promote a problem- saturated identity for African Americans as inferior and unintelligent, lazy at best and dangerous at worst. These narratives incited fear among Whites and justified intimidation and violence against African Americans, especially when we resisted racism. White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan emerged that used violent intimidation and murder to maintain White domi- nance. Lynching was a frequently used tactic, killing thousands of African

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Americans in southern states by 1950. Resistance songs called attention to these operations of racism. Among these is “Strange Fruit,” a mournful song recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 (Holiday & Duffy, 2006):

Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

“Strange Fruit” powerfully and richly describes this grisly tactic of rac- ism. Not surprisingly, White dominance responded by banning this recording from airing on some U.S., U.K., and South African radio stations (Margol- ick, 1999). Despite efforts to suppress it, the song has been performed and recorded by numerous artists for several decades since its release and is rec- ognized by some as the protest anthem that catalyzed the civil rights move- ment (Margolick, 1999). The song has played an enduring role in mapping the brutality and inhumanity of racism (Davis, 1999).

The civil rights movement emerged in the 1950s and grew into a strong and organized effort to oppose racism and its operations. African Americans, along with White and Jewish allies, marched for voting rights, staged sit-ins at lunch counters to protest segregation, and boycotted buses and businesses to demand fair treatment. Racism responded with increased Ku Klux Klan violence and state- sponsored terrorism that included attacks with police dogs, clubs, and fire hoses; beatings, arrests, and jailing; death threats; firebombing of our homes and churches; and murder of our loved ones and leaders. Still, we sang, sometimes defiantly, declaring our willingness to give our lives for our freedom. The post–Civil War song “Oh Freedom” is an example (Sanger, 1995, p. 179):

Oh, freedom, oh, freedom Oh, freedom over me And before I’d be a slave I’d be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be free

Freedom songs employed during the civil rights movement (1954–1968) played a critical role in reauthoring African American lives to support coura- geous action. Also called civil rights anthems and civil rights hymns (Sanger, 1995), these songs named racism and its tactics as the problem and mapped its oppressive and inhumane effects. These alternative narratives opposed the dominant discourses of White supremacy and constructed standing against apartheid and oppressive conditions as morally right and just. Such songs as “We Shall Not Be Moved” (Sanger, 1995) used local knowledge, drew upon people’s current understandings within a Christian framework, and expanded these ideas to support challenging state power. The refrain of the 1947 African American gospel song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” was used

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along with revised lyrics that fit local circumstances (Sanger, 1995). Imagine participating in a civil rights march and facing police with dogs, clubs, and water cannons while holding hands and singing:

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around. Gonna keep on walking, keep on

talking, marching into freedom land [instead of heaven’s land] Ain’t gonna let [insert a problem, such as segregation or opposing person,

like Bull Connor in Selma, Alabama] turn me around . . .

These narratives are declarations of courageous, preferred identities empowered to face the dangers of opposing the White racist power structure.

Traditional Black spirituals were reinterpreted and revised to include new lyrics that spoke to issues of the time. The spiritual “I Woke Up This Morn- ing with My Mind Stayed on Jesus” became “I Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom” (Sanger, 1995). Some of these songs served re- membering functions, connecting us to our past successes overcoming slavery and to biblical figures who had been victorious fighting oppression. These songs inspired courage and hope. “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” illustrates these narrative strategies with references to the biblical story of the Jews in the wilderness (Sanger, 1995, p. 190):

Well the one thing we did right, was the day we started to fight. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize hold on . . . Well the one thing we did wrong was staying in the wilderness much too

long. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, hold on, hold on, hold on

Vocal artists from various racial/ethnic backgrounds wrote and per- formed new songs that challenged White supremacy’s discourses of African American inferiority, limitations, and ugliness. These civil rights anthems pro- vided alternative narratives that described our beauty, worthiness, and possi- bilities for a bright future. Nina Simone’s (1969) classic “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” written in memory of author Lorraine Hansberry, is an example:

To be young, gifted and black Oh what a lovely precious dream To be young, gifted and black Open your heart to what I mean In the whole world you know There are a billion boys and girls Who are young, gifted and black And that’s a fact!

Subsequently performed and recorded by U.S. and U.K. artists, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” serves as a narrative document that has been widely shared across three generations, carrying a message of hope and possibility.

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Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968 ended codified racism, but oppression of African Americans continued with- out formal state sanction. Many vocal artists wrote and performed songs in the same blues and gospel styles of the civil rights movement to address these injustices, constructing alternative narratives that supported continued resis- tance. Female a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock has continued the tradition of addressing racism, sexism, and classism through song. “I’m Gon’ Stand!” (Reagon, 1988b) uses a call-and- response style to emphatically assert an empowered preferred identity to resist oppression: “We will not bow down to racism. We will not bow down to injustice. What you gonna do? I’m gon’ stand. I’m gon’ stand.”

Sweet Honey in the Rock’s “Ella’s Song” (Reagon, 1988a) is a tribute to civil rights activist Ella Baker that poignantly maps the effects of racism, richly describing an empowered identity. The refrain is a declaration of a resolute identity of agency: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” The first verse names the problem: “Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons. . . . ” The refrain follows as an empowered response to these unjust actions. The rampant killings of unarmed Black men and women by police in this decade makes “Ella’s Song” as important now as when it was released in 1987.

Other genres of music emerged during the post–civil rights movement era that contributed significant songs to the developing narrative of African American preferred identity. Most notably among these is hip-hop/rap music. This genre of songs was born of African American youth culture in Bronx, New York (Chang, 2007). The socially conscious subgenre of hip-hop/rap music has its roots in the Black Nationalist segment of the civil rights move- ment and shares common ideas and ideology (Alridge & Stewart, 2005). Socially conscious hip-hop/rap music names and maps the effects of multiple forms of oppression and related social, economic, and political disparities and, in some cases, offers empowered responses to them. Songs by Grand- master Flash (“The Message”), Queen Latifah (“U.N.I.T.Y.”), the late Tupac Shakur (“Brenda’s Baby”), and Common (“Glory”) are examples of these types of songs (Terrell, 2015). The broad appeal and pervasiveness of hip-hop/ rap music (Keyes & Dickens, 2004) have captured the attention of practitio- ners who work with youth and adults, especially in urban areas.

Hip‑Hop/Rap Music as a Therapeutic Social Justice Tool

Tyson (2004) suggests that “failing to recognize the sociopolitical significance of [hip-hop/rap] music and its unequivocal popularity among youth represents a missed opportunity to use this resource in practice with youth” (p. 4).

The earliest documented therapeutic uses of hip-hop/rap music are hip-hop therapy (Tyson, 2002) and rap therapy (Elligan, 2000, 2004). Both emerged as culturally responsive approaches for practice with urban African American

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and Latino male adolescents and young adults. Hip-hop therapy was devel- oped by the late Edgar Tyson (2002), a social worker and social work educa- tor, who described it as “an innovative synergy of rap music, bibliotherapy, and music therapy” (p. 132). In Tyson’s 1997 exploratory study of this model (reported in Tyson, 2002), he conducted a 12-week group intervention at a residential facility for youth who were homeless, had run away, and/or had been abused, abandoned, neglected, or truant. During group sessions, youth were asked to listen to selected rap songs and discuss the lyrics. The record- ings Tyson chose were intended “to create discussion specifically on issues of self- concept, positive racial identity, group identity and peace and unity” (p. 135). Practitioners implementing this psychoeducational model must be knowledgeable, appreciative, and respectful of this genre of music. Beyond typical group work processes (e.g., setting ground rules in the beginning and review and summary at termination), the intervention involves sharing a brief history of hip-hop/rap music; identifying “what might be considered as nega- tive and positive rap music” (Tyson, 2004, p. 3); playing lyrics from songs the practitioner selects; asking clients to interpret and link lyrics to their personal struggles and broader community and societal issues; validating clients’ inter- pretations and/or offering additional or alternative interpretation(s) that are consistent with themes for which the lyrics were chosen; facilitate continued discussion of clients’ interpretations of the lyrics; and encourage self- reflection to achieve treatment goals (e.g., developing specific insights, skills, and behav- iors; Tyson, 2002). The critique of societal disparities in socially conscious hip-hop/rap songs creates the opportunity to assist clients to contextualize their experiences within dominant discourses and systems of oppression.

Developed by clinical psychologist Don Elligan (2000, 2004), rap therapy is a cognitive, behavioral, and psychoeducational approach that can also be practiced in counseling. Several other practitioners have created similar mod- els with structured curricula (Alvarez, 2012; DeCarlo & Hockman, 2003; Hadley & Yancy, 2012).

Song in Narrative Therapy and Community Work

In contrast to hip-hop/rap therapies that focus on one predetermined genre of songs, narrative practice facilitates the emergence of songs from the consulta- tion process. A narrative practitioner might ask a client to share relevant songs during any part of the therapeutic process. For example, after the problem has been named (e.g., racism) and during an externalizing conversation, a practi- tioner might ask a client about songs that express how the problem influences them or how they feel when the problem is influencing them. The practitio- ner might ask, “Is there a song you have heard that describes how you feel when racism is influencing your life?” Because songs can operate powerfully to prompt recall of cognitions and emotions and aid in their expression, they can support clients in describing ways a problem is operating in their lives. Similarly, because songs function to connect us with people, places, and ideas,

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they can be useful in the re- membering process. Practitioners might ask clients to recall songs that describe others who have overcome similar difficulties or songs that express their values, intentions, and hopes. The practitioner’s question could be, “When you think about the songs you like, can you recall one about someone who has faced difficulties like the ones you are facing and how they dealt with them?” Additional questions about the meaning of these song lyrics to clients can support their sense of connection to others, new discoveries of strategies to overcome hardships, and new conclusions about themselves. These lines of inquiry can lead to developing thicker and richer descriptions of people’s stories about their abilities to face challenges, deal with trauma and adversity, and become aware of supports available to them through their connections with others and local knowledge.

Inviting clients to share songs that are meaningful to them expands the range of relevant lyrics to support initiatives clients are undertaking. This approach ensures that the songs will be familiar, will resonate with the cli- ent, and will be culturally congruent. Another narrative approach that shares these advantages is narrative songwriting (Denborough, 2002, 2008; see also Dulwich Centre [n.d.] for examples of collaborative songs written in response to trauma and other hardship).

Writing songs in collaboration with individuals, families, groups, and communities is a collaborative narrative practice methodology. The client may write the song with support from the practitioner, as needed. The song may be cowritten by the client and practitioner, or the practitioner may compose the song using the client’s narratives for the client to review and revise.

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A young Asian therapist who recently graduated from a master’s pro- gram in clinical social work is employed at a community mental health clinic that serves Asian Americans. Among her first clients are Karen, a 24-year-old Taiwanese American, and Michael, a 24-year-old Euro- pean American. The two met in college and have been together for 2 years. Michael initiated therapy because he wants to marry Karen, but he feels frustrated and stuck because Karen gets very anxious every time he brings up the subject. Karen says that she loves Michael but knows that her parents will oppose the marriage because Michael is not Chinese. Karen has never told her parents about Michael out of fear that they would disown her if they found out that she was involved with a non- Chinese man. Karen does not feel that she can go against her parents’ wishes and becomes anxious and paralyzed. Michael thinks that Karen needs to become more independent from her family.

The therapist understands the ways in which Karen feels caught between her family and Michael. At the same time, she believes that the ideal clinical outcome for Karen is to be able to “follow her heart.” In try- ing to assess Karen’s anxieties, the therapist begins to create a list of pos- sible reasons that Karen is not able to stand up to her parents, especially her father. She hypothesizes that Karen’s main issues are her inability to individuate from her parents, fear of being disloyal to her parents, and her intense fear of her father’s anger. In haste, the clinician begins to focus on what she perceives to be Karen’s issues. She views Karen’s need to submit to her parents’ expectations at the expense of her own desires as problematic. She does not take into account Karen’s possible discomfort with Michael’s apparent lack of concern about the way his family might

C H A P T E R 3 2

Interracial Asian Couples Beyond Black and White

Tazuko Shibusawa

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react to having a non-White daughter- in-law and with the pressures of being the first person of color to marry into Michael’s family. Nor does she take the time to consider what issues of Michael’s were played out in his relationship with Karen. The therapist also experiences difficulty connecting with Karen. She senses that the way she asks questions makes Karen feel uncomfortable. After a few sessions the couple drops out of therapy.

I was the therapist in the preceding vignette over 30 years ago. The growing recognition of the need for ethnic- specific mental health services for Asian Americans had led to the opening of the clinic where I was employed. The entire staff was Asian, and there was an implicit assumption that Asian cli- nicians knew how to work effectively with Asian clients merely because we were Asian. Although I was excited to be able to work in the Asian Ameri- can community, I remember often feeling like a failure when faced with clients like Karen. On the one hand, I would hear my “internal supervisor” telling me that I should be more “clinical” with my Asian clients. Why was I treading so gently? Why couldn’t I be more direct with my clients? Why did I feel so insecure and worried about what my Asian clients thought of me? Why did I have such a strong need for acceptance? On the other hand, my “Japanese self” would question why I was not able to be more Asian in my interactions with my clients. Why was I asking questions that seemed so foreign to them? Why couldn’t I ask questions in a more indirect and elegant way? Why was I forcing my clients to talk about things that seemed so pri- vate to them?

It was not until many years later, when Vincenzo DiNicola, an Italian Canadian colleague and family therapist, told me about the Italian proverb “traduttore traditore” (“translator, traitor”; DiNicola, 1997) that I was able to view my conflicts in a new light. I began to realize that the dilemma that I had been experiencing was “not only personal, but political” and perhaps common to other ethnic therapists who had been trained in the Western model of psychotherapy. I was, as the proverb illustrates, betraying aspects of my Western psychotherapy training when translating concepts into the context of Asian culture, and, furthermore, I was betraying myself and my clients when trying to conceptualize our experiences within a Western framework. This sense of “betrayal” can be a heavy burden for bilingual– bicultural therapists, because working with a sense of integrity is fundamental to our relationship with clients.

In this chapter, I discuss the ways in which Western assumptions and values that are embedded in couple therapy pose challenges when working with couples with an Asian partner. I first present background information on Asian Americans and intermarriage and then discuss some of the lessons that I have learned while working with Asian clients in the context of couple therapy.1

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ASIAN AMERICANS: BACKGROUND

The first wave of immigrants from Asia arrived in the United States from the mid- to late 1800s and early 1900s from China, the Philippines, Korea, India, and Japan. Most of the immigrants settled in Hawaii and on the West Coast, areas that continue to have large concentrations of Asians. The youngest descendants of the first wave of immigrants are currently the fourth and fifth generations in the United States. Whereas over 27 million European immi- grants arrived in the United States during the same period, the Asian popu- lation remained small because of various exclusionary immigration policies, which stemmed from the 1790 Naturalization Law that limited citizenship to people who were White. The exclusionary policies culminated in 1924, when virtually all immigration from Asia was banned. This ban continued into the 1950s.

The second and third waves of immigration from Asia began after the enactment of the 1965 Immigration Law, which eliminated national- origin quotas. Since then, Asians have immigrated for professional opportunities, family reunification, and to seek refuge and asylum, as in the case of South- east Asians and Tibetans. Currently, 59% of all Asians in the United States are foreign born, compared with the total U.S. population of 13% (Pew Research Center, 2013). As mentioned earlier, although some Asians are fourth and fifth generation, over 30% are limited English proficient (LEP; U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).

Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. In 2014, there were over 20 million people who identify as Asian alone or in combination (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). Asians in the United States are a diverse group, representing more than 43 different ethnic groups, speaking 100 different languages and dialects, and affiliated with a wide range of reli- gions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism (Rastogi & Wadhwa, 2006). The six largest Asian nationalities in the United States are Chinese (23.2%), Filipino (19.7%), Asian Indian (18.42%), Vietnamese (10.0 %), Korean (9.9%), and Japanese (7.5%; Pew Research Center, 2013).

Asian Americans are also diverse in terms of socioeconomic status, edu- cational background, and levels of acculturation. For example, although a large number of Asian Americans identify as middle class, 12% of Asian Americans live below the poverty line (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). Because of the diversity within the Asian American population, addressing Asians as one ethnic group can lead to the risk of overgeneralization and stereotypes.

RACISM

The ways in which racism affects Asian Americans are often not visible to non- Asians, because when race is discussed in the United States, the focus

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tends to be on the Black–White dichotomy. On the one hand, Asians are upheld by Whites as a model minority for their economic and educational achievements; on the other hand, this stereotype not only ignores the needs of Asian Americans but is also used to denigrate African Americans and other ethnic groups. While touted for their achievements, Asians are simultaneously treated as “perpetual foreigners” who are unable to assimilate and, there- fore, cannot be trusted (Sue, Bucceri, Lin, Nadal, & Torino, 2007). A prime example of this prejudice is seen in the case of Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwanese American nuclear scientist who was falsely accused of espionage on behalf of China (Lee & Zia, 2002). Even fourth- and fifth- generation Asians continue to be treated as if they are “foreigners,” something that would never happen to the descendants of European immigrants (Luo, 2016).

Gender- based ethnic stereotypes, another dimension of racism, have dif- ferent effects on Asian American men and women. Asian women are usually stereotyped as docile and submissive and desirable by the opposite sex. Asian men, on the other hand, struggle with negative stereotypes of being socially dull, “nerdy,” and inept with respect to American culture (Pyke & Dang, 2003). Both heterosexual and gay Asian American men live with the pervasive stereotype of being emasculated (Eng, 1997). For example, in the following account, author David Mura (2005), a third- generation Japanese American writer, discusses the influence of stereotyped images on his development of masculinity:

For years . . . each beautiful white woman had seemed a mark of my exclu- sion. The stereotype of Asian women is a doll-like submissiveness and a mys- terious exotic sensuality, qualities which make them attractive to Caucasian men who have trouble accepting women as equals. As an Asian American male, I was placed in category of neutered sexuality. . . . None of the women I saw on television, in the movies, or read about in books dreamed of a lover like me. . . . (Mura, 2005, pp. 148–149)

ASIAN AMERICANS AND INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES

Interracial marriages in the United States increased significantly after the last miscegenation laws were abolished in 1967. The total number of inter- racial marriages in the United States soared from 3% in 1980 to nearly 15% in 2010 (Wang, 2012). The rates of interracial marriages differ according to racial groups. Although much attention has been paid to Black–White inter- racial marriages, Whites and Blacks have lower rates of exogamy than Lati- nos or Asians. According to the 2010 Census, the intermarriage rates among newlyweds were 9.4% among Whites and 17.1% among Blacks. In the case of Latinos, the intermarriage rate was 25.7%. Asians had the highest rate of intermarriage at 27.7% (Wang, 2012). With regard to gender differences, there were no gender differences among Whites (men 9.5%, women 9.4%) and

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Hispanics (men 25.9%, women 24.4%). On the other hand, among Blacks, more men (23.6%) than women (9.3%) were married to someone of a differ- ent race/ethnicity. In contrast, among Asians, more women (36.1%) than men (16.6%) were in interracial/interethnic marriages (Wang, 2012).

Asian women are considered to marry out more than men do because the dominant society is more receptive of Asian women than men, because Asian women acculturate at faster rates than Asian men, and because the system of “mail order brides” applies only to women (Le, 2017). It is important to note that the rates of exogamy differ according to nativity and nationality groups among Asians. Asians who are native born (i.e., children or descen- dants of immigrants) are more likely to marry outside of their ethnicity than those who are immigrants. As for nationalities, among couples in which one of the partners is U.S.-born or -raised, close to 70% of Asian Indian men and women have endogamous marriages (Le, 2017). In contrast, among U.S.-born or raised Koreans, 61% of the men are married to Korean women, and only 35% of Korean women are married to Korean men. Twenty- three percent of Korean men are married to White women, and 58% of Korean women have White husbands (Le, 2017).

There has also been a recent increase in Asian interethnic marriages, espe- cially among U.S.-born Asians (Le, 2017). Some researchers predict that inter- marriage among Asians may lead to the development of a pan-Asian ethnicity, similar to the historical marital patterns among White ethnic groups during the 20th century in which intermarriage among various European immigrant groups led to the formation of a distinct “White” group in the United States (Qian & Lichter, 2001).

Among the different therapeutic modalities (i.e., individual, couples, and families), couple therapy in which one or both partners are Asian can be the most challenging for Asian clinicians such as myself who were trained in North America. The reason is that clinical theories about functional mar- riages and couplehood are based on Western assumptions and values, includ- ing the notion of “falling in love” as a requisite for marriage or committed relationships. The very act of talking to a third party about intimate relation- ships is also an alien concept for many Asians. In the following, I discuss cultural differences that can contribute to couple conflicts.

Michiko and David

David and Michiko, who are in their early 40s, sought couple therapy at David’s insistence. The couple have been married for 15 years and have two children, ages 12 and 10. David is European American and Michiko is Asian, originally from Japan. They moved from another state 6 months ago because of David’s job transfer. David has been working for a For- tune 500 company and sought the job transfer because he considered it an opportunity to move up the corporate ladder. David states that he has been dissatisfied with their relationship for the past few years and feels that something has to be done if they are to stay together. He complains

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that Michiko has been overly involved with the children and does not seem to care about their relationship as a couple. Michiko appears depressed and acknowledges that she has been having difficulty adjusting to the move. Not only did she lose her friends and support system, but she also lost her part-time job and has not figured out what kind of work she wants to pursue. Michiko finds attending to her children more demand- ing than before because her oldest daughter, in particular, has been hav- ing difficulties settling into her new school. During the intake session, David is very vocal about what he wants from Michiko— emotional and physical intimacy— and articulates his needs in a self- involved way, evok- ing in the therapist an image of a child having tantrums when he is not able to get what he wants. Michiko, on the other hand, is withdrawn, and seems to be at a loss with David’s insistence on his desire for her to be more attentive to him.

If this couple were both White, therapists would probably take into con- sideration the history of the relationship, the move as a possible crisis, family life cycle stages, conflicts over intimacy, power dynamics based on gender dif- ferences and patriarchal values, and each partner’s goals for therapy despite differing foci based on the therapists’ theoretical orientations. The therapists would not need to take into account the complex ways cultures shape the experiences of couplehood. Nor would they need to examine the ways in which their theoretical assumptions, founded on Western cultural ideas, form their assumptions about intimate relationships.

The following are some of the assumptions that are inherent in Western psychotherapy and that can limit therapists’ understanding of cultural con- flicts between interracial couples such as Karen and Michael or Michiko and David. When discussing culture, it is important to note that cultures are not static entities; they are always in a flux, as are individual members of these cultures. Thus it is not my intention to describe Karen and Michiko as the torch bearers of traditional Asian cultural values. However, when using West- ern psychotherapy with non- Western clients, it is important to consider the possibility that no matter how acculturated clients are, it is most likely that their worldviews contain constructions that differ from those of Westerners.

CENTRALITY OF THE MARITAL/COUPLE UNIT

In most Asian cultures, marriage has traditionally been viewed as a union of two families or households, rather than two individuals. Marriages were arranged to ensure the succession of the patrilineal line. In countries such as China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, which have been influenced by Con- fucianism, parent– child relationships take precedence over marital relation- ships. The reason is that in patriarchal societies, women are considered as outsiders who have entered the family through marriage (Chung, 1992; Min, 1998). Also, in traditional Asian cultures, the goals and needs of the family

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take precedence over the needs and desires of individual members (Agbayani- Siewert, 1994; Ho, 1994; Pettys & Balgopal, 1998).

As stated earlier, when working with Karen and Michael, I had believed that the optimal outcome for Karen was to “follow her heart” and had thought that she should not sacrifice her desires for her family. My view was based on the Western notion of selfhood and ego development— that individuals need to develop the ability to make their own decisions and be in control of their own lives. I was also influenced by the Western notion that for marriages to be successful, partners need to separate psychologically from their parents (Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 1995).

I had also minimized the impact that immigration had on Karen’s family. Karen grew up with the stories of the hardships that her parents had endured to come to the United States and the tremendous sacrifice that they had made to send her to college. As with many children of immigrants, Karen shoul- dered the expectations of actualizing her parents’ dreams of life in the United States. Included in the parents’ dreams were future generations of Chinese children. Whereas the need to fulfill one’s parents’ dreams is viewed from a Western psychological perspective as “enmeshment” or lack of individuation, family cohesion and the willingness to relinquish one’s desires and aspira- tions for the good of the family have historically contributed to the survival of many immigrant families in the United States (Ying, Akutsu, Zhang, & Huang, 1997).

ROMANTIC LOVE AS A PRECONDITION FOR MARRIAGE

Romantic love and passionate love are conceptualized as a universal experi- ence and viewed as a criterion for intimate relationships in Western cultures. Yet romantic love as a precondition for marriage is also a relatively new phe- nomenon in Western societies. It was not until the 18th century, with the separation of work and home, that emotional and sexual intimacy between spouses came to be viewed as a desirable state (Aries, 1985). Some scholars also argue that the notion of romantic love is a product of individualistic cul- tures and that love is experienced differently in collectivistic cultures (Beall & Sternberg, 1995). Individualistic cultures encourage people to focus on personal fulfillment, which in turn facilitates choosing partners who make them feel fulfilled. As part of the notion of having the power to shape one’s destiny, people in individualistic cultures also believe that they have choices in selecting partners. In collectivistic cultures, individuals do not necessarily believe that they have individual choices. This is reinforced by the belief that it is fate that dictates one’s marriage partner. For example, the Chinese concept of yuan (connection), which is widespread in East Asian nations, is based on the Buddhist belief that relationships are formed in life because of destiny (karma) and that individuals have little control over their destiny (Chang & Holt, 1991).

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In Western culture, there is a distinction between passionate love and companionate love, in which passionate love involves emotional intensity and sexualized feelings (Berscheid, 2010). David and Michiko’s conflicts are illustrative of the cultural differences in expectations of the nature of love in couple relationships. David looks to Michiko to fulfill his needs for closeness and is frustrated that they are no longer passionate as a couple. He views this as a loss and a sign that Michiko is no longer invested in their relationship. In traditional Asian marriages, companionate love, which is characterized by respect and trust (Berscheid, 2010), is valued over passionate love.

In East Asian cultures, emotional bonding between people is explained as the result of chin, which is a Chinese word. Chin is known as jeong in Korean and jyo in Japanese culture and is based on the same Chinese writ- ten character. Although it is difficult to translate chin into English, the word encompasses feelings, empathy, connection, tenderness, compassion, senti- ment, trust, bonding, and love (Kim, Kim, & Kelly, 2006). Unlike the West, where emotions are thought to be located in the individual, chin denotes an intersubjectivity in which feelings are a shared experience. In Western cul- tures, an individual experiences, owns, and acts on the feelings of love. Chin, on the other hand, exists outside of people and is something that is experi- enced among people rather than owned. In fact, in Japanese culture, having affection for another person is characterized as “catching jyo,” similar to the way someone would “catch” a cold.

In romantic relationships, people are expected to demonstrate their feel- ings of love. In the case of David and Michiko, David believes that couples need to make the time to nurture and express their intimacy. For Michiko, once there is a trusting relationship and companionship, the feelings between them do not necessarily have to be demonstrated or articulated. Her com- mitment to David is expressed through her role as wife and mother, not as a romantic lover. Thus, when working with couples like David and Michiko, it is important that the therapist acknowledge that the very notion of love is a social construction (Beall & Sternberg, 1995) and that the way love is constructed in Western culture is not necessarily a prerequisite for functional marriages.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPISTS

When working with interracial couples, clinicians must examine how our the- oretical assumptions about intimate relationships are shaped by Western cul- tural values. Understanding conflicts experienced by interracial couples can start only with our awareness of the lenses through which we view the world and how these lenses have been shaped by our location within the context of dominant society. The lack of such awareness can result in pathologizing the partner who is of a non-White background. In this respect, the framework of intersectionality, which is part of critical race theory, is extremely helpful

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for therapists in examining the way in which our different privileges and/or disadvantages shape our understanding of interracial couples with whom we work (Crenshaw, 1995).

When working with interracial couples, it is also important for clinicians to understand how cultural conflicts are intertwined with personal and family- of- origin issues (Falicov, 1995), as well as power dynamics that are based on societal gender inequities (Knudson- Martin, 2013). In the case of David and Michiko, the couple conflict was not only based on cultural differences regarding intimacy but also on long- standing power dynamics in which David had expected Michiko to place priority on his career. In addition, David had little awareness of the challenges that Michiko had faced living in the United States, a country in which she felt like a “foreigner,” occupying a more mar- ginalized position in the context of the dominant culture. For example, for Michiko, English was her second language. Although Michiko spoke English well, she was more comfortable speaking in Japanese. However, the couples’ sessions were conducted mostly in English because David did not speak Japa- nese. Although I encouraged Michiko to use Japanese and offered to translate what she was saying, she usually opted to speak in English. The couple ther- apy sessions, therefore, replicated Michiko’s experiences in the United States, in which she was the one who had to make more accommodations.

As I noted earlier in this chapter, when I started my career as a clinical social worker at an Asian American community mental health center, there was an assumption that Asian clinicians knew how to work effectively with Asian clients simply because we were Asian. It is important to acknowledge the struggles that non- European American therapists experience in integrat- ing their Western training and applying them to our own communities. The increase in immigrant populations has resulted in the need for bilingual– bicultural therapists. Training programs should not assume that bilingual– bicultural students can automatically translate Western concepts into their practice and be effective with their clients. The act of therapy itself is a foreign act in many cultures. Thus attention must be given to how this foreign act can be helpful and collaborative without “betraying” the client or the culture of psychotherapy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Irene Chung and Dr. James Runsdorf for their helpful comments.

NOTE

1. Although higher rates of same-sex couples are involved in interracial relationships than heterosexual couples, this chapter is based on my experiences with hetero- sexual couples, which naturally limits its scope.

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REFERENCES

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Aries, P. (1985). Love in married life (A. Foster, Trans.). In P. Aries & A. Bejin (Eds.), Western sexuality: Practice and precept in past and present times (pp. 130–139). New York: Blackwell.

Beall, A. E., & Sternberg, R. J. (1995). The social construction of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12(3), 417–438.

Berscheid, E. (2010). Love in the fourth dimension. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 1–25.

Chang, H. C., & Holt, G. R. (1991). The concept of yuan and Chinese interpersonal relationships. In S. Ting- Toomey & F. Korzenny (Eds.), Cross- cultural interper- sonal communication (pp. 28–57). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

Chung, D. K. (1992). Asian cultural commonalities: A comparison with mainstream American culture. In S. Furuto, R. Biswas, D. Chung, K. Murase, & E. Ross- Seriff (Eds.), Social work practice with Asian Americans (pp. 27–44). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

Crenshaw, K. W. (1995). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, & K. Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 357–383). New York: New Press.

DiNicola, V. (1997). A stranger in the family: Culture, families and therapy. New York: Norton.

Eng, D. L. (1997). Out here and over there: Queerness and diaspora in Asian Ameri- can studies. Social Text, 52/53, 31–52.

Falicov, C. J. (1995). Cross- cultural marriages. In N. S. Jacobson & A. S. Gurman (Eds.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy (pp. 231–246). New York: Guilford Press.

Ho, Y. F. (1994). Cognitive socialization in Confucian heritage cultures. In P. M. Greenfield & R. R. Cocking (Eds.), Cross- cultural roots of minority child devel- opment (pp. 285–313). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kim, I. J., Kim, L. C., & Kelly, J. G. (2006). Developing cultural competence in work- ing with Korean immigrant families. Journal of Community Psychology, 34(2), 149–165.

Knudson- Martin, C. (2013). Why power matters: Creating a foundation of mutual support in couple relationships. Family Process, 52(1), 5–18.

Le, C. N. (2017). Interracial dating and marriage. Retrieved January 5, 2017, from www.asian- nation.org/interracial.shtml.

Lee, W. H., & Zia, H. (2002). My country versus me: The first-hand account by the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy. New York: Hyperion.

Luo, M. (2016, October 9). An open letter to the woman who told my family to go back to China. Available at www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/nyregion/to-the- woman-who-told-my- family- to-go-back-to-china.html.

Min, P. (1998). Change and conflicts: Korean immigrant families in New York. New York: Allyn & Bacon.

Mura, D. (2005). Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei. New York: Grove Press. Pettys, G. L., & Balgopal, P. R. (1998). Multigenerational conflicts and new immi-

grants: An Indo- American experience. Families in Society, 79(4), 410–424.

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Pew Research Center. (2013, April 4). The rise of Asian Americans. Retrieved from www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/06/19/the-rise-of-asian- americans.

Pyke, K., & Dang, T. (2003). “FOB” and “whitewashed”: Identity and internalized racism among second generation Asian Americans. Qualitative Sociology, 26(2), 147–172.

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Sue, D. W., Bucceri, J., Lin, A. I., Nadal, K., & Torino, G. C. (2007). Racial micro- aggressions and the Asian American experience. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 13(1), 72–81.

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Wallerstein, J., & Blakeslee, S. (1995). The good marriage. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Wang, W. (2012). The rise of intermarriage: Rates, characteristics vary by race and

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P A R T V I

IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING

477

In spite of lip service by our professional organizations about “cultural sen- sitivity” and “cultural competence,” integration of material on culture in mental health professional training remains a “special issue”—ignored for the most part in research, taught at the periphery of psychotherapy training, rarely written about or recognized as crucial by or for therapists of European origin, and almost never mentioned in references to “evidence- based prac- tice,” which has become the buzzword for service delivery in recent years. For the most part, therapists are still trained without reference to the insidious role that cultural hierarchies related to ethnicity, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ability play in the United States. We are taught con- cepts of human development, psychopathology, and family functioning from the totally skewed patriarchal, classist, heterosexist framework of the domi- nant white groups in our society. We are taught that you can learn about “men’s issues” and not mean issues of African American, Latino, or Asian men, because their experiences are never referred to. In general, when we have talked about couple therapy, solution- focused therapy, sex therapy, the family life cycle, or dual- career families, we have been referring only to white het- erosexual families. For awareness of diversity to become truly integrated into our work, it will require a transformation of our field that has barely begun.

C H A P T E R 3 3

Re‑Visioning Family Therapy Training

Kenneth V. Hardy Monica McGoldrick

In this chapter we have capitalized “Black” and lowercased “white,” in spite of the conven- tion to do the reverse, because it seems to us that “Black” is a word which at least to some extent was chosen by African Americans to refer to themselves, while “white” does not deserve the “specialness” of capitalization as an honor to the distinction.

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We must change our training so that discussion of culture becomes part of all conversations about theory, practice, and research in our field. Blacks and other disenfranchised groups are still dealt a bad deal at every level of our nation’s systems: judicial, governmental, educational, health care, and so forth. This is the sociopolitical context in which family therapy is embedded. Unless we are vigilant, we are all likely to replicate the unjust patterns of the broader social order in our everyday institutional practice. Our institutions replicate the values of the larger society, and if these are focused toward fiscal profits rather than morality as a society, we are doomed to create therapies that are unjust and that perpetuate the disenfranchisement of those already kept at the margins in our nation.

In the first edition of this book, Robert- Jay Green (1998) predicted that race would “become a major nucleus around which new developments in the theory of family therapy would emerge” (p. 95). He predicted also that the study of therapist– client interracial differentness would help illuminate the more general process of negotiating differentness between therapist and client, beyond just the difference of race, stimulating studies of how other therapist– client differences affect treatment process and outcome. He hoped that the study of race and family functioning would “not be simply another peripheral vein, but rather a chamber at the very heart of family therapy” (Green, 1998, p. 95).

Unfortunately, we are still facing the major theoretical task laid out by Green: “to weave together multicultural theory . . . into a coherent whole” (Green, 1998, p. 95), including factors of race, gender, ethnicity, social class, physical ability, sexual orientation, spirituality and religion, life cycle stage, and traditional family systems theory, into a coherent whole. Green (1998, p. 95) put forth a very tall order—that “this new ‘Multicultural Family Sys- tems Theory’ must link the individual, family, and cultural perspectives in a manageable way; it must be flexible enough to encompass all of sociocultural diversity and practical enough to be applied in the new health care delivery and other treatment contexts.”

Unfortunately, even two decades later, we remain a long way from Green’s recommendations, and diversity does not yet characterize our profes- sion. Unfortunately, whiteness more aptly defines and characterizes the prac- tice of our profession. “Whiteness” is a political descriptor of those who have unearned privilege in relation to others in the society. It is a characterization that exists because racism exists. We cannot continue to train white therapists to work primarily with white families. Most family therapy training gives minimal lip service to cultural issues. Probably not even 10% of the faculty of most counseling and family therapy training programs are people of color, and they form a much smaller percentage of those who control the funding for “evidence- based” research on therapeutic practices, such as the National Institute of Mental Health.

Yet more than 37% of the U.S. population, and a much higher percentage of the families in need of psychological help, are ethnic minorities.

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Racism is perhaps the most pernicious element of our culture and the hardest to deal with because of the extremely high level of segregation in our society. The forces for racial segregation are so powerful that, unless we make strong and deliberate efforts to nurture diversity, they will prevail. Whites have tended to keep themselves unaware of racism. It is not a category in our diagnostic manuals and has been invisible in our developmental theories and in our psychotherapy. We cannot assume that racism will disappear just by our being “good people” or by leaving it to people of color to deal with. It is time for all of us to stop perpetuating the problems of racism by actively addressing cultural issues in every level of our training programs.

We must change our training to incorporate cultural understandings and play our part in becoming accountable for racism. Unwittingly, our training programs have been part of the problem, reproducing the racist, sexist, and heterosexist structures of the wider society. We cannot make revisions just by modifying our reading lists. We must radically change our programs and pro- vide concrete guidelines for transforming our training to overcome society’s blinders in theory and practice. We must be deliberate in figuring out what we have to do to stop participating in the delivery of mental health care that is so full of disparities for people of color in our society.

CULTURE AND THE ORIGINATORS OF OUR FIELD

Many of the originators of family therapy, almost all of whom were white men, had interest in cultural issues. Gregory Bateson, one of the prime movers of early family research, was a cultural anthropologist. Many others demon- strated a clear interest in cultural issues. Dick Auerswald always emphasized an ecological approach. John Weakland studied anthropology and brought it into his clinical insights. Paul Watzlawick, a linguist before he became a family therapist, provided many cultural insights from his experiences living in multiple cultures. Salvador Minuchin focused for years on work with the poor. Murray Bowen added a societal dimension to his original family theory. John Spiegel, whose work was the most overt in promoting a focus on culture, incorporated an anthropological framework at the very core of his clinical thinking. Al Scheflen’s and Ray Birdwhistle’s work directly related to cultural dimensions of family communication that came out of Birdwhistle’s earlier studies of Native tribes of Canada. Carolyn Attneave’s and Ross Speck’s net- work therapy developed directly out of Attneave’s knowledge and wisdom about her Native American roots. Harry Aponte, a Puerto Rican therapist, has for decades focused on spirituality and ecological clinical thinking. Brau- lio Montalvo, also Puerto Rican, was one of the originators of the structural approach, with Minuchin and others. Carlos Sluzki, an early member of the Palo Alto group from Argentina, has always attended to issues of culture. Fritz Midelfort, one of the most creative but least appreciated early develop- ers of family therapy, placed culture at the very center of his understanding of

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families. Kitty LaPerriere also always spoke from a multicultural perspective. There were also such pioneers as Elaine Pinderhughes, Nancy Boyd- Franklin, and Celia Falicov, who have specifically addressed cultural issues for decades. Our own endeavors were part of the second generation’s efforts to put culture on the map as a core issue in family therapy.

But over the years, the powerful insights of many of the creative origina- tors of family therapy were lost in cultureless descriptions, which meant pri- marily white descriptions, of theory, practice, and research and, more recently, “evidence- based” practice. Training and therapy paid little attention to issues of diversity in marital and family therapy, which has generally been taught without much regard for the culture of the therapist or of the client. More arti- cles relating to culture were published in the early days of family therapy than recently. Often, even when culture was referred to, it was marginalized. In my own work (MM), for example, when we wrote about “life cycle,” we meant the white middle- class heterosexual life cycle. We wrote separately about the life cycle of multiproblem poor families of color or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families. When we wrote about couples, we were refer- ring to white, heterosexual couples, unless otherwise specified. The generic category was white. The fields of psychotherapy, counseling, sex therapy, cou- ple therapy, and family therapy have generally operated exclusively with theo- ries of and for white couples and families. Psychotherapy is still conducted in general by, for, and about white people, with cultural issues marginalized as specific subcategories of the general focus. Research makes little reference to the culture of the sample, and there is no acknowledgment that the culture of the sample should always be a primary focus of research discussion.

We believe that the only ethical stance for our field to take is one that incorporates cultural understandings into the core of theory, practice, and research. We have lost a tremendous amount of human wisdom by not allow- ing cultures beyond the dominant group to contribute to our knowledge or play a role in our theorizing, research, and practice. Furthermore, those at the margins may have particularly important insights for the dominant soci- ety. Maria Root’s (1996) “Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People” (Figure 33.1v), is good for all of us, because we all have multiple cultural identities. And no one should have to suppress parts of him- or herself in order to “pass” for normal according to the dominant culture’s standards or categories.

The Color of the Field

Although most training programs indicate that they try to recruit students of color, many fail to do so. Faculty of color in training programs remain few and far between— less than 5%—with African Americans especially rare in full-time faculty positions. McDowell, Fang, Brownlee, Young, and Khanna (2002) reported that more than 80% of students in family training programs were of European ancestry. Long, Sprenkle, Dyson, King, and Richardson (2003) found that less than 5% of faculty and supervisors in family training

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programs approved by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) were people of color and that these programs were not doing well at recruiting or admitting ethnic minority students. Lee, Nichols, Nichols, and Odom (2004) reported that there has been virtually no increase in the 2% of African American supervisors in the past 25 years. The clinical membership of AAMFT is racially homogeneous and white, despite what- ever efforts have been made to address this issue. Kyle Killian and I (KVH, 1998) did a study of AAMFT conference content from 1980 through 1996 and found that only two people from minority cultures had served as keynote speakers at general sessions over a 19-year period.

Basic Assumptions of a Re‑Visioned Family Therapy Field

Our underlying openness to those who are culturally different is the key to expanding our cultural understanding. We learn about culture primarily not by learning the “facts” of another’s culture but, more, by knowing that person well and, through that connection, changing our own attitudes about differ- ence. In our view, the most important part of a multicultural family systems theory involves a therapist coming to understand his or her own identity and social location. Just as clinicians must sort out the relationships in their own families of origin, developing cultural competence requires first of all coming to terms with their own cultural identities. One goal would be for therapists no longer to be “triggered” by culturally based characteristics that they may

FIGURE 33.1. Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People by Maria Root.

I have the right . . .

•• Not to justify my existence in this world.

•• Not to keep the races separate within me.

•• Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity.

•• Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.

•• To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.

•• To identify myself differently than how my parents identify me.

•• To identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters.

•• To identify myself different in different situations—to create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial.

•• To change my identity over my lifetime and more than once.

•• To have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people.

•• To freely choose whom I befriend and love.

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have regarded negatively, nor to hold to the view that their own cultural values are more “right” or “true” than those of others. Cultural self- awareness opens therapists to understanding values that differ from their own, so that they need neither convert others to their view nor give up their own values. The best cultural training for family therapists, particularly those from dominant groups, is to become aware of the cultural values of the dominant culture— or perhaps to experience what it would be like not to be part of the dominant culture.

We suggest the following assumptions as a starting point for a re- visioning of our field:

•• Always, in every situation, unless we have evidence to the contrary, assume each member of any system’s functioning is influenced by contextual factors, including: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class, reli- gious and spiritual training and beliefs, age, abilities and disabilities, political background, and so forth. Assume that these factors are shaping each person’s participation in discussions of theory, clinical practice, training, organiza- tional functioning, and research. (This should apply to faculty, students, cli- ents, agency directors and board members, etc.)

•• Having a positive awareness of one’s cultural heritage, just like a posi- tive connection to one’s family of origin, contributes to one’s sense of mental health and well-being.

•• Negative feelings and lack of awareness of one’s cultural heritage are probably reflective of cutoffs, oppression, or traumatic experiences that have led to suppression of history.

•• Knowing our history— personal, familial, cultural, societal, and professional— strengthens our understanding of ourselves and our world.

•• No one can ever fully understand another’s culture, but curiosity, humility, and awareness of one’s own cultural values and of history contribute to the ability to relate to others.

•• Clients from marginalized cultures have probably internalized society’s prejudices about them, and those from dominant cultural groups have proba- bly internalized assumptions about their superiority and right to be privileged within our society.

•• Respectful clinical work involves helping clients clarify their identi- ties in relation to their families, communities, cultural history, and relation- ship difficulties, while also adapting to changing circumstances as they move through life.

•• Clinical intervention is not neutral but requires moving toward social justice.

•• Our work requires accountability for moving not just our clients but our field toward social justice, to eliminate disparities in services to all families

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in our society, and to make sure our field builds its professional and intellec- tual structure on an equitable basis.

•• Becoming an effective professional requires developing the ability to work collaboratively across professional boundaries with all who serve fami- lies: psychologists, counselors, social workers, nurses, marriage and family therapists, physicians, lawyers, educators, and any others whose business involves the well-being and resilience of families.

•• At the heart of the re- visioning of family therapy is our belief that we are all connected: oppressor and oppressed, rich and poor, gay and hetero- sexual, cisgender and transgender. The space between therapist and client is seldom as great as we have been trained to believe. Therapists are never blank slates.

Setting Up a Context for Cultural Competence Training

The re- visioning of family therapy will inspire therapists to be unrelentingly curious, not just about the influence of their families of origin on their work, but also about the influences of gender, sexual orientation, race, social class, religion, age, ability, and so on. It will be an accepted understanding of train- ing that clinical interactions are always cross- cultural interactions between therapists’ and clients’ selves, contexts, and heritages. Cultural paradigms are useful to the extent that they help us challenge our long-held beliefs about “the way things are.” But we cannot learn about culture in cookbook fashion, through memorizing recipes for relating to other groups. Information we learn about cultural differences will, hopefully, expand our respect, curiosity, and humility regarding cultural differences and, most of all, our ability to listen.

Our experience has taught us repeatedly that theoretical discussions about the importance of culture are practically useless in training. We best appreciate the relativity of values through specifics that connect with our per- sonal experience of group differences. Thus it makes sense in training to fit any illustration of a cultural trait into the context of historical and cultural experiences in which that value or behavior evolved.

Generalizing about Group Patterns

When beginning cultural training, it is extremely important to set up a con- text that allows generalizing about cultural differences. Many people, espe- cially white people, respond that they “prefer” to be thought of as individuals, so they don’t think in terms of group patterns. Everyone would, of course, want to be appreciated for him- or herself. The problem is that our society is organized by teaching subtly but thoroughly a set of values related to group patterns, and we all get inducted into them without realizing it. We all absorb racist, sexist, heterosexist, and classist values, but because the induction is so subtle, we mostly don’t even notice it. Unless we can become aware of this and

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discuss and challenge these values, we can have no understanding of how race, gender, religious prejudice, or sexual politics operate in our society.

Of course, all generalizations represent only partial truths. We begin by personal sharing, conveying the fact that everyone has grown up influenced by ethnicity, class, race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. We discuss the problem of stereotyping, or becoming stuck in overgeneralizations, and the problem of not generalizing, without which culture cannot be discussed at all.

We have found that to organize training only around “minority” ethnici- ties, as has so often been done, is not helpful. Such training perpetuates the marginalization of groups that are already at the periphery because it con- tinues the myth that theories developed by Europeans and white Americans are the norm from which all other cultures deviate. Instead, training requires considerable deconstruction of “Western” ways of thought to make clear how they have been absorbed and accepted without our knowing it and to free people to become more culturally competent.

Common pitfalls in discussions of these issues include being so inclu- sive that the discussion marginalizes racism in the “oppression Olympics,” a competition among the multiplicity of cultural “-isms,” in which proposals for inclusiveness become so extensive that the institutionalized racism that is destroying our society is overshadowed by discussion of other inequalities.

A second pitfall is that discussion will become polarized. As Beverly Tatum (1997) has noted in another context, those who have focused on racial identity development have done little to address gender, whereas feminist theorists have often done little to address race. Discussions of diversity may polarize “Black–white” issues, leaving others feeling that their issues have no place. Sexism, anti- Semitism, and homophobia may be pushed into the back- ground as people argue over which oppression is the worst or most important. And most of us would prefer to discuss those “-isms” on which we do not feel privileged. It is much harder to acknowledge those “-isms” on which we get a free ride or special privileges and do not experience the negative messaging of society about our status.

We believe it is essential to focus specifically on racism and whiteness if we are to embark on accountable and ethical practice and to educate white people about the pervasiveness of oppression in every aspect of our theory, training, research, and practice (Sue et al., 2007). But we must discuss the intersectionality of these issues and take account of how they play out differ- entially in different contexts.

It is hard to raise some issues in the context of others. The question of how to sensitively address sexism with a couple who are themselves both victims of racism is complicated. The question of how to address negativity toward homosexuality within African American and other racially oppressed communities is also challenging. Hall and Greene (1994) have addressed the ethical imperative of attending to the complexities surrounding issues of femi- nism, racism, and homophobia in relation to African American families:

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The African American woman may perceive that feminists and the feminist movement underestimate the integral role of cultural traditions and racism in her life. In a parallel experience, many African American males equate feminism with lesbianism, anti-male and white perspectives. It is imperative that feminist family therapists examine how much of the negative percep- tion of therapy and feminist family therapy within the African American community is based on realistic experiences as opposed to sexist attitudes and misconceptions. . . . The ethical inclusion of cultural pluralism, a cul- tural context for therapy, as well as the examination of the influence of white privilege in feminist family therapy is essential in the provision of appropriate and meaningful treatment. (pp. 6–7)

We need to keep a multidimensional perspective that can highlight the evil of institutionalized racism, while not making light of other forms of oppression. We have to hold African American and other racially oppressed men accountable to women and at the same time understand the particular oppression they have together been subjected to for generations. While mov- ing against sexism, we have to hold white feminists accountable for their privi- lege and “unintentional” racism.

We must also respectfully hold white men accountable for their privilege, entitlement, and obliviousness to their role in perpetuating the current sys- tem. Their lack of consciousness is part of the structure of our society, which functions in such a way that the oppressed always know much more about the dominant groups than the dominant groups know about them, as their survival depends on this understanding.

This means that, just as we must ask white men to take responsibility for learning to be uncomfortable with organizational structures that are domi- nated by white men, those of us who are white must learn to become uncom- fortable in all segregated situations, governmental, corporate, geographic, and intellectual— for instance, reading books about feminism or homosexuality that pertain only to white people. We must become so uncomfortable that we are moved to do something about it. Our failure to act, even when done inno- cently and benignly, serves to preserve the prevailing order.

Furthermore, those of us who are people of color must resist the tempta- tion of using what Lorde (1990) aptly referred to as the “master’s tools” when confronting oppression associated with gender, class, and sexual orientation. As a people who have experienced the unrelenting chokeholds of oppression and marginalization, we must use the lessons learned from our own subjuga- tion to forge a deeper and more compassionate understanding of how the dynamics of oppression malign our lives. We must cease to participate in interactions that perpetuate polarizing notions about “who is Black/Latino enough and who isn’t.” We must also, with empathy and an unshakable sense of resolve, welcome our LGBT brothers and sisters. We must make certain that we do not perpetuate dichotomous assertions that one is either a member of the LGBT community or a person of color, a feminist or a person of color,

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implying that membership in one group negates the other. This more complex thinking and action are at the core of re- visioning family therapy.

GUIDELINES FOR TRAINING PROGRAMS

Programs and organizations must convey overtly, in their mission statements and in their organizational policies, their dedication to diversity and to a mul- ticultural perspective. Including diversity in the stated mission of the organiza- tion establishes it as a core value that will be a major focus in future planning.

Organizational Structure

Organizational transformation to cultural competence requires conscious efforts on the part of the leadership to get all members of the faculty and staff on board to support the change. To succeed, the structure of the organization must reflect the core values that it espouses. In other words, if an organization is committed to diversity, its organizational structure should be diverse from top to bottom.

Leadership must deal with the inevitable faculty resistance to such a transformation process. With leadership consistency, the resistance can be overcome, and faculty will accept, if not all move toward, the change process. Faculty members are likely to fear that requiring cultural “competence” on issues they do not feel sure of will mean that they may be judged incompetent. It is important that the leadership efforts toward transformation are done more with a carrot than a stick. Offering incentives to faculty members to undergo extra training to increase their cultural competence or to undertake to teach a course that incorporates multicultural insights promises to be much more effective for change than threatening faculty members if their course outlines do not reflect multicultural perspectives.

Collaboration is the quickest way to move toward greater cultural com- petence of staff members. When people work as a team, they are less likely to feel threatened and more likely to think creatively and increase their con- fidence. Isolating faculty members and trying to bring about change through memos and requirements rather than inspiring them with a shared vision is very unlikely to work.

Recruitment, Retention, and Mentoring of Faculty

Strategies for the recruitment of new faculty and staff members should be informed by the organization’s mission to ensure diversity and to promote cultural competency. The commitment to diversity must be an integral part of the organization’s recruitment strategy rather than an afterthought.

Once a diverse faculty is achieved, it is important for the organization not to rest on its laurels. Creating a milieu that provides sanctuary for faculty

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members of color and other marginalized faculty members must be actively and consciously pursued by the organization. Faculty members from mar- ginalized backgrounds will not stay in systems in which they have become GEMM (good, effective, mainstream, minority) family therapists and trainers (see Hardy, 2008).

Establishing formal and informal networks to mentor both faculty and trainees of color and those from other nondominant social locations is impera- tive. Active mentoring programs help to enhance the retention rates of faculty members and students of color, as well as the participation of other marginal- ized individuals.

Recruitment, Retention, and Mentoring of Students

The recruitment and retention of a culturally diverse student population is essential to the re- visioning of family therapy. Having a diverse student popu- lation is critical to developing a sense of cultural competency. When organiza- tions are diverse, they enable students to experience what they are learning about theoretically in the didactic portions of their training.

As with faculty, it is not enough to recruit diverse students without also devoting equal attention to how to retain them. Changing the culture of insti- tutions is central to retaining a diverse student body. When the student body is significantly diversified, it is not enough for an organization to continue busi- ness as usual. Every domain of the organization must be carefully scrutinized culturally to make sure that the ideology of the organization is compatible with the needs of students from a wide range of backgrounds.

Providing ongoing mentoring to students of color that focus on their didactic and clinical needs is important but insufficient if it does not also devote attention to their cultural needs. Mentoring from a multicultural per- spective helps students and trainees of color to deal with the inevitable and inherent struggles of learning and practicing family therapy in a field that is often oblivious to the dynamics of oppression.

Curriculum

Diversity and issues germane to cultural competence and social justice should be integrated throughout the curriculum. When we have succeeded in this integration, family therapy theory will take into account at its core the experi- ences of marginalized families. Thus more critical dialogue regarding what and who constitutes a family will become a centerpiece of theorizing efforts. Family therapy training will contextualize and critique theory based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and so on.

Just as we need to develop theory, research, and practice that reflects diverse perspectives, training tools and methods must honor different modes of learning and the experiences of students from diverse backgrounds. Exer- cises and training approaches that assist students in assessing themselves in

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terms of their social context will facilitate student learning. Training students to use genograms to map clients, not just to observe family patterns but also to understand the broader cultural dimensions of the client’s context, is essen- tial. Training approaches need to be broadened to highlight the significance of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation within the context of family- of- origin experiences.

An Expanded Life Cycle Framework

An expanded and inclusive perspective on human development is an essential framework within which to incorporate for students any conceptualization of human problems. Students need to have a framework for understanding clients’ lives in terms of their evolution from the past (oppression, survival, migration, resilience) and into the future. Acknowledging family resources or lack of resources in intergenerational and community structure is essential for helping them make sense of their problems and for facilitating their abil- ity to access their strengths to resolve problems in a context in which many traditional resources may be lacking. Widely accepted paradigms such as the family life cycle need to take explicitly into account how human development is affected by broader social conditions, such as poverty, sexual orientation, and so forth. Training on human development will incorporate evolving defi- nitions of families through the life cycle. Human development and life cycle approaches built around marriage and children unwittingly marginalize the growing number of individuals who either choose not to marry or who are legally forbidden to do so. Also, those who either cannot or choose not to have children are also left out of traditional developmental conceptualizations of the “normal” family life cycle.

All clinical course content will, of course, take into account the cultural context of theory, practice, and research, so it will no longer be acceptable to relegate issues of culture and social justice to isolated courses taught by minority faculty members or to special sections of textbooks on couple or family therapy theory and practice. Rather than relying on single specialized courses devoted to designated areas of diversity, program curricula will focus on the intersection of various issues. Accordingly, trainees will be encouraged to think “relationally” while thinking culturally. “Evidence- based practice” will be required to consider “evidence” as a culture- bound phenomenon and to consider the cultural context within which research on diverse populations becomes meaningful or feasible, no longer just requiring numbers sanctioned by the dominant culture as “evidence.”

Cultural Sharing

We generally begin training with cultural sharing to convey from the outset that all clinical interactions require building cultural bridges from different perspectives and to engage students in exploring their cultural backgrounds.

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We ask students in a training group to introduce themselves by: (1) describing themselves ethnically; (2) describing who in their family influenced their sense of ethnic identity; (3) discussing which groups other than their own they think they understand best; and (4) discussing how they think their own family members would react to being referred for therapy for a psychological prob- lem. At times we use exercises that enable trainees to have mini- conversations with others in their training group to discuss cultural issues, such as:

•• “Describe something you like most about your cultural background and something you find hardest to deal with.”

•• “Describe how your family was ‘gendered’—that is, what were the rules for gender behavior, and who in your family did not conform to its gender stereotypes?”

•• “What is your class background, and what changes have you or others in your family made because of education, marriage, money, or sta- tus?”

•• “Describe a time when you felt ‘other’ in a group and how you and oth- ers dealt with this ‘otherness.’ ”

•• “Describe what you were taught growing up about race and how your consciousness about this may have changed over time.”

We ask trainees to think first about how their own group and perhaps that of their spouses or of close friends differ in responses to pain, attitudes about doctors, their beliefs about suffering, and what help they would be inclined to seek. Do they prefer a formal or informal style in dealing with helpers? Authorities? Strangers? Do they tend to feel positive about their bodies, about work, about physical, sexual, psychological, or spiritual intimacy, and about children expressing their feelings? Then we try to help them broaden this understanding to other groups through readings, film, and conversations that illustrate other ways of viewing the same phenomena.

Using Cultural Genograms

We have found genograms to be central in training clinicians to incorporate a cultural focus in their work. We routinely ask students to present their cul- tural genograms to their colleagues as an initial way of thinking about the intersection of family- of- origin issues and the threads of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation with which they are interwoven (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008).

The very nature of the cultural genogram requires the trainee to think concurrently about family and culture. Doing a genogram reminds each trainee that we all have culture— everyone is located somewhere on the dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. Gradually, trainees begin to realize that these cultural dimensions have mean- ings, both inside and outside the family, that become what we refer to as major

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life organizing principles (Hardy & Laszloffy, 1995). As trainees are encour- aged to explore the context of their families and cultural backgrounds, they enhance their sense of cultural competency by (1) gaining a better understand- ing of the ways cultural and family patterns are inextricably tied together; (2) developing a more comprehensive view of themselves and others as cultural beings; and (3) developing and refining their ability to engage in “context talk,” that is, to discuss culture openly and nondefensively.

Social Location Exercise

As training evolves, we discuss the implications of people’s social location, which becomes a core part of our assessment of each case, both for the thera- pist and for the client. A power analysis of cultural, racial, class, religious, and gender politics becomes a core part of all training, so that clinicians can see how power affects all clinical interactions (McGoldrick et al., 1999).

The training usually proceeds from the personal to the theoretical to the clinical implications. We have frequently used an exercise in which trainees discuss their own social locations and how they have shifted over the course of their own and their families’ cultural journey in the United States through time. We do this by actually putting on the floor a hierarchical listing of social locations by class (from upper class, those who live on inherited wealth; to the poor, who may grow up without even the hope of employment), with subhierarchies for gender, race, and sexual orientation. As in most exercises we do, trainers go first, modeling their own changes in social location. Train- ees then take turns moving along this social location hierarchy on the floor as they describe their personal and family evolution. As they do this, they explore the influence of ethnicity and religion on the hierarchies of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. They show also how education, migration, employment, finances, health, and marital status have influenced their posi- tions. This exercise helps trainees understand that cultural dimensions are not individual issues but are socially structured within the sociopolitical context.

Managing Difficult Dialogues

We have found that certain problems typically develop in cultural discussion at every level of any organizational hierarchy— among faculty, staff, clients, support staff, and administration. But encouraging difficult dialogues is the only way to promote the re- visioning of our field. We offer the following guidelines for leaders in managing dialogues about culture:

1. Familiarize a group with the dynamics of power, privilege, and oppres- sion early in the conversation and convey that in terms of social location all of us have privilege on certain dimensions and oppression on others.

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2. Share guidelines that may help trainees notice how these power dynam- ics work so that people can monitor themselves. They can, for example, notice their own inclination to shift discussion from any dimension on which they have privilege to another on which they are oppressed— something we all tend to do in such discussions. People tend to think much more easily about their own oppression than about their privilege. Thus, for example, white people are likely to move quickly from acknowledgment of racism and white suprem- acy to other dimensions, such as growing up poor, on which they have expe- rienced trauma or oppression. This typically has the effect of short- circuiting discussions of racism, sidelining racism as other differences are discussed. The more privilege we have, the harder it is to think about how our own actions have affected others with less privilege or to understand the rage of powerless- ness. We have been socialized to take our privilege for granted— our right to safety; to acknowledgment; to being heard, treated fairly, and taken care of; our right to take up available time, space, and resources; and so on.

3. In such discussions, “staying at the table” is everything. We make great efforts to clarify the idea that if we are to succeed in moving conversa- tions about race and other oppression forward, staying in the conversation is the primary requirement. We try to emphasize that the conversations may get sticky, uncomfortable, or intense and that we will all make mistakes as we go along. But hanging with the conversation is everything— not letting the issues get resubmerged, which always leads to cutoff, war, destruction, and ultimately death.

4. We consider it essential to keep a multidimensional perspective that highlights the overwhelming reality of institutionalized racism, while also including other forms of oppression.

5. Discussion may become polarized, particularly around the Black experience of white racism, leaving other people of color feeling invisible or excluded. People can easily become lost in arguments over which oppression is the worst or most important. This typically leads to the withdrawal of those who feel their issues of oppression are marginalized in such a dialogue, so it is important for facilitators to encourage nuanced dialogue.

GUIDELINES FOR UNDERSTANDING PRIVILEGE AND OPPRESSION

Sara Winter (1977) long ago addressed her reactivity to discussions of racism:

When someone pushes racism into my awareness, I feel guilty (that I could be doing so much more); angry (I don’t like to feel like I’m wrong); defensive (I already have two Black friends. . . . I worry more about racism than most whites do—isn’t that enough?); turned off (I have other priorities in my life—with guilt about that thought); helpless (the problem is so big—what

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can I do?). I HATE TO FEEL THIS WAY. That is why I minimize race issues and let them fade from my awareness whenever possible. (p. 24)

Her reaction is the kind of response we want to address with guidelines to help white people stay at the table and become more conscious of the structure of their reactions. We offer the following list of common responses to discus- sions of racism. We lay out these guidelines in training to help participants monitor their own reactions and increase their awareness of and sensitivity to others.

Common White Responses to Attempts to Discuss Racism

•• Distinguishing themselves from those with power and privilege by emphasizing their other oppressions: They refer to their great- grandfather, who was Cherokee, or to their own history of oppression as Irish, Jewish, gay, poor, disabled, or from abusive or mentally ill families. They say, “We experi- ence oppression ourselves. Why focus only on racism?”

•• Shifting discussion to the internalized racism of people of color against themselves or of one group against another: the issue of skin color within African American families, conflicts between Latinos or Koreans and African Americans, and so forth.

•• Resisting group categories, saying: “We’re just human beings”; “We do not think of people by color, culture, or class, but as unique human beings”; “You’re creating the problem by forcing us into categories. It’s stereotyping. I don’t identify as white. It’s not fair to force me into this categorization. It’s reverse racism. How can you blame a whole race for a few individuals? My ancestors weren’t even here during slavery. It’s not fair for you to blame me for these problems.”

•• Saying they feel “unsafe” in an atmosphere of “political correctness,” which makes them feel they are walking on eggshells. This focuses discussion on their discomfort, implicitly blaming those who are attempting to discuss oppression for making them uncomfortable. Such assertions make it impos- sible to have a discussion about their privilege.

•• Refocusing discussion on their feelings of shame. By this they assume a talking position and keep the focus on themselves, implicitly asking others to listen or take care of their pain about their racist behavior.

•• Disqualifying the issue or the one who raises it, by saying things like “Why do people always have to bring up the past? Slavery ended 160 years ago”; “People of color get so angry when they talk about these issues that it’s impossible to talk with them. I don’t want to talk until they can deal with these issues in a more appropriate, less angry way”; “They never point out the clinical implications of these issues.”

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•• Reacting with confused silence: “I’m certainly not a racist. I can’t think of anything to say on this topic.”

•• Claiming to acknowledge racism, while going back to individual think- ing when assessing the behavior of a person of color. Not getting excited about Rodney King, Trevor Martin or Amadu Diallo but being appalled about O. J. Simpson.

Common Responses of People of Color to Discussion of Racism

•• “It’s too painful and overwhelming. I feel so weary always having to lead whites in these discussions, and they never get it anyway.”

•• “Racism makes me feel so much rage. I hate to get into it. I have to choose my battles. Why should I go into it here?”

•• “When I was a child, we could not even eat next to a white person or use their drinking fountain. And they still don’t get it.”

•• “I wish I knew how to protect my children from racism. I worry how I will handle it the first time my child comes home having experienced a racist insult.”

What White People Need to Do in Response to People of Color Discussing Their Experiences of Racism

•• Resist the temptation to equalize the experience with a description of their own suffering.

•• Resist refocusing the conversation on their good intentions. •• Listen and believe. This is the only reasonable position for people of

privilege to take.

•• Resist any response that could negate the experience that is being described, and do not fill the space with your own words (Hardy & Bobes, 2016).

CONCLUSION

To re- vision family therapy, training programs will need to use their privi- lege and social justice commitment to help dismantle well- established, deeply entrenched “this is the way we’ve always done it” approaches to clinical edu- cation that perpetuate the status quo. At the very least, we hope that training programs will take an active role in becoming more accountable for effect- ing cultural changes. They will need to increase the inclusion and representa- tion of members of traditionally oppressed groups throughout the training

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program. If this is not immediately possible through the recruitment of train- ees, faculty members, and supervisors from these groups, then it is imperative for the program to design special programs to increase visibility, exposure, and inclusion. Racist patterns are most likely to be replicated when only one member of a traditionally oppressed group is present. Whites are more likely to learn about oppression and privilege in a group in which a significant per- centage (“a critical mass”) are people of color, a context that rarely occurs for white people. If such perspectives are not adequately represented within an institution, seeking consultation outside one’s organization for other perspec- tives is an important act of accountability. People of color must be represented in the hierarchy of institutions and programs. The most culturally competent structure has people of color at every level of the hierarchy. If that is not pos- sible, consultation to the upper levels of the hierarchy from an outside group with experience dealing with racism and partnerships at other levels with con- sultants of color can help the organization move in this direction as well. It helps to have at least three perspectives present in any discussion to minimize polarization. Discussion becomes more meaningful when three or more per- spectives are discussed together, at least until there is general acceptance of the importance of culture in clinical discussion. This is especially important because of our society’s tendency to polarize: Black–white; male– female; gay– straight; rich–poor. It is always valuable to create a context in which overlap- ping and ambiguous differences cannot easily be resolved, because that fits better with the complexities of human experience. Presenting several groups also tends to help students see the pattern rather than the exception. Thus, for example, although all Dominicans may not be alike, they may have certain similarities when compared with Haitians, Russians, or Greeks.

Both bringing attention to and discussing issues of race, class, and sexual orientation, as well as other experiences involving marginalization, must be regularly and consistently initiated by members of the dominant group and the hierarchy as a matter of principle. It has been our experience that conver- sations addressing any form of injustice have often been the responsibility of the marginalized person, while members of the majority group sit in silence, seeking safety and fearing reprisal. We all need to keep taking steps to find ways to contain opposites, contradictions, and ambiguities— not oversimpli- fying the issues but also not obfuscating the prejudices and oppression that are defining and destroying us.

REFERENCES

Green, R. J. (1998). Race and the field of family therapy. In M. McGoldrick (Ed.), Re- visioning family therapy (pp. 93–110). New York: Guilford Press.

Hall, R. L., & Greene, B. (1994). Cultural competence in feminist family therapy: An ethical mandate. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 6(3), 5–28.

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Hardy, K. V. (2008). On becoming a GEMM therapist: Work harder, be smarter, and never discuss race. In M. McGoldrick & K. V. Hardy (Eds.), Re- visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice (2nd ed., pp. 461–468). New York: Guilford Press.

Hardy, K. V., & Bobes, T. (Eds.). (2016). Culturally sensitive supervision and train- ing: Diverse perspectives and practical applications. New York: Routledge.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (1995). The cultural genogram: A key to training culturally competent family therapists. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21(3), 227–237.

Killian, K., & Hardy, K. V. (1998). Commitment to minority inclusion: A study of AAMFT conference program content and members’ perceptions. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 24, 207–223.

Lee, R. E., Nichols, D. P., Nichols, W. C., & Odom, T. (2004). Trends in family therapy supervision: The past 25 years and into the future. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 30, 61–69.

Long, J., Sprenkle, D., Dyson, O., King, E., & Richardson, B. (2003). Talking the talk and walking the walk. Presentation at the meeting of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Long Beach, CA.

Lorde, A. (1990). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In Sis- ter outsider: Essays and speeches by Audre Lorde (pp. 110–113). Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.

McDowell, T., Fang, S., Brownlee, K., Young, C. G., & Khanna, A. (2002). Trans- forming an MFT program: A model for enhancing diversity. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 28(2), 179–191.

McGoldrick, M., Almeida, R., Bibb, A., Moore Hines, P., Hudak, J., Garcia Preto, N., et al. (1999). Efforts to develop an equitable family training program. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 25(2), 191–210.

McGoldrick, M., Gerson, R., & Petry, S. (2008). Genograms: Assessment and inter- vention (3rd ed.). New York: Norton.

Root, M. P. P. (1996). A bill of rights for racially mixed people. In M. P. P. Root (Ed.), The multiracial experience: Racial borders as the new frontier (pp. 3–14). Thou- sand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M., Nadal, K. L., et al. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62, 271–286.

Tatum, B. D. (1997). Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?: And other conversations about race. New York: Basic Books.

Winter, S. (1977). Rooting out racism. Issues in Radical Therapy, 17, 24–30.

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A framework for promoting social justice is essential in family therapy training. Although there have been efforts to acknowledge cultural issues in therapy training, there are also powerful trends that counter such prog- ress. We have been overtaken by a universalizing search for evidence- based practice in numbers and manualized nonculturally differentiated treatments. Community- based mental health practices that have been relied upon by families for decades are increasingly disregarded in favor of procedures that offer no continuity of service and no acknowledgment of a family’s history or cultural context and that for the most part minimize family or community importance.

The training described in this chapter centers on cultural context: that of beginning students and that of their families and communities. Cultural context includes the influence of ethnicity and cultural heritage, as well as explorations of the hierarchies of gender, social class, sexual orientation, race, religion, and different abilities. Therapists need to understand that cultural dimensions are not individual issues but part of complex dynamics that are socially structured within a particular sociopolitical context. I think of teach- ing students as being akin to skipping a stone across water. If thrown just right, ideas will go deeper and deeper without veering off course. Helping students to appreciate the real challenges families encounter prepares them to be more effective.

C H A P T E R 3 4

Social Justice in Family Therapy Training The Power of Personal and Family Narratives

Matthew R. Mock

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MY OWN BACKGROUND AND FINDING MY PLACE IN THIS WORK

My own background and growing- up experiences frame why and how incor- porating diversity, social justice, and personal narratives are so important in my work. I am a third- generation Chinese American heterosexual man born and raised in Southern California. Economically, my parents struggled to raise seven children on the single income of my father as a postal carrier. My mother was my primary connection to Chinese culture, having spent most of her childhood in China. She was most comfortable speaking a dialect of Cantonese rather than English. Everything in my house reflected influences of being Asian, while everything outside contrasted with this. I alternated between being Asian in my home and anything but that outside. It was a life lesson in being bicultural, as well as being a minority. Growing up during a time when the fight for civil rights and women’s rights were at their height, along with the Vietnam War protest movement, definitely had a lasting impact on me. So did keeping the peace in my own home. As an ally, the subse- quent struggle for gay rights made sense to me as another public movement for equity and social justice.

I could never ignore the fact that social inequities and injustices differen- tially affect families. Although we are a country built on immigrants, includ- ing my Chinese ancestors, there are strong feelings about who belongs in the United States and who does not. Racial minorities are often stereotyped as suspects or perpetrators of crimes. We are overrepresented in jails and prisons. We are often used as scapegoats. Although women have made gains, they are still not compensated equally with men for their work. People who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender still face discrimination and exclusion. Muslim and Jewish communities are targeted for hate crimes. Family thera- pists must address the impact of such social inequities; not to do so colludes with an unjust narrative that families are the problem, and they are left to shoulder the blame.

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL JUSTICE IN FAMILY THERAPY

The goal of social justice is the equality, safety, security, and full participation of all groups in our diverse society. Family therapists need to use their abilities to affect change or agency to positively influence systems and ultimately to contribute to relational equity (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2007). To achieve this, therapists must recognize the societal forces of power, privilege, and socially maintained differences and the role they play in what families bring to them as problems or stressors. Among the core competencies of family therapists is the recognition of systemic and contextual dynamics, including the dimensions of social injustice, as they operate within each of us and our institutions, as well as within the families we are aiming to help.

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Social justice requires a commitment to never- ending education. As Paolo Freire (1970) taught us long ago, oppressive forces are the result of historical and socially constructed influences. Oppressive dynamics can be changed through education and action. Connecting theory and practice is the goal of liberation education, which facilitates the recovery of multigenerational histories, narra- tives, daily experiences, and the perspectives of marginalized individuals. Fam- ily therapists need to be aware of their internalized oppression, as well as of the power that they wield to confront unjust systems. This can be elicited initially through identifying some of their actual family stories. A Latina student chose to work as a family therapist after seeing how her grandmother’s stressors as an undocumented, monolingual immigrant led her to take her own life. A woman abused by her husband and threatened with forced hospitalization furthered her passions to eventually work as a feminist therapist in lockup settings.

My own family history fueled my passion to professionally help oth- ers who were treated as “less than” by the dominant culture. After working for decades directing a multicultural child and family therapy program in Berkeley for families with limited resources, I was compelled to move on to another position to address racial, cultural, and ethnic mental health dispari- ties throughout California. There are times in our lives when each of us must take a stand; this was my time to do so. Witnessing the effects of larger, more enduring movements such as those during the civil rights era compelled me to do more. On a personal level, my parents’ maturing into older age and the launching of my daughter into college greatly influenced me to question my hoped-for legacies in life. I had worked with families one by one who were affected by social inequities. I had also witnessed disparities in the mental health treatment of children and families. The move I made followed my com- mitment to address larger systemic inequities.

As a professor in a graduate counseling psychology program, I am pas- sionate about training the next generation of family therapists. One of the pillars of our program is a commitment to the infusion of cultural responsive- ness and social justice throughout our program. We inform potential students about this ahead of time. We reiterate our commitment during student orien- tation and follow up with the workshop described in this chapter.

Of course, no training will guarantee that every student will embrace social justice. But our program has several components that reinforce under- standing of social justice. These include several courses that build off the ini- tial workshop, including a sequence that focuses on the self-of-the- therapist; a multicultural counseling course; and an advanced course on social inequities. Ideally, all of our graduate courses underline the essential infusion of cultural processes in family therapy, each course evaluating students regarding their awareness of cultural and power issues in clinical relationships. We frame this as an ethical and clinical practice issue that is part of our profession. All our students get considerable exposure to multiculturalism in practice, inten- sive workshops on mental health disparities, and specific courses on work- ing with various cultural communities. Their clinical training and supervision

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involves diverse individuals and families. With the self-of-the- therapist as a major focus of our training throughout, students are strongly encouraged to consider the social influences of their own background on their training and future work. The initial workshop described below, mainly using examples of addressing racism, aims to build a foundation for students for this orientation, moving students from personal to theoretical to clinical learning about power, privilege, and oppression in our society.

Most students come to our program already believing they have compas- sion for others. But when they are made aware of their unearned power and privilege, they may not be ready to acknowledge it. When it is pointed out to a White, straight male that he was born into unearned privilege, his initial stance is usually defensive, feeling his integrity is being challenged. The sug- gestion that he has benefitted from White supremacy often leads privileged students to withdraw, feeling they are being accused of mistreating others. We try to prepare for such defensive responses by acknowledging up front that these are structural issues built into our society, not personal failings, and that society has been created to keep patterns of privilege and oppression invisible.

Confrontational strategies are sometimes necessary when there is absolute denial. However, we find that facilitation of empathy, curiosity, and careful listening through authentic, caring conversation is generally more effective. It also serves as a foundation for sometimes necessary, more pointed interven- tions. Facilitators need multiple strategies to promote this process. For exam- ple, in one recent training, an African American male student expressed frus- tration with one of the White students who was not fully acknowledging of his privilege. Students discussed that, of course, racism does exist and that one of the hallmarks of having privilege is being free not to be aware of it. Some of the White students worked with the man who had become defensive to support his staying in the conversation and learning how privilege and White supremacy work. This led a group of women of diverse backgrounds to share how their second- class status due to their gender is often denied or minimized. Although the discussions can be very difficult, it is extremely gratifying to see students evolve in such a learning process and begin to share their learning with others.

I use my own experiences as a Chinese American man who grew up amid multiple challenges to urge my students to draw on their own cultural strengths in striving to understand social justice and equity. I urge them to dare to share their experiences honestly. Obviously, my power as one of the core professors may make students feel uncomfortable in challenging me. I try to be explicit about that difficulty, so at least that aspect of my privilege in relation to their disadvantage is on the table.

FOUNDATIONAL WORKSHOP ON SOCIAL JUSTICE

At the beginning of their training, students participated in a 2-day workshop in groups of 20 that sets the stage for all future learning in our program,

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conveying a basic understanding of concepts such as social location, social context, intersectionality, power, cultural humility, and social justice. Stu- dents move from personal, emotional relating to conceptual understanding and then clinical implications. We engage them in an intensive process to appreciate diversity and social justice as they relate to themselves and to the families they will encounter.

For many, this is the first time they are interacting intensively with oth- ers of different backgrounds in relation to race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, and more. Students (we are located in the California Bay Area) are often from middle- class backgrounds, though some have grown up poor. Usually about 75% are women and 10% are gay, lesbian, or transgen- der. Approximately one-third identify as racial or ethnic minority students, some of recent immigrant or refugee family backgrounds.

Setting an Initial Framework for Personal Sharing through Learning Agreements

Our personal stories reflect our own histories interwoven with histories of our families, our interactions with others, and our environment. Telling and listening to stories is critical for working with families. It is an essential step toward the practice of social justice. In order to learn about our social location in the socially constructed world of inequities, it is important to have a safe context in which to learn together.

Unlike with many other conversations, the emotional charge of talking about socially constructed and maintained differences created by racism, sex- ism, classism, ageism, and other “-isms” can lead students to shut down fur- ther interaction. Facilitated training sessions with dialogue based on learning agreements can take participants to a level they have not previously thought possible. We must have a willingness to move beyond “political correctness” to authenticity with others. Rather than avoiding sensitive, charged topics, we encourage taking respectful risks.

To set up a safe and enduring context for learning through personal nar- ratives, we offer learning agreements to facilitate their conversations. We give examples or have them “try some on” (Mock, 2017). The following are exam- ples of these agreements:

•• Speak from an “I” place. Do not speak for someone else. •• Be fully present. Put away all distractions. •• Participate with mindfulness and mutual respect. •• Honor confidentiality. That which happens in the group stays in the

group. •• Be patient with yourself and others. Best thoughts are often conveyed

after reflection. •• Listen with an open mind and heart. We are working to have meaning-

ful, thoughtful interchange, not to determine who is right or wrong.

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•• Suspend judgment. Our intention is to have courageous dialogue to connect rather than to divide us.

•• Don’t give up. Working toward transformation is hard, and we must persevere.

We ask all attendees to consider whether they can accept these agree- ments and, as facilitators, try to model them throughout our time together, coming back to adjust them as needed. Students usually agree readily but later discover that they are challenged when they experience disagreements brought on by the multiplicity of “-isms” that arise. Women may become impatient or judgmental when a man falls short of acknowledging the realities of sexism. Persisting in helping him to gain insight into to how he has benefitted from sexism can be powerful.

The first part of the workshop focuses on emotional understanding of students’ personal identity and power. We concentrate on core concepts of power, privilege, context, and social location in students’ own lives and then for their work with clients. They explore influences of their own cultural con- text, including issues of race, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, spiri- tuality, abilities, immigration status, and appearance in relation to identity. They discover that they have multiple identities that intersect. This process generally takes up the first day of the training and ends with a broader discus- sion of social inequity, social justice, health disparities, and the importance of taking a stand against violence in all forms— including oppression.

On the second day we widen the lens to students’ professional identity, work in organizations, and social justice. This process is more focused on the core concepts of power, privilege, context, and social location as they relate directly to the clinical context. We offer examples of some of the historic and systemic challenges families face and how these issues may show up clinically. Students’ attention is drawn to inequitable systems such as schools, juvenile justice, and mental health services for diverse families. They are challenged not just to understand how families are often marginalized in society but also to become part of the solution in their future roles as therapists.

Facilitating the Process: Narratives as Personal Stories, as “Gifts” of Connection

Graduate students are invited to be both storytellers and listeners to stories, as they soon will be with families. The message is that we each have stories to tell. To open students to new perspectives, we structure the process of their sharing personal narratives.

At the same time, in order to incorporate social justice in their work, they must create spaces for difficult dialogues. As human beings we naturally make distinctions between “us” and “them.” This is one source of prejudice and discrimination. Close interpersonal, intergroup personal contact with others whose backgrounds we are unfamiliar with can counter biases and prejudice.

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With this in mind, the group has dialogues in pairs or threesomes. We empha- size cultural humility, an interpersonal stance in which one is respectfully open to the other. This acknowledges ways that their own personal histories, cultural identities, and experiences may affect their future sensitivities to cli- ent families.

Early on, the group is divided into pairs for 5-minute conversations for about an hour. We try to diversify their pairings. Students may initially gravi- tate toward someone who looks like them or whom they perceive as similar, such as in gender or race, but they are instructed instead to find someone they do not know, perhaps who is of similar height or contrasting skin color, and so on. This moves people out of their comfort zone. The simplicity of sharing parts of their story in dyads connects them in new ways. The aim of this is to build a healthy “learning community.” They begin to become personally invested in each other. Of course, they learn from others when they agree and share experiences, but they often learn even more when they disagree or come from socially disparate backgrounds.

Some examples of the structured partner sharing include:

•• “Discuss your name, its origin as far back as you can trace it. Many of us are ‘strangers’ with different places of origin, languages, pronunciation, spellings, and cultural meanings to our names.”

•• “Describe someone who is a hero to you— someone you know or a mythical or historical person. Describe the person’s background, why he or she is heroic for you, and what role the person plays in your life.”

•• “Discuss a ‘cultural transitional object’ that connects you to your cul- ture, has significant meaning, and engenders some emotional response.” (For example, I might, as a Chinese person, choose a red envelope with money inside, which is passed out during special events. Someone Jewish might choose a menorah. Someone identifying as gay might choose the rainbow flag.)

•• “Discuss a time when you or your family sought assistance or care from others. What were some cultural healing practices, beliefs, or rituals that you and your family engaged in when you were growing up? How might your ancestors have dealt with illness or maintained wellness for your family?”

•• “Discuss a grand celebration for an important transition in your life (real or imagined). Who was or would be there? What foods, rituals, or pro- cesses would be a part of your celebration? Many of us like to think we live in a ‘global village.’ How is cultural diversity reflected in your gathering and to what degree?”

•• “Discuss your first awareness of human differences. Recount the words, sounds, smells, colors, and visual memories of the event. What was the source of the difference? How did you feel about that? How did people close to you respond? Would you have wanted anyone to do something differently? How has your reaction to that interaction changed over time? While memories

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of exact details may have faded, what feelings do you remember having during that situation?”

After students talk in changing pairs for 5–7 of the diversity topics previ- ously discussed, we debrief as a group for another hour. We discuss questions about new learning and what created new perspectives, which often helps students appreciate the connections they were beginning to develop. One pri- mary lesson is that everyone has a culture that takes on different meanings throughout our lives. Students often begin to see that socially constructed sources of difference, including discrimination and prejudice, have played out in personal, family, and community interactions throughout their lives. They consistently enjoy the discovery of their interconnectedness, despite their dif- ferent worldviews and life experiences. Everyone has had stories to tell, often shared for the first time, about cultural objects, rituals, or people that gener- ally have great meaning for them.

The sharing that seems to challenge participants the most is their stories of their first awareness of human difference. Shifting from personal stories to this social dimension is often a key point for their critical consciousness. They share painful stories of an “-ism” they have experienced or other trauma. They reflect on differences created by being treated as an “other” in some form. They share painful memories that have endured for years. It is impor- tant to acknowledge participants for having honestly shared their stories. Underlining examples of commonalities furthers group learning and cohesion.

We then use media clips to deepen their awareness and conversation. A clip from the film Children Full of Life (Nogami, Hinohara, & Kaetsu, 2003), for example, shows a beloved teacher educating his young students to have compassion for others, understand differences, and care for others through- out their lives. He models learning from our mistakes. Students learn that it is important to share differences. Although it may be emotionally challenging to do so, the shared experience can bring them closer together. And if one truly cares about others, risk taking can be empowering. A video clip from All Orientals Look the Same (Soe, 1986) viscerally captures the perniciousness of stereotypes used to reference Asian Americans. For this clip I sometimes speak of coming from one of the only Asian families in my neighborhood when I was growing up. We were referred to as “Oriental.” This term, developed by Westerners who traded in Asia, is viewed by many, including Asians, as deri- sive. In California early Chinese immigrants were repeatedly excluded from attaining legal residence due to “being foreign,” with different eyes and darker skin. As with many marginalized families, my father did not speak of these microaggressions but internalized them. I recall my father later speaking of encountering racism due to being stereotyped as “Oriental.” I came to under- stand him differently. Earlier in life I had assumed that my father’s silence about oppression meant it had no relevance for us. When I learned about how his speaking up actually endangered our family, I understood his being quiet as being protective. When we children were older and more mature, we were

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able to have meaningful conversations about what he had endured, and these talks empowered each of us as Chinese Americans.

Film narratives expand the storytelling process, allowing students to wit- ness a variety of intense stories of social injustice and discuss their reactions. Video is a powerful way of teaching “from the outside in.” A video may depict the impact of racist acts on families and efforts of oppressed communities to counter such discrimination. Silent Beats (Chu & Browne, 2001) is a pow- erful springboard to help students talk about everyday experiences of rac- ism. It depicts an African American adolescent who is buying Band-Aids and snacks in a store being treated as a suspect to be watched and feared. Traffic Stop (Hartman & Petzold, 2010) forces students to address current realities often encountered by young Black men facing unfair treatment by police, as well as uncomfortable but necessary multiracial conversations. These clips are materials for difficult dialogues that are followed up in later trainings in our program.

To assist students in becoming systemic thinkers, we confront their linear polarizations and help them hold multiple perspectives on inequities at once. The personal sharing of the first day warms students up for addressing some of the harsh realities of societal inequities and “-isms” on the second day of our training, which hopefully provides them with a foundational conceptual grounding.

Laying a Foundation through Core Concepts

We begin the second day by discussing core concepts such as power, social location, and intersectionality. We have found that engaging students per- sonally and emotionally first facilitates discussion of power inequities, which play such a major role in identity development, relationships, family dynam- ics, and societal disparities (Pinderhughes, Jackson, & Romney, 2017) that place some in positions of privilege or power over others. Those with less power are oppressed within our society.

Students must understand and appreciate the dynamics of their own cul- ture and social location (Watts-Jones, 2010), which refers to the groups that a person belongs to in society and history. It also refers to the relative standing of these groups in society. The ways we are defined and treated based on our diverse, multiple identities within each of us frames our social location within a specific social context of time, place, and community. Our identity, includ- ing our identity within our families, is heavily influenced by the social rules, roles, power, privileges, and systemic oppression conferred upon us by the larger society. The image of an umbrella of multiple oppressions (Figure 34.1) can help students locate themselves, each other, faculty members, and their clients in terms of how everyone’s social standing influences their social loca- tion. Within each of these social categories some have more power or influence than others. Using Figure 34.1, we have students identify themselves, adding also dimensions they think of that are not on the map. A multiracial student

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revealed that she often passed as White in order to be accepted. A middle- aged South Asian woman shared that she was from an upper-class background but was often criticized by her family for pursuing education rather than marriage. She had also faced public discrimination through being mistaken for a Muslim. These examples illustrate how important it is to identify our own social location. Using this diagram helps students identify dimensions of socially constructed differences among people. Within each dimension, there is a hierarchy in which some have more power, advantages, and privilege. It is essential for students to understand how these hierarchies affect them, the families they will see, and everyone’s interrelationships.

We discuss how racism is most commonly oversimplified and framed as a Black–White issue. I often refer to my own experience as a Chinese Amer- ican man, often referred to as the “model minority.” This is far from the truth and is used to criticize other minorities, blaming them for creating their own situations. Asian Americans, no matter how many generations they have been in the United States, are stereotyped as “forever foreigners.” Many Lati- nos share a similar experience. When there is an economic downturn, Asian Americans and Latinos and others perceived as recent immigrants tend to be scapegoated, a common strategy used to divide minorities. We discuss also historical examples such as how Koreans and African Americans were pitted against one another at the time of the Rodney King riots. This was an issue of White supremacy that was deflected to two oppressed groups: Asians and Blacks. Describing these dynamics helps students appreciate the complexity of

Religious Hierarchy Christian Muslim Jewish

Agnostic Atheist

Racism White Black Latino Asian

Native American

Heterosexism Heterosexual Homosexual

Bisexual Trans Queer

Sexism Male

Female Ambiguous

Classism Upper Class

Upper Middle Class Middle Class

Lower Middle Class Working Class

Poor/Underclass

Ageism Young Adult Child/Teen

Middle Aged Old

Ableism Healthy Able Bodied

Disablied Severly Disabled

Other Dimensions: Language Ability, Physical Beauty, Height, Weight, etc.

FIGURE 34.1. Power grid of “-isms”: domination versus oppression.

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the power dynamics of White supremacy, which pits oppressed groups against each other.

We spend a good deal of time on the concept of intersectionality as well, helping students appreciate the complexity and not oversimplifying the issues or getting into competition over whose oppression or privilege is higher.

Reflecting on Narratives of Social Location and Injustice

During a later part of the workshop we focus on systemic challenges. We view clips from the historic documentary Eyes on the Prize (Hampton, Vec- chione, & Else, 1987), which captures individual, family, and community movements of social justice during the civil rights period. We discuss why segregation still persists and its impact on children and families. We view clips from Robert Coles’s film Listening to Children: A Moral Journey with Robert Coles (Smith, Harris, & Squires, 1995) that demonstrate how his truly listening to 6-year-old Ruby Bridges provided insights for helping her come to terms with those who treated her as less than others. We discuss how racism is experienced as an ongoing trauma and show how our cultural humility will be tested by it, illustrating also roles we can play in validating the experience of those whom racism has hurt and empowering them to be effective in society.

Other videos demonstrate the role that institutional inequities and sys- tems play in the lives of families. Unnatural Causes (California Newsreel with Vital Pictures, 2008), for example, documents the impact of generations of discrimination and injustices, including ways racism may have a deleteri- ous impact on the pregnancies of African American women. That is, when a racist encounter is experienced, it is remembered and internalized by the woman, affecting hormonal release during pregnancy. In this same documen- tary film, Episode 3 titled Becoming American: The Latino Paradox explores why Latino families tend to do less well overall the longer that they are in the United States, hypothesizing that protective factors of home culture disappear through acculturation processes.

Video narratives heighten students’ awareness of structural, institutional inequities that racism creates in education, health care, and juvenile justice and sensitizes students about the enormity of their future responsibilities. Finally, our training always goes to the students’ roles as future family thera- pists contributing to societal improvement.

Narratives of Mistreatment

We then return to sharing personal narratives, this time in triads. We acknowl- edge that we cannot take action in all situations, sometimes for reasons of our own safety or that of the person mistreated, sometimes because we do not have complete information or are hesitant to act with full commitment with uncertainty of the consequences. Students are asked:

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•• “Discuss a time when you were mistreated or treated as less than equal to someone else. Who was there? What happened? What would you have wanted to happen?”

•• “Discuss a time when you observed someone else being mistreated, treated as less than or less than equal. What happened? What did you do? What would you have wanted to do?”

After debriefing these narratives as a group, students are given time to identify commonalities of their experience. One student spoke of how he iden- tified with a Latino father we saw on film who was initially ashamed of his son being gay but changed his position when his son was forbidden to bring a male date to his prom. After acknowledging his fears and giving in to negative messages from heterosexism, the father stepped in to become an advocate. As a result, the son and father became closer, and their bonds became stronger. The student cried as he told his own story of coming out, as others gave him support and praise.

We work together to identify different aspects of their experiences that would make a positive difference during or after these insidious events. We identify characteristics of allies, those who would stand up to break the cycle of oppression. We work to build up the awareness that each student can be an ally personally and professionally.

Anticipating and Supporting Difficult Dialogues

Two of the major tasks of the workshop are to foster students in creating a container for freer exchange of ideas and to promote a space for voices and ways of knowing that have so frequently been absent, unpopular, or excluded. We must encourage students to examine the limits of their knowledge, com- fort, and understanding of different perspectives. Incorporating a commit- ment to social justice is often new to them. It means diving into the center of relational wounds of the past to understand processes for healing relation- ships among families in the future. In seeking a “cure,” we cannot stay silent, yet it is uncomfortable to talk about them. We must talk about the roots of racism, its history, and how it is societally perpetuated.

Students may have felt wounded in previous race discussions. We com- mend them for candor in speaking up. We may then point out that, as they are becoming more aware of privilege, oppression, and power differences, managing difficult conversations about race will be essential to their clinical work. Part of the reason for the difficulty is that society denies these realities, making it difficult for people to grapple with them. In fact, rather than con- fronting structural prejudice, bias, and discrimination, people may resort to “color blindness” or “color silence” (Sue, 2015). Students vary in how aware they are of their relative power or lack of it. Not surprisingly, those with less power are generally the most aware of power dynamics. Part of our work is learning how this happens.

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If there is a focus on race, for example, racial minority students will, if they are honest, share experiences of being targeted and oppressed. Those who cannot fully identify with the Black–White dichotomy are likely to have other reactions, as the dynamics of racism and White supremacy do not ade- quately address their experience of marginalization. I consciously bring up Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans as communities that must be acknowledged in discussions about race. Being mindful of groups often left out of discussions exemplifies the significant role of inclusion. We work to keep everyone in the conversation, actively monitoring how students are participating.

Social justice as an integral aspect of family therapy training continues throughout our program. Describing aspects of difficult dialogues prepares students to understand how hard such conversations can be and the “heavy lifting” that needs to be done to keep oneself and others in the conversation. We try to convey the importance of students remaining in connection through empathy and compassion. It is not just teaching content but also process. Dif- ficult dialogues aim to counter polarization by dealing more effectively with the breakdowns of civil discourse. Part of the difficult conversation about race, for example, includes exploring how unearned skin privilege contributes to White- skinned people’s alienation from themselves and from others who are not White (powell, 2012).

Participating in difficult dialogues is a type of courageous conversation requiring a commitment to respect, humility, patience, courage, and perse- verance (Worthington, Khairallah, & Boggs, 2009). It means grappling with challenging and sensitive issues in the field of family therapy. A White student may express compassion when shown a situation in which a young Black man is assaulted by a police officer without just cause. Yet when we enter into a dialogue about how structural racism gives Whites unfair advantages, the same student may become defensive, expressing less compassion.

Strategies to Facilitate Remaining in Courageous Conversations

Discussions that tackle any “-isms,” such as racism, are hard. Some White students walk away feeling singled out or guilty for past historical injustices. Students of color may feel outraged about their real histories of inequality. We take time to expose students to Hardy’s (2016) discussions about the tasks for the privileged and the tasks for the subjugated. This provides students with a framework for understanding polarizations that occur. We find it helpful to preemptively describe how conversations typically break down as the sub- jugated feel unheard and the privileged feel defensive. Using clips from films such as The Color of Fear: A Film (Lee, Hunter, Goss, Bock, Almanzan, et al., 1994) or The Way Home: Women Talk About Race in America (Butler, 1998) assists in teaching about group dynamics, as well as exemplifying the benefits of uncomfortable dialogues. Students generally prefer to talk about their dimensions of oppression rather than dimensions of power. One way to

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help students expand their awareness is to make room to specifically address the ways they have power or advantage and the ways they do not. We talk about why it is often easier to talk about how we have been oppressed than about our privilege and power. Giving lots of praise for respectfully persist- ing through dialogues that are hard provides students with hope that positive change can happen.

Making Commitments toward Ongoing Learning and Issues of Accountability

Making a commitment as a family therapist to social justice in everyday prac- tice is among the hardest work that we do. Even if this training seems trans- formational in the moment, it can only last if students continue developing their understanding and practice of social justice for the rest of their lives. We caution them that their newly found commitments to social justice will be undermined. They will need to be continuously conscious about the social forces that underlie inequities, especially ways they differentially affect fami- lies that they work with. Students need to be assisted in overcoming the norm of avoiding talking about race, racial dynamics, and societally perpetuated racism.

We often have students address a letter to themselves, listing specific commitments they will make to social justice personally, such as, “I will point out incidences of sexism as they arise” or “When I witness acts that contribute to cycles of mistreatment, I will stand up and interrupt them” or “I will turn political acts of social injustice into opportunities to actively resist and protest in ways that meaningfully involve others.” We send these often forgotten self- written letters back to students months afterward, and they often mention how powerful it is to receive their own letters, which remind them how hard it is to maintain accountability.

As we close the training, we remind students that it is important to go beyond their actual experiences and think what actions they can take in the future as family therapists. I tell the story of a talented Vietnamese American adolescent who was targeted for being expelled due to his school’s “three strikes” infraction policy. We worked with administrators to understand how racist treatment, living in poverty, and his family’s traumas, having arrived as refugees, affected his relationships. He had clear, identifiable adverse child- hood experiences that were seldom identified. Key role models who identified his strengths and resilience came to view his family differently, advocating for him in court and connecting him to meaningful peer groups. Rather than viewing him as a “bad kid,” his teachers came to view him within his family as someone emerging from oppressive forces. He came to view school staff not as untrustworthy adversaries but as potential bridge builders, working with his situation, empowering his family.

We make every effort to support students throughout the program to go from difficult dialogues for critical learning to applying them to commitment

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and action in their future clinical work. Increasing the competencies of future therapists benefits the families they will work with.

Some students have launched their own groups to support their work in addressing social inequities or continued social justice– related initiatives in schools, their communities, and at professional conferences.

Incorporating social justice and the combating of societal “-isms” into family therapy training must include awareness of who has defined our theo- ries, practices, and research methods, as well as what controls our universities and clinics. This must be followed by continuously understanding what would have to change for space to be made for marginalized voices, as well as what it would take to appeal to those not yet included in our family programs and clinics.

This workshop is just a start. Longer and more in-depth courses will deepen the lessons from the workshop. When I was growing up, the middle child of seven children, we started dinner only when all nine of us were at the table, and we were given permission to leave only after the last person was done. This was how we managed scarcity of food and also how we avoided being pulled away from family togetherness. No matter what, we were always to be mindful of each other and to make a place at the table for each other. I urge my students to think about the time and place in which we interact as being like a “living room.” Obviously, we won’t always agree, but we will persist and remain together. It is a matter of listening and paying attention to the unheard. As I child, I used to think my parents were mean to enforce this rule of togetherness. I later came to appreciate their deeper intent: to acknowl- edge how we are connected, how we should care for one another and look out for each other’s needs. This requires a relational commitment. I would not have understood this at such a deep, emotionally meaningful level unless I was taught to endure. I trust that my students, the next generation of family therapists, will do more than endure. I hope they will continue to contribute to a better world for us all.

REFERENCES

Adams, M., Bell, L. A., & Griffin, P. (2007). Teaching for diversity and social justice: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

Butler, S. (Producer & Director). (1998). The way home: Women talk about race in America [Video]. Oakland, CA: World Trust.

California Newsreel with Vital Pictures. (Producer). (2008). Unnatural causes [Docu- mentary]. San Francisco: California Newsreel.

Chu, J. (Producer), Browne, C. (Producer), & Chu, J. (Director). (2001). Silent beats [Video]. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum International. Hampton, H. (Executive Producer), Vecchione, J. (Producer), & Else, J. (Producer).

(1987). Eyes on the prize [Documentary video]. New York: PBS.

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Hardy, K. V. (2016). Culturally sensitive supervision and training. New York: Rout- ledge.

Hartman, R. (Producer), Petzold, R. (Producer), Kamentsky, G. (Director), & Zam- marchi, J. (Director). (2010). Traffic stop [Motion picture]. United States: Lospotreros.

Lee, M. W., Hunter, M., Goss, R., Bock, R. C., Almanzan, R., Christensen, D., Clay, G. (Producers) & Lee, M. W. (Director). (1994). The color of fear: A film [Video]. Berkeley, CA: Stir-Fry Productions.

Mock, M. R. (2017). Personal compassion and alliance building: Interrupting cycles of discrimination and relational dehumanization. In S. Anderson & V. Middle- ton (Eds.), Explorations in diversity: Examining complexities of privilege, dis- crimination and oppression (pp. 289–298). New York: Oxford University Press.

Nogami, J. (Producer), Hinohara, N. (Producer), & Kaetsu, N. (Director). (2003). Children full of life [Motion picture]. Japan: NHK.

Pinderhughes, E., Jackson, V., & Romney, P. (2017). Understanding power: An imperative for human services. New York: NASW Press.

powell, J. A. (2012). Racing to justice: Transforming our conceptions of self and other to build an inclusive society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Smith, S. (Executive Producer), Harris, M. (Co- Producer), & Squires. B. (Director). (1995). Listening to children: A moral journey with Robert Coles [Documentary video]. New York: PBS.

Soe, V. (1986). All orientals look the same [Video]. San Francisco: Center for Asian American Media.

Sue, D. W. (2015) Race talk and the conspiracy of silence: Understanding and facili- tating difficult dialogues on race. New York: Wiley.

Watts-Jones, D. (2010) Location of self: Opening the door to dialogue on the intersec- tionality in the therapy process. Family Process, 49(3), 405–420.

Worthington, R. L., Khairallah, T. S., & Boggs, K. (2009, January). Difficult dialogues in multicultural psychology. Paper presented at the National Multicultural Con- ference and Summit, American Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA.

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On January 20, 2017, the first African American President, Barack Obama, left the White House, and Donald Trump was inaugurated. As a candidate and after taking office, Trump used an appeal to racism to galvanize his sup- porters. The African American writer Ta- Nehisi Coates (2017) felt this only made “the implicit explicit,” giving evidence to the endurance of the deadly bias (steadfastly denied) written into our national DNA since our foundation.

Yet, at this same time, Senator Bernie Sanders (campaign speech) said of millennials: “There has never been a generation less racist, less misogynist, less homophobic, less xenophobic than this one.” Widespread campus support for the Black Lives Matter movement attests to his observation. In 2014, cell phone videos documenting horrific acts of police violence inflicted on people of color began to proliferate. A foundational experience of African Americans (see, e.g., Mosley, 2015) and other people of color burst through bubbles of White not knowing.

There have been significant changes for the better, perhaps a profound generational shift, yet much has remained the same and even worsened dur- ing the Trump administration. Current political developments can be used to engage students and illuminate discrepant understandings of racism.

Many students recognize the power differentials inherent in racism. The concept of White privilege has gained currency. Yet the realities of inequality may need to be reviewed for those who maintain a “color-blind” perspective. There is growing literature on the unrelenting experience for people of color of

C H A P T E R 3 5

Teaching about Racism and the Implications for Practice

N. Norma Akamatsu

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inferior status, economic discrimination, marginalization, and injustice (see, e.g., Coates, 2015; Smith, 2016; Gonzalez, 2012; Nguyen, 2015; Rankine, 2014). But the specific hows and whys of disadvantage by race, brutally salient to some, can remain veiled to those who are protected. It is imperative to introduce specific course content on how inequality manifests itself.

Of equal importance is addressing Whites’ fears of being “shamed and blamed.” In our course at the Smith College School for Social Work (cotaught with the Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian), we established a culture of clemency at the very outset. We emphasized that racism is “the air we breathe,” something we are all schooled in from early childhood. We made clear that people may differ in their knowledge about racism, but that “where you start out today” is less important than “where you go.” Our stated goal is to foster the inten- tion to go forward with greater understanding and a willingness to address racism. At the same time, sensitivity to the vulnerabilities that students of color may experience is also carefully monitored and can be acknowledged: “We recognize you may feel the spotlight is on you and invite you to share or not as suits you.”

“RACISM 101”: FIRST LESSONS

A useful starting point is to differentiate personal, institutional, and cultural racism and develop an understanding of structural racism, the net effect of these interacting systems. A high schooler in Hawaii once expressed confu- sion: “How can I be a racist? I don’t hate Hawaiians. I don’t think any of my ancestors ever owned slaves!”

For many, the word “racist” is understood as “individual acts of mean- ness” (personal racism). The more costly and pervasive effects of institutional and cultural racism may be less well perceived. In our course, these distinc- tions are drawn in the first class. The effects of institutional racism, more subtle than the legal segregation of the past, are delineated, such as corporate “glass ceilings” that limit promotion of people of color, inadequate strategies for retention of those newly hired, discriminatory banking and real estate practices, voter suppression, or extreme differences in incarceration rates (see, e.g., Alexander, 2012; Coates, 2014; Smiley, 2006; Stevenson, 2014; Tatum, 2007). We discuss racism in educational systems and the considerable impact of negative expectations, long considered in our field. Psychologist Claude Steele (1992) has researched the effects of stigma: “Terms like ‘prejudice’ and ‘racism’ often miss the full scope of racial devaluation in our society . . . in all of us, not just in the strongly prejudiced . . . even in Blacks themselves. . . . Sooner or later it forces on its victims [the] painful realization . . . that society is preconditioned to see the worst in them” (pp. 72–74).

We invite students to examine their own work contexts, using the Mul- ticultural Organizational Assessment Inventory (Jackson & Holvino, 1988; Jackson, 2006), which outlines seven types of organizational responses to

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racism. The impact of exclusionary organizations (e.g., country clubs) pales in comparison to the far- reaching effects of organizations with an attitude of passive compliance: “Our doors are open, but ‘they’ don’t apply!” An African American diversity trainer succinctly observes, “I’m less afraid of the men in white sheets than the men in blue suits” (Kenneth Jones, personal communica- tion, June 1996).

Finally, we examine cultural racism, any message or image that promotes the false but constant idea that White is the standard, ideal, normal. At the close of our first class, students are sent out to roam our New England town and develop a list of 20 examples of cultural racism.

Computer ads, monuments, magazine covers, greeting cards, cosmetics, and baby products that portray only White people are frequently cited. Recog- nizing the elevation of Whiteness and disavowal of peoples of color, like a rap on the head from the Zen master, suddenly awakens many White students to the pervasive ordinariness of a now- blatant cultural racism: “I am surprised at my surprise,” one student proclaimed. In recent years, growing psychological research supports the formidable shaping effects of “implicit bias” that oper- ates outside our conscious awareness, applying a socially endorsed template of stereotypes without our actively choosing it (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013; Powell, 2016). The film Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People is an excellent example of this (Earp & Jhally, 2006).

RACISM AS DOMINANT DISCOURSE

Many White students begin to experience an uneasy puzzlement over their previous inability to notice these pervasive systems of inequality. The frame- work of “dominant discourses,” first used in our field by narrative therapists (Hare- Mustin, 1994; White & Epston, 1990; White, 1993), makes sense of their predicament. Pointing to the values embedded within cultural norms, that which looks “regular” or “common sense” is subjected to new analysis and review. The subtle endorsement of arrangements of privilege and power is an especially important implication.

For example, when a Latino family therapist complains about a national family therapy conference brochure that depicts photographs of White clini- cians only, a White colleague realizes with shocked dismay that she had not even noticed the omission. White (1993) emphasizes how the biases embedded within the dominant discourse are hidden by their very ordinariness, a sense of normality that functions to preclude questioning.

Pedagogical efforts follow that attempt to create a wedge of awareness that might help students “stand outside” of their accustomed views. Drawing attention to both the influence of larger social contexts and their embedded values is central to a process of deconstructive inquiry, a critical scrutiny of our own “taken-for- granted realities and practices” (White, 1993, p. 34).

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WHITE IS HEALTHY: EUROCENTRIC THEORY

One student’s list of cultural racism examples included these entries: “Band- Aids, Barbies, our theories.” Although initially difficult to perceive, cultural biases are discerned gradually, stimulating a renewed analysis of the political impact of ideas. In this way, the implicit endorsement of Eurocentric com- municational styles, nonverbal behaviors, and ways of handling emotion, as well as a narrow focus on the heterosexual nuclear family structure, becomes apparent (see Falicov, 1995; Hardy & Laszloffy, 1994).

Recognition of such preconceptions also promotes a more critical per- spective on ethnic differences (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia- Preto, 2005) and disrupts a “you-have- ethnicity- and-I-don’t” mentality. We move beyond a one-sided description of “them” toward a recursive dialogue in which the clinician’s own cultural and professional assumptions are also called into self- awareness and questioned. Students are encouraged to consider and make explicit the links between their preferred clinical ideas and practices and some of the meaningful personal experiences and cultural contexts that have informed these choices (White, 1993). They can invite their clients to do the same. For example, the following questions engage immigrant mothers and their daughters in a conjoint deconstruction of their differing cultural prem- ises about gender roles (Akamatsu, 1995):

•• “What is the traditional role for women in your culture, as you under- stood it, based on your particular family experience?”

•• “What was the impact of immigration or living in the United States on the traditional role?”

•• “What aspects of the traditional role have the women in your fam- ily followed and what have they not followed? Based on what experi- ences?”

•• “Do you see yourself as similar to or different from your daughter (or mother) in this regard?”

PUTTING THE WORLD BACK INTO THERAPY

A family therapist proudly describes her approach to a racially and ethnically diverse caseload: “I treat them all the same,” thus universalizing the experi- ence of the White middle class. By contrast, a fundamental and long- standing position of family therapists— especially those who have worked with mar- ginalized populations— assumes the absolute necessity of taking into account the impact of wider contexts and including them in the therapeutic conversa- tion (see, e.g., Auerswald, 1968; Boyd- Franklin, 1989; Crawford, 1988; Gold- ner, 1985; Waldegrave, 1990). I ask students to consider the “mental health” implications of such contingencies:

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•• “What if a family runs out of money for food by the third week of the month?”

•• “What if a lesbian couple is raising a 14-year-old son in middle Amer- ica?”

•• “What if he earns $90,000 and she earns $30,000?” •• “What if she has a civil service position and he can no longer find a job

in the manufacturing industries that used to employ him?” •• “What if they both work outside the home, yet she does 80% of the

housework and child care?” •• “What if he is a 17-year-old Puerto Rican youth with no viable strategy

for ever earning more than $20,000?” •• “What if she is the only African American girl in her elementary

school?”

These questions were suggested by the work of Carter (1988), Crawford (1988), Waldegrave (1990), and White and Epston (1990). Finally, we consider the implications of locating the effects of these problems within people with- out taking broader social pressures into account.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

The deeply entrenched tendency to disqualify the experience of targeted peo- ple requires our energetic attention and ingenuity to redress. The biracial anti- bias educators Ayvazian and Tatum (1996) urge us to “listen and believe” (p. 16). Personal choices and the values underlying preferred actions can be highlighted and explored (Denborough, 2005; White, 2005). In addition, acts of resistance can be identified and validated and the resilience required to manage oppression acknowledged: “What does your tenacity say about what you are really committed to in your life?”

Therapists and teams can constitute what Lynn Hoffman (personal com- munication, 1995) calls an “honoring community,” bearing witness to both the painful realities of oppressive situations and the strengths clients demon- strate, including the adaptive value of behavior that might easily be labeled problematic if the demands of the broader social context are ignored (Hardy, 2015). Students or faculty of color can offer their personal experience or criti- cal feedback to expand others’ sensitivity to an unfamiliar existential terri- tory. However, a recurring problem is that the burden of teaching is habitually placed on the disadvantaged, exacerbating the lack of initiative taken by those in power. Furthermore, to discuss the impact of a subjugated status is an inher- ently distressing step that renders a person immensely vulnerable. A student of color protested, “I am tired of being ‘The Experience’ for White students.” Ayvazian and Tatum (1996) emphasize that people of color must feel that such activity benefits them and that clear guidelines safeguard the conversation.

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Ideally, face-to-face dialogue may be postponed until after some work is done independently by each group. Those in the targeted group may benefit from the freedom to focus on their own needs and agendas first. For those in the dominant group, apprehending their own privilege— the benefits auto- matically bestowed, embraced, and relied on—can be an identity- shifting rev- elation, often greatly discomfiting for people of color to witness. When asked “What would you need White people to understand in order to engage in dia- logue?,” people of color often respond, “to acknowledge the reality of racism and White privilege.” When asked “What would you need people of color to understand in order to engage in dialogue?,” White people often respond “to accept the limits of my awareness of racism, without writing me off as ‘rac- ist.’ ” A difficult side effect of the growing recognition of racism is the awk- wardness and anxiety White students may feel about their inevitable blunders in engaging in conversations about race. Eula Biss (2017) speaks of entering this territory “pre- mortified” over her own possible ignorance or insensitivity. She believes it necessary, however, for these conversations to proceed: “If you can’t talk about something, you can’t think about something. And I’ve worked with students who could barely let themselves think, they were so scared of thinking the wrong thing” (Biss, 2017).

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE

In any form of oppression, those who are advantaged are usually unaware of this status and experience their privileges as “normal.” Those in the targeted group are often (not always) more keenly aware of what they lack. “Invisible” forms of advantage and painful sources of disadvantage and vulnerability are not easily shared across this divide.

It may be useful to consider this problem in more general terms by dis- cussing (preferably in a small-group format) experiences of feeling “left out”:

•• “Have you ever been part of a group that you felt was ignored, looked down upon, or not accepted?”

•• “What feelings came up for you?” •• “Were you able to share your feelings and, if so, with whom?” •• “Did you feel others, not in “your” group, recognized how you felt or

were concerned about you?” •• “What difference would it make if you felt your experiences were

understood?”

Often when groups are divided, they begin to see each other in simpli- fied or stereotyped ways. A malevolent feedback loop tends to ensue that can amplify mutually negative views. Various efforts have been developed to create vehicles for communication across differences, often using a dialogue

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model. This is in sharp distinction to the more usual model of debate— taking a position and gathering evidence for your view with the goal of convincing the other side to agree with you. Dialogue, by contrast, is intended to allow a more in-depth understanding of how people arrive at their positions, not trying to change positions. Questions to facilitate understanding around a given issue can also be applied to fostering understanding about political dif- ferences:

•• “What is the heart of the matter for you? What do you care about most?”

•• “What important personal experiences have shaped your perspective?” •• “Do you feel you ‘stand with’ specific important people in your life or

connect to valued legacies?” •• “Do you have any doubts or gray areas within your own position?”

See, for example, Essential Partners: Bold Explorations in Community (https://what is essential.org) or Schirch and Campt (2007).

Learning the “back story,” deconstructing positions, is not intended to achieve consensus but to foster mutual understanding and, at times, mutual compassion. A caveat is that dialogue formats may give the appearance of a false equality that ignores the impact of power differentials, which are essen- tial to consider.

STANDING OUTSIDE ONESELF

Greater awareness of privilege can be encouraged even without such dialogue. Taking the role of “emissaries,” students can attempt to look through the lens of a particular marginalized group to test the usefulness and relevance of spe- cific theories or practices.

The experiences of the LGBTQ community, members of specific ethnic groups, single parents, childless couples, as well as people of color, have gained new prominence in this way. Another aspect of this reflexivity is considering how members of dominant groups may themselves be perceived—“imagining others imagining you”—which can expose more of the “invisible” mantle of privilege (see also Miller & Garran, 2008). Some questions raised are:

•• “Considering specifically how you look, talk, dress, and so forth, what stereotypes do you think people of color might hold about you?”

•• “How might clients of color experience a predominantly White agency?”

•• “How might therapists of color feel in these contexts?” •• “What might be useful in a dialogue between a White therapist and a

client of color?” •• “What do you imagine needs to be heard or experienced to break the

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expectation of being stereotyped and to open space for authentic dia- logue?”

“MULTIPLEXITY”

As White students develop more awareness and knowledge, it is necessary to address possible feelings of guilt or defensiveness about the advantages they enjoy. The notion of multiple social identities is quite useful— the highly particular “combination of multiple contexts and partial cultural locations” an individual may occupy “where views and values are shaped and where power or powerlessness are experienced” (Falicov, 1995, pp. 376–377). Inter- sectionality, originally articulated by Black feminist theorists (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989), brings attention to the compounding effects of interactions among different areas in which people are targeted (e.g., race and class, sexual orientation and ageism). Key to the notion of “multiplexity,” as used in our class, is the paradox that we may be disadvantaged in some contexts yet privi- leged in others:

In each form of oppression, there is a dominant group (the one that receives the unearned advantage, benefit, or privilege) and a targeted group (that is denied). . . . We know the litany of dominants: White people, males, Chris- tians, heterosexuals, able- bodied people, those in their middle years and those who are middle or upper class. . . . We also know that everyone has multiple social identities— we are all dominant and targeted simultaneously. I am, in the very same moment, dominant as a White person and targeted as a woman. (Ayvazian, 1995, p. 17)

The underlying duality— the coexistence of one’s own privileged and tar- geted positions— is not easy to apprehend emotionally. It requires a more com- plex view of identity in which these contradictory experiences form ragged layers. This demands a particular sort of “both–and” ability to “contain opposites”: “The [both–and] metaphor embodies an intellectual, political and psychological ideal: the attempt to recognize the value of competing and con- tradictory perspectives and to tolerate the psychological experience of extreme ambivalence without splitting ideas and people into good and bad” (Goldner, 1992, pp. 56–57)

LIVED EXPERIENCE

I have found that one of the most useful ways to approach the compli- cated issue of multiple social identities is through telling my personal story as a third- generation Japanese American. I was named “Norma” after the first White girl who befriended my mother, raised in the highly prejudiced

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atmosphere of California in the years leading up to World War II. The idea that racism can be transcended and that it is real are both embedded in my identity. I have likened my childhood to a checkerboard of disadvantage and privilege in which I was catapulted from “pauper” to “prince.” I was one of the poorest kids, among the very few children of color, in an elementary school of predominantly well-to-do White children. From there, I went on to Booker T. Washington Public Junior High School 54, where I was con- spicuously advantaged as one of the most economically secure youngsters in a predominantly Black and Puerto Rican student body with a high propor- tion of families supported by welfare. I first developed consciousness of race amid the still- lingering anti- Japanese stereotypes of World War II, came into adulthood during the Vietnam War years of “gooks” and “dinks,” and, in between, was identified as a member of a “model minority.” I tell the story of a road trip through the South in 1957 in which my then 11-year-old brother needed to make an emergency bathroom stop. My father pulled up to a road- side diner, and Johnny raced to the restrooms in the back, only to come careening out front to the car again: “The bathrooms have signs. One says ‘White.’ The other says ‘Colored.’ Where am I supposed to go?” And without skipping a beat, my mother told him firmly: “White. White. You go to the White bathroom.”

This anecdote has come to symbolize my sense of participation in privi- lege. When I imagine how other people of color (people of other colors) might see me, I would guess that, despite its hazards, the social access conceded to Asians in this society is perceived as a “relative privilege.” This is not to dis- count the reality of anti-Asian discriminatory attitudes. Chang (1995) views the “model minority” myth as a means of obfuscating the oppression of Asian Americans.

Acknowledging the advantages that I can recognize in my life has eased my conversations with people of other targeted groups. A student pointed out, very importantly, how this acknowledgment simultaneously recognizes another’s disadvantage and becomes an important form of validation.

THE PROBLEM OF COMPETING “‑ISMS”

As political and economic forces increasingly threaten to divide and conquer some of us more than others, our connections become vital and tenuous. Our sense of oppression is a double- edged sword. The marginalization we have experienced, when unacknowledged, can polarize and divide us. As these experiences are typically suppressed, we are all starved for validation. But the need for acknowledgment of the particular injustices we have endured can drive us into a symmetrical, mutually isolating competition to be heard. At the same time, these experiences, although different and unique, can provide a basis for coalition and a connecting arc/ark of mutual recognition. A defensive holding on to our sense of disadvantage is likely to be experienced as denial of

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another’s oppression. Ironically, we may only be released from our defensive posture by another’s acknowledgment of our pain. Over time, collectively, we will have to learn to balance our need for validation with acknowledgment of our privilege and a readiness to validate another’s suffering.

A review of other federally recognized systems of disadvantage— sexism, classism, heterosexism, religious oppression, ableism, and ageism— is a core teaching in our class. We encourage familiarity with these other aspects of multiplicity. Recognizing the similarities for those who are protected and sim- ilarities for those in targeted positions across these different systems is critical. Powell (2016) notes that these dichotomies also demarcate important distinc- tions between who “belongs” and who is “other.”

For their final assignment, students are asked to inventory both the dom- inant and the targeted positions they occupy across all these arenas. Next, they write about what personal experiences have brought the issue of rac- ism to life for them. We recognize the danger of presuming to understand one form of oppression through the experience of a different form—“I’m a woman, I get racism!” However, while resisting simplistic substitutions, we find that racism is understood more richly through reference to the lived experience of one’s own marginalization. This formalizes an ongoing pro- cess, apparent in their journals, of students connecting with the emotional truth of racial oppression through their own experiences of marginalization as women, working- class people, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ people, persons with disabilities, and/or survivors of significant familial dysfunction or vio- lence. The “both–and” process of journaling about these experiences, while increasing awareness of privilege, is a foundational process in our course. (This exercise further addresses the confusion of those who enjoy a broad array of advantages. A heterosexual White male student noted his “triple dominance” with abashment. However, even amidst an accounting of his privilege, he was able to identify areas of private suffering that constituted a personally meaningful basis for empathy with racial oppression, important in developing his commitment as a White ally.) Acknowledgment in the form of detailed and attentive written responses to their journals by both coteachers, constituting a small “honoring community” for the students, further sup- ported this development.

A specific tension between competing claims of the impact of race versus class, identity politics versus an economic analysis, can be especially problem- atic. Ezra Klein (2018) argues for the greater impact of racism in “White threat in a browning America” while David Leonhart (2018) proposes that “Inequal- ity breeds hate.” A “both–and” perspective is needed, and a greater under- standing of how these systems of disadvantage are linked. Heather McGhee (2016) presents a careful history of Reagan- era efforts to portray “Big Gov- ernment” as benefitting primarily people of color—“welfare queens” (read as African Americans). If federal programs are racialized, attention is diverted from the economic benefit shared by all, and potential allies are pitted against each other (Powell, 2016). Michael Dyson (2019) reiterates James Baldwin’s

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observation that America is “split in two—not between North and South but between the powerful and the disenfranchised. Racism . . . remains the nation’s greater peril. But the powerful maintained the status quo by sowing discord among the disenfranchised. Poor white folk, rather than uniting with their socioeconomically oppressed brothers and sisters . . . channeled their anxieties into a vengeance against blackness” (p. 7). Robert Kuttner (2018) emphasizes the need to attend to “the interplay of declining economic fortunes and feelings of being left behind,” and of the disadvantages based on class and race.

In our teaching, two perspectives form a critical foundation: clarity about one’s own multiplexity (where one is privileged and targeted) and recogniz- ing how the same dynamics operate across different systems of oppression. We look to a future when we are quicker to recognize an individual’s cross- cut of “class privilege– disadvantage,” “race privilege– disadvantage, “gender privilege– disadvantage, “heterosexual privilege– disadvantage,” and so forth, and develop a more nuanced understanding of how all these systems are related.

Powell (2016) encourages analyses and narratives that expose our linked fates across difference, how your well-being supports my well-being, that “lean into connection.” He argues for the necessity of recognizing our inter- dependence, proposing a view like that of the Buddhist activist Thich Nhat Hanh (1999): We all “inter-are” (p. 154).

CONCLUSION

As practitioners/teachers who occupy positions of privilege and who choose to confront racism, we must stand ready to initiate dialogue about power differences and to demonstrate that we possess the “ears” that can hear the unspoken toll of disadvantage. As we continue to learn more and talk together more openly, teaching situations and the practice of therapy offer possible new sites of awakening, connection, resistance, and coalition.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge and thank the Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian for her inestimable contribution to the work discussed in this chapter. To educate myself, I joined with her to form a biracial teaching team for a required course on racism at the Smith College School for Social Work. I developed the “Clinical Applications” portion of a course she originally designed. Our courses were oriented to the teaching of the White stu- dents who populated our classes.

I also wish to acknowledge the architect of narrative therapy, Michael White, whose commitment to social justice inspired a framework for bringing political con- sciousness to clinical work and who asked us always to clarify the values we live out in all that we do.

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I want to reflect on family therapy’s origins, our present dilemmas and future possibilities. With a focus on training new family therapists for current public sector domains, I examine our field’s strengths, vulnerabilities, and contradic- tions. I challenge the current vogue of model certainty and branding. Finally, I want to invite us to heed a call for a newly invigorated field of family therapy.

I have been fortunate to live my career over the last 40 years in a rich variety of contexts, encompassing family therapy scholarship, training, and practice. Homes were offered to me in academic doctoral- level psychology, psychiatry, family medicine, family therapy institutes, master’s-level marriage and family therapy, and private practice. I have been an advisory editor for domestic and international family therapy journals. As the editor of Fam- ily Process for nearly a decade, I followed our field’s most current thinking, research, and practice. My editorship, along with a range of elected positions in the professional organizations, including the presidency of the American Family Therapy Academy, enabled me to influence some directions and gifted me with valuable colleagues and dear friends around the world. As the author and editor of five books and scores of articles, my aim has always been to cut across specific models of practice. I offer this background as the umbrella under which I ponder our field today.

My focus for all my career has remained the same— collaborating to hone a multisystemic perspective, teaching those who are coming after me, facilitat- ing beautiful and engaging writing, and expanding our ideas about couples and families in all of their various forms.

My position as Program Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Master’s Degree Program at Mercy College continues the arc in my work of

C H A P T E R 3 6

A Letter to Family Therapists in the 21st Century

Evan Imber‑Black

A Letter to Family Therapists 527

preparing the next generation to deliver high- quality public sector services. The majority of our students constitute the first generations in their families to go to college. They are African American, Caribbean, Latina/o, Asian, and European American. Many are single parents, working full time while pursu- ing a master’s degree. They are creating never- before- seen traditions in their own genograms. They are working to enter this career to gain knowledge to further their own commitments to healthy family relationships and to offer a vision for their children of new possibilities. Nearly all will graduate burdened with huge debt.

In sharp contrast is my work at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City, where I direct the Center for Families and Health, provid- ing services for families facing chronic or life- shortening illness and supervise an advanced postgraduate group. Although Ackerman is providing increas- ingly more training opportunities for postgraduate trainees of color, my own groups since 1997 have been overwhelmingly White married women social workers. Most have private practices and recognize the need for knowledge to work well with couples and families. The training at Ackerman is excellent. I encourage my Mercy graduates to enroll, but most simply cannot afford the cost.

My work in these two dissimilar worlds allows me to engage in rich and multistranded thought about our field. I have been pondering about where we have come from and where we are going. What are our responsibilities to couples and families, those who provide them with therapy, and our own wider field?

ORIGINS

Family therapy, in all of its manifestations, began in the 1960s, a decade of broad challenge and change. Civil rights, the nascent women’s movement, the emergence of 70 million baby boomers into adulthood, all provided the backdrop for this initially underground bicoastal conceptual and practice transformation. Having bubbled up in the 1950s, what we now call family therapy was a creative response to postwar America— families with soldiers now home and women needing to be convinced to turn from their wartime jobs to the household; great optimism about the future; and a response to the disappointments of psychoanalysis in dealing with major mental illness and juvenile delinquency. Family therapy, like most fields of thought, arose in opposition to what has come before, and in so doing it sowed the seeds for the next departure.

The paradigm shift from the individual’s internal life to the connections between us and the patterns these create provided a generative nest for the models that followed. A trend began in this first generation of theorists— model wars (Gurman, 2011; Imber-Black, 2011), a trend continuing to the present day, albeit with different models, each claiming to be the best and

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only way to work. Each original model— Minuchin’s structural, Haley’s stra- tegic, the Mental Research Institute’s brief therapy, Bowen’s intergenerational, Boszormenyi- Nagy’s contextual, Whitaker’s symbolic– interactional, Satir’s experiential— provided its own explanatory metaphors for family relation- ships, problems, symptoms, change, and the proper way to conduct therapy. Each model made claims to universal application, and each ignored similari- ties, preferring to emphasize the differences. Family therapy institutes grew up all over North America, and a bit later, in Europe and elsewhere around the globe. These institutes were multidisciplinary and long predated the marriage and family therapy graduate degree.

Mirroring the social movements born of great hope and coinciding with the civil rights movement and deinstitutionalization and the Mental Health Center Act, early family therapy thinkers imagined a revolution in mental health services. We fell in love with our own belief in small changes leading to big results. Excitement coupled with blind arrogance allowed us to ignore the power of vested interests to maintain the status quo.

Nonetheless, an exciting multidisciplinary field was born. Nowhere else in the broader mental health field could one find psychiatrists, psycholo- gists, social workers, and nurses working together in largely nonhierarchical and collaborative groups. The field at first attracted the outliers, those who wanted to think and practice radically, creating institutes that functioned as think tanks and provided mentoring. In 1961 Family Process was created. Family therapists found a welcoming home in the American Orthopsychiat- ric Association, whose meetings attracted thousands, enabling leading family therapy theorists and practitioners to demonstrate their ideas with live ses- sions in front of huge audiences. Social justice commitments permeated our early field. The power of guilds to divide us was slightly over the horizon. And although we had not yet made peace with the disappointment inherent in our incapacity to revolutionize mental health, we began to relish our position on the margins of the larger mental health field.

We had both the benefits and risks of being a stepchild in mental health. When we were careful, we could view the broader field and our place within it. Allegiances bound us less, freeing us to create new thought— live supervi- sion (Montalvo, 1973); the family life cycle (Carter & McGoldrick, 1981); various family forms, including divorce and remarriage. However, like step- children everywhere, we carried the risk of triangulation, making alliances where we should not and turning against one another in the quest for the one “correct” way of working.

CONTEMPORARY FAMILY THERAPY

Family therapy today looks both similar to and different from the visions of the founders. A purist’s version may be possible in the office of the rare private practitioner who does not need to accept insurance. For thriving institutes

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such as Ackerman, whose students learn in our low-cost clinic, accommoda- tion must be made to the demands of larger systems, such as the Office of Mental Health. While such conciliation can, at times, feel like a deal with the devil, the possibility of providing quality care to low- income families makes the deal worth it— providing we do not pretend and we maintain a systemic perspective on all aspects of the metasystem. For our master’s students placed in public agencies and hospitals, family therapy is considered a modality, not a way of thinking. The early days of tilting at windmills are behind us. Our job as teachers is to help students learn the difference between systemic thinking and modalities of intervention, encouraging them to view the workplace and their position in it systemically.

Stepping away from our field’s earlier demand for purity, learning to col- laborate with those who think differently, and appreciating anew that the whole is, indeed, greater than the sum of its parts is our best hope of larger system transformation.

Integrative Theory and Practice and the Public Sector

Careful integrative thinking and practice have developed as sagacious alter- natives to the ferocious demands of model loyalty. These approaches are not eclectic soup, but rather diligently thought- through ways of working that may draw from multiple models of practice (Fraser, Grove, Lee, Greene, & Solovey, 2014; Lebow, 2014). Such approaches require an attitude of openness to diverse points of view, anchored in disciplined thinking.

Work such as integrative family and systems treatment (I-FAST; Fraser et al., 2014) offers beginning family therapists an accessible, broad, and strength- based way to learn the complexities of a systemic approach to treatment.

Madsen’s collaborative helping (Madsen & Gillespie, 2014; Madsen, 2014) is one fine example of careful integration. Moored in the narrative approach, made accessible for frontline workers, collaborative helping also embraces solution- focused, structural, and motivational practices. Madsen richly credits others in his highly original work, reminding us that we each stand on someone’s shoulders. My students from Mercy College who intern and eventually work in the public sector utilize Madsen’s work effectively on behalf of multistressed families, without needless arguments about what model is best. This is far from the early days of family therapy, when we lacked an understanding of how to use our own theories to join with larger systems (Imber-Black, 1988).

Both I-FAST and collaborative helping are notable for their keen apprecia- tion of agency requirements and the requirement that supervisors be on board with the theory and practice. I have been amazed witnessing our master’s students gently introducing new ideas to supervisors from a carefully crafted complementary position and watched supervisors, who are often social work- ers with little to no knowledge of family therapy, become curious as they wit- ness long-stuck cases begin to improve. These approaches have the potential

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to mitigate the historical experience in our field of family therapists fleeing the public sector, where they are most needed. This requires a serious commit- ment to better pay, benefits, and job security, precisely at a time when more and more public sector clinics are adopting a per diem approach to compensa- tion. Remedying this requires that we organize and join coalitions. Although family therapists are judged to be one of the top 50 growing professions for the next decade and the profession is expected to grow by 31% by 2020 (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014), our new graduates will be joining the ranks of the underpaid if they choose to remain in the pub- lic sector. The positions that all recent master’s graduates will take are in the public sector. Accessible integrative models that enable highly competent fam- ily therapists to remain in agencies that share a common approach are a gift.

In the recent work of Sal Minuchin (Minuchin, Reiter, & Borda, 2014), one finds tiny pearls of integration, as he makes room for highly specific intergenerational practice and a few grains of sand of the narrative approach. Minuchin notes similarities in outlook regarding the location of symptoms, rejection of the notion of pathology, a focus on social justice, respect for diver- sity, an appreciation of alternative ways of being and multiple identities, and an emphasis on context and witnessing. He then makes clear that structural and narrative approaches have very different views of family functioning, change, and therapeutic methods.

A fine example of these similarities and differences is in Catherine Lew- is’s foster care work (2011), in which she integrates postmodern thinking and structural work. A member of the current generation of family therapy think- ers and practitioners, Lewis exemplifies the suppleness needed to work effec- tively with the most complex multiple families— foster care and biological— and their larger systems.

Minuchin’s colleague, Wai-Yung Lee in Hong Kong, turns structural family therapy ideas upside down, encouraging children to lead their parents to deal effectively with couple conflict. In a cultural context in Hong Kong, where a focus on couples’ relationships in therapy was not yet accepted, Lee (2010) found a way to reach couples through the demonstrated distress of their children to parental antagonism. Utilizing structural concepts and bio- feedback, Lee’s work illustrates the creativity possible when we open ourselves to knowledge outside our field.

Both Lee’s and Lewis’s work illustrate what is realizable as new genera- tions both build on what has come before and have the delightful audacity to challenge and create when aspects of those older ways of working do not fit the current context.

The Ackerman relational approach (Sheinberg & Brewster, 2015) repre- sents an integrative effort. Intended to enable postgraduate trainees to work well with complex family systems, the Ackerman relational approach inte- grates intergenerational theory, a biopsychosocial perspective, the couple’s or family’s current dilemmas, broad multicultural maps, social justice, and femi- nism with a focus on generating new meanings and beliefs capable of creating

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interactional change, symptom amelioration, and relational reconciliation. The Ackerman relational approach has integrated location of the self-of-the- therapist theory and practice (Watts-Jones, 2010) to work effectively with the complexities of 21st- century cross- cultural practice.

The Dilemma of Models: Eschewing Certainties

No matter the integrative approaches discussed above, our field still largely comprises major models of couple and family therapy. Models provide a cer- tain coziness, a reference group, a sense of belonging. Today, as in the past, models have gurus, and protégés are often encouraged to be imitators, both in style and substance.

Our invidious history of model wars continues in a new form. Just as the model originators of 50 years ago claimed they had discovered the way, the light, and the truth, some models of the present make this same claim. Demands for fealty, coupled all too often with a pyramid system of expensive training to become a “certified” brand of therapist, supervisor, or trainer, represent an approach to knowledge generation that belies and undermines the best of our traditions. Our field has never before had a method whereby attending several weeklong workshops moved one up a ladder. Rather, thera- pists moved up according to their competencies and their creativity. People built successful careers in our field, not by paying for a brand or a trademark, but by demonstrating their knowledge and capacity to do the hard work suc- cessfully. The larger cultural convention today of branding, a process that narrows our focus to the most slick website, does not lead to an interperson- ally connected family therapy praxis.

We simply must reverse this trend and insist that, as we train future gen- erations of family therapists, we grasp a more ambitious path together.

Teaching New Trainees to Practice Family Therapy

In our Couples Therapy course, students study a range of contemporary mod- els, comparing these models on a range of factors and, in keeping with our social justice lens, researching how each model responds to gender, ethnic- ity, class, and racial differences. Models way too often claim universality and one-size-fits-all. We hear published research findings of the short-term out- comes of a given model’s success, with never any mention by the researchers of Gurman’s (2011) summary of couple therapy research showing that positive outcomes occur in about two- thirds of researched couple treatment, regard- less of model, and that “only small and inconsistent differences in rates of improvement have been reported across different approaches to couple ther- apy” (p. 282).

The contrast between graduate programs and postgraduate institute training is most pointed in model knowledge and application. Institutes are free to select a particular model, whether that be narrative, intergenerational,

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structural, solution focused, or integrative. Trainees know when they enroll that they are coming to learn and apply a singular way of working. Graduate programs, on the other hand, are required to teach the full range of models of today—and yesterday. Questions on the licensure exam will focus on this multiplicity. Our aim is threefold: that they (1) pass the licensure exam, (2) learn to be very good thinkers and evaluators of claims of the literature, and (3) begin to develop a sense of a flexible and multifaceted self as a therapist capable of handling the demands of public sector practice— goals that are often contradictory. We intend that they learn to hold the contradictions, for in so doing they will be better therapists. As stated above, few of our gradu- ates can afford institute training. They study Gurman’s ideas about therapist– model fit (Gurman, 2011). I urge my students to become adept at one model, to hold it lightly, and to be grateful for the family or couple they will meet who won’t fit the model, requiring that they learn anew over and over.

A major dilemma in family therapy training for public sector practice is that of agency– model fit. No agencies or hospital clinics in New York are practicing collaborative helping or I-FAST or the Ackerman relational approach, even though they may have had a smattering of training in one of these. Though most service agencies have such names as Family Services or Family Guidance, they mostly practice with individuals. Students are required to hold multiple realities. They are learning family therapy and are required to work with couples and families, but they are placed in agencies that often have no agreed- upon model of practice other than warmed- over psychody- namic theory or workbook- driven cognitive- behavioral therapy and whose focus is largely individual. Although we aim for family- therapy- friendly agen- cies, an intern is always just one supervisor’s leaving away from being the sole person delivering family therapy. There are no one-way mirrors. Supervision is often focused on required reams of paperwork. They may be asked by other clinicians, “Just what is family therapy?” Many agencies practice what I call “add a therapist,” meaning that one family may have four therapists— one for each member of the family. Paperwork, insurance, DSM diagnosis, and psychopharmacology all demand that the beginning family therapist, as well as those of us who are far more experienced, figure out how to make an uneasy peace with the requirements of an individual and psychopatho- logical focus while at the same time practicing competent family therapy. DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and the mental health prac- tice requirements of the Affordable Care Act add a new layer of complexity, a new challenge to assessing and working with connections. A successful family therapist today, one who stays with our field, is able to balance these contradictory demands. Having learned from the failures of arrogance in our field, we teach our students to join at the agency level in the same way they join families. Trainees’ systemic work must permeate an approach to their entire context. We teach our students to attend to the larger system just as they attend to their clients— with a systemic eye. In supervision, we often focus on multiple systems, teaching them ways to join when their agency is partially their client, too. From that position, trainees learn ways to take

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small chances in case conferences, dropping in manageable new ideas. We encourage them to offer to take the couple and family cases that others may not be eager to acquire. I am always astounded by our students’ abilities to truly think systemically, thread their way through this maze, create family cases from individual referrals, and inhale what they need from supervision, while letting the detritus go.

Scholarly Journals: What’s Missing?

The robust health of the scholarly part of our field is also evident in the con- tinued growth of family therapy journals internationally, specific disciplinary journals that include a focus on families and the eagerness of large corporate publishers to include family therapy in their stable of academic journals. Fam- ily Process continues to expand its international reach, publishing abstracts in Spanish and Mandarin since 2007, and more recently publishing translated articles from these languages.

While our scholarly journals exhibit a particular aspect of our health as a field, they also display our debility. Our origins are as outsiders, and from that position enormous creativity was unleashed. For one example, Fam- ily Process originated as an independent journal, owned briefly by the Men- tal Research Institute and the Ackerman Institute, and sold in the 1960s for $1,000 to become freestanding and not attached to any disciplinary organi- zation (Imber-Black, 2011). The journal mirrored the multidisciplinary field being birthed. Today, this journal and nearly all others in every field serve a different set of masters, both corporate and academic (which is often the same entity). It is impossible for a refereed journal with substance and reach to do so any longer as a freestanding body. Why is all of this important? For decades, this and other family therapy journals attracted sparkling, innovative clinical articles— articles that were capable of inspiring practicing therapists. Currently, such papers, exhibiting both disciplined thinking and visionary leaps, are few. Rich case studies, anchored in theory while taking flight with innovation, are mostly missing. Although well- executed research papers cer- tainly advance our thinking and practice, these can only be realized by those well funded. Academics, under pressure to publish for tenure and promotion, look first at a journal’s impact score and only then at the journal’s reader- ship. Scholarly journals in our field are seldom read any more by the working family therapist, and similarly, the working family therapist who might have a brilliant idea is unlikely to write and publish. Most of us who have been or are journal editors have decried this split between the clinical and research domains, and yet remedying it has remained beyond our reach.

Our Generational Predicament and Opportunity

The first generation of powerful family therapy originators— the ones who developed the first models— is mostly gone. The second generation— creators of exemplary model crosscutting ideas such as Walsh’s (2006) resilience work,

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McGoldrick’s ethnicity and culture contributions (McGoldrick, Giordano, & Garcia- Preto, 2005), Boss’s ambiguous loss concept (1999), Pinderhughes’s (1989) and Boyd- Franklin’s work (2006) on African Americans and race, Fali- cov’s (2014) model for immigrant and second- generation families known as the Multidimensional Ecosystemic Comparative Approach (MECA), Green’s (1996) contributions to LGBT couples and families, Doherty, McDaniel, and Hepworth’s (2014) work on families and medical illness, the many contrib- utors on gender, my own work on families and larger systems, rituals and secrets— is beginning to age. Many of us were fortunate to have mentors, people who cared deeply about us and the larger field. And although many serve as mentors today in academic and institute settings, there is no system for enabling brilliant working family therapists with new ideas to publish. I am calling here for a collaborative infrastructure to develop new writers in the clinical sphere. Likely, this needs to arise out of the leadership of the few remaining institutes with support from the scholarly journals. Such an effort would provide insider knowledge of the arcane world of publishing and train- ing to prepare a publishable manuscript focused on original clinical work. I tell my colleagues and new family therapists who present outstanding work- shops: “If it isn’t published, it didn’t happen.”

I am calling for the careful development of the next generation of leader- ship in family therapy. This centers less on new models, pricey webinars, and continuing- education units and more on a genuine return to systemic thought and practice.

Guild Allegiance versus Collaboration as Family Therapists

Family therapy began as a multidisciplinary venture. Today, every state requires specific licensure as a “marriage and family therapist.” The main multidisci- plinary context for those who build theory, do research, or practice fam- ily therapy is the American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA)—a very small organization, and one to which few researchers now belong. Although small, AFTA has been able over the last 40 years to seriously integrate social justice into family therapy. Transformed from an organization only for senior teachers and researchers, AFTA today welcomes early- career practitioners and students. Here is the perfect opportunity for mentoring the next generation of leaders.

Our original multidisciplinary home, the American Orthopsychiatric Association, holds no more large conferences and no longer attracts family therapists. Rather, professionals join their own guild organization— the Amer- ican Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, or the American Psychiatric Association. For licensed marriage and family therapists, this is the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. This development rode the rails of licensure, insurance reimbursements, cor- poratization, and turf protection in employment— all divisive factors in what originated as a multidisciplinary aspiration. I encourage my own graduates to hold a both–and position. They need their guild organizations for all of

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the career protections these offer, and they need AFTA in order to maintain a multidisciplinary group of colleagues, among whom they are most likely to find collaboration, new thought, and mentorship.

WHAT HAS SUSTAINED US?

We began in part as a field looking for new, effective ways to heal the seriously mentally ill. Carefully knitted connections from our field’s past to its present are realized anew, for example, in a current New York City project: Parachute, NYC. Anchored in the classic systemic work of Carolyn Attneave (1969) in network therapy, brought back to life in 21st- century Scandinavia (Seikkula, Arnkil, & Erikson, 2003), and funded by the Center for Medicare and Med- icaid Innovation, Parachute provides family and network therapy for mentally ill people and those they identify as their network. Offering a soft landing for those experiencing a psychiatric crisis, this innovative project identifies the family of choice in a patient’s home or community. The services are home based and family centered. A major part of the services is family therapy. Here newly minted master’s-level family therapists collaborate on multidisciplinary teams with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and nurses to serve those with major mental illness and their families, an echo of our origins at Bronx State Hospital in the 1960s and 1970s. Programs such as this sustain my hope in our field—a hope grounded in placing clients’ needs over model purity, a spirit of creative collaboration, and a place where the newest in our field can plant a flag for family therapy.

While I certainly have days when I decry our failure to transform the larger mental health field, I more often have days when I cherish our minority voice. When we take care to remain humble, while holding fast to our knowl- edge and commitments, we flourish in many domains. And when we refuse to be coopted, we continue to teach a new generation to bring a different point of view—one deeply rooted in interpersonal justice and family and community well-being.

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of men- tal disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: Author.

Attneave, C. (1969). Therapy in tribal settings and urban network intervention. Fam- ily Process, 2, 192–210.

Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. Boston: Har- vard University Press.

Boyd- Franklin, N. (2006). Black families in therapy: Understanding the African American experience. New York: Guilford Press.

Carter, B., & McGoldrick, M. (1981). Family life cycle: Framework for family ther- apy. New York: Gardner Press.

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Doherty, W., McDaniel, S., & Hepworth, J. (2014). Contributions of medical family therapy to the changing health care system. Family Process, 52, 529–543.

Emery, R. (2014). New roles for family therapists in the courts: An overview with a focus on custody dispute resolution. Family Process, 52, 500–515.

Falicov, C. J. (2014). Latino families in therapy (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Fraser, J. S., Grove, D., Lee, M. Y., Greene, G. J., & Solovey, A. (2014). Integrative

and family systems treatment (I-Fast). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Green, R. J. (1996). Lesbians and gays in couples and families: A handbook for thera-

pists. New York: Jossey- Bass. Gurman, A. (2011). Couple therapy research and the practice of couple therapy: Can

we talk? Family Process, 50, 280–292. Imber-Black, E. (1988). Families and larger systems: A family therapist’s guide

through the labyrinth. New York: Guilford Press. Imber-Black, E. (2011). The evolution of family process: Contexts and transforma-

tions. Family Process, 50(3), 267–279. Lebow, J. L. (2014). Couple and family therapy: An integrative map of the territory.

Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lee, W. Y. (2010). Capturing children’s responses to parental conflict and making use

of it. Family Process, 49(1), 43–58. Lewis, C. (2011). Providing therapy to children and families in foster care: A systemic-

relational approach. Family Process, 50(4), 436–452. Madsen, W. (2014). Taking it to the streets: Family therapy and family- centered ser-

vices. Family Process, 52, 380–400. Madsen, W., & Gillespie, K. (2014). Collaborative helping: A strengths framework

for home-based services. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. McGoldrick, M., Giordano, J., & Garcia- Preto, N. (2005). Ethnicity and family ther-

apy (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Minuchin, S., Reiter, M. D., & Borda, C. (2014). The craft of family therapy: Chal-

lenging certainties. New York: Routledge. Montalvo, B. (1973). Aspects of live supervision. Family Process, 12(4), 343–359. Pinderhughes, E. (1989). Understanding race, ethnicity and power: The key to effi-

cacy on clinical practice. New York: Free Press. Seikkula, J., Arnkil, T., & Erikson, E. (2003). Postmodern society and social net-

works: Open and anticipation dialogues in network meetings. Family Process, 42(2), 185–203.

Sheinberg, M., & Brewster, M. K. (2015). Thinking and working relationally: Inter- viewing and constructing hypotheses to create compassionate understanding. Family Process, 53(4), 618–639.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2014). www.bls.gov/opub/ mlr/2014.

Walsh, F. (2006). Strengthening family resilience (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Watts-Jones, T. D. (2010). Location of self: Opening the door to dialogue on intersec-

tionality in the therapy process. Family Process, 49(3), 405–420.

P A R T V I I

IMPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

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The concept of cultural bias in research is akin to the notion of democracy in America for people of color. Participants in each system are indoctrinated with promises of truth, objectivity, and color-blind fairness. However, when lived out in the experiences of marginalized and vulnerable populations, clear patterns of oppression, victimization, and even genocide become painfully apparent. The schism between what is “promised” and what is “practiced” is illustrated in Patrick Campbell’s painting of the American flag titled The New Age of Slavery (Figure 37.1). Historically, the significance of the colors of the American flag became associated with the following: White signifies purity and innocence; red, hardiness and valor; blue, vigilance, perseverance, and justice. In Campbell’s rendering of the American flag, muted images of lynched bodies hang vertically in every red stripe. The broad blue band contains cracks through most of the stars, and the artist turned the others into silhouettes of men holding guns pointed at boys and men who were on their knees, begging not to be shot. In sum, Campbell’s painting suggests that democracy for Blacks in America is more myth than reality.

Cultural bias in research and democracy in America share a lengthy and problematic history when viewed through the eyes of marginalized peoples. In her 2008 book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experi- mentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, medical anthropologist Harriet Washington charts the history of America’s horrendous treatment of people of African descent as unwilling and unknowing experi- mental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment and experimental

C H A P T E R 3 7

Ways of Knowing Cultural Bias Pitfalls to Avoid

When Using Research to Inform Practice

Sarita Kaya Davis

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FIGURE 37.1. The New Age of Slavery by Patrick Campbell (2015).

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researchers. Medical Apartheid is the most comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Beginning with the earliest encoun- ters between the descendants of Africans and Western explorers and medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways peo- ple of African descent were used in hospitals for experiments conducted with- out their knowledge— a tradition that continues today within some communi- ties. It reveals how African- descended people have been prey to grave robbing, unauthorized autopsies, the pseudoscience of eugenics, social Darwinism, experimental exploitation, and inferior medical treatment that treated them as inhuman, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. These medical atroci- ties were conducted by the government, the armed services, prisons, and pri- vate institutions. Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes transparent the unjust and unethical treatment of people of African descent. Washington’s book provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to experience power in research as systemic and sanctioned abuse.

Cultural bias in research is no less problematic. The social scientific method is entrenched in the value-laden assumptions embedded in medical research. Consequently, medicine and the social science method share the same underlying assumptions. Early social scientific research in Western soci- ety was formed on the observations and stories of travelers who were typi- cally White men whose interactions with indigenous people were constructed around their own cultural views of gender, race, and sexuality (Smith, 2002). For example, Memmi (1965/1991) explains that early scientists typically used zoological terms to describe indigenous people. The dispassionate and dehu- manizing ways of viewing “other” have become so embedded in the fabric of doing research that they are nearly invisible to the uncritical eye.

In this chapter, I discuss how knowledge construction occurs in research, as well as the obstacles to reasoning entrenched within them. I explore this topic in the following three sections: (1) How Do You Know That?; (2) Logical Misjudgments; and (3) Faux Pas in Cultural Analysis. Let’s examine some typ- ical ways of constructing knowledge and the pitfalls to reasoning surrounding them.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?

When I am teaching my graduate course on research methods, I begin by asking students, “How do you know what you know?” about a variety of topics, such as relationships, social issues, or even the weather forecast for the next day. Invariably, they identify a number of sources of their knowledge, including personal experience, expert opinion, media, and common sense. Personal experience is based on what people do out of habit and ritual. People who share cultural ties have a shared understanding about how the world around them works. These commonly held beliefs vary from group to group.

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Sometimes, however, groups may tend to continue to function according to these shared beliefs long past their usefulness. For example, it was once a com- monly held belief at some levels of the federal government that the demise of the Black family was due to emasculating Black women. This commonly held belief was based on the findings from the 1965 publication titled The Negro Family: A Case for National Action (Moynihan, 1965). The author of the report, New York State Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, called attention to the growing number of single- parent families in the Black community. In 1965, approximately 25% of Black families were headed by single women. In 2010, that percentage was nearly 70% (McLanahan, Haskins, Garfinkel, Mincy, & Donahue, 2010). African American single- female- headed house- holds were typically viewed as problematic and rarely seen for their resilience and strengths (Whitaker, Whitaker, & Jackson, 2014). However, subse- quent research on single Black mothers shows that resilience is an important resource for single Black mothers. Although single Black mothers have been found to be at increased risk for a host of social, psychological, and physi- ological issues, high amounts of resilience have been found in this population in the context of their adversity (Kadner, 1989; Monteith & Ford- Gilboe, 2002). Although much of the resilience literature has focused on how this capacity helps people cope with adversity, resilience also supports the per- son’s ability to manage more normative life challenges, including the develop- ment of healthy lifestyle practices. The positive relationship between mothers’ resilience and health- promoting lifestyle practices is consistent with findings of previous studies with mothers of preschool children (Monteith & Ford- Gilboe 2002) and single mothers (Black & Ford- Gilboe, 2004), as well with employees, graduate students, and people with arthritis, in which their sense of internal control and personal competence were associated with health- promoting lifestyle practices (Pender, Walker, Sechrist, & Frank- Stromborg, 1990; Smith, Wallston, & Smith, 1995).

Ironically, the pitfalls of commonly held beliefs are rooted in their strengths. Oftentimes, people subscribe to these beliefs not necessarily because they are useful but simply because it is the way things have always been done. Commonly held beliefs evolve over a period of time. As a result, when people encounter beliefs contrary to their own, they can be resistant to change. Ironically, the act of testing assumptions is at the very heart of social scientific inquiry. After all, it was once a commonly held belief that an African American could never become president of the United States.

Take, for example, the belief that Black women are lazy and welfare queens. This belief rose to unprecedented levels under the presidency of Ron- ald Reagan. Despite this popularly held belief, recent statistics show that Afri- can American women are the most educated and enterprising subgroup in the United States. Statistics on Black women and education have shown them leading all other gender and racial groups for the past few years. More than half of all Black women specifically between the ages of 18–24 are enrolled in college, and Black women overall outpace other race and gender groups

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in terms of college enrollment, according to the National Center of Educa- tion Statistics (NCEA)/U.S. Census numbers (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). NCEA goes on to report that Black women also have the highest num- bers when considering degree earning. Although Black women only make up 12.7% of the female population in the country, they consistently make up over 50%—and sometimes much more—of the number of Blacks who receive postsecondary degrees. Percentage- wise, Black women outpace White women, Latinas, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans in this arena. The findings indicate that Black women led every other race and gender group in this area, making them the most educated demographic in the country (U.S. Department of Education, 2012).

Additionally, Black women’s labor force participation rates exceed those of all other women, and even after motherhood, they are far more likely than other women to work outside the home (Jones- DeWeever, 2016). They also make less than both White men and White women, experience higher unem- ployment rates than their White female peers, and “are more likely than any group in America to work for poverty- level wages,” according to a report from the Black Women’s Roundtable. Avis Jones- DeWeever (2016), editor of the report, states that Black women start businesses at a higher rate than any other group by a measure estimated at six times the national average, produc- ing approximately $44.9 billion annually in revenue. The report also goes on to say that between 1997 and 2013 Black women led all women in the nation in the number of business startups and in revenue growth. Far from slothful, Black women continue to propel themselves to press forward in the face of insurmountable labor force challenges. Keep in mind that it was once a com- monly held belief that Christopher Columbus discovered North America, even though indigenous people already lived there. The researcher must always challenge assumptions and commonly held beliefs, especially when they are inaccurate.

Expertise

We also construct knowledge based on what experts tell us. Imagine that someone tells you that you must burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound a week. Are you more likely to believe your personal trainer who has a degree in kinesiology and nutrition, or a stranger whom you met on the street? More than likely you would believe your trainer because of his or her expertise. Your trainer had to undergo years of education and certification before being deemed qualified to train. People commonly accept information when they feel it comes from a credible source. Experts serve an important function in many fields including law, family therapy, accounting, and medicine. Histori- cally, in the Black community the Black church has been viewed as expert and accorded a great deal of respect and authority. Spirituality is a prominent aspect of African American culture. It features prominently in every domain of African American life (Davis et al., 2005). Historically, spirituality has

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served as a personal and communal source of liberation, solace, hope, mean- ing, and forgiveness, especially in relationship to social, political, and eco- nomic injustices. Further, spirituality has encouraged political engagement, promoted altruism, and influenced cultural expression through music, art, and literature (Mattis & Jagers, 2001). As a result of the historic importance of spirituality in the lives of African Americans, clergy and the Black church have achieved positions of power and leadership among African Americans (Davis et al., 2005). They are in a position to provide guidance and support in the everyday lives of their congregants, but particularly during times of tragedy. An important role of clergy and the church has been to support and affirm congregants during times of joy and sorrow. However, there are also downsides to relying on experts as a source of knowledge. In some cases, indi- viduals in positions of leadership have been able to get away with perpetuating inaccurate information and marginalizing subgroups.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 2014), gay African American men and heterosexual African American women are disproportionately affected by HIV. Among all African Americans diag- nosed with HIV in 2014, an estimated 73% (14,305) were men and 26% (5,128) were women. Gay and bisexual men account for more than half of estimated new HIV diagnoses among African Americans (CDC, 2014). However, the stigmatizing position of the Black church on homosexuality has caused many gay African American men and women to withdraw from the church or hide their sexuality at the risk of compromising their health. Research suggests that within the Black community, homosexuality is often perceived to be White abnormal behavior that infiltrated the Black commu- nity (Griffin, 2006; McBride, 2005; Somerville, 2000). Murray and Roscoe (1998) argue that much of the homophobia in the Black community rests on the belief that homosexuality did not exist among Blacks prior to coloniza- tion but is the result of European influences. This belief continued until the AIDS epidemic attacked the Black community. The epidemic was especially devastating to the Black gay community. As a result, research and literature began to examine the lives and experiences of Black lesbians and gays, and scholars examined homosexuality and homophobia within the Black church (Constantine- Simms, 2001; Dyson, 2001; Fullilove & Fullilove, 1997; Grif- fin, 2006; Johnson, 2001; Miller, 2007; Schulte & Battle, 2004).

As a religious institution, the Black church is not unique in its opposi- tion on sex and sexuality; however, the reasons for its opposition are unique. Research suggests that this opposition originated during slavery, when much of the focus was placed on Black sexuality and the Black body (Douglas, 2003). Blacks were stereotyped as “bucks” or “jezebels” without intellect, morals, or decency (West, 2001). The belief that Blacks were little more than chattel worthy of ownership made it palatable for Whites to justify slavery (Doug- las, 2003). By degrading Black sexuality and the Black body, Whites further strengthened their power and control over Blacks (Collins, 2004). Postslavery, to distance itself from this negative portrayal of Black sexuality, the Black

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community embraced a very conservative stance toward sex and “deviant” sexuality, such as premarital sex, extramarital affairs, out-of- wedlock births, and especially homosexuality (Mitchell, 2004). Mitchell (2004) explains that this conservative stance was a strategy often “employed” as a response to assaults on the Black body. She states: “Respectability was part of a larger interracial pedagogy on earning civil rights and gaining self- respect through proper conduct” (Mitchell 2004, p. 85). Expertise as a source of knowledge can be an invaluable resource, but all knowledge is rooted in context, as a result it is not above reproach.

The Media

News and social media are a growing source of information in the world. The Internet makes information available to people instantly. The ubiquitous use of cell phones with Internet capability and cameras are changing the face of how we communicate information. People are able to witness images and break- ing events via live streaming cell phone video footage. Eyewitnessed events, such as police brutality, storms, sporting events, and political rallies, can be broadcast to the world as they are happening. Not only are these images used in social media, but news outlets feature these images prominently in their reporting. The pitfall is that this form of information gathering can suffer from inaccuracies and lack of scientific rigor. Researchers are called to be systematic and rigorous in their investigations. The process can be tedious, detailed, and painstakingly slow. The benefits of such rigor, however, should be accurate, precise, and innovative information. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, as we learned earlier from the work of Margaret Washington in Medical Apartheid (2008). Next, we explore what happens when logical misjudgments occur.

LOGICAL MISJUDGMENTS

Human beings make mistakes all the time, especially when they attempt to interpret the behavior of other human beings around them. When we fail to understand the context of human behavior, especially as it is rooted in cul- tural experience and history, we wind up with opinions and conjecture. These obstacles to logical thinking can cause us to draw illogical conclusions and make flawed decisions. Let me explain further.

Generalizing Beyond Your Data

Generalizing beyond your conclusions occurs when you extend the findings to people who were not included in the research. For example, imagine you want to know how many residents in your community would be in favor of building a dog park. You decide to conduct a survey among the six dog owners you see

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walking on your street. You decide to share your findings with your neighbor- hood subdivision association. Your report states that a majority of the com- munity residents in the community support building a dog park. Snap! You have just generalized beyond the data in your study. Your findings can only be generalized to the dog- loving residents you surveyed, and not all residents in your subdivision. Don’t panic; there is a way to remedy the error. Increase the number of residents you survey. Try to sample more than half of the residents living in your subdivision. If the sample does indeed support the dog park, this will allow you say with conviction that a majority of the residents are in agreement.

The problem with generalizing beyond the parameters of your data is that there are practical consequences. In my own research on HIV prevention education with Black women in Atlanta, I often find that a majority of HIV prevention education approaches privilege Eurocentric culture— meaning that White culture and values are the driving forces behind the ideology and assumptions of the interventions. For example, HIV prevention educa- tion approaches are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive- behavioral models. The goal of cognitive- behavioral models is to change patterns of thinking or behavior that are behind people’s difficulties and so change the way they feel (Martin, 2016). When applied to HIV prevention education, the goal is to change people’s HIV risk by changing the way they feel about sexual risk taking. However, the intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender faced by a majority of Black women in America makes their HIV risk more struc- tural than behavioral. Research shows that Black women are no more sexu- ally active than their White counterparts but are at greater HIV risk due to social determinants, such as sexual exploitation (Collins, 1991), segregation (Massey, 2005), economic marginalization (Zierler & Krieger, 1997), and mass incarceration (Braithwaite & Arriola, 2003; Rothenberg, 2007). As a result, real-world consequences of generalizing HIV prevention education messages on the privileged existence of White women are that the structural barriers in the lives of Black women are effectively marginalized, and they are kept at increased risk of HIV.

Discriminatory Observation

There is growing sentiment that research has never been objective (Kershaw, 2004; McDougal, 2014; Reviere, 2001; Washington, 2012). Researchers, just like everyone else, bring their own biases and preconceived ideas to the research table. In so doing, researchers are not immune from engaging in erroneous inquiry and discriminatory observation. If you believe that African American males are more likely to commit crime, you may be more inclined to ignore evidence to the contrary. In a 2014 debate on police brutality in the Black community between former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and commentator/scholar Michael Eric Dyson on NBC’s Meet the Press, Giuliani

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said, “I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93 percent of Blacks in America are killed by other Blacks. Persistent Black-on- Black crime is the reason for the heavy police presence in the Black commu- nity. White police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70 percent of the time.”

Giuliani’s comments are true, but statistics show that Whites are killing each other at comparable rates. In other words, crime is generally intraracial. According to the FBI, in 2011, White people committed about 6.58 million crimes; Blacks committed 2.7 million. Crime in the Black community has actually declined by 67% (U.S. Department of Justice, 2011). Research bias must be questioned when we see studies on violence by ethnicity. The notion that one group is inherently more violent than another is rooted in long-held racial stereotypes about African Americans.

After the abolition of slavery in 1863, Black Codes (1865–1866) and Jim Crow policies (1876–1965) in the southern states served to reenslave free Blacks for relatively minor offenses. For example, in Mississippi Whites passed the vagrancy law, which stated that a Black person could be jailed if he or she was not employed. Former slaveowners were not inclined to pay for labor that was once free (Wilson, 1965; Warde, 2012). White fear of Black retribution for slavery was also a factor in the overpolicing of Black bodies. The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation depicts the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and Blacks as villains and rapists who threaten the social order (Wilson, 1965). This depiction of Black men as inherently violent has fueled social scientific research. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Harriet Washington explored the history of biased medical experimentation on Black bodies (2006). In one chapter of her book, she focuses on research targeting young African Ameri- can males. She discusses research conducted between 1992 and 1997 by New York City’s New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University. The researchers examined whether there was a biological connection between race and violent behavior— a “mean gene.” The researchers identified only African American and Hispanic boys who had been involved with the proba- tion system. This type of racial selection is stigmatizing Black and Hispan- ics as “born criminals” and has become normative. In 2003, the Journal of Pediatrics published an analysis (Walsh & Ross, 2003) by researchers at the University of Chicago of 192 research studies in prominent pediatric journals in the United States between 1999 and 2000. The findings showed that Black and Hispanic children were overrepresented in clinical trials and underrep- resented in therapeutic studies and White children were overrepresented in therapeutic research. Researchers must be held accountable for their biases. Through reflexivity and critique, the purpose and motivation behind research can be revealed. If the roots of research questions are grounded in bias and ideology, the academy and the public should question the need for pursuing the study.

The next section explores how faulty cultural analysis occurs in research.

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FAUX PAS IN CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Much of history and social scientific research is told from the perspective of the oppressor. As a result, what we “know” about other groups is based on an outsider’s gaze of the “other” (Smith, 2002). Smith explains that researchers whose training is grounded in Western epistemology and methodology are trained to privilege their own beliefs over those being observed. As a result, their ability to truly understand marginalized groups is highly subject to flawed cultural analysis. Several examples of how this occurs include making comparisons between Blacks and other groups, assuming all Blacks are the same, respectability politics, assuming difference equates to deficiency, and the use of best practices. Although all of these obstacles are important, I focus on one that I think is easiest to remedy, which is engaging in research without historical context or grounding.

Lack of Historical Grounding

Oftentimes, researchers fail to consider the lived experiences of people in the inquiry process. In other words, researchers do not look at the context in which a phenomenon occurs. In connecting the present to the past, the researcher can develop a more nuanced approach to inquiry. For example, in my HIV prevention education research with Black women, I studied the treat- ment of the Black female body in history, literature, research, and contempo- rary music. Research suggests that negative sexual stereotypes of Black women can affect their internalization of these images (Gordon, 2008; Townsend, 2010). By grounding my research in the histories of Black women’s bodies, I have been better able to examine nuanced sites of harm and resilience in their sexual decision making. It is the researchers’ responsibility to understand not just what they see before them, but the conditions under which it evolved.

Best Practices

The idea of manualized care (a.k.a. best practices, evidence- based practice) stands at the edge of a slippery slope in the context of diagnosing and treat- ing vulnerable populations in health/mental health settings. A “best practice” is defined as a process that is generally considered superior to standard ways of operating (Bogan & English, 1994). The intention of best practice is to use the most cost- effective approach to improve an outcome. Our knowledge of what constitutes a best practice is based on large homogenous datasets, not the experiences of historically oppressed groups (e.g., LGBTQIA, people of color, women). Consequently, human service providers should raise a fur- rowed brow when asked to use best practices with objectified groups. As best I can tell, the origin of best practices is business management; however, it has been quickly adopted by government agencies, health care industries, educa- tion, and human service delivery.

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My first encounter with using best practices came as a postdoctoral research fellow at the CDC when I participated in a policy evaluation training workshop. I was given a vignette that detailed the declining rates of breast cancer among Eastern European women. I was asked to use the data to deter- mine the best age for baseline mammogram screening among women in the United States on Medicare. The facilitators wanted the workshop members to make a recommendation to raise the minimum age of mammograms from age 40 to 50. So here is the problem. Generalizing cancer screening protocols for poor women living in economically depressed conditions based on the cancer trends of an incompatible group is not only unscientific, but unethical. Subsequent research supports that there are distinct factors, such as age and ethnicity, that play polarizing roles in the breast cancer outcomes of women. According to the American Cancer Society (2015), although breast cancer in young women is rare, more than 250,000 women living in the United States today were diagnosed with it under age 40. In young women, breast cancer tends to be diagnosed in its later stages and is more aggressive. Also, young women have a higher mortality rate and higher risk of metastatic recurrence (return of breast cancer in areas beyond the breast). Breast cancer screening among young women is further complicated because their dense breast tissue prevents routine mammograms from being a useful tool (Bleyer et al., 2008). The data on breast cancer among African American women under age 35 suggests that breast cancer rates are two times higher than their Caucasian counterparts, that they are three times more likely to die, and that they are more likely to get aggressive forms of breast cancer than anyone else (Anders & Carey, 2009).

In summary, best practices make perfect sense in the context of business but lose their generalizing appeal when applied to diagnosing and treating vulnerable populations. Best practices are revered among policymakers, but keep in mind that they are more interested in a one-size-fits-all approach than a contextually rooted approach that honors difference. I am not the first social scientist, nor will I be the last, to make the point that manualized care is a value- driven business whose proponents are more concerned with reducing costs than facts and value uniformity far more than context.

RE‑VISIONING

I wish I could point to a magic bullet or easy 3-step formula that could help resolve the aforementioned fallacies in research and how we construct and use knowledge. However, no such thing exists. Our best approach is to question everything and know the origins of the information we use. Every practice has a place of origin and its historical influences. When practitioners are able to contextualize information, we become critical consumers of research find- ings and increase our ability to make culturally relevant decisions for our clients. After reading this chapter, the practitioner should have a broader

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understanding of how methodological errors and cultural bias work together to challenge knowledge construction.

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The field of public sector mental health is at a crossroads. Implementation of evidence- based practice, leadership, and policymaking intersect to create a complex web of systemic and sociocultural trauma. This chapter outlines the challenges embedded in our current environment from the vantage point of the public service delivery system and the need to reconceptualize the work, refocus leadership, and redistribute resources.

CONTEXT

You don’t need numbers; you need passion and this is proven by the history of the world.

—JAMes BAlDwin AnD rAnDAll kenAn (2010, p. 15)

My father was in the insurance business. I always assumed this business was about mitigating risk and providing peace of mind at a cost determined by actuaries. At my father’s funeral, many of his clients and colleagues talked about how my dad always took the time to get to know them personally, how he had gone out of his way to help them in ways that had nothing to do with their insurance policies. One of his younger colleagues told me, with tears in his eyes, that my father was a mentor to him and that he aspired to emulate the way my dad built relationships with his customers. They remembered how he made them feel and they gifted me with whispers from his soul.

C H A P T E R 3 8

Relational Healing and Organizational Change in the Time of Evidence

Ken Epstein

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

—MAyA Angelou

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I am a White, Jewish, middle- class, 60-year-old, heterosexual male and a second- generation social worker. I am the proud father of a third- generation social worker. For over 35 years I have worked in nonprofit university and public sector agencies providing and overseeing service delivery of physical and mental health treatment to children, youth, families, adults, and older adults.

In 1981, at the age of 23, I was hired as a counselor in a group home for 12- to 18-year-olds. My supervisor, Dennis, was a college graduate, a schol- arship football player, an African American heterosexual man, and a very talented child care worker. Dennis knew how to connect. He understood the pain of his clients, and when he spoke to young people, I was in awe of their emotional response. His relationships facilitated healing in the young people.

Dennis taught me about “holding” the pain of others. Social work profes- sors, supervisors, and mentors taught me about family systems and encour- aged me to deeply consider the interface of race, youth, sexual orientation, gender, poverty, and community reaction in the wake of trauma and discrimi- nation. Jan, a White lesbian social worker, taught me as a social work intern how to engage fathers in their children’s treatment, which helped me recognize and work through the emotional code of silence in my relationship with my own father. Still others modeled humility and somehow knew how to console and challenge me when I made mistakes, thickening my skin while opening my heart. Over the almost four decades I have been in the field, these voices have whispered in my ear, improved my practice, and influenced how I live my life.

How do I know this to be true? Where is the evidence? What metrics did I use to arrive at this conclusion? Alas, I have only my observations, my gut reaction; in this day and age, that doesn’t seem to count for very much, but I want to challenge that idea. Perhaps in response to my observation of my father’s interactions with clients, I began to pay close attention to the way in which professors, colleagues, and supervisors cultivated relationships with all those with whom they interacted.

I worry that the whisperers have been silenced and devalued. The busi- ness of mental health has been shifting from recognizing and valuing Dennis’s, Jan’s, and others’ relational and mentoring skills to seeking and implementing packaged and manualized practices. Evidence and accountability are neces- sary; however, the pendulum has shifted to measuring and modifying behav- ior and symptoms as though human beings were widgets rolling off an assem- bly line. Concurrently, organizational change models, borrowed directly from the private sector, have been adapted into the public sector. These models are designed to transform large organizations by managing risk and increas- ing efficiency and productivity. The current political, legislative, and legal- istic environment demands immediate results (e.g., a corporation expected to produce quarterly profits). Together, this triad of efforts seeks a “quick fix” (Kilmann, 1984) but in reality operates as a Band-Aid impersonating a

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strategy, often ignoring the complexities of race, place, trauma, embedded organizational dysfunction, and homeostasis.

It was within this landscape that, in 2012, I took a leadership job for the County Department of Public Health, running the Behavioral Health Sys- tem for Children, Youth and Families. San Francisco is a diverse and rapidly changing city, in which the disparity between rich and poor has grown wider, the face of prosperity has become Whiter, and income inequality between Whites and Black and Brown residents has become greater. The children, youth, and families we served were primarily Black and Brown. My White race, middle- class background, and lack of exposure to adverse life experi- ences did not reflect the population I served.

The public health department I worked for promoted a vision focused on health and equity; our diverse workforce served as a safety net for communities that have been systemically disenfranchised, disengaged, and marginalized. Despite this vision, our organization was faced with an uncomfortable truth. Many of the clients we served did not trust the system, and the human service and health care workforce had lost faith in the bureaucrats who appeared to value the mitigation of risk above all else. So how did we develop more healing relationships and work toward restoring trust? This issue dominated the work I did each day as a leader in the field of mental health.

THE PROMISE AND PROBLEM WITH EVIDENCE

. . . if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systemic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

—RobeRt M. PiRsig (1975, p. 88)

In the last four decades, I have witnessed dramatic changes in the field of practice, including innovations, new technologies, progressive policies, and a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of human relationships. For exam- ple, the advent of community- based practices has been associated with a radi- cal reduction in psychiatric institutionalization, long-term placement in group homes for abused and neglected children and youth, and incarceration of juve- nile offenders. These changes are associated with a more robust effort to serve people within the context of their communities, cultures, and families and to promote practices and policies that are strength and equity based, resiliency focused, and patient and family centered.

However, not all communities have enjoyed positive visible and measur- able outcomes. We continue to struggle with intractable problems, including disparities in quality of health care, access to services, and the availability of culturally reflective services. We now know that social determinants such as

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traumatic experiences, food insecurity, racism, discrimination, housing insta- bility, income inequality, community violence, low education, and poor access to quality health care contribute to continued and unacceptable mental and physical health disparities (Aragón, Lichtensztajn, Katcher, Reiter, & Katz., 2008).

No doubt, public service organizations need to increase their account- ability to the populations they serve and the workforce. Partially in response to our failure to effectively measure and quantify mental health outcomes, the science of evidence- based practice (EBP) emerged, along with a new lan- guage that intrinsically disavows relational approaches to human service and healing. With a focus on “what the evidence says,” we now emphasize brief interventions that produce quantifiable improvements in cognition and behav- ior. Consequently, I now work for “behavioral health,” not mental health, with the implication that behaviors can somehow be divided and measured as “healthy” or “unhealthy.”

The division between the world of practice and the world of evidence begins at the outset of scientific inquiry. For a practice to be labeled “evidence- based,” it has to have been shown to work in a controlled setting and have been replicated independently. Once such practices meet this threshold, they become codified in a treatment manual and targeted to a specific population and/or specific symptoms or problems (Larner, 2004). Registries have been produced that list programs that meet strict scientific protocol and that have demonstrated that they effectively prevent and/or lower risks, detention rates, and recidivism and improve mental health (see, e.g., www.cochrane.org; www.campbellcollaboration; www.samhsa.gov/nrepp; www.blueprintspro- grams.com). These listings have become the equivalent of a pharmacological formulary, where treatments are administered using algorithms similar to the way medicines are prescribed. I now hear proclamations from social workers, lawyers, judges, and physicians that a client needs cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), a formulaic response to a complex situation: “Take two CBT’s and call me in the morning.”

Significantly, the process of mandating proven practices can confuse new practitioners. A recently graduated social worker discussing her experience with EBP told me:

During my internship I began seeing a 14-year-old client who had recently lost his mother, and also had been occasionally using marijuana. He reported that his marijuana usage had not changed in frequency since the loss. My supervisor urged me to use Seeking Safety with him, which is an evidence- based practice intended for individuals experiencing trauma and substance abuse. I questioned the rationale for using this modality, as it did not seem appropriate for my client, but I was told that we needed to use it because we needed to have more cases that we could bill for Seek- ing Safety. I was put in a difficult position of trying to tailor an EBP to fit the client’s needs, needing to prove that the EBP is being used at every

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session, and still showing that there was progress being made toward specific behavioral treatment goals.

Alternatively, I wonder what this student would have felt if she had been encouraged to engage, empathize, and connect to this young person suffering in a meaningful way prior to being taught more targeted skills intended to further the client’s healing.

Proof from randomized trials under controlled conditions does not neces- sarily translate to effectiveness in the real world, and often the results cannot be replicated in settings other than those in which the research was conducted (Kazdin, 2007). This is especially true in the more complex, uncontrolled, and unpredictable realities of the public service delivery system. Imagine trans- lating findings from a controlled study in an academic medical center to an inhumane and dilapidated public housing project riddled with violence, bereft of healthy food, and supported by underperforming schools. Most clinicians and case managers in the public sector do not work in “controlled” settings.

There is a general absence of a sociocultural lens in diagnostic and research protocols. This omission limits the focus of research and precludes key social conditions and cultural factors and increases the likelihood of implicit bias. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men- tal Disorders (DSM) has been criticized for its sociocultural blindness and unacknowledged biases, reflecting the dominant White male culture and not adequately addressing the needs and perspectives of marginalized populations (Snowden, 2003). Bias in practitioner diagnoses across cultures has also been noted (Whaley, 2011). The ensuing mismatch between the perspectives of those creating and implementing diagnostic criteria and those marginalized populations receiving services limits the scope of our understanding and the degree to which research using these criteria can be considered valid.

Intervention studies are similarly limited by the lack of diversity of their participants. Due to mistrust, stigma, bias, inability to access services, and lack of available resources, the overwhelming majority of people experienc- ing mental health symptoms do not receive treatment or participate in stud- ies (New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, 2003). Evidence based on studies of specific populations and excluding others will necessarily be limited in its application and relevance.

Appropriately, there has been a call to increase focus on culturally responsive supervision as a mechanism to ensure that EBPs are being utilized accurately and effectively (La Greca, Silverman, & Lochman, 2009) to better serve the changing needs of marginalized communities. However, in the pub- lic sector and in nonprofit services, clinical supervision has become a luxury, as supervisors are saddled with compliance and efficiency metrics. Even when clinical training and supervision are available, clinicians’ and case managers’ turnover is often an impediment to relationship building and to the fidelity of implementation. Paradoxically, in overstressed systems, clinical supervision is often the first to be cut or abandoned.

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When we do spend dollars to buy packaged and manualized practices, our capacity to support and sustain them is limited due to competing initiatives, time constraints, lack of infrastructure, and bureaucratic barriers. Although some practitioners utilizing EBPs may be helping some of their clients that fit the model, the increasing pressure for immediate systemwide results leads to a round robin of adopting practices that have met this gold standard. Just in the last few years, our department hired specially trained therapists to provide dialectical behavior therapy, trauma- focused cognitive- behavioral therapy, multisystemic therapy, parent– child interaction therapy, functional family therapy, and an assortment of other practices. Unsustainable costs, clinician and supervisor turnover, and/or the introduction of a new (and better) practice contributed to abandoning practices or limiting their effectiveness.

Meanwhile, while the practice- as-usual environment endeavors to pro- vide high- quality care with limited resources, universities and other service organizations, armed with private and public dollars, have been feverishly working to prove that practices are effective. In this competitive environ- ment, there is a race for positive results (Larner, 2004). The resulting com- modification of clinical practice is promoting the capitalization of treatment specialization and creating an elite class of “developers” selling the practices and “privileged” clinicians delivering the models. The resulting fragmenta- tion between evidence, policy, and practice has become an unspoken secret. Institutions and organizations with resources create and “own” the evidence, whereas disenfranchised communities and practitioners in the field “own” the problem, ignoring the whispers of history, culture, relationship building, indigenous community practices, and participatory research practices. Within this context, how does the tension between a field built on relationships and a science based on “objective truths” coexist and make an impact on a mental health delivery system?

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND STRESS

However, the use of effective interventions on a scale sufficient to benefit society requires careful attention to implementation strategies as well. One without the other is like a serum without a syringe; the cure is available, but the delivery system is not.

—Dean L. Fixsen, KaRen a. bLase, M. a. DuDa, s. F. naooM, anD M. K. Van DyKe (2010, pp. 447–448)

It is insufficient to discuss implementation of practices without understanding the impact and stress that organizational change initiatives and bureaucratic challenges have on service delivery. Indeed, short-term fixes aimed to address socioculturally induced health and mental health disparities as opposed to facilitating workable plans and dedicated time for planning are highly likely to increase divisions among practitioners, mental health leadership, universi- ties, and policymakers.

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Often, agencies’ typical response to this predictable tension is to “consult” and “import” practices from other places and to develop additional metrics, manuals, run charts, deliverables, and productivity standards. Disastrously, these surface responses, absent recognition of the source of the problem, cre- ate what one colleague called a “white space,” in which the science and data supersede relationship and indigenous knowledge. The conflicts created are a direct result of a myopic focus on the solution while neglecting the health of the workforce and the delivery system.

The conditions that create inordinate stress in civil service and nonprofit organizations that make up the system of care I oversaw can be crippling. Electronic health records are clunky and poorly adapted to staff members’ and clients’ needs. It is absurd that many of our staff members were required to comply with increasingly restrictive (and unfunded) federal and state compli- ance standards while operating without modern technology. Many initiatives to address organizational efficiency and effectiveness are time- consuming, duplicative, and poorly coordinated.

For example, I was charged with improving the productivity of our work- force. I immediately participated in a process with leadership to set clinician productivity standards. The metric we created seemed reasonable; employ- ees should certainly have clear expectations about their work. However, the reaction from the clinicians and case managers was immediate and strident. They described multiple barriers to being productive, including facility issues, safety, difficulty hiring staff, technology issues, documentation overload, lack of training and support, and more. Demanding that well- intended, com- passionate employees become more productive challenges their competency and questions their commitment; they feel diminished. Productivity conjures up images of profits and profit margins. Improving client engagement, con- versely, invites staff to collaborate in improving the quality and quantity of client participation in treatment.

Organizationally induced stress can also be located in the way we run meetings. Meetings are not only the core of organizational structure; they are also the place where dominance and privilege are concentrated and concret- ized. Meetings can become vehicles through which organizational stress is cultivated. In a meeting I participated in, practitioners were expressing strong feelings about potential unintended consequences associated with a proposed policy. After listening to the input and strong feelings, the leader responded: “OK, folks. Let’s get solution focused here.” Establishing a new metric invali- dated the feelings that were expressed. This led the three participants and other supporters to “withdraw” from the remainder of the meeting. With- drawal may involve checking one’s cell phone, responding to emails, perus- ing Facebook, or simply gazing out the window. Being “solution focused” is code for the valuing of conforming and performing, whereas questioning and seeking deeper understanding are rejected. The impact of this phenomenon is that too often critical discussions are pushed underground and expressed in hallways or behind closed doors.

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The failure to engage in challenging and inclusive conversations contrib- utes to maintaining the status quo. There is an old leadership joke: The wise leader gives the new leader three letters to open, in order, at critical junctures. The first letter suggests blaming the predecessor; the second letter promotes restructuring; and the third letter recommends that the leader write three let- ters to his or her successor. In the public sector, initiatives are the fuel by which organizations are restructured. Even when new initiatives are welcomed, our workforce experiences that their perspectives will be diminished or drowned by the tidal wave of a top-down new idea.

As a case in point, the Department of Public Health adopted an organi- zational change model called “Lean.” Lean is a quality- improvement model adapted from Toyota and now widely applied in health care systems. It is focused on eliminating waste, involving staff at the line level, and improv- ing the customer and employee experience. Lean relies on mapping a prob- lem, establishing metrics, and developing rapid improvement cycles to foster change. This quality- improvement model challenges generational and bureau- cratically established day-to-day workflows that induce waste and inefficiency and includes direct- service personnel in helping to fix problems. Many people who support Lean expect that this model will rapidly and consistently trans- form organizations.

As discussed in the critique of EBP earlier, Lean could very well be effec- tive but insufficient. It is for all intents and purposes a “cart before the horse,” solving problems without addressing the heart of organizational dysfunction related to its systemic and relational roots. The quality- improvement meth- odology embedded in Lean does not account for the impact of culture, race, gender, power, history, and mistrust. Further, in adopting Lean, the manag- ers and leaders at the Department of Public Health now use Japanese terms to describe administrative processes. This tends to confirm the perception that this new practice hails from somewhere else. One might reasonably ask how a practice developed in a Japanese culture for Toyota can be successfully applied to a diverse, urban health care community in the United States. Are we that similar? Are the problems the same? Unspoken is the impact of initia- tive fatigue affecting the readiness, willingness, and ability of the workforce to implement new practices without experiencing meaning and connection to the purpose and process.

Policy implementation faces many of the same challenges of translation that practice and organizational data- driven approaches have faced. An exam- ple of a recent policy is continuum of care reform. Policymakers, child and family advocates, and advocacy groups supported legislation to address the ineffective and harmful effects of removing children from their families due to abuse and neglect and placing them in group homes. The proposed legislation is based on the understanding that children need to grow up in permanent homes (California Assembly Bill 403, Continuum of Care Reform, 2015– 2016). The goal was to develop a trauma- informed, evidence- based short-term residential facility (which, by the way, does not exist in the evidence but is

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codified in the legislation!). The measurement of success will be measured by a reduction in the number of children in congregate care. The unintended result in the Bay Area is that many small group homes operated by people of color and located within communities they serve will close or be absorbed. Large, mostly historically White-run, agencies will operate the more complex treatment facilities. This is obviously not a desirable outcome for a system dis- proportionately populated by youth of color, particularly African Americans.

These three examples hopefully convey the complexity of data- driven approaches to changing health and mental health delivery. Lost in the transla- tion of implementing aggregate approaches to the practice environment is that they require workforce motivation, trust, capacity, and buy-in and that they demonstrate the way in which bureaucratic behavior can drive organizational stress. How do we concurrently work on helping the community, improving the delivery system, and healing the workforce?

TRAUMA‑INFORMED SYSTEMS: TOWARD HEALING ORGANIZATIONS

Without intending to do so, without recognizing that it has happened, entire systems can become “trauma- organized”—inadvertently organized around interactively repeating the patterns of repetition that are keeping the individuals they are serving— and their staff members— from learning, growing, and changing. And like individual trauma survivors, systems find it very difficult to see their own patterns. They resist the pain it takes to grow and change, to thaw their frozen parts and reclaim movement.

—sanDRa L. bLooM (2005, p. 67)

Indigenous and spiritual communities have recognized and responded to trauma since the beginning of recorded time. Western medicine first rec- ognized trauma in the 1890s, and it has been the subject of psychoanalytic theory since Freud. However, psychological trauma was not recognized diag- nostically until 1980, when the American Psychiatric Association included posttraumatic stress disorder in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statis- tical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Associa- tion, 1980). Felitti et al. (1998) published the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES) and, for the first time, drew a direct relationship between the number of adverse childhood experiences and physical and mental health ail- ments, such as heart disease, lung disease, and obesity, as well as substance use, suicidality, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Beginning in the 1960s, trauma began to be recognized as affecting fami- lies and being transmitted across generations in Holocaust survivor families (Rakoff, Sigal, & Epstein, 1966). Today, we appreciate that the intergenera- tional transmission of trauma is critical in understanding families and com- munity functioning, particularly for families lacking resources and function- ing on the margins because of historical and ongoing traumas such as slavery, racism, discrimination, abject poverty, immigration, or illness. Collective

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trauma related to specific events such as Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, or other community or societal traumas can create a shared sense of suspicion, rage, internalized despair and hopelessness, fear, and despair (Huang, 2015).

The impact of trauma is significant regardless of race, gender identity, income, and geography. However, it has become clear that social determi- nants can strongly affect health. In particular, social determinants increase the likelihood of Black and Brown children and adults, transgender individu- als, and socially isolated people to be disproportionately sick, incarcerated, out of work, homeless, and likely to suffer premature death (Shonkoff, Boyce, & McEwen, 2009).

We know that the public- serving workforce charged with helping vulner- able populations also experiences the impacts of trauma. Vicarious trauma (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995), sometimes referred to as compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress (Stamm, 1997) and/or secondary victimization (Figley, 2010), can result from caring for those who have had traumatic expe- riences, resulting in inner feelings of hopelessness and depression, sleep dis- orders, and burnout associated with social manifestations such as hyperre- activity, conflict, anger, and blaming. It is important to recognize vicarious trauma, but it fails to underscore the way organizations and bureaucracies can induce trauma in practitioners. Bureaucracies left alone can lead to cognitive and emotional overload for the workforce, which in turn results in burnout, attrition, and underfunctioning— what some have called a “trauma- organized system,” characterized by crisis- driven, risk- averse, compliance- driven, conflict- ridden, amnesia- inducing, avoidance- promoting, isolating, fragment- ing, authoritarian leadership (Bloom & Farragher, 2013).

I served in a bureaucracy that can be dehumanizing and that has power- ful forces that protect the status quo, and our practices often mirrored the same disparities we see in the community around power and privilege. This included the way we hired, promoted, and disciplined staff, as well as how we prioritized resources. To combat the process of inducing trauma organi- zationally, the San Francisco Trauma- Informed Systems (TIS) builds on work across the country, including the sanctuary model (Bloom & Farragher, 2013) and Thrive (Yoe, Goan, & Hornby, 2012). TIS begins with the notion that in the public sector, the exposure to trauma is extraordinarily high. Prolonged trauma exposure can result from a “parallel process” in which systems in working relationship with traumatized clients, families, and communities concurrently develop similar affects, cognition, and behaviors and transmit symptoms back and forth.

Healing the delivery system through the approach of TIS explicitly com- bats the insidious effects of systemic trauma (Loomis, Epstein, Dauria, & Dolce, 2018). Shared trauma understanding among all staff members, from the clerks to the physicians, supports a shift away from pervasive thinking that the system is a “machine” whereby employees perform their jobs based on a specific set of inputs to a conception of the organization as a living organism, a system, feeding off of compassion, predictability, and relationships that are

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open, complex, and adaptive. Within this context, the understanding is pro- moted that difficult conversations, including those dealing with race, privi- lege, power and function, are necessary to improve organizational culture and practice.

The TIS approach is at a crossroads. The hegemony of the “culture of evi- dence” can and has been transposed onto this comprehensive organizational change effort. The lingo of “trauma informed” has become ubiquitous. The hunger for immediate change has been met with a race for scales and instru- ments focused on creating clear behavioral indicators. Meanwhile, there is enormous demand for manuals and miniaturized trainings. We are at risk of management prescribing homogenized surface remedies to complex problems.

CONCLUSION

The whispers of my fathers’ colleagues, of Dennis, Jan, and so many others, fortify my belief that we need to operationalize and promote alternatives to a mechanistic approach. Each day that I went to work as a leader, I was faced with complex problems and tasked to solve them with simple explanations, packaged evidence, and universal policy while maintaining organizational efficiency. This paradigm did not address the intractable disparities experi- enced by marginalized and traumatized populations. It is tempting to end with a concrete solution, which is probably the feeling that compels leaders, academics, and policymakers to seek consistent and immediate approaches to fix complex problems. Instead, we can look at some key ingredients for leaders and practitioners that may help us evolve into better serving the diverse and ever- changing needs of our communities and workforce.

Before adopting EBPs and authoritatively legislating implementation of them across the general population, we must engage in realistic conversation with practitioners and the affected community. This would include under- standing how the intervention would work within different populations, with the goal of ensuring that the unique needs of the receiving community can be met. Concurrently, academic researchers must facilitate rigorous conversation about how to develop, replicate, and sustain effective practices serving low- income and diverse communities. Radically shifting our investment and fund- ing mechanism from “thin” metrics to “thick” measurements would obligate academic, philanthropic, and public funders to work together to achieve real outcomes by investing in a diverse and reflective workforce, supporting rela- tional practices and fostering healing organizations. A commitment to change must be grounded in institutionalizing cultural humility and equity, focused on recognition that disparities are embedded within the fiber of all parts of our organizations and that they must be addressed systematically and inten- tionally. To accomplish all of these changes, leaders must resist authoritarian management and embrace democratic processes anchored in a clear and well- articulated participatory model of decision making.

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Of final note, we must honor a reliance on clinical knowledge and wis- dom, both earned and learned. This includes expanding training and super- vision from simply learning key clinical skills to embracing and supporting mentorship and reflection. Early human service career competence should be measured more by the qualities of the relationships than overall produc- tivity or the collection of an “alphabet soup” of practices they can list on their resumes. Perhaps my greatest hope is that the next generation of social worker, therapist, psychologist, and counselor trainees seek out, advocate, and/or demand as consumers that professors, supervisors, and institutions support and cherish their growth and development. Early- career human ser- vice professionals deserve to hear and be shaped by the whispers of elders and be respected for their diversity, lived experience, and enthusiasm. For, in the end, sustaining a “relational culture of healing” is the primary principle that must drive human service, organizational change, and policy development.

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association. (1980). Diagnostic and statistical manual of men- tal disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Aragón, T. J., Lichtensztajn, D. Y., Katcher, B. S., Reiter, R., & Katz, M. H. (2008). Calculating expected years of life lost for assessing local ethnic disparities in causes of premature death. BMC Public Health, 8(1), 116.

Baldwin, J., & Kenan, R. (2010). The cross of redemption: Uncollected writings. New York: Pantheon Books.

Bloom, S. L. (2005). The sanctuary model of organizational change for children’s residential treatment. Therapeutic Community, 26(1), 65–81.

Bloom, S. L., & Farragher, B. (2013). Restoring sanctuary: A new operating system for trauma- informed systems of care. New York: Oxford University Press.

California Assembly Bill 403. Continuum of Care Reform, 2015–2016. www.cdss. ca.gov/cdssweb/entres/pdf/AB403_ FactSheet.pdf.

Felitti, V. J., Anda, R., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D., Spitz, A., Edwards, V., et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Pediatrics, 14(4), 245–258.

Figley, C. R. (2010). Compassion fatigue as secondary traumatic stress disorder: An overview. In C. R. Figley (Ed.), Compassion fatigue: Coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat the traumatized (pp. 1–20). New York: Routledge.

Fixsen, D. L., Blase, K. A., Duda, M. A., Naoom, S. F., & Van Dyke, M. K. (2010). Implementation of evidence- based treatments for children and adolescents: Research findings and their implications for the future. In J. Weisz & A. Kazdin (Eds.), Evidence- based psychotherapies for children and adolescents (2nd ed., pp. 435–450). New York: Guilford Press.

Huang, L. (2015, August 21). Everyday trauma in our communities: A critical men- tal health issue–a public health crisis. Retrieved from https://blog.samhsa. gov/ 2015/08/ 21/everyday- trauma- in-our- communities- a- critical- mental- health- issue-a- public- health- crisis/#.WQZL0lPytxg.

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Kazdin, A. E. (2007). Mediators and mechanisms of change in psychotherapy research. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 3, 1–27.

Kilmann, R. H. (1984). Beyond the quick fix: Managing five tracks to organizational success. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.

La Greca, A. M., Silverman, W. K., & Lochman, J. E. (2009). Moving beyond efficacy and effectiveness in child and adolescent intervention research. Journal of Con- sulting and Clinical Psychology, 77(3), 373–382.

Larner, G. L. (2004). Family therapy and the politics of evidence. Journal of Family Therapy, 26, 17–39.

Loomis, B., Epstein, K., Dauria, E. F., & Dolce, L. (2018). Implementing a trauma- informed public health system in San Francisco, California. Health Education and Behavior. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10 90198118806942?journalCode=hebc.

New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. (2003). Achieving the promise: Trans- forming mental health care in America (DHHS Publication No. SMA-03-3832). Rockville, MD: Author.

Pearlman, L. A., & Saakvitne, K. W. (1995). Trauma and the therapist: Countertrans- ference and vicarious traumatization in psychotherapy with incest survivors. New York: Norton.

Pirsig, R. M. (1975). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: An inquiry into values. New York: Bantam.

Rakoff, V., Sigal, J. J., & Epstein, N. B. (1966). Children and families of concentration camp survivors. Canada’s Mental Health, 14, 24–26.

Shonkoff, J. P., Boyce, W. T., & McEwen, B. S. (2009). Neuroscience, molecular biol- ogy, and the childhood roots of health disparities: Building a new framework for health promotion and disease prevention. Journal of the American Medical Association, 301(21), 2252–2259.

Snowden, L. R. (2003). Bias in mental health assessment and intervention: Theory and evidence. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2), 239–243.

Stamm, B. H. (1997). Work- related secondary traumatic stress. PTSD Research Quarterly, 8, 1–3.

Whaley, A. L. (2011). Clinicians’ competence in assessing cultural mistrust among African American psychiatric patients. Journal of Black Psychology, 37, 387– 406.

Yoe, J., Goan, S. K., & Hornby, H. (2012). Thrive: Maine’s trauma- informed sys- tem of care. Available at http://hornbyzeller.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/11/ Thrive- Evaluation- August-2012-FINAL.pdf.

P A R T V I I I

LARGER SYSTEMS WORK How to Build Bridges across the Divide

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Globalization has brought about an increasingly interdependent planet, where the Western world has come to depend upon staples produced in the Third World and people in developing economies have come to depend upon grains and processed foods produced in the United States. On the one hand, Third World countries have benefitted from the Green Revolution that has increased food supplies, corporations producing foods and other commodities for the international market have provided job opportunities, and education and medical facilities have improved many lives. On the other hand, these develop- ments have had unintended consequences. Throughout the world, commercial production has appropriated the best land for agriculture and leveled forests to create new fields, and new economic opportunities have introduced West- ern values and beliefs that run counter to deeply rooted traditional values. Less understood is how these economic developments are eroding the very economic and social fabric of foraging and agrarian societies. As the global economy has taken root, the tight-knit social world in which foragers, farm- ers, and their kin-based networks who labored to produce food has faded. Many, especially those who do not have access to land, can no longer provide for their families, leaving them no option but to seek jobs elsewhere, either laboring for others or migrating to cities or developed countries. All these factors have contributed to a deep erosion of the social fabric of communities.

C H A P T E R 3 9

Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes

through Historic Ethnography An Anthropological Exploration

of the Human Connection with the Environment

Joanne Bowen

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Murray Bowen’s eighth concept of societal emotional process and soci- etal regression addresses the emotional component of this transformation. For decades he recorded his observations and emerging ideas in letters to his family, and in 1974 he presented an integration, describing “a societal level of anxiety was related to the human species” survival instinct, population explosion, the disappearance of new habitable land, depletion of raw materials, and grow- ing awareness that ‘spaceship earth’ cannot definitely sustain humans in the style to which man and his technology have become accustomed . . . ” (Bowen, 1978, p. 272). He continued, when animals are “confined to a limited space and their numbers are increasing, they test the limits of the compound, there is more mobility and moving around and they come to live more in piles than spread evenly over existing space” (Bowen 1978, p. 272). Bowen theorized how chronic societal level anxiety emerged out of threats to the relationship with the earth and its resources. When real or perceived threats emerge, the forces of togetherness would come into play, with families, communities, and all other institutions functioning like families in crisis, enhancing their func- tioning at the expense of a third party. Togetherness forces collide, making it difficult for thinking responses based on principle, and reducing the overall level of differentiation in society. This concept provides a way to achieve a bet- ter outcome through thoughtful, fact-based planning (Bowen, 1978).

Anthropological studies that focus on societal formations can extend Bowen’s understanding of societal emotional process to incorporate how families are systematically organized, as are all other social species, and how this forms the foundation for societal- level formations. Families are economic units that cooperate through their social relationships to hunt, gather, plow, harvest foods for consumption, and produce surpluses that enable them to either trade or purchase goods or to pay taxes. Understanding how a shift in societal formations and social relationships can functionally cut families off from a direct connection to the land and from their social relationships can help us understand how societies can devolve into societal regression. Nonin- dustrial societies focus on producing foods for consumption. Their economies are structured around and function through landowners and their kin. When societies begin to produce commodities for sale, the very basis of their eco- nomic system becomes increasingly impersonal. The labor to produce food and distribute it moves from personal, family- based exchange to impersonal, cash-based economic relationships (Bates, 2005). These adaptations are suf- ficient to trigger anxiety on a societal level.

This chapter presents two case studies to show how factors Bowen iden- tified as having the potential to trigger societal regression are driven at least in part by a shift from one production system to another. The very fabric of social relationships is altered, a change that created a societal- level dishar- mony between labor, land, and resources. The first is a study of the !Kung, a hunting and gathering group in the Kalahari Desert. The second is a rural 18th- century town: Suffield, Connecticut.

Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes 571

SOCIETAL EMOTIONAL PROCESS

Murray Bowen grew up on a farm just outside Waverly, Tennessee, surrounded by his family (Figure 39.1). In his letters and stories, he described laboring alongside his parents and siblings on land that had sustained his family for generations. His father was a town leader who owned and ran a local store but also supervised work on the farm. To hear Bowen describe it, “As kids we worked our lives away to help Mother prepare the year’s food from the fields, garden, orchards, kill farm animals, (and more) . . . ” (Bowen, 1982). A hired man butchered hogs, plowed the field with his mule, and did other odd jobs, and hired girls helped indoors, but family members planted, milked, stacked wood, made sausage and cider, and stored fruit and vegetables (Bowen, 1979). His father’s knowledge of the natural world ran even deeper.

He KNEW botany and what it was about, and he could predict weather from moss on trees, the thickness of animal furs, and the density of fogs. . . . He knew each and every sound from birds and animals. . . . [He] determined his kids would know the land and he put a tremendous amount of time with his sons hunting and fishing, inspecting crops, gathering nuts, explaining his built-in knowledge of Nature” (Bowen, 1982).

His experience led him to write about people who grew up in cities, par- ticularly those who joined groups such as the Sierra Club.

[They] teach nature as a part-time lark, BUT THE THING THEY KNEW AND GREW UP WITH WAS A LIFE OF PLENTY IN MODERN TECH- NOLOGICAL SOCIETY. There is no way to convey the cycles of nature

FIGURE 39.1. Murray Bowen and siblings, circa 1922. Waverly, Tennessee.

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to people who grew up with bathrooms and electricity. . . . AWAY FROM LIFE CYCLES OF FARM ANIMALS AND THE WILD ANIMALS WHO LIVED IN THE WOODS NEARBY. [Their knowledge] is compartmental- ized and not really a part of them. . . . They do not KNOW the life cycle things I knew from having lived in it. (Bowen, 1982)

Bowen’s goal (1978, p. 415) was “to present the concept of Emotional Process in Society as accurately as possible, with knowledge as it now exists.” He was keenly aware that social systems were important but knew this area was beyond his expertise: “I approached this presentation with challenge and trepidation. The trepidation comes . . . mostly from the effort to extend sys- tems thinking into social relationship systems. I have had little direct experi- ence with large social systems and it can be pretentious to even venture into that area . . . ” (Bowen, 1978, p. 447). He left it to future scholars to develop a greater understanding of societal emotional process, how societies go through phases in which they function and when any combination of threats, includ- ing overpopulation, resource depletion, or disappearance of land to colonize would trigger societal regression.

ANTHROPOLOGY

This discipline provides a useful perspective for extending Bowen’s concept of social emotional process and societal regression, as it shifts its focus from how individual families relate to one another, their communities, and their gov- ernment to how institutions themselves function. Bowen’s genius recognized how institutions’ emotional functioning mirrors that of families; what anthro- pology can contribute is a perspective that looks at the society itself, how humans, like all other social species, are organized into a settlement system with a distinctive mode of production that ensures that families can procreate and produce a living for themselves. Ethnographies of foraging, horticultural, pastoral, and agricultural societies each contain functional facts for under- standing how its social, political, and economic formations are organized into a coherent whole that supports human life.

Anthropology includes the study of past and current human groups, viewed through the lens of semiotics, belief systems, societal formations, human biology, and ecology. Cultural anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead and structural anthropologist Lévi- Strauss represent a large school of theoreticians who set the human species apart from other life forms; language and the ability to communicate through symbols and beliefs define behavior (Bateson 1972; Erickson, 1998). Icon Claude Lévi- Strauss believed all cultural practices have homologous counterparts in other cultures and that there existed “deep structures” that are essentially equitable in all cul- tures (Layton, 1997). Bowen came to know Bateson and Mead during the 1950s and 1960s as part of his work with the Group for the Advancement of

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Psychiatry. Bowen’s personal library indicates that they introduced him to this school of anthropology.

There are other schools of anthropology in which the focus is on social systems (Layton, 1997). Social anthropologists distinguish between culture and society: “A culture is the way of life of a people; while a society is an orga- nized, interacting aggregate of individuals who follow a given way of life. In simpler terms a society is composed of people; the way they behave is their cul- ture” (Herskovits, 1964, p. 14). This approach dates to the late 19th century, when Emile Durkheim focused on how humans are naturally social beings and how they formed groups that functioned to maintain internal stability over time (Wilk, 1996). Later British anthropologists, known as structural functionalists, conceptualized societies as organized interdependent parts, such as the family, the economic, and the political systems that collectively formed the social structure. In this approach, society is viewed as groups of people interacting, bound together by social institutions and rules that regu- late and maintain the whole. Culture is another system, a value system that is learned by each generation and codified in its religion, myths, and legends (Layton, 1997).

Economic anthropologists also contributed to an understanding of the human connection to the earth (Wilk, 1996). The theoretical approach that is most applicable defines economy as a population’s system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources. In a capitalist system, money buys labor power. There is a social gap between the land or business owner and labor; in nonindustrial societies, labor is generally not bought but given as a social obligation. In these kin-based systems, mutual assistance in the produc- tion of foods is part of a large web of social relations (Kottack, 2002). From this perspective, humans are a social species, and producing food is funda- mentally a social activity. The economy begins with labor needed to produce and procure work. No farmer, forager, or family can do it all themselves, even with the help of their children; harvesting, planting, hunting, gathering, plow- ing all require extra labor, and families look to kin, neighbors, friends, and hired labor to assist. It is labor that connects humans to the land that sustains them, and hence the individual’s and family’s connection to the earth is fun- damentally a social activity (Gudeman, 1978).

One of the most influential theoreticians studying relationships between humans and their natural, social, and built environment was Julian Stew- ard, who examined the systematic and dynamic interrelationships between the earth and the life forms that inhabit it (Steward, 1973; Kerns, 2003; Sut- ton & Anderson, 2004). He and many since have shown that society has its own adaptive mechanisms and that families are closely bound in an ecological system, in which they are organized in such a way that they, along with their extended kin and neighbors, procure a living from the land. As a teenager, Steward attended a boarding school near Death Valley. It was a ranch, and stu- dents were expected to help construct buildings, herd, and be responsible for all chores. They learned that if they failed to bring in the hay during summer,

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the cattle would go hungry in the winter. Steward’s experience proved nodal. He was taken by how close the Paiute Indians, who continued to forage much like their ancestors had foraged for plants and wild animals. He saw how their primary resource, piñon nuts, defined the basic organization of their society. Families foraged in small groups but, when piñons were abundant, formed larger groups. Here in this desert environment, mobile and fluid family groups defined the basic structure of their society.

This research formed the backbone of Steward’s theory, which views soci- ety as a natural system in which human families are systematically organized around land and its resources. He believed food procurement was the primary force in this dynamic relationship, and he developed what he called the “cul- tural core”; those activities most closely related to food procurement became the essential organizing principle (Steward, 1973, p. 37). He specified three steps to investigate the cultural ecology of a society: First, describe the natu- ral resources and the technology used to extract and process these resources; second, outline the social organization of work for these activities; third, trace the influence of these two phenomena on other aspects of culture.

He showed how households are closely bound in an ecological system in which the availability of resources and level of technology define social groups. Through this interaction, societies and the use of the land evolved; so did the social, political, and economic organization of the society (Murphy, 1977). Cultural ecology has expanded to incorporate more concepts from biological ecology, with more emphasis on quantification, charting ecological change historically and in complex societies, and incorporating trade, warfare, gov- ernment, and international political economy as forces driving change and adaptation (Bennett, 1996; Sutton & Anderson, 2004; Bates, 2005).

Bowen’s brilliance was that he was able to conceptualize how the nuclear family emotional system was a natural system and how— through triangles, emotional cutoff, family projection, multigenerational transmission, sibling position, and societal emotional process— the natural system expanded to include extended kin, neighbors, friends, communities, local, national, and international institutions. Had he known about Steward and other cultural ecologists, he no doubt would have appreciated Steward’s belief that social relationship systems form the foundation through which human life is con- nected to the earth.

In summary, foraging societies where families hunt and gather wild plants, and in agrarian economies where farmers raise crops and husband live- stock to feed their families, social and economic structures remain grounded in solid principles of cooperation among kin groups. The connection to the land is direct, deep, and enduring. However, when another group takes over resources and the inhabitants lose control, or when the production of com- modities becomes the goal, there is a cascade effect in the way families relate to the land and to each other. The result is a shift in the mode of production, and kin-based reciprocal exchange systems fade in the face of hired labor. The ripple effect is deep. The laborer becomes disenfranchised from the land.

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Those with fewer resources AND fewer kin connections are impacted the most. It is this group that work as field labor, or they move to towns, or even leave their home to look for work in towns, cities, or even migrate to other countries in search of work.

Foraging and the !Kung

For perhaps 4 million years, hunter- gatherers moved across the land to col- lect wild plants and to fish and to hunt wild game. Gradually, in the face of expanding agricultural peoples, this way of life has all but disappeared. One example of these peoples is the !Kung, who have made their home in the Kala- hari Desert for perhaps 50,000 years. As early as 1,500 years ago, the !Kung responded opportunistically, foraging and interacting with agricultural and pastoral peoples who had settled in the more favorable parts of the region (Denbow, 1984). In the 1950s, when Lawrence and Lorna Marshall studied these people, followed by Richard Lee in the 1960s, the !Kung followed a mobile, foraging way of life. Beginning in the 1960s, however, restrictions to land and its resources gradually led the !Kung to adopt a more sedentary life- style. By 2004, their ancient way of life had come to an end (Lee, 1979; Bates, 2005; Thomas, 2006).

The !Kung (see Lee, 1979, 2013) live in a vast semiarid savannah region where scrub trees and vegetation are scattered and the soil is sandy. For 6 months of the year the area is completely dry, surface water evaporates, foliage withers, and water can be found in only nine permanent water holes. During the other 6 months, there are heavy but unpredictable rains, totaling 6–9 inches yearly; water collects in shallow pans, and many foods become avail- able. This scarcity of water is the major factor in the !Kung being a nomadic people. They have adapted by moving through the landscape, clustering around water holes during dry times, harvesting a wide variety of plants when they were available, and hunting a variety of small game throughout the year (Bates, 2005). A reliance on upward of 500 species of plants and animals ensured that they would always have food. Up until Lee’s 1979 study, the professional community had presumed that foraging in these lands was a hard way to make a living. Lee, however, showed that these people survived quite well working only 2–3 days a week, and their foraging way of life became known as the “original affluent society.”

This landscape formed the backbone of their social organization. It is distinctive, and it differs from agriculturalists in that these people rely on a fluid relationship with the land. Agriculturalists are invested in tilling soil, and consequently groups own specific pieces of land; not so for foragers, who sustain their families by moving through broad areas, harvesting and hunting as resources become available. As a result, a group or groups share rights over a territory, negotiating with other groups living nearby for use of resources. To gain access, these groups ask for permission, which is never denied.

Unpredictable rainfall defines settlement patterns, and this society has

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evolved with small groups of closely related kin— anywhere from 10 to 30— that are organized around a core of related older people, siblings, or cousins, who live in camps near water holes. Their composition is fluid, always chang- ing, depending on the availability of water. During the dry season from June through December the !Kung congregate in camps of about 20–40 people around water holes (Bates, 2005). During these times of relative scarcity, small groups of women walk within a 6-mile radius to gather mongongo nuts, and small groups of men hunt small game. By August, when preferred goods are no longer available, women turn to the less desirable gums, roots, and melons. In times of moderate drought, 11 groups will congregate near five holes, and in times of severe drought, 11 groups will congregate near two holes. In October, when the rains come, pools of water form, and the landscape is transformed with lush green new plants and abundant animals. With new opportunities, the !Kung split into smaller groups of two to four families, a shift that allows them to take advantage of new resources, fruits, berries, greens, a rebirth of wildlife. For the next several months, these small groups move about, staying in one area for about 3 days before moving on (Bates, 2005).

In foraging societies, where people are constantly moving, they do not accumulate food reserves in the sense that agricultural people do. As they harvest, they share (in the dictionary sense of the word) among their group until there is nothing left to share. Hunters share game with their partners, who split their meat with the family members, who split what they receive with others, until everyone in the camp has received a portion. Plants that are collected and prepared by women are normally shared only within the family circle, but visitors, even individuals passing by the fire, would be invited to eat.

This system of distributing foods among members of a society is a direct link to the land and its resources; without sharing, the survival of families and the society itself would be at great risk. The !Kung are fully aware of the enor- mous social value of their food- sharing practices, and no one has the right to expect more than others. Lee (2000) has written about the values reinforcing this behavior. At Christmastime he wished to repay their kindness by buying a big, fat ox and offering it as a feast for all. But his generosity was not well received. The !Kung told him his ox was skinny, old, and worthless. An elder tried to help, and asked him,

Do you honestly think you can serve meat like that to people and avoid a fight? I don’t mean a fight with you, white man, but a fight amongst my people. With such a small quantity of meat to distribute, how can you give everybody a fair share? Someone is sure to accuse another of taking too much or hogging all the choice pieces. Then you will see what happens when some go hungry while others eat. (Lee 2000, p. 15)

Lee tried to buy another cow to make sure he had enough for everyone. No one would sell him another. When his ox was slaughtered, there was enough

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for each family to receive about 50 pounds of fat and meat. They feasted for 2 days, so why were they laughing at him? Several days later he learned the lesson every hunter learns. Normally, hunters speak of their lack of skill and the smallness of their kill. To brag was to be arrogant, and arrogance leads to a young man thinking of himself as chief or a big man, who thinks of others as his servants or inferiors. They told him, “We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. We speak of his meat as worthless to cool his heart and make him gentle” (Lee, 2000, p. 15). He had not understood that giving one ox at Christmas did not wipe out a year of debts. No one benefitted from bragging and taking power over the other. Sharing depended upon mutual obligation— all gave until there was none left to give.

Changes to the !Kung Region and Their Society

As far back as 1,500 years ago, the !Kung were in contact with agriculturalists and pastoralists (Barnard, 2007; Lee, 1979). The first contact with European settlers was in the 1690s, when the Dutch began to hunt sporadically in the region. By the 1870s the Tswana, a Bantu cattle- herding group, began to trade and hunt in the region, and soon these people expanded, first to graze cattle during the summer and later to establish permanent settlements. By the 1920s the Herero, a pastoral people, had been given grazing rights in the region, and by the 1940s they had established permanent villages and were grazing large numbers of cattle. The Herero asserted their authority, but generally the !Kung coexisted with them peacefully. Throughout these developments, the !Kung remained primarily foragers, moving seasonally in family groups. When the Tswana began to trade and hunt, the !Kung acted as trackers and meat carriers, a task they could incorporate into their hunting rounds, and after the Tswana began to graze their cattle in !Kung territory during the sum- mer, they allowed young !Kung to take their cattle with them on their hunting rounds. They allowed cattle to drink, and when the water was gone, the young men drove the cattle back to the main water hole. During this time, the !Kung remained full-time foragers, with Tswana men hunting side by side, and the Tswana women gathering wild plants alongside the !Kung women.

In the 1960s Europeans in South Africa set in motion a plan to settle and “civilize” the interior !Kung, a development that would forever alter the relationship the !Kung had with their environment, the land that sustained them, their subsistence practices, and the social relationships that connected families to each other (for detailed descriptions, see Lee, 1979, 2013; Thomas, 2006). Gradually the !Kung lost control over their territory, water, plants, and wildlife. In the process they became part of a mercantile economic system, and they adopted a sedentary way of life, unable to forage as they had done for thousands of years. Up until this time, their way of life had remained intact, families moving across the landscape in groups small or larger depending on available resources. As the !Kung’s settlement system eroded, it altered the

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social and economic organization, with deep ripple effects that affected the emotional functioning of these people.

From the 20th century, the Herero, a pastoral group, had settled the region, bringing with them cattle (Lee, 1979). Herds quickly overgrazed this arid land, and in an effort to protect the land, the South African government built a fence along the Namibia/Botswana border in 1965. This succeeded in keeping cattle out, but it also altered wildlife movement. The !Kung were allowed to use a ladder to cross over, but the barrier made it much more dif- ficult for them to hunt, and it severely diminished family groups’ ability to visit and forage for wild plants. Another change came when a tribal grazing land policy took land out of communal into freehold tenure. In doing so, the government removed open land, where the !Kung had organized their society in a way that allowed them to move freely and forage as resources became available. In 1975 the government allocated land to individuals on a 50-year basis, and game laws protected endangered species. No longer able to hunt large game, the !Kung herded cattle, grew gardens, worked as laborers, and depended upon imported food provided in government programs.

The insertion of the Western world’s mercantile economy into their own economy initiated a series of changes that conspired with new land owner- ship policies to alter how the !Kung could procure a living for their families. Change was gradual, beginning with new opportunities that the !Kung could integrate into their way of life. In 1963, three- quarters of the !Kung in the Dobe area were full-time foragers, living in camps, hunting and gathering, and incorporating herding and planting efforts as well as possible into their mobile way of life. One-half the men planted crops on an ad hoc basis, and only a few became herders themselves, as herding hampered family move- ments. Many let their cattle run with the Herero’s herds. Some middle- aged male !Kung lived with their families at their cattle posts, helping with chores and receiving food, clothing, a donkey, or a calf in exchange. Another oppor- tunity a few could take advantage of was to labor in South Africa’s gold fields (Lee, 2013). To these foragers, they could insert what they received— wages, food, clothing, or wages—into their economic system by distributing what they received within their group, much as they had distributed meat and plants for thousands of years. It was a noncash economy, in which labor performed was a mutual obligation and everyone shared whatever they procured with family members and others in their groups.

In 1967 there was a fundamental shift in the emergent economy— a development that challenged the way families interacted and supported each other—and produced waves of reactions. The most significant development, one that inserted a mercantile economy in the region, was a private White- owned store. Things changed. The main purpose of this establishment was to purchase Herero cattle and hire young !Kung men to herd cattle. They also sold !Kung staple foods, dry goods, and sugar, which !Kung women used to start up a beer brewing enterprise that thrived. !Kung who came to the store could pay 5 cents a cup. Lee reported in 1973 a supply truck with almost

Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes 579

3 tons of sugar, enough to make almost 3,000 buckets of home brew. This insertion of a cash economy had the unintended consequence of increased accidents, fights, rowdy behavior, and murder (Lee, 1979; Thomas, 2006). The cash economy undermined long-held reciprocal and obligatory social relationships, combined with fundamental changes in !Kung leadership, and reduced access to land, wildlife, and water. All these factors played their parts in unraveling a life that had sustained them for generations. Together, they collectively triggered a societal- level regression.

Leadership evolved as part of this colonization. In the old life, there was no institutionalized government; nor was there leadership as Westerners know it. Like so many other foraging societies, the !Kung did not own land, and leadership was informal (see Vaughn, Eerkens, & Kanter, 2009). The informal leader tended to be an elder male of the core group who had great hunting skills and was a good leader, but just as often it was not clear who the head- man was (Lee, 2009). Leaders emerged in this egalitarian society through their skill in organizing hunting groups and their influence in resolving group disputes. The !Kung’s informal government was overcome by groups who had formal forms of government, with hereditary or elected leaders.

Starting in 1968, a tribal grazing lands policy act took land out of com- munal tenure, placing it in freehold, a step that eliminated groups’ being able to move fluidly through the landscape. By the 1970s economic relationships were becoming more like the less personal forms found in capitalist econom- ics. The !Kung had lost upward of 70% of traditional hunting territory, they were forbidden to kill certain animals (giraffe and roan antelope), and no one was living in the bush. Instead, a large camp had grown up around the workers at this cattle post, with huts facing their cattle rather than in the tra- ditional circle with doors facing inward toward their neighbors. Only some men had jobs and were able to acquire food, and relatives depended on those with work. Jealousy and anger infected everyone, tensions rose, and alcohol consumption created a situation of rowdy parties and brawls (Thomas, 2006). By the 1990s, most lived a sedentary life in permanent homes and kept small gardens and herds of cattle and goats. Few were able to gather wild plants or hunt small game, and big-game hunting was prohibited. In their place, jobs and farming had become increasingly important. Some walked 80 or 90 miles to White farms to look for work, and others worked in Namibian mines. Water had become their greatest problem, as elephants migrating to escape poaching, culling, and loss of habitat had entered this territory, raiding gardens, devastating plant life, and consuming the farmers’ sources of water. Some farmers gave up and moved to Tsumkwe, where almost everyone had relatives. There they could find welfare food and water (Thomas, 2006).

By 2000 the 25,000-square- mile area where the !Kung lived had become a game park. Some areas fared better than others. In the Dobe area, foraging still provided about 30% of their food, the rest being milk and meat from domestic stock, garden produce, and store- bought food or government rations. The adoption of refined carbohydrates, combined with smoking, alcohol, and

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lifestyle changes brought about increased cholesterol and blood pressure (Lee, 2013). The !Kung have had to deal with massive resettlement, apartheid, loss of most of their land, and militarization (Lee, 2013). They were promised wage work, agricultural training, and medical care, but over two decades they were herded together and supported with government rations, some wage work, and little access to bush foods (Lee, 2013; Thomas, 2006).

There are deep contradictions between a foraging and an agricultural way of life. Groups of families foraging in territories, with males hunting and females gathering and sharing food until nothing is left are central to this way of life; agriculturalists who maintain fields require a sedentary way of life, land is owned, and producers are bound to the seasonal cycles of birth, growth, and harvest. In agrarian societies, producers own their harvest, and there are complex labor systems in which produce is exchanged for labor. One example demonstrates how a seemingly simple shift in mode of production can initiate waves of anxiety (Lee, 1979, 2013). “Bo”, a leader of his group, herded goats and planted fields of maize and melons. When the corn grew to maturity, kinsmen appeared to share in his good fortune, much like they did when hunters returned from the bush. He fed them a meal and offered his fire for them to stay overnight, and, knowing an extended stay would wipe out his harvest, the next morning he sent them on their way with a handful of his home-grown tobacco. The response? He was called stingy and hardhearted, feared, and accused of witchcraft. His son’s wife left her husband and other kin shunned Bo’s camp. In the end, he had become a successful but isolated farmer. Soon Bo had had enough. He sold all his cattle and other stock for cash, packed his things, and walked across the border to settle near another group.

John Marshall, an anthropologist and filmmaker who had worked with the !Kung, remarked that development programs have acted as if the !Kung wanted the old way (Thomas, 2006). Steps taken by the government include establishing a conservancy to protect wildlife, having tourists pay to see wild- life, allocating funds to buy more game and drill boreholes for wild animals, and encouraging the !Kung culture by encouraging the young people to learn it again. The irony in this is that wildlife populations are declining, all except elephants. Buffalo that were introduced are not indigenous. They depend on water, so new water sources are needed, and any !Kung caught hunting them would be sent to jail.

Marshall advocates listening to the !Kung, who say: “We would not be on this planet if we had not taught ourselves to help our own” (Thomas, 2006, p. 316). The !Kung are resilient, and they continue to maintain strong rela- tionships with their kin. How to achieve a viable future? For now, small farms enable families to be together, independent and in their homes, from which they can reach kin and partners in other communities. They can supply them- selves with food, support themselves and one another by their own efforts, as they did in the past, with a different set of plants, animals, and implements. They would be buffered from the fluctuations of tourism and trophy hunting.

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They can regain the connection to the earth and the social relationships, and they can continue to take care of others in the family, in the old way.

How could the !Kung reenvision their world? If a person has something and others have nothing, then he and they are not equal. Thus they help oth- ers in a handholding chain that goes back through time, a chain that depends upon community. Here, Thomas has linked Bowen’s and Steward’s under- standing that a viable connection to the earth is critical. Bowen was clear that a disconnection from the land would set the emotional stage, and Steward was clear that social relationships— the system through which families connect with the earth—count. Both a connection with the land and social relation- ships are essential for sustaining life on this earth.

Eighteenth‑Century Suffield, Connecticut

In 1620, a group of Puritans landed at Plymouth to build a new home for their families that was free from religious persecution. Except in areas where the soil was exceptionally rich, New England farmers generally supported their families with subsistence farming (Innes, 1983; Bowen, 1990; Garrison, 1991). Suffield is located along the Connecticut River Valley. Rich with allu- vial soils and wildlife, colonists established a fur- trading post in the 1630s, and soon became the first major hog and cattle production region in Mas- sachusetts (Innes, 1983). Because the land in Suffield was relatively poor, it was the last town established along the river, and it remained a community of primarily small farmers from 1671 until after the Revolutionary War when the West Indies market exploded. At that time, a few Suffield farmers began to grow flax and to raise beef cattle, and as they embraced commercial agri- culture, they left behind the exchange relations they had had with their kin and neighbors.

My historic ethnography on 18th- century Suffield, Connecticut, indi- cates that the same patterns we have seen with the !Kung occurred in this rural community. Having no live informants to observe, I used documentary sources, including account books, tax and land records, church records, and more to reconstruct the agrarian past, where, until markets opened up in the late 18th century, farmers relied on their kin and neighbors to produce food for their own consumption. Since results produced vast quantities of data on kin relationships, settlement patterns, and agrarian economics that were not supported in secondary historical texts, my research reached widely into eth- nographies and anthropological works that informed me about the social and economic foundations for subsistence agriculture and how social relationships changed as new markets gave farmers new opportunities.

Eighteenth- century account books that recorded the variety of exchanges of crops, food, animals, goods, and farm labor were my primary sources of information. From 200 account books, I was able to track two extended fami- lies, each spanning five generations (Bowen, 1990). I reduced the sample to 12 account books dating between the 1770s and 1810, involving 800 individuals.

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To reduce the sample to a manageable number, I opted to capture only the individuals who provided or received animals, animal husbandry, and ani- mal products. After this selection, I was left with 431 individuals, on each of whom I had to conduct research to determine how they were related and where they lived. Fortunately, Delphina Hammer Clark, a local resident, had reconstructed the land history of the entire town. For 30 years she pored over records to produce 11 irreplaceable volumes containing information on who lived where, with genealogies and maps. As I worked, it became apparent that roads had changed, and I had to return again and again to Clark’s records to reconstruct the landscape with the old roads and social networks of the two families. One, the Sikes family, lived near the river on the east side of town, and the second, the Sheldons, lived inland. What is striking is how tight they were. Anyone could have walked from their home to another’s in minutes.

Analysis showed Suffield was a tight-knit agrarian community, where farmers formed ego- centered cooperative work groups composed of extended kin, friends, and occasional business associates. As in other agrarian com- munities, farmers supported their families by drawing on their own complex network to exchange, depending on individual needs, agricultural products, goods, and services. It was a world Murray Bowen understood, one in which farmers’ “actions and choices were directly tied to the natural resources of land, water, weather, and sun” (Diaz, 1967, p. 50). Farmers and their families were closely bound into an ecological system of kinsmen and neighbors who plowed, harvested, husbanded livestock, and performed the myriad of tasks related to producing food (Bowen, 1990).

The debate among historians was whether these farmers were self- sufficient or whether they focused on producing commodities (Bowen, 1990; Rothenberg, 1992). Those who assume that these communities were self- sufficient have written that each household had sufficient resources to sup- port themselves and that the exchange of food and services was more about communal support and a way for farmers to assist one another during harvest and other times in the agricultural cycle that required supplemental labor. Others have presumed that the New England farmer’s goal was to produce a surplus as a commodity. Anthropological ethnographies have demonstrated that neither was correct. Farmers engaged in producing foods for home con- sumption did produce a small surplus, which they used to purchase imported and other manufactured goods and to pay taxes. Further, not all farmers were self- sufficient; some had more resources than others, and exchange networks enabled the community to provide a subsistence for all members, just as the !Kung’s obligation to share what was hunted and harvested provided a subsis- tence for those less able to care for themselves.

An analysis of a 1780 tax record that recorded who owned land, houses, and livestock produced four distinct demographic groups (Bowen, 1990), the poorest of which made up 35% of the households. Most did not own a house or any land, though almost everyone owned a horse, a cow, or a pig. It’s clear

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that these farmers did not have the resources to provide a basic subsistence for their families. The wealthiest households were small in number— only 5% of the population— who each owned at least one house, controlled most of the good land, and had substantial livestock holdings. All accounts show that until the 1780s even the wealthiest farmers practiced subsistence agriculture. With their kin and friends, they maintained reciprocal relationships, occa- sionally exchanging a quarter of beef or veal. Because what they needed most was labor, they more often exchanged labor, lending a son or helping others to plow or mow, with their exchange partner doing likewise. With other kin, such as a brother or cousin who had less than they did, these wealthy farmers helped by providing pasturage, the use of their oxen, or food; in return their kin provided labor— slaughtered livestock, made hats and barrels, did carpen- try work, or repaired farm equipment.

When the West Indies market surged after the Revolutionary War and growing cities created a market for agricultural produce, the agrarian world in Suffield changed from one grounded in personal, kin-based relationships to one that was increasingly impersonal. Individuals with greater resources began to produce commodities, and, as they did so, they dropped exchange labor in favor of hiring impersonal laborers, who worked for cash and in-kind payments of food. Here are two examples of how Suffield farmers adapted to new opportunities.

The Sikes family lived along the river (Bowen, 1990). Victory Sikes, Sr., who ran a subsistence farm and a sawmill, relied upon his kin and friends who lived nearby. Account data show that at least 50% of the people in his network were related. With the wealthier, he exchanged primarily labor, and with those of modest means, such as his nephew Lot Sikes, they exchanged their labor for food, molasses, the use of pastures, the ox team, or a horse. Lot Sikes, who must have been an expert butcher, used his talents to exchange with Victory, Sr., and other farmers. When Victory, Jr., took over the farm after his father died in 1785, he took advantage of an emerging linseed oil enterprise and began to raise flax. His accounts show that only 10% of the individuals he listed were related to him, a sign that kinsmen were not integral to his new economic scheme. Instead, the many entries of nonrelated individu- als demonstrate that he relied upon day laborers, whom he paid with cash and food.

The Sheldon family lived inland, just west of the richest alluvial soils. Elijah Sheldon successfully maintained a subsistence farm for many years, acquiring sufficient land that he could provide a farm for five of his sons (Bowen, 1990). Account entries show that he, like Victory, Sr., relied on nearby kin, depending on their means, for a range of goods, services, food, and labor. When his second son, Martin, inherited the farmstead in 1784, he, like Victory, Jr., opted to fatten cattle. One might presume he cut off economic relationships with his kin—but not this man. Entries show 36% of the individuals were kin, a sign that his relationships with his brothers

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and cousins were strong and that they had become partners in the cattle- fattening business, either pasturing beef cattle or delivering beef to market. In addition, they also exchanged, regardless of each other’s status, the full range of subsistence- related activities— labor, pasturage, occasionally food, and the use of oxen, bulls, and horses. But he also hired large numbers of low- ranking unrelated individuals. Some boarded with him for brief periods, and others were from poor families, many of whom had no kin I could iden- tify. Tax records show some were transient, staying in town only long enough to be married or have a child; others stayed for long periods, renting homes and working for farmers like Martin Sheldon. Several of these men ended up on Suffield’s poor rolls.

After working with the account book data, I realized that dietary data was the strongest proxy for measuring the impact of a shift from family- based subsistence agriculture to commercially based agriculture on the lives of these rural people. Looking at the food entries, it’s clear that foods flowed from the wealthier down the economic scale to others who lacked the resources to produce food for themselves. From Victory Sikes’s farm, only 1% of meat and dairy products went to the wealthier households, 33% to the middling households, and 66% went to the households in the lowest rank. Ninety per- cent of all meat exchanged went to the poorest families, many of whom were kin. One can conclude that kinship was important; if one had kin, regardless of income or ability to produce food, one was taken care of. In a subsistence- based society, poorer families who had wealthier kin received the same foods the wealthy consumed in exchange for their labor. Men like Lot Sikes, a butcher and laborer, received essentially the same foods eaten by Victory’s family. However, those who were not kin received a less varied diet composed of preserved foods in small quantities in exchange for their labor.

As commercial agriculture got under way and hired labor increased, a segment of New England’s population felt the effects of commercialized eco- nomic relationships. In former times, New Englanders maintained lifelong membership in the town where they were born, meaning that at any time during their lives they could return and expect support. But by the late 18th century, when increasing numbers of people were no longer protected by the largesse of their kin, towns no longer wanted this responsibility, and they began to require proof of birth. Many people moved to cities, where city gov- ernments had established poor houses. Many, however, moved from town to town, becoming known as the “strolling poor” (Jones, 1975). They became day laborers who were not related to the farmers, and they received less fresh meat and smaller amounts of preserved foods such as salt pork, cheese, and butter. As farmers began to hire labor, the safety net diminished, isolating the poor. In comparison with families who for generations lived off their land, close by many relatives, these families showed signs of their situation. They had no kin to turn to, and their relationships with nearby farmers lacked the depth of relationships between people who had known each other since childhood. Only their skills and ability to work as hired hands provided their

Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes 585

families with a basic subsistence. The implications of their marginality on their diet and on their health are staggering.

CONCLUSION

Although many see globalization as a modern- day phenomenon, international trade and indigenous economic development began at least 6,000 years ago, when Near Eastern societies sought to trade with China. More recently, in the 15th century, European countries began to explore the globe, looking for resources. Richard Franke (1987) provides an excellent summary of the evo- lution of mercantile trade, as does Daniel Bates (2005) for the social conse- quences that current globalization is having on small farmers.

Our capitalist economic system has unleashed powerful production forces that have improved communications and scientific and technological develop- ments, but there have been unintended consequences, as the examples of the !Kung and colonial Connecticut have shown— supportive exchange networks fade in the face of wage labor. The impact of these changes is real, diminish- ing or even eliminating the supportive role of kin-based labor, changes that have affected the poor and left them less able to cope. Leatherman’s study (1996) on the impact the global economy has had on the social and economic relationships of a rural community in Peru is another excellent example that shows that families like the Sheldons of Suffield, who had resources and strong cooperative networks and close kin ties, were still able to mobilize reciprocal exchanges. But like the “strolling poor” of colonial New England, the poorer Peruvians have few resources, and they are therefore vulnerable and likely to experience more difficulty adapting to the seasonal rounds of planting and harvest. For them, wage labor comes before planting and other field- related tasks. If a member gets sick, their former exchange partners, who now work as hired labor themselves, are not able to assist. If illness coincides with sea- sonal peaks in production, the mother may be left at home with few resources, trying to cope. If she gets sick, options dwindle even further, and household members drop commercial tasks in favor of subsistence- related tasks, leaving them with even less cash. All these factors translate into lower levels of con- sumption, depleted resources, and, for the poorest, the potential to become irreversibly marginal.

These studies indicate that societal regression, as defined by Murray Bowen, is driven, at least in part, by a shift from one production system to another, through which access to land, ownership of produce, and the very fabric of social relationships that produce food are altered. Given the emo- tional forces that accompany upheaval, the potential of a regression is great. Yet societies can reemerge with a new system with well- defined and coherent social and economic relationships that connect families to the land. But the ecological balance changes. History has shown that the evolution of societies has been a trajectory from the egalitarian world of foraging toward greater

586 L A R G E R S Y S T E M S W O R K

complexity, in which agriculture redefines the relationship to the soil and its produce and disrupts kin-based economic relationships and in which owner- ship is altered so that some have more and some have less. The ecological balance shifts to the masses laboring for others for pay. In so doing, they lose ownership of what they produce. This level of disconnection from the land could be sufficient to trigger emotional reactivity in societies and in families that make that world their home. It could be sufficient for families to migrate to another world, where opportunities are better. For communities in margin- alized countries, and even rural towns in the United States where capitalism has taken root, the principles laid out by Murray Bowen and human ecolo- gists could provide a foundation for governments to establish policies and programs that can either retain or restore both families’ connection to the land and their social relationships. If policies could address these essential relationships and develop plans that assist families, the communities they live in could restore harmony with the land and among the people who live there.

REFERENCES

Barnard, A. (2007). Anthropology and the Bushman. Oxford, UK: Berg. Bates, D. (2005). Human adaptive strategies: Ecology, culture, and politics (3rd ed.).

Boston: Pearson Education, Allyn & Bacon Press. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology,

psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bennett, J. W. (1996). Human ecology as human behavior: Essays in environmental

and development anthropology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Bowen, J. (1990). A study of seasonality and subsistence: Eighteenth- century Suf-

field, Connecticut. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brown University, Provi- dence, RI.

Bowen, M. (1978). Societal regression as viewed through family systems theory. In M. Bowen (Ed.), Family therapy in clinical practice (pp. 269–282). New York: Jason Aronson.

Bowen, M. (1979). Letter to Carl Whitaker, August 14, 1979, Acc. 2007-049, Box 1, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.

Bowen, M. (1982). Letter to Bob, February 16, 1982, Acc. 2004-043 Box 4, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.

Denbow, J. R. (1984). Prehistoric herders and foragers of the Kalahari: The evidence for 1500 years of interaction. In C. Schrire (Ed.), Past and present in hunter gatherer studies (pp. 175–194). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

Diaz, M. N. (1967). Introduction: Economic relations in peasant society. In J. M. Pot- ter, M. N. Dias, & G. M. Foster (Eds.), Peasant society: A reader (pp. 50–56). Boston: Little, Brown.

Erickson, P. A. (1998) A history of anthropological theory. Orchard Park, NY: Broad- view.

Franke, R. W. (1987). The effects of colonialism and neocolonialism on the gastro- nomic patterns of the Third World. In M. Harris & E. B. Ross (Eds.), Food and evolution: Toward a theory of human food (pp. 455–480) Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Garrison, R. (1991). Landscape and material life in Franklin County, Massachusetts, 1770 –1860. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Gudeman, S. (1978). The demise of a rural economy: From subsistence to capitalism in a Latin American village. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Herskovits, M. (1964). Cultural dynamics. New York: Knopf. Innes, S. (1983). Labor in a new land: Economy and society in seventeenth- century

Springfield. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press. Jones, D. L. (1975). The strolling poor: Transiency in eighteenth- century Massachu-

setts. Journal of Social History, 6, 28–54. Kerns, V. (2003). Scenes from the high desert: Julian Steward’s life and theory.

Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kottack, C. (2002). Anthropology: The exploration of human diversity (9th ed.). Bos-

ton: McGraw- Hill. Layton, R. (1997). An introduction to theory in anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press. Leatherman, T. L. (1988). Challenges to seasonal strategies of rural producers: Uncer-

tainty and conflict in the adaptive process. MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology, 5, 9–20.

Leatherman, T. L. (1996). A biocultural perspective on health and household econ- omy in southern Peru. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 10(4), 476–495.

Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, women, and work in a foraging society. Cam- bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lee, R. (2000). Eating Christmas in the Kalahari. In A. H. Goodman, D. L. Dufour, & G. H. Pelto (Eds.), Nutritional anthropology: Biocultural perspectives on food and nutrition. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

Lee, R. B. (2013). The Dobe Ju/’hoansi (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Murphy, R. F. (1977). Introduction: The anthropological theories of Julian H. Stew-

ard. In J. C. Steward & R. F. Murphy (Eds.), Evolution and ecology: Essays on social transformation (pp. 1–40). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Rothenberg, W. B. (1992). From market- places to a market economy: The transforma- tion of rural Massachusetts 1750 –1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Steward, J. H. (1973). Theory of culture change: The methodology of multilinear evolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Sutton, M. O., & Anderson, E. N. (2004). Introduction to cultural ecology. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Thomas, E. M. (2006). The old way: A story of the first people. New York: Picador. Vaughn, K. J., Eerkens, J. W., & Kanter, J. (Eds.). (2009). The evolution of leadership:

Transitions to decision making from small-scale to middle- range societies. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press.

Wilk, R. B. (1996). Economics and cultures: Foundations of economic anthropology. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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The importance of theory in science is not the elegance of its ideas but instead its ability to solve vexing human challenges in new ways that lead to improved human functioning and well-being. The deaths and injuries of children in families is a vexing social problem that affects millions of children and fami- lies in the United States. Although rates of child abuse are declining in this century, millions of families continue to experience child neglect and various forms of abuse. Child abuse and neglect have been demonstrated by research to increase the risk for long-term social, emotional, physical, and cognitive problems for children, teens, and adults.

This chapter describes my use of a family systems theory to guide the design and implementation of reforms in a child abuse agency existing within an integrated department of human services. Bowen family systems theory (Bowen, 1978), as developed by Murray Bowen, MD, and others, widens our lens to understand human functioning and symptom development as an aspect of extended family networks of interlocking relationships and interactions. The family as a unit adapts to stresses, threats, and challenges, and sometimes symptoms and problems arise in the process. Instead of attributing symptoms to individuals, the theory explains how they are a part of dynamic processes of interactions within extended families.

Applying these ideas to child abuse does not excuse aggressors’ responsi- bility for violent behavior and does not blame victims of child abuse. Each per- son is responsible for his or her aggressive and neglectful behavior. Explaining it as a part of relationship functioning does not alter our individual obligation to manage ourselves responsibly. Furthermore, any of us can be the victim

C H A P T E R 4 0

An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare

Walter Howard Smith, Jr.

An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare 589

of the aggressive behavior of others, and having a prior history of interac- tions with an aggressor does not make us responsible for their actions or for becoming a victim. We simultaneously function as individuals and as integral members of family and social relationships.

BACKGROUND

Several years ago, I became the administrator for county child welfare ser- vices in a large northeastern city. I launched the design and implementation of a model to improve outcomes for families and to integrate mental health, drug, alcohol, aging, and intellectual disability services for families. The child welfare office budget is $213 million annually and serves more than 17,000 persons each year (8,400 parents and 8,600 children). There are 600 staff members and 129 contracted services by nonprofit agencies providing a large array of case management, support, and treatment services to children, teens, and families. Child welfare services are a part of an integrated government department that reaches one of every six county residents in aging, mental health, child welfare, intellectual disability, drug, alcohol, and community- based services. There are hundreds of services, and 60% of the clients of the department are served in multiple program areas. For example, a client may be served in mental health, intellectual disability, and drug and alcohol services. The department has an annual budget of $800 million dollars that funds 350 service agencies and serves 225,000 people each year. I also became the clini- cal director for the department.

SUMMARY OF PAST OBSERVATIONS OF CHILD ABUSE IN FAMILIES

For 25 years prior to my current positions, I was the clinical director and executive director of a family- focused nonprofit organization that served 20,000 people annually to prevent and treat child abuse. I made hundreds of observations of families (through clinical practice and supervision), created and tested hypotheses, and derived conclusions. I used Bowen family systems theory as a guiding framework to explore child abuse in families and as a lens to understand the functioning of all families. I used the theory as a guide for devising hypotheses regarding how violent behavior develops as a part of fam- ily emotional processes and for designing interventions. I used observations to test and retest hypotheses to learn about the common emotional processes and patterns of interaction. These observations became the basis for designing and implementing clinical services for the prevention and treatment of child abuse.

1. Child abuse evolves within a family’s adaptation to stressful condi- tions and traumatic events. It reflects a continuously evolving family emo- tional process, and, as a symptom, it reflects basic conditions of an extended

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family in its social environment. A family’s adaptation is best understood across all family relationships rather than by merely examining each family member’s individual coping behaviors.

2. A family as a single emotional unit adapts to threats and stresses. Under stress, roles of leader, helper, distancer, symptom bearer, and follower naturally emerge. Family interaction increases, and members become more responsive to one another. Relationships shift to cope with stresses. Coali- tions and conflicts emerge. Relationships fuse and distance in patterned ways. Families’ adaptation can succeed and effectively manage challenges, or it can adapt in ways that increase stress and symptoms. The way a family responds and adapts to stresses shapes its adaptation to future challenges.

3. Although the particular behaviors and conditions of child abuse are episodic, it is embedded in stressful conditions that are chronic and persistent. Even when acts of child abuse are not occurring in these families, chronic stress is high, and other symptoms are common. These general conditions of families exist with all forms of child abuse and neglect.

4. Stressful conditions and family adaptation reflect the overall func- tioning of the entire extended family, not merely the nuclear family in which abuse occurs. Reciprocal and complementary patterns of functioning occur in all families. Family members with more symptoms complement other mem- bers who function much better. As problems and symptoms emerge in some branches of families, helper roles emerge, too.

5. Child abuse predictably occurs with chronic, persistent unresolved marital (partner) conflict and conflict among generations of an extended family. Cutoffs among branches of an extended family are common. Isolated branches of families have increased risk for symptoms and family violence.

6. The emotional conditions for violent and aggressive behavior evolve progressively in families and in a predictable fashion. The real threats of stressful and traumatic events trigger adaptation that leads to family mem- bers’ perceiving threats within the nuclear and extended family. With chronic stress, family members increasingly respond to perceived threats more than real ones. Perceived threats escalate with aggression, and child abuse typically becomes progressively more aggressive and violent over time.

7. When child abuse is sustained over long periods, a process of family regression can occur, putting children at high risk for injury. Family emotional regression is linked to the cutoff and emotional isolation of the nuclear family, but this is a process of the entire extended family system as an emotional unit.

8. Child abuse triggers strong emotional reactions in professionals engaged with a family, and most struggle with how to remain neutral and derive family- based hypotheses to explain their observations.

9. A useful focus of clinical interventions is to find leaders and helpers in the extended family willing to improve emotional self- regulation to lower

An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare 591

reactivity, manage relationships responsibly, and more accurately manage threats. These members are a part of every extended family.

HYPOTHESES IN CURRENT PROJECT

Leading change in practices and operations of a large system of services is complex, because human service agencies, somewhat like families, are a large interlocking network of relationships and have similar ways of responding to challenges and stress. I used my knowledge of Bowen family systems theory to anticipate challenges and obstacles and plan ways of achieving large-scale departmental change and manage its resistances. I found having hypotheses useful for remaining emotionally neutral about resistances and challenges to change.

An initial step was leading a team that wrote a new practice model for the department and established a set of guiding principles for implementing a new integrated system of services. Key ideas in the practice model were:

1. The family (nuclear and extended), not the individual, is the client. 2. Families function best when they are self- reliant and rely on their own

resources and abilities to adapt.

Months later, I amended a nationally recognized family engagement practice1 to be used in all areas of service across the department. Department leadership adopted the model and launched it in child welfare with plans to disseminate it across the larger Department of Human Services system of ser- vices.

The hypotheses that I established regarding child abuse and systems change included the following:

1. Child abuse develops as an adaptive response to numerous stressful and traumatic events in the family, and adding too many services interferes with the adaptive responses of families by decreasing the family’s responsibility for its own functioning.

2. As family members change to end abuse, stresses may increase, and relationships are likely to shift, triggering past patterns of family adaptation.

3. Social services that control families increase threats and stresses, triggering more adaptive responses and increasing chronic anxiety.

4. For every branch of a family at lower levels of functioning, there are branches at higher levels than can support adaptation if cutoff, dis- tancing, and other emotional processes are managed.

5. The absence of functional leadership (parents, grandparents, older siblings) tends to lead to emotional regression and isolation, increas- ing chronic anxiety and risk for violence and death.

592 L A R G E R S Y S T E M S W O R K

6. Services can support the emergence of leadership in families and increase successful adaptation if they engage families in ways that do not interfere with the families’ own resources and strengths.

7. The vast majority of extended families have the basic capacity to raise their children safely and without harm and injury.

8. Decreasing cutoff and distance in family relationships will increase anxiety and conflict. However, if sustained, the family will discover healthier ways of adapting to threats and stresses without being told what to do or how to do it.

9. Families at moderate and higher levels of differentiation of self are likely to respond positively to the model and improve in overall func- tioning; families at lower levels will struggle but still tend to function better.

10. My ability to remain steadfast, principled, and neutral as a leader will be greatly tested as the stresses of system change occur. Change will be a 5- to 7-year effort.

11. Creating ways for families to hold service professionals accountable will improve family functioning and services.

12. Integrating and coordinating services around family meetings will decrease the use of services and increase benefits to family members.

CURRENT PROGRESS

After 4 years, the following objectives have been achieved or nearly achieved:

1. The family, both nuclear and extended, is defined as the “client” and not merely the individual child/teen or parent; family members can live in multiple households and include significant natural support persons as selected by the family.

2. The following model of service delivery has been designed and imple- mented: a. All services are guided by immediate and extended family mem-

bers’ plans. b. A family plan is the child welfare plan for keeping children safe

except for non- negotiable items asserted by the courts. c. All professionals providing services must meet regularly with

families and are accountable to families. d. 600 agency staff members and hundreds of contracted agency

staff members have been trained in this new model. e. The model engages families in forming their own plans for change

and using their own resources before professional services are offered.

3. A shift has occurred in the focus of professionals onto strengthen- ing family adaptation and coping rather than trying to “fix” family problems.

An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare 593

4. Our qualitative evaluations reveal that families like the new model. But professionals like it much less.

5. There has been a decrease in the use of services along with increased coordination of services.

6. The connection and interaction among parts of the child welfare sys- tem (courts, service agencies, advocates, child welfare agency) has increased and has weathered the initial stresses of system change; child welfare is less disconnected from other program offices such as mental health and drug and alcohol; services are more integrated.

7. The child welfare system continues to receive strong support from local, state, and federal government.

8. The increased stress and pressure on child welfare staff members has increased turnover and job dissatisfaction; turnover rates increased 2% as staff members found the new model more stressful. Some lead- ers and caseworkers left the agency because of the changes.

9. The new model is the basis for how leaders manage staff and office operations; there is increased focus on staff teamwork to address challenges; a new supervision model mirrors clinical practice.

10. The number of children in out-of- family placements has decreased, and more children are safely remaining in their families of origin; there has been increased use also of kinship foster care.

11. The number of children in residential care and group homes has been sharply reduced.

12. Residential and group home agencies are shifting to community- based family services or going out of business.

13. Resistance to change by agency staff is declining, but staff members have difficulty remaining neutral and outside the family’s decision making about its own functioning.

14. There has been wide recognition and acceptance that change in the child welfare practice will take 5–7 years.

15. The family practice model is spreading to prevention, mental health, and aging services.

DISCUSSION

Bowen family systems theory offers a way to rethink and add value to human services based on an understanding of families as an emotional system and as an emotional unit. These ideas were applied to develop a model of services and guide its implementation. Few people knew I used Bowen theory as a guide for designing these efforts and for managing change. The application of the theory to design new services and practices has not been as complicated as the process of leading and implementing change.

Many professionals do not have a systems perspective, but they have increased understanding of relationship functioning and a general idea that family symptoms and problems are interrelated. However, they want to be

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active in making a difference for the families in their caseloads. Their step- ping back to foster extended families in taking the lead in planning and taking action steps to ensure that children are safe is challenging, particularly in child welfare, when society often holds professionals responsible for child safety.

Managing change of a large social service system is more complicated than developing and communicating new ideas and services. Human service agencies function as a social system, and counterbalancing forces exist that resist change and reforms. Furthermore, social problems such as poverty and racial bias put pressure on child welfare agencies to keep children safe when agencies have little control over the social circumstances of families.

An adaptation model of understanding family functioning emphasizes building individual and family capacities to cope and adapt to stresses and challenges, even if one cannot change social conditions. Fostering families to build coping capacities requires professionals to engage and remain present and connected to families to let them generate their plans and actions to keep children safe. Furthermore, many resources exist within extended families that can be invaluable supports for stressed branches experiencing aggression and violence.

LESSONS LEARNED

1. It is essential for leaders to have a theoretical framework that guides how to implement change in large, complex social systems.

2. Bowen family systems theory accurately predicts the way social sys- tems respond to and resist change and can be utilized to anticipate and plan how to manage these obstacles.

3. Engaging extended families strengthens families’ adaptive strengths, and they have the best ideas for how to keep children safe.

4. To manage cutoff and distance, it is critical to engage extended family members in order to find leaders and resources for better adaptation.

5. Our society tends to assign a new service for each problem, as if each problem has a separate etiology; this overwhelms families and reduces family adaptation, often overwhelming families with services.

6. Balancing support for families adapting to stresses and challenges without fostering dependency on services is difficult for professionals and for helping systems.

SUMMARY

Bowen family systems theory provides a way of achieving important social goals by shifting the direction of designing, managing, and implementing services in a public agency. Instead of viewing services as addressing “prob- lems,” symptoms are viewed as an aspect of family adaptation to stressful

An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare 595

and traumatic events and conditions. The theory operates on the belief that families have the capacity and resources to manage their challenges, threats, and adaptations.

These ideas may be accepted in principle, but there are major obstacles to translating these ideas and implementing changes into practice. Change initially tends to increase stress and anxiety. Fully implementing the idea that families have the capacity to change themselves is a radical idea in practice, particularly in child welfare, as many do not believe families deserve to make their own decisions. We found that forcing all service providers to meet with family members reduces the need for services, increases family responsibility for change, and increases professional accountability to families. When an extended family provides its own resources to manage its challenges, they innovate ideas for change and use fewer services, which strengthens families. Changes in child welfare practice have saved millions of dollars, but more importantly, more children are remaining in their families than are being placed in foster care and residential care settings.

The department is committed to long-term change, based on its practice model of family meetings and integrating services. We continue to anticipate many obstacles to change. Yet the service system is gaining increased coping and adaptive capacities. As a leader, using Bowen family systems theory as a framework to guide, design, and implement changes has been invaluable.

NOTE

1. Family team conferencing is a model of family engagement developed by the Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group (2017) in Alabama. I amended the model by adding teaming meetings after the initial conference that continue family meetings throughout services and require all professionals to constantly meet with the fam- ily to coordinate and integrate services.

REFERENCES

Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. New York: Jason Aronson. Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group. (2017). Family team conferencing. Retrieved

from http://childwelfaregroup.org/documents/FTC_ History.pdf.

597

Abandonment, 271, 272, 314 Ability, physical, 223 Ableism, 504–506, 505f, 520–522 Abortion, 230 Abuse, 355, 588–595 Academic communities, 254–255 Acceptance

African Americans and, 207 intracultural issues and, 435 LGBTQ individuals and, 372 power of knowledge and, 211 White privilege and, 284–285

Accountability, 347, 509–510 Acculturation. See also Transnational families

Asian Americans and, 466, 468 interracial marriage and, 468 Native American identity and, 154 theories of, 119 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 414 Ackerman relational approach, 530–531, 532 Action, power of, 212–213 Activism, 257, 358 Adaptation, selective, 172–174 Addiction to domination disorder (ADD), 10 Adolescents, 367–369, 374–375 Advocacy, 379 Affirmation, 32, 34, 428– 429 Affirmations, 205 African Americans. See also Black identity

connection with the past and, 124–127 cultural bias and, 542–543 culture and, 209–210 invisibility of, 261–262 overview, 200–201 power and, 204–213

re-visioning of family therapy and, 484– 485 songs and, 454– 460 spirituality and, 543–544 therapy and, 201–204

Ageism foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f privilege and, 223 teaching about racism and, 520–522

Agender individuals, 374 Agnosticism, 75 Ambiguity, relational, 393–396, 399t American Association for Marriage and Family

Therapy (AAMFT), 21–22 American Dream, 39– 41, 50. See also Social

class American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA),

20–21, 534–535 Anger, 146–147 Anthropology, 572–585. See also Society factors Anti-Semitism, 134–135, 337–338, 346 Anxiety, 154, 165, 404, 412 Arab identity, 251, 252–253, 343–347 Asexual individual, 365 Asian Americans. See also Interracial Asian

couples clinical practice and, 464– 465, 471– 472 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

255 foundational workshop on social justice and,

503–504, 505–506, 508 interracial marriage and, 467– 471 marriage and, 469– 470 overview, 466 racism and, 466– 467 romantic love and, 470– 471

Index

Note. f, t, or n following a page number indicates a figure, a table, or a note.

598 Index

Assaulted sense of self. See also Self Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

420– 423, 430– 432 invisible wounds and, 144–145, 147

Assessment, 69, 85–86 Assimilation, 325 Assumptions, 207–208, 481– 483 Atheism, 75 Attachment disruptions, 403– 404 Attachment theory, 229 Authenticity, 210–211 AVAF model of accountability, 242, 245

Beliefs and belief systems. See also Religion; Spirituality

case example, 129–130 clinical practice and, 127–131 connection with the past and, 124–127 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 172 resilience and healing and, 83–85 sources of knowledge and, 541–542 well-being and, 124

Belonging, 97–98, 253–256 Best practices, 548–549 Biases

cultural bias, 539–541, 540f discriminatory observation and, 546–547 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

252–254, 257–258 male privilege and family therapy and, 229 oppression trauma, 134–135 research and, 539, 541, 546–547 violence and political climate and, 252–253 White privilege in therapy and, 239

Bigender individuals, 374 Bigotry, 134–135 Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage

(Root), 183–184, 481f Binational comparative research studies, 119–120 Biological sex, 28, 363 Biracial individuals. See also Multiracial identities

caregiving and, 185–187 identity development and, 179–185 self-definition and, 177–179

Bisexual individuals, 365. See also LGBTQ individuals Black genealogy research

family and, 272–277 historical context, 269–272, 270f implications of for therapy, 277–281 overview, 262–269, 262f, 264f, 265f, 268f racism and, 273–277

Black identity. See also African Americans; Black Latino identity

Black heterosexual couples in therapy and, 427– 432

case example of a Black heterosexual couple in therapy, 424– 427

denial of Blackness and, 195–196 invisibility of African Americans and,

261–262 invisible wounds and, 420– 423 Latino identity and, 194–195 overview, 419– 420 power and, 204–213 power of words and, 205–206, 207 White privilege and, 194–195, 239

Black inferiority myth power and, 204–205 power of action and, 212–213 power of the collective and, 206–207 power of trust and, 207–209 power of words and, 206 therapy and, 201–204

Black Latino identity, 195–196, 197–199. See also Black identity; Latino identity

“Black Lives Matter” movement, 354 Black shadow, 200–213 Black shame, 210 Blame, 297, 513 Blame-the-victim response, 141 Bonding, 470– 471 Bowen family systems theory, 588–595. See also

Systemic perspective Bridge metaphor, 175 Broker of permission concept, 71 Brown-skinned identity, 251–258

Canadian identity, 251–258 Caregiving. See also Parenting

LGBTQ families and, 369–371 multiracial legitimacy and, 185–187 transgender individuals and, 377–378 transnational families and, 113–114

Case conceptualization, 163–166 Caste system, 319–320, 333n Catholic identity, 308–317 Celibate individuals, 365 Census data, 179, 267, 269. See also Records Ceremonies, 75, 166. See also Naming

Ceremony in Native American culture; Spirituality

Change, 41– 48, 74–76, 224–225, 257, 327, 497. See also Organizational transformation

Child abuse, 355, 588–595 Child welfare, 588–595 Child–parent relationships. See Parent–child

relationships Children

gender identity and, 374–375 LGBTQ youth, 367–369, 374–375 socioeconomic factors and, 46– 47, 49–54

Choice, 286 Chores, 229–230 Cisgender, 364 Civil rights, 388–393

Index 599

Class. See also Poverty; Social class Asian Americans and, 466 Black culture and, 210 evolution of family therapy and, 16–22 example of an examination of, 106–107 gender and, 29–30 hyperlinked identity and, 328–329 intersectionality of with race and gender,

67–68 oppression and, 58–67 overview, 14 privilege and, 224 training in family therapy and, 494 White identity and, 238 White privilege and, 222–223, 283–285 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 411 Classism, 504–506, 505f, 520–522 Clinical oppression disorder (COD), 10 Clinical practice. See also Re-visioning of family

therapy Black genealogy research and, 277–281 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

427– 432 case example illustrating a family–professional

network and, 436– 446, 437f contemporary family therapy, 528–535 exploring gender in, 31–35 family systems theory in child welfare and,

592–593 hyperlinked identity and, 329–332, 331f interracial Asian couples and, 471– 472 Latino identity and, 194 LGBTQ individuals and, 379–381, 392–393,

397–398 organizational change initiatives and, 558–561 poverty and, 68–71 prejudice and discrimination and, 392–393 racism and, 515–516 relational ambiguity and, 394–396 research and, 555–558 same-sex relationships and, 392–393,

397– 400, 399t social class and, 49–54 social justice and, 497– 499, 510 songs and, 450– 452 spiritual belief systems and values and, 85–88,

127–131 transnational families and, 111–114 trauma-informed systems and, 561–563 White privilege and, 238–240, 246–247,

294–297 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 407– 414 Cognitive freeze, 147 Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), 556–557 Collaboration, 461, 486, 529–531, 534–535 Collective, 206–207

Collectivistic cultures, 470– 471 Color-blindness, 247 Coming-out experiences, 366–367, 375–376, 380 Communications

exploration of an Indian identity and, 322 hyperlinked identity and, 324–325, 329–330,

331, 331f transnational families and, 114–117 white male privilege and, 232

Community factors. See also Online communities community development, 434– 435 community support, 380, 460– 461 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and, 257 explorations of a Jewish and a Palestinian

identity and, 346 hyperlinked identity and, 327–328 local knowledge and, 516–517 Native American identity and, 164 overview, 6–7 religion and spirituality and, 77 shame and, 288

Community-based peer support, 379 Community-based practices, 555 Compassion

explorations of a Jewish and a Palestinian identity and, 346, 347

need for, 4 shame and, 288 spirituality and, 85

Complacency, 319 “Completing the circle” questioning, 165 Confrontational strategies, 499 Connection

Black heterosexual couples in therapy and, 431– 432

connection with the past and, 124–127, 131–132 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 175 foundational workshop on social justice and,

501–504 heteronormative context and, 365–366 hyperlinked identity and, 328–329 immigrants and refugees and, 403– 404 oppression and, 319 transnational families and, 114–117

Conscious awareness, 293 Constitutiveness, 322 Consultation, 295–296, 558–561 Continuing education, 411 Coping, 82–83, 392–393 Couple and family therapy (CFT), 30. See also

Couple therapy Couple therapy

Black heterosexual couples in therapy and, 427– 432

case example of a Black heterosexual couple in, 424– 427

interracial Asian couples in, 464– 465

600 Index

Couple therapy (cont.) invisible wounds and, 420– 423 same-sex relationships and, 393 through a racial lens, 419– 420

Creating space, 429 Creative collaboration, 333n Creativity, 380 Critical race theory, 152, 471– 472 Cultural analysis, 548–549 Cultural bereavement, 409– 410 Cultural bias, 539–541, 540f. See also Biases Cultural competence

guidelines for training programs, 486– 491 overview, 11–12 training in family therapy and, 477, 483

Cultural conflicts, 472 Cultural context, 413– 414, 496, 500, 501 Cultural genograms. See Genograms Cultural heritage, 93–97, 153–156, 155f Cultural perspectives, 20–22, 23 Cultural racism, 514. See also Racism Cultural resistance, 392–393 Cultural sharing, 488– 489 Cultural subversion, 392–393 Culture

African Americans and, 209–210 case example, 129–130 clinical practice and, 127–131 connection with the past and, 124–127,

131–132 evolution of family therapy and, 16–22 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 175 oppression and, 133–134 overview, 573 power of, 209–210 sociocultural oppression, 135–143 songs and, 449 training in family therapy and, 477– 486, 481f working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 412– 414 Culture of poverty, 57–58. See also Poverty Curiosity, 324, 346 Curriculum, 487– 488 Custody, 377–378 Customs, 154

Death, 80, 173–174 Deconstruction technique, 160, 165–166 Defensiveness, 247, 520–522 Deficit perspective, 47– 48 Degradation, 146–147 Dehumanization

assaulted sense of self and, 423 diversity and, 4 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 170

oppression and, 319 power of words and, 205–206

Democracy, 290–291 Depression

exploration of by a transgender man, 355, 356–357

Native American identity and, 154 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 404, 412 Deprivation, 60 Devaluation

clinical practice and, 69, 297 invisible wounds and, 143–144, 147, 420– 423 poverty and, 60–63 rage and, 146–147 stigma and, 61–63

Developmental processes biracial identity development and, 182 guidelines for training programs, 488 identity transformations and, 350–351 male privilege and, 216 multiracial legitimacy and, 185–188

Diagnosis, 8–9, 11–14, 365. See also Naming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM), 8–9, 365 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM-III), 561 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM-IV), 376 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM-V), 379 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders (DSM-5), 9–10, 532 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental

Disorders-Marginalized Version (DSM-M), 10

Dialogues exploration of an Indian identity and, 322 explorations of a Jewish and a Palestinian

identity and, 343–347 foundational workshop on social justice and,

502, 507–508 guidelines for training programs, 490– 491 hyperlinked identity and, 323 Israeli–Palestinian conflict and, 343–347 organizational change initiatives and, 559–560 teaching about racism and, 517–518

Dignity, 43– 44, 319 Dignity assaults, 60–61, 144 Disconnection, 403– 404 Discrimination

American Dream and, 40 clinical practice and, 380, 392–393 current 21st century political climate and,

230–231 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

256–257

Index 601

exploration of by a transgender man, 353–354 foundational workshop on social justice and,

501–502 Israeli–Palestinian conflict and, 344 LGBTQ individuals and, 372, 389 oppression trauma, 134–135 religion and spirituality and, 77 same-sex relationships and, 388–393, 399t trans couples and, 376

Discriminatory observation, 546–547. See also Research

Disempowerment, 207–208, 210 Diversity

evolution of family therapy and, 16–22, 526–528

guidelines for training programs, 486– 491 labels and, 12 overview, 3–7 power of action and, 213 spirituality and, 75 training in family therapy and, 477– 479

Divorce, 46, 174. See also Marriage Documentation, 164, 453– 454. See also Records Documented immigrants, 254. See also

Immigrants and immigrant families; Transnational families

Dominance Black genealogy research and, 280 foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f songs and, 456– 457 white male privilege and, 223, 224–225

Domination, 146–147, 230 Dominican identity, 192–193, 197–199. See also

Latino identity Downward mobility, 42– 43 Driver’s licenses, 374–375 DSM Syndrome, 10–11 Duality, 326–327, 519 Dynamic process view, 48

Ebonics, 209–210 Ecological systems, 573–581 Economic anthropology. See Anthropology Economic class, 224, 521–522, 542–543. See also

Class; Poverty Education. See also School environment

Asian Americans and, 466, 467 clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals and, 380 marriage and family life and, 46 racism and, 513–514 societal transformations and, 43, 44 training in family therapy and, 478 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 411 Educational programs. See Training

18th-century Suffield, Connecticut, 575–581 Elderly caregiving, 113–114 Elitism, 134–135 Emergent identity, 322, 324 Emotional regulation, 356 Emotional support, 431– 432 Emotional transmigrants, 117–118. See also

Transnational families Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT), 229 Empathy, 485– 486 Employment factors, 51–53, 543 Empowerment

clinical practice and, 70 power of action and, 213 songs and, 456, 458

Enrage, 146. See also Rage Entitlement. See also Privilege

Black genealogy research and, 275–276 explorations of intersectionality and, 242, 244 power and, 222 shame and, 288 therapy based in liberation consciousness and,

231–234 White privilege and, 236–237, 246–247

Equality, 497 Ethical values, 74 Ethnicity, 193, 224, 237–238, 484 Ethnography, 575–585 Evidence-based practice (EBP), 556–558, 560,

563–564 Exclusion, 177 Expanded life cycle framework, 488 Expertise, 543–545 Exploitation, 333n Externalizing, 453

Faith, 211–212. See also Spirituality Families of origin, 403– 404, 472, 489– 490. See

also Family; Genograms Family. See also Families of origin; Home;

Transnational families anthropology and, 574–575 Asian Americans and, 469– 470 Black genealogy research and, 272–277, 280 child abuse and, 589–591 clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals, 396–398 family systems theory in child welfare and,

588–595 family therapy and, 7 immigrants and refugees and, 403– 404 !Kung and, 575–581 LGBTQ individuals, 369–371, 379 naming and, 8–11 organizing principles of poor families, 58–67 overview, 6 relationships and, 365–366

602 Index

Family (cont.) religion and spirituality and, 75–76, 77, 79–80 societal transformations and, 45– 48 socioeconomic disadvantage and, 46– 47 spirituality and, 78–82

Family systems theory, 588–595. See also Systemic perspective

Family therapy in general. See also Clinical practice

backlash within, 14–16 contemporary family therapy, 528–535 evolution of family therapy, 16–22, 23 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

254–256, 257–258 history of gender in, 29–30 LGBTQ individuals and, 379–381 naming and, 8–11 origins of, 527–528 overview, 6–7, 526–527, 535 therapy based in liberation consciousness and,

231–234 white male privilege and, 226–235

Family therapy training. See Training Family-of-origin intervention, 397 Family–professional network, 436– 446, 437f Fathers, 269–271, 270f, 272 Feelings, 201–202 Feminist perspectives, 29–30 Fifth Province Associates (FPA), 434 Fifth-Province approach, 434– 435, 436– 446,

437f, 447n. See also Intracultural issues Financial factors, 114–115. See also Economic

class; Poverty Flirting, 227–228 Fluidity, 322, 324, 327–328 Folk wisdom, 125–126 Forgiveness, 84–85, 289 Freedom, 210–211, 457– 458

Gay individuals, 365–366, 544. See also LGBTQ individuals

Gay marriage and parenting. See also Marriage; Parenting; Same-sex relationships

current 21st century political climate and, 231 legal factors and, 388–389 prejudice and discrimination and, 391 relational ambiguity and, 393–396 religion and spirituality and, 81–82

GEMM family therapists and trainers, 487 Gender

Asian Americans and, 467 assaulted sense of self and, 422 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

429– 430 case example, 33–35, 425– 427 clinical practice and, 31–35 cultural bias and, 542–543

definitions of, 28–29 evolution of family therapy and, 16–22 example of an examination of, 98–103 exploration of an Indian identity and,

321–322, 326 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 169 gender perspective, 18–20 gender roles, 28, 229–230 history of in family therapy, 29–30 hyperlinked identity and, 324–325, 328–329 interracial marriage and, 467– 468 intersectionality of with class and race, 67–68 Latino identity and, 193–194 male privilege and, 216–217 Native American identity and, 163–164 nonconformity as resilience, 31 race and, 30–31 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484– 485 societal transformations and, 45 White privilege in therapy and, 239

Gender dysphoria, 365, 379 Gender expression, 364 Gender identity, 28, 351–353, 364, 373–375. See

also Gender; Transgender individuals Gender identity disorder, 376 Gender queer individuals, 374 Gender stories, 32, 34 Gender transition, 375–376 Gender-creative individuals, 374 Gender-diverse individuals, 374 Gender-expansive individuals, 374 Generalizing beyond data, 545–546. See also

Research Genograms

Black genealogy research and, 264f, 268f, 270f family–professional network and, 436, 437f guidelines for training programs, 489– 490 spirituality and, 85–86

Globalization, 569–570, 585–586 Graduate program training, 531–532. See also

Training Grafting technique, 165 Grandiosity, 288 Grief, 80–81, 173–174 Guild allegiance, 534–535 Guilt. See also White guilt

case example of, 425– 426, 444– 446 clinical practice and, 297 diversity in family therapy and, 15–16 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

253 power of action and, 213 spirituality and, 80–81 White privilege and, 283–285, 287–290,

291–293 White privilege in therapy and, 247

Index 603

Harassment, 367–368 Healing, 82–85 Health care. See also Mental health care; Service

delivery systems contemporary family therapy and, 532 current 21st century political climate and, 230 research and, 555–558 training in family therapy and, 478 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 412 Health factors, 412 Helplessness, learned. See Learned helplessness Heroes. See S/heroes Heteronormative context, 365–366 Heterosexism

foundational workshop on social justice and, 504–506, 505f

privilege and, 224 religion and spirituality and, 81–82 teaching about racism and, 520–522

Heterosexual individuals, 365 Heterosexual privilege. See also Privilege

current 21st century political climate and, 230–231 guilt and morality and, 292–293 overview, 223–224 therapy based in liberation consciousness and,

231–234 Hip-hop music, 459– 460. See also Songs Historical context

Asian Americans and, 466 Black genealogy research and, 269–272, 270f,

279–280 invisibility of African Americans and, 261–262

Historical grounding, 548 Historical trauma. See also Slavery

cultural bias and, 539, 541 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 169 Native American identity and, 153–156, 155f power of faith and, 211–212 power of the collective and, 206–207

History of family therapy, 16–22 Home. See also Family

class and, 106–107 cultural heritage and, 93–97 gender and, 98–103 immigrants and, 254 race and racism and, 103–106 as a spiritual place, 97–98

Home ownership, 41 Homelessness, 368 Homophobia

clinical practice and, 381, 484– 485 guilt and morality and, 292–293 LGBTQ individuals and, 372, 381 LGBTQ youth and, 367–368 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484– 485

Hope clinical practice and, 130–131 connection with the past and, 124–127 overview, 124, 131–132 religion and spirituality and, 83–84

Hopelessness trap, 130–131 Human rights, 346, 353–355, 388–393 Humanity, 203, 222 Hyperlinked identity

clinical practice and, 329–332, 331f exploration of an Indian identity and, 322 as a generative resources, 326–329 overview, 318, 322–325, 332–333 positionalities and, 329–332, 331f

Hyperlocalism, 320

Identity in context, 351–352 development of, 179–185 explorations of intersectionality and, 241–246 foundational workshop on social justice and,

501 intersectionality and, 371–373 overview, 357 power of words and, 206 songs and, 455– 457 White privilege and, 222–223

Identity confusion, 154 Identity resolution, 184–185 Identity transformations, 350–351. See also

Transformation Immigrants and immigrant families. See also

Transnational families Asian Americans and, 466 binational comparative research studies,

119–120 clinical practice and, 407– 414 examples of, 108–109, 414– 415 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

254 explorations of, 404– 406 Indian identity and, 321 overview, 109–111, 120–121, 403– 404,

416– 417 political factors and, 415– 416 postmigration experience and, 409– 414

Immigration reform, 416, 466 Indian identity, 318–333, 325–326, 328, 332 Individualistic cultures, 470– 471 Individualizing responses, 15–16 Individuation processes, 183–184 Inequalities

American Dream and, 39– 41 clinical practice and, 49–54 foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f gender and, 102

604 Index

Inequalities (cont.) Indian identity and, 320 overview, 55 societal transformations and, 41– 45 trans couples and, 376

Institutional change. See Organizational transformation

Institutionalized racism, 485, 513–514. See also Racism

Integenerational transmission of trauma, 284–285

Integrated clinical interventions, 379, 529–535 Integrating multiracial identities, 181. See also

Multiracial identities Integrative family and systems treatment

(I-FAST), 529–531, 532–533 Integrative theory, 529–531 Integrity, 208 Interconnectedness, 328–329, 357–358 Interfaith marriage, 79–80 Intergenerational theory, 530–531 Intergenerational trauma, 59–60 Internal family systems (IFS) model, 344–345,

346 Internalized hatred, 141–142 Internalized racism, 211, 247. See also Racism Interracial Asian couples, 464– 465, 468– 469,

471– 472. See also Asian Americans Interracial marriages, 467– 471 Intersectionality

exploration of an Indian identity and, 321–322

exploration of by a transgender man, 353–354

explorations of, 241–246 foundational workshop on social justice and,

500, 504–506, 505f gender and race and, 105–106 hyperlinked identity and, 328–329, 330 interracial Asian couples and, 471– 472 LGBTQ individuals and, 371–373 teaching about racism and, 520–522 training relationships and, 240, 241–246 White privilege in therapy and, 238–240,

246–247 Intertextuality, 322–323, 332–333 Interventions, 379–381, 397, 590–591. See also

Clinical practice Intimate partner violence, 227–228. See also

Violence Intolerance, 77–78, 177 Intracultural issues. See also Fifth-Province

approach case example, 436– 446, 437f Fifth-Province approach and, 434– 435 overview, 433, 446

Invalidation, 356

Invisibility African Americans and, 261–262 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

255–256 exploration of by a transgender man, 352–353 teaching about racism and, 518–519

Islamophobia, 134–135, 252–253 Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 336–347

Jewish identity, 336–338, 342–344, 346–347 Job loss. See Employment factors Just Therapy approaches, 414

Knowledge and knowledge construction. See also Research

Black genealogy research and, 279 cultural bias and, 539–541, 540f local knowledge, 516–517 misjudgments and, 545–547 power of, 210–211 racism and, 516–517 songs and, 453– 454 sources of knowledge, 541–545

!Kung, 575–581

Labels. See also Naming gender nonconformity as resilience and, 31 hyperlinked identity and, 329 overview, 11–14 problems of naming and, 8–11

Labor force, 543. See also Employment factors Language

Asian Americans and, 466 Black Latino identity, 199 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 170–171 foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f hyperlinked identity and, 327, 329–330 multiracial identities and, 187 power and, 205–206, 207 white male privilege and, 232 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 409, 414 working with LGBTQ individuals and, 363–365

Latin America, 195 Latino identity

Black Latino identity, 197–199 creation of, 192–193 denial of Blackness and, 195–196 exploration of multicultural identity and,

298–307 foundational workshop on social justice and,

508 myth of sameness and, 192 overview, 193–194 White privilege and, 194–195

Index 605

Learned helplessness, 63–64 Learned voicelessness. See also Silence;

Voicelessness clinical practice and, 69–70 invisible wounds and, 145, 147 poverty and, 63

Learning agreements, 500–501 Legal factors

same-sex relationships and, 388–393 training in family therapy and, 478 transgender parents and, 377–378 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 416 Lesbian individuals, 365–366. See also LGBTQ

individuals LGBTQ individuals. See also Same-sex

relationships; Sexual orientation; Transgender individuals

clinical practice and, 379–381 coming out and, 366–367, 375–376 context for, 365–366 creating a support system and, 396–398,

399t explorations of intersectionality and, 244 families and, 369–371 gender identity and, 373–375 intersectionality and, 371–373 LGBTQ youth, 367–369, 374–375 prejudice and discrimination and, 388–393,

399t relational ambiguity and, 393–396, 399t religion and spirituality and, 81–82 re-visioning of family therapy and, 485– 486 teaching about racism and, 518, 520–522 terms and concepts to understand when

working with, 363–365 training in family therapy and, 480 visibility and invisibility and, 352–353

Liberation consciousness, 231–234 Liberatory frame, 328 Licensure, 534. See also Training Listening, 329–330, 501–504 Locating the client, 32, 34 Locating the self, 32, 34 Loss

case example illustrating a family–professional network and, 440– 444

exploration of an orphaned Polish Catholic identity, 313, 314

exploring multicultural, multiracial identities and, 173–174

immigrants and refugees and, 404 LGBTQ individuals and, 369 of meaning, 80–81 spirituality and, 80

Love, 470– 471 Loving v. Virginia (1967), 178

Male privilege. See also Privilege; White male privilege

acknowledgement of, 216–217 clinical practice and, 295–297 exploration of by a transgender man, 348–358 guilt and morality and, 292–293 overview, 215–225, 235, 283–284 re-visioning of family therapy and, 485 therapy based in liberation consciousness and,

231–234 White privilege in therapy and, 239–240

Mapping, 453 Marginalization

biracial identity development and, 182 Black Latino identity and, 197 exploration of by a transgender man, 353–355 Indian identity and, 321 interconnected identities and, 358 intracultural issues and, 435 LGBTQ individuals and, 372 Muslim identity and, 318 power of action and, 212–213 teaching about racism and, 520–522 training in family therapy and, 480 White privilege in therapy and, 239

Marriage. See also Couple therapy; Gay marriage and parenting

Asian Americans and, 469– 471 divorce and, 46, 174 interracial marriage and, 467– 471 marital relationships, 174 multiracial identities and, 177–178 romantic love and, 470– 471 societal transformations and, 45– 48 socioeconomic factors and, 49–54

Marriage and family therapy (MFT), 323 Marriage gap, 46 Meaning making

exploration of an Indian identity and, 322 hyperlinked identity and, 327, 329–330 religion and spirituality and, 83

Meditative practices, 79 Mental health care, 553–558, 592–593. See also

Health care; Service delivery systems Mental health factors, 238, 365, 412 Mentoring of faculty and students, 486– 487 Meritocracy, 39– 40, 220, 225 Microaggressions

devaluation and, 143–144 exploration of by a transgender man, 354–355 explorations of intersectionality and, 244–245 White privilege in therapy and, 247

Microentitlements, 245, 247 Middle East conflict, 336–347 Migration studies, 119–120 Moral injury, 80–81 Moral thinking, 283

606 Index

Morality clinical practice and, 296–297 explorations of a Jewish and a Palestinian

identity and, 346 guilt and, 291–293 privilege and, 222 spirituality and, 74, 79 White privilege and, 287–288

Multicultural identities. See also Diversity Black Latino identity and, 191–199 exploration of, 168–175 overview, 298 personal exploration of, 298–307

Multicultural Organizational Assessment Inventory, 513–514

Multicultural perspective, 3–7, 433, 486– 491. See also Intracultural issues

Multifaith families, 79–80 Multifamily groups, 51–53 Multilevel approaches, 50–51 Multiplexity, 519. See also Duality Multiracial identities. See also Biracial

individuals Black Latino identity and, 191–199 caregiving and, 185–187 exploration of, 168–175, 176–188 multiracial legitimacy, 185–188 self-definition and, 177–179

Multiracial legitimacy, 185–188 Muslim identity, 251, 252–253, 318–333 Myth of sameness, 191–192

Naming. See also Diagnosis; Labels Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

429– 430 exploration of multicultural identity and, 300 problems of, 8–11 racial identity and, 191–192 sociocultural oppression and, 137–140 songs and, 453

Naming Ceremony in Native American culture. See also Native American identity

case conceptualization and treatment and, 163–166

case example, 156–166 overview, 151–152, 153, 157, 166

Narcissism, 288, 289–290 Narrative therapy, 460– 461 Narratives. See also Storytelling

case example illustrating a family–professional network and, 444– 446

foundational workshop on social justice and, 501–504, 506–509

hyperlinked identity and, 332 songs and, 452– 461 teaching about racism and, 519–520

Nationality, 223

Native American identity, 151–166, 155f, 508. See also Naming Ceremony in Native American culture; Racial identity

Neurobiology, 228–229 Neutrality myth, 226 Nonbinary individuals, 374

Objectification, 138–140, 297 Online communities, 257. See also Community

factors Oppositional cop disorder (OCD), 10 Oppression

Black genealogy research and, 279 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

429– 430, 431– 432 Black Latino identity and, 197–198 clinical practice and, 297, 380, 381 complacency and, 319 exploration of a Jewish identity and, 338 exploration of by a transgender man, 355, 356 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 169 faulty cultural analysis in research, 548–549 foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f gender identity and, 375–376 guidelines for training programs, 490– 493 guidelines for understanding, 491– 493 interconnected identities and, 358 intersectionality of class, race, and gender and,

67–68 invisible wounds and, 420– 423 male privilege and, 217, 227–230 oppression trauma, 134–135, 143–147 overview, 133–134, 147, 419– 420 poverty as sociocultural trauma and, 58–67 privilege and, 224 same-sex relationships and, 393 sociocultural oppression, 135–143 songs and, 454– 460 spirituality and, 81–82 teaching about racism and, 517–519, 520–522 training in family therapy and, 484, 493– 494 White identity and, 238

Oppression trauma, 134–135, 143–147 Organizational transformation

guidelines for training programs, 486 overview, 553–555, 563–564 stress and behavior created by, 558–561 trauma-informed systems and, 561–563

Orphan identity, 308–317 Outrage, 146. See also Rage Overgeneralizations, 484. See also Stereotypes

Palestinian identity, 336, 338–342, 344–345, 346–347

Palestinian–Israeli conflict, 336–347

Index 607

Pansexual individuals, 365 Parent–child relationships. See also Relationships

Asian Americans and, 469– 470 transgender parents and, 378 transnational families and, 112–113 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 414 Parenting. See also Gay marriage and parenting

child abuse and, 590 clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals, 379–380, 396–398 exploration of by a transgender man, 352 LGBTQ families and, 369–371, 396–398 multiracial legitimacy and, 185–187 transgender individuals and, 377–378 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 414 Passing, 353, 375, 376 Pathological guilt, 291–293. See also Guilt Patriarchy

case example of a Black heterosexual couple in therapy, 426– 427

exploring multicultural, multiracial identities and, 169

male privilege and family therapy and, 227–228

naming and, 138 Native American identity and, 163–164 religion and spirituality and, 81 white male privilege and, 215–225

Performative identity, 322, 324–325 Persecution, 283 Personal racism, 513–514. See also Racism Physical abuse, 355 Physical assault, 367–368 Physical factors, 223, 504–506, 505f Planned Parenthood, 230 Plurality, 322, 324, 328 Police violence, 230 Policy implementation, 560–561 Polish identity, 308–317 Political climate

Brown-skinned identity and, 252–253 clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals and, 381 explorations of intersectionality and, 243–244 gender identity and, 374–375 organizational change initiatives and, 560–561 power and domination and, 230–231 same-sex relationships and, 388–393 training in family therapy and, 478 White privilege and, 290–291 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 415– 416 Political correctness, 283–297, 492 Polyphony, 327–328 Positionalities, 329–332, 331f

Postgraduate institute training, 531–532. See also Training

Postmigration experience, 409– 414 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 80–81 Poverty. See also Class

Black genealogy research and, 272, 280 children and families and, 46– 47 clinical practice and, 49–54, 68–71 exploration of by a transgender man, 354 intersectionality of class, race, and gender and,

67–68 organizing principles of, 58–67 overview, 57–58, 71–72 power of knowledge and, 211 racial disparities and, 40 sociocultural oppression and, 141–142 transnational families and, 114–115 White superiority and, 237–238

Power of action, 212–213 African Americans and, 201–202, 203,

204–213 biracial identity development and, 184 Black culture and, 209–210 Black genealogy research and, 281 clinical practice and, 203, 231–234 collective, 206–207 complexity of, 205 of culture, 209–210 current 21st century political climate and,

230–231 exploration of by a transgender man,

348–358 explorations of a Jewish and a Palestinian

identity and, 347 explorations of intersectionality and, 243–244 exploring gender in clinical practice and,

31–32, 34 foundational workshop on social justice and,

500, 501, 504–506, 505f, 507–508 guidelines for training programs, 490– 493 Indian identity and, 320 interconnected identities and, 358 of knowledge, 210–211 learned helplessness and, 63–64 male privilege and, 216–217, 227–230 naming and, 137–140 privilege and, 221–223 race and racism and, 103–106, 512–513 relationships and, 333n sociocultural oppression and, 137–140 teaching about racism and, 517–519 training in family therapy and, 493– 494 trust and, 207–209 White privilege and, 286–287, 294 words and, 205–206

Powerlessness, 184, 201–202

608 Index

Prejudice Black genealogy research and, 280 clinical practice and, 392–393 current 21st century political climate and,

230–231 diversity and, 4 foundational workshop on social justice and,

501–502 multiracial identities and, 177 oppression trauma, 134–135 religion and spirituality and, 77 same-sex relationships and, 388–393, 399t White superiority and, 237–238

Pride events, 380 Primary-level oppression, 136–140. See also

Oppression Privilege. See also Male privilege; White male

privilege; White privilege clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals and, 380 current 21st century political climate and,

230–231 effects of, 217–220 exploration of a Jewish identity and, 338, 341 exploration of a Palestinian identity and, 341 exploration of by a transgender man, 348–358 explorations of a Jewish and a Palestinian

identity and, 346, 347 explorations of intersectionality and, 241–246 family therapy and, 227–230 foundational workshop on social justice and,

501 guidelines for training programs, 490– 493 guidelines for understanding, 491– 493 heterosexual privilege, 223–224 interconnected identities and, 358 interracial Asian couples and, 471– 472 LGBTQ individuals and, 371–373 power and, 204–205 power of action and, 212–213 power of trust and, 208–209 teaching about racism and, 517–519, 520–522 therapy based in liberation consciousness and,

231–234 White privilege in therapy and, 238–240,

246–247 Privilege, White. See White privilege Privilege disorder, 10 Professional training. See Training Profiling, 209 Projection, 297 Pronouns, 355–356, 374 Psychobiological approach to couple therapy

(PACT), 228–229 Psychological homelessness, 254 Puerto Rican identity, 298–307

Queer individuals. See LGBTQ individuals

Race. See also Racism Asian Americans and, 466– 467 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

427– 432 evolution of family therapy and, 16–22 example of an examination of, 103–106 exploration of an Indian identity and, 325–326 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

255–256, 257–258 exploration of by a transgender man, 353–354 foundational workshop on social justice and,

508 gender and, 30–31 hyperlinked identity and, 328–329 intersectionality of with class and gender,

67–68 overview, 248n, 325–326 privilege and, 224 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484 societal transformations and, 44 therapy and, 201–204 training in family therapy and, 478 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 411 Racial bias, 239 Racial category construction, 182 Racial disparities, 40– 41, 41 Racial identity. See also Latino identity;

Multicultural identities; Native American identity

biracial identity development and, 182 Black Latino identity and, 197–199 denial of Blackness and, 195–196 exploration of by a transgender man, 353–354 multiracial identities, 168–175 naming and, 191–192

Racial oppression. See Oppression Racial self, 432 Racial trauma, 426– 427, 430– 432. See also

Trauma Racism. See also Race

Asian Americans and, 466– 467 Black genealogy research and, 269–272, 270f,

273–277, 280 clinical practice and, 203, 515–516 as dominant discourse, 514–515 Eurocentric theory and, 515 example of an examination of, 103–106 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

255–256, 257–258 exploration of by a transgender man, 353–354 explorations of intersectionality and, 241–242,

243–244 foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f guidelines for training programs and, 491, 493 guilt and morality and, 292–293 hyperlinked identity and, 324–325

Index 609

Israeli–Palestinian conflict and, 344 LGBTQ individuals and, 372 local knowledge, 516–517 male privilege and family therapy and, 229 oppression trauma, 134–135 overview, 512–514, 522 power of action and, 212–213 power of knowledge and, 210–211 power of trust and, 208 privilege and, 224–225, 517–519 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484– 485 songs and, 454– 460 teaching about, 512–522 training in family therapy and, 479, 493– 494 types of, 513–514 White privilege and, 220–221, 239 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 410– 411, 411 Rage, 146–147 Rap music, 459– 460. See also Songs Reciprocal familial obligation, 64–65, 70–71 Records, 262–272, 262f, 264f, 265f, 268f, 270f.

See also Census data; Documentation Recruitment of faculty and students, 486– 487 Reflexivity, 331, 518–519 Refugees and refugee families. See also

Immigrants and immigrant families clinical practice and, 407– 414 current 21st century political climate and,

230 overview, 403– 404, 416– 417 political factors and, 415– 416 postmigration experience and, 409– 414

Rejection, 379–380, 396–397 Relational ambiguity, 393–396, 399t Relational approach, 530–531, 532 Relational contexts, 351–352 Relational metaphors, 324 Relationality, 319–320, 328–329 Relationships. See also Parent–child relationships;

Same-sex relationships; Sibling relationships; Spousal relationships

Black genealogy research and, 276–277 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

427– 432 clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals and, 380 exploring gender in clinical practice and,

31–32, 34 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 174 heteronormative context and, 365–366 hyperlinked identity and, 324, 328–329 Indian identity and, 319–320 male privilege and family therapy and,

229–230 power and, 333n shame and, 289

spirituality and, 79 trade model based on, 320 trans couples, 376–377 transnational families and, 114–117 White privilege and, 237, 297

Religion. See also Spirituality African Americans and, 543–545 Catholic Church and, 310 connection with the past and, 126–127 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

253–254 explorations of intersectionality and, 244 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 172 foundational workshop on social justice and,

504–506, 505f hyperlinked identity and, 324–325 overview, 73–74 privilege and, 223, 224 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484 same-sex relationships and, 389–390 societal transformations and, 74–76 sociocultural influences on, 76–78 songs and, 458 teaching about racism and, 520–522 violence and political climate and, 252–253

Religious exemption laws, 389–390 Re-membering, 453, 456– 457, 461 Remittances, 114–115, 116–117 Research. See also Knowledge and knowledge

construction clinical practice and, 555–558 cultural bias and, 539, 541 faulty cultural analysis in, 548–549 misjudgments and, 545–547 re-visioning of, 549–550

Resilience clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals and, 380 gender nonconformity as, 31 LGBTQ youth and, 368–369 religion and spirituality and, 82–85 vicarious resilience, 123–124

Resilience-oriented multifamily groups, 51–53 Resistance, cultural, 392–393 Resource perspective, 47– 48 Resources, limitation of, 60, 69, 320 Respect, 43– 44, 144 Restorying, 272–273, 277–278 Retention of faculty and students, 486– 487 Reunifications, 111–112, 113 Re-visioning of family therapy. See also Clinical

practice; Family therapy in general assumptions of, 481– 483 evolution of family therapy and, 16–22 guidelines for training programs, 486– 493 overview, 483– 486, 493– 494 research and, 549–550

610 Index

Rituals, 75, 114–117, 365–366. See also Naming Ceremony in Native American culture; Spirituality

Romantic love, 470– 471

Safety exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

253–254 exploration of by a transgender man, 354 home as a spiritual place of, 97–98 social justice and, 497

SALUD Mexican Immigrant Project, 120 Same-sex relationships. See also Gay marriage

and parenting; LGBTQ individuals; Relationships

clinical practice and, 398– 400, 399t creating a support system and, 396–398, 399t overview, 388 prejudice and discrimination and, 388–393, 399t relational ambiguity and, 393–396, 399t religion and spirituality and, 81–82

San Francisco Trauma-Informed Systems (TIS), 562–563. See also Trauma-informed systems

Scholarly journals, 533 School environment, 380, 513–514. See also

Education Scientific research, 539, 541 Secondary-level oppression, 136, 140–143. See

also Oppression Secrecy, 61–63, 280 Security, 497 Selective adaptation, 172–174 Self

assaulted sense of, 144–145, 420– 423 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and,

420– 423, 430– 432 empowerment and, 213 exploring gender in clinical practice and, 31–32,

34 expression of, 146–147 forgiveness of, 81 hyperlinked identity and, 324 identity transformations and, 350–351 invisible wounds and, 144–145 self-definition, 179–185

Self-advocacy, 146–147 Self-of-the-therapist. See also Therapists

Black heterosexual couples in therapy and, 432 gender and, 32, 34 poverty and, 71 social justice and, 498

Self-reflection, 131 Self-subjugation, 141–142 Self-worth, 43– 44, 206, 211 Semitic identity. See Jewish identity; Palestinian

identity Separations, 111–113, 211, 416

Service delivery systems. See also Health care; Mental health care

overview, 553, 563–564 research and, 555–558 trauma-informed systems and, 561–563

Sex, 28, 363 Sexism

foundational workshop on social justice and, 504–506, 505f

guilt and morality and, 292–293 male privilege and, 216–217, 229 privilege and, 224–225 teaching about racism and, 520–522 White privilege in therapy and, 239

Sexual abuse exploration of an orphaned Polish Catholic

identity, 311, 315, 316, 317 exploration of by a transgender man, 355

Sexual exploitation of women, 269–271, 273 Sexual identity, 224 Sexual intimacy, 376–377 Sexual orientation. See also LGBTQ individuals

explorations of intersectionality and, 244 heteronormative context and, 366 hyperlinked identity and, 328–329 overview, 364 privilege and, 223–224 religion and spirituality and, 81–82 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484 training in family therapy and, 494

Sexuality, 172 Shame. See also White shame

Black culture and, 209–210 Black genealogy research and, 263, 273, 280 clinical practice and, 69, 297 guidelines for training programs and, 492 overview, 288 poverty and, 61–63 racism and, 513 spirituality and, 80–81 White privilege and, 247, 283–285, 287–290,

291 S/heroes, 70, 125 Sibling relationships, 112–113, 315–317. See also

Relationships Sikh identity, 251–258 Silence. See also Learned voicelessness

African Americans and, 209 clinical practice and, 69–70, 297, 381 exploration of an Indian identity and, 326 invisible wounds and, 145 multiracial identities and, 186–187 poverty and, 61–63 power of knowledge and, 211 power of trust and, 209 White privilege in therapy and, 247 White silence, 204

Index 611

Skills, 453– 454 Skin color, 320–321, 325–326 Slavery. See also African Americans; Historical

trauma Black genealogy research and, 263, 264f,

266–271, 268f, 270f, 273–277 culture and, 210 fathers and, 269–271, 270f power of faith and, 211–212 power of trust and, 209 racism and, 273–275 songs and, 454– 459

Social anthropology. See Anthropology Social class. See also Class

American Dream and, 39– 41 clinical practice and, 49–54 dynamic process view of, 48 evolution of family therapy and, 16–22 intersectionality of with race and gender,

67–68 overview, 14 privilege and, 224 therapists and, 53–54 ubiquity of, 65–67 White privilege and, 290–291 widening divides in, 38

Social context, 323, 500 Social identity stories, 332. See also Storytelling Social justice

clinical practice and, 497– 499, 510 exploration of, 497 family therapy and, 497– 499 foundational workshop on, 499–510, 505f overview, 230–231, 496 songs and, 459– 460 White privilege and, 286

Social location, 500, 501, 504–506, 505f Social location exercise, 490 Social supports, 376, 380, 396–398, 399t Socialization, 229–230 Societal emotional process

anthropology and, 572–585 18th-century Suffield, Connecticut, 581–585 !Kung and, 575–581 overview, 570, 571–572, 571f, 585–586

Societal projection process, 278 Societal regression

anthropology and, 572–585 18th-century Suffield, Connecticut, 581–585 !Kung and, 575–581 overview, 570, 585–586

Societal roles, 279–280, 281 Societal transformations, 41– 48, 74–76 Society factors

anthropology and, 572–585 Black genealogy research and, 278–280 caste system in India and, 333n

hyperlinked identity and, 328, 331, 331f Indian identity and, 319–320 !Kung and, 575–581

Sociocultural factors, 76–78, 134–135 Sociocultural oppression, 134–143. See also

Oppression Sociocultural trauma, 58–60, 71–72 Socioeconomic variables

American Dream and, 39– 41 Asian Americans and, 466 clinical practice and, 49–54 marriage and family life and, 46– 47 overview, 55 social class and, 38 societal transformations and, 41– 45 teaching about racism and, 521–522

Songs African American experiences and, 454– 460 implications for practitioner education and

training, 450– 452 narrative perspective on, 452– 461 overview, 449– 450

South Asian identity, 251–258 Spiritual pluralism, 88 Spirituality. See also Religion

African Americans and, 543–545 case example, 129–130 clinical practice and, 127–131 connection with the past and, 126–127 in family life, 78–82 home as a spiritual place, 97–98 issues related to, 87–88 overview, 73, 74–78 power of, 211–212 resilience and healing and, 82–85 songs and, 458

Spousal relationships, 112. See also Couple therapy; Marriage; Relationships

Stereotypes African Americans and, 209 Asian Americans and, 467 assaulted sense of self and, 421– 422 Black culture and, 209–210 Black genealogy research and, 279 foundational workshop on social justice and,

503–504 LGBTQ individuals and, 372 Native American identity and, 163–164 power of trust and, 207, 209 religion and spirituality and, 77 research and, 547 re-visioning of family therapy and, 484

Stigma clinical practice and, 379 LGBTQ individuals and, 365, 372, 379,

391–392 poverty and, 61–63

612 Index

Stigma (cont.) racism and, 513–514 research and, 547 same-sex relationships and, 391–392

Storytelling. See also Narratives African Americans and, 209 foundational workshop on social justice and,

501–504, 506–509 hyperlinked identity and, 327–328, 331–333 power of trust and, 208–209 songs and, 449 teaching about racism and, 519–520 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 409– 410 Straight individuals, 365 Strength, 221–222, 280–281, 380 Stress

child abuse and, 589–590 Native American identity and, 154, 165 organizational change initiatives and,

558–561 religion and spirituality and, 82–83

Structural racism, 513–514. See also Racism Struggle, 124–127 Substance use/abuse, 356 Subversion, cultural, 392–393 Suffering, 80–82 Suicidal thoughts and behaviors

case example illustrating a family–professional network and, 436– 446, 437f

clinical practice with LGBTQ families and individuals and, 380

exploration of by a transgender man, 355 Native American identity and, 154–155, 164 shame and, 289

Supervision. See also Training contemporary family therapy and, 532 evidence-based practice (EBP) and, 557 social justice and, 498– 499 White privilege and, 295–296

Support systems. See Social supports Survival, 63, 64 Systemic perspective

application of in child welfare, 588–595 18th-century Suffield, Connecticut, 581–585 intracultural issues and, 435 !Kung and, 575–581 overview, 23 societal emotional process and societal

regression and, 572–585

Termination, 131 Terrorism, 256–257 Textual space, 332, 333n Theory

biracial identity development and, 179–180 clinical practice and, 529–531

evolution of family therapy, 16–22, 527–528, 531, 533–534

guidelines for training programs, 487– 488 Therapeutic relationships, 380 Therapists

African Americans and, 200, 201–204 belief and value systems and, 128–129 Black heterosexual couples in therapy and, 432 of color, 426– 427, 480– 481 exploring gender in clinical practice and, 31–32 hyperlinked identity and, 327, 332 interconnected identities and, 358 interracial Asian couples and, 471– 472 intersectionality in training relationships and,

240, 241–246 male privilege and family therapy and, 227–230 race and, 201–204 religion and spirituality and, 86–87, 88 re-visioning of family therapy and, 481– 483 social class and, 53–54 transnational families and, 111–114 White privilege in therapy and, 239, 246–247 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 407 Training

contemporary family therapy and, 531–533 culture and, 479– 486, 481f diversity in family therapy and, 526–527 evolution of family therapy and, 22 guidelines for training programs, 486– 493 interracial Asian couples and, 472 overview, 477– 479, 493– 494 race and intersectionality and, 240, 241–247 social justice and, 498–510, 505f socioeconomic factors and, 49 songs and, 450– 452 understanding privilege and oppression and,

491– 493 White privilege and, 295–296 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 410– 411 Transcendence, 84–85 Transformation, 172–174, 348–358. See also

Identity transformations Transgender individuals. See also Gender identity;

LGBTQ individuals clinical practice with LGBTQ families and

individuals and, 380 coming out and, 375–376 current 21st century political climate and, 230 exploration of, 348–358 interconnected identities and, 357–358 marginalization and, 353–355 overview, 364, 374 parenting and, 377–378 trans couples, 376–377 visibility and invisibility and, 352–353

Index 613

Transitioning, gender, 375–377 Transitions, 348–358 Transnational families. See also Family;

Immigrants and immigrant families acculturation and, 119 binational comparative research studies, 119–120 clinical practice and, 111–114 connection and, 114–117 examples of, 108–109 overview, 109–111, 120–121 second generation and, 117–118

Transphobia, 381 Trans(s)exual individuals, 364. See also LGBTQ

individuals Trans/transgender man, 364. See also LGBTQ

individuals; Transgender individuals Trans/transgender woman, 364. See also LGBTQ

individuals; Transgender individuals Trauma

Black heterosexual couples in therapy and, 430– 432

case example of a Black heterosexual couple in therapy, 426– 427

child abuse and, 589–590 exploration of by a transgender man, 355–357 guidelines for training programs, 491 historical trauma and, 153–156, 155f intergenerational transmission of, 284–285 oppression trauma, 134–135, 143–147 organizational change and, 561–563 overview, 133–134 religion and spirituality and, 82–83 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 416 Trauma-informed systems, 561–563 Treatment, 163–166, 238–240 Trust

Indian identity and, 319–320 power of, 207–209 spirituality and, 80–81 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 409– 410

Undocumented immigrants, 254. See also Immigrants and immigrant families; Transnational families

Upward mobility, 39, 42– 43

Validation, 429– 430, 521 Values

case example, 129–130 clinical practice and, 127–131 connection with the past and, 124–127 exploring multicultural, multiracial identities

and, 172 male privilege and family therapy and,

227–230

Native American identity and, 154 spirituality and, 74, 84 working with immigrant and refugee families

and, 413– 414 Vicarious resilience, 123–124. See also Resilience Violence

against Black people, 230 Brown-skinned identity and, 252–253 child abuse and, 589–591 current 21st century political climate and,

230–231 exploration of by a transgender man, 355 intimate partner violence, 227–228 LGBTQ individuals and, 367–368, 391 male privilege and, 283–284 songs and, 456– 457

Virtual communities, 116–117 Visibility, 255–256, 352–353. See also Invisibility Voicelessness, 423. See also Learned

voicelessness; Silence

Well-being, 124, 131–132 White blindness, 243 White fathers, Black genealogy research and,

269–271, 270f, 272 White fragility, 243 White guilt, 213, 287–290, 291–293. See also

Guilt White identity

Black genealogy research and, 271–272 historical context of, 237–238 Indian identity and, 320–321 mental health discourses of, 238 overview, 236–237 privilege and, 222–223

White Latino identity, 196. See also Latino identity; White identity

White male privilege. See also Male privilege; Privilege; White privilege

clinical practice and, 295–297 current 21st century political climate and,

230–231 exploration of Brown-skinned identity and,

256 exploration of by a transgender man, 348–358 family therapy and, 226–235 overview, 215–225, 235, 286–287 re-visioning of family therapy and, 485 therapy based in liberation consciousness and,

231–234 White privilege in therapy and, 239–240

White privilege. See also Privilege; White male privilege

clinical practice and, 203, 231–234, 238–240, 246–247, 294–297

current 21st century political climate and, 230–231

614 Index

White privilege (cont.) denial of Blackness and, 195–196 effects of, 217–220 exploration of a Jewish identity and, 338 exploration of by a transgender man, 348–358 guidelines for understanding, 491– 493 guilt and shame and, 287–290, 291–293 Latino identity and, 192 overview, 194–195, 215–225, 235, 286–287 political correctness and, 283–297 power of action and, 212–213 power of trust and, 208–209 re-visioning of family therapy and, 485 White privilege in therapy and, 238–240

White shadow, 204 White shame, 196, 287–290. See also Shame White silence, 204 White superiority myth

Black genealogy research and, 273–277 historical context of, 237–238 mental health discourses of, 238 overview, 236–237 power and, 204–205 power of action and, 212–213

power of the collective and, 206–207 therapy and, 201–204, 202–204

White supremacy assaulted sense of self and, 420– 421, 422 Black shadow and, 200–201 clinical practice and, 294–297 exploration of by a transgender man, 354–355 explorations of intersectionality and, 241–246 family therapy and, 258 foundational workshop on social justice and,

505–506, 508 guilt and morality and, 293 historical context of, 237–238 songs and, 456– 460

Whitening, 194–195, 196 Witnessing, 166 Women’s Project, 19–20 Women’s Studies, 215–216, 223 Words. See also Language

hyperlinked identity and, 329–330 power of, 205–206, 207 white male privilege and, 232 working with LGBTQ individuals and,

363–365

Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Editors
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
I. Theoretical Perspectives

1. The Power of Naming
2. Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power: Equity, Accountability, and Refusing to Silo
3. Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream
4. The Sociocultural Trauma of Poverty: Theoretical and Clinical Considerations for Working with Poor Families
5. Spirituality, Suffering, and Resilience

II. Sociocultural Trauma and Homelessness

6. Homelessness and the Spiritual Meaning of Home
7. Transnational Journeys
8. Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain: Hope, Culture, and Therapy
9. Toward a Psychology of the Oppressed: Understanding the Invisible Wounds of Trauma

III. Racial Identity

10. Native American Identity Transformation: Integrating a Naming Ceremony with Family Therapy
11. Letting My Spirits Guide Me: Multicultural and Multiracial Legacies
12. Moving toward Multiracial Legitimacy: A Personal Reflection
13. On Being a Black Dominican
14. Facing the Black Shadow: Power from the Inside Out
15. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies
16. Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy
17. The Inevitable Whiteness of Being (White): Whiteness and Intersectionality in Family Therapy Practice and Training
18. Brown in America: Living with Racial and Religious Bias

IV. Cultural Legacies and Stories: Therapists’ Experiences

19. Black Genealogy Revisited: Restorying an African American Family
20. White Privilege, Pathological Shame and Guilt, and the Perversion of Morality
21. The Discovery of My Multicultural Identity
22. Going Home: One Orphan’s Journey from Chicago to Poland and Back
23. Hyperlinked Identity: A Generative Resource in a Divisive World
24. The Semitism Schism, Revisited: Jewish–Palestinian Legacies in a Family Therapy Training Context
25. No Single‑Issue Lives: Identity Transitions and Transformations across the Life Cycle

V. Implications for Clinical Practice

26. Working with LGBT Families
27. Same‑Sex Couples: Successful Coping with Minority Stress
28. Working with Immigrant and Refugee Families
29. Therapy with Heterosexual Black Couples through a Racial Lens
30. A Fifth‑Province Approach to Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context: Marginal Illuminations
31. The Power of Song to Promote Healing, Hope, and Justice: Lessons from the African American Experience
32. Interracial Asian Couples: Beyond Black and White

VI. Implications for Training

33. Re‑Visioning Family Therapy Training
34. Social Justice in Family Therapy Training: The Power of Personal and Family Narratives
35. Teaching about Racism and the Implications for Practice
36. A Letter to Family Therapists in the 21st Century

VII. Implications of Research for Clinical Practice

37. Ways of Knowing: Cultural Bias Pitfalls to Avoid When Using Research to Inform Practice
38. Relational Healing and Organizational Change in the Time of Evidence

VIII. Larger Systems Work: How to Build Bridges Across the Divide

39. Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes through Historic Ethnography: An Anthropological Exploration of the Human Connection with the Environment
40. An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare

Index