I am lucky that my first experiences of learning I was White are among some of my earliest memories.
I learned something (not exactly sure what it was) when I attended gatherings during my mom’s graduate training in the Bay Area as an interpreter where she was one of the few White people speaking Japanese. Something clicked and kept clicking as I noticing how race was handled by the grown-ups.
Later, living in rural Oklahoma, I noticed a totally different set of rules around race and was confronted with the process of being taught (fairly directly) about White supremacy. Noticing race and racial dynamics is something that has been with me a long time.
My education and research (on training clinicians to be racially responsive) has only bolstered my noticing and analyzing by helping me to articulate the complexity around our interpersonal processes around race.
While Identity is dynamic from a psychological perspective, often within our society we tend to feel more comfortable being able to put people in static categories (i.e., “racist” and “not racist”). As professionals, we struggle to take responsibility to understand what identity means to our leadees (i.e., the people we lead) or ourselves.
When it comes to race, White people will often avoid discussing race, and racial dynamics going on at work. It can feel like people can do literal backbends to avoid race, especially when a problem is occurring right in front of them. Of course the mechanisms of privilege uphold the justification to avoid discussing the significance of identity in general. If the dominant culture is the norm, then “diversity” ultimately is defined by those who vary beyond the norm.
So, why racially responsiveness?
Because we don’t just need therapist supervisors to be racially responsive.
We need professionals in all fields who can talk about race, who can talk about racial dynamics and not just in cross-racial contexts. We need people who can promote and support the racial identity development of their leadees. We need people who are supported to understand how their own values intertwine with their racial justice values, and how both can be observed through action.
We need leaders and leaders of leaders protecting and advocating racial justice efforts. We need people to understand how to create policies and develop workplace cultures that address toxicity and racial dynamics, as well as reinforce racial justice efforts. And we also need more White people to understand their psychology (i.e., thoughts, feelings, & behaviors) on race.