Competence
Theme 3: Responsibility
Common individual emotional responses such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, or anger when talking and learning about racism (Carter, 1995; Helms, 1990, 2001) can nevertheless be experienced by people as atypical, pathological, and emotion-ally paralyzing. As people become aware and begin understanding how racism and oppression operate in their realities, they may feel more responsible about inter-rupting these cycles of oppression by identifying misinformation and adjusting their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Thus, educators and trainers must be espe-cially attentive to normalize these feelings as part of a developmental cognitive-affective learning process to prevent paralysis or intellectual entrenchment. As shown in Table 5.3, by communicating that decreasing prejudice and racism goes beyond intellectually grasping information about race and racial socialization, peo-ple will realize they must become their own race change agents.
EXPERIENTIAL TRAINING
By valuing how race-based assumptions can influence interpersonal interactions and understanding a person’s personal racial reality, experiential education teaches
Table 5.2 Sample of Personal Relevance Teaching Materials
System Example of Teaching Material
Chronosystem Explore your own family U.S. immigration history and how zeitgeists and racial issues may have inf luenced familial occupational and financial choices and accomplishments.
Exosystem Explore how societal stereotypes and expectations can inf luence employment and educational choices.
Mesosystem Explore how organizations in your community may systematically reward and disenfranchise different racial groups (e.g., White privilege and presumed entitlements) in employment, housing, health care systems.
Microsystem Discuss how microaggressions (e.g., being followed, not being helped when shopping) have personally inf luenced quality of life issues such as employ-ment, renting or purchasing a home, applying to schools, receiving health care.
Using a personal time line (e.g., critical events and incidents) from a racial vantage point, show how race has shaped personal attitudes and behaviors.
people how to become effective racial-cultural agents in their daily lives. Relying on previous didactic knowledge and beginning awareness, a focused experiential learning of personal racial self-exploration of how overt and covert displacements of power are experienced (e.g., microaggressions), power is exercised, and vulnera-bility is experienced can shift thinking and feelings from presumptions about what people should be to more personalized interactions based on who people are.
Applying an ecological systems approach, experiential training focuses on how people’s feelings, attitudes, and behaviors about race occur at various levels of so-cial and personal functioning. Specifically, concentrating on how raso-cial identities are formed and maintained forces individuals to face and understand how they as-sign meanings that shape people and institutions around them. To this end, in a small group format, people are given the opportunity to identify and acknowledge their bi-ases, blind spots, and strengths and the ways their perceptions, attitudes, and feel-ings have developed and are manifested in personal and workplace environments. By developing racial self-awareness and its associated physical and psychological bene-fits and consequences of maintaining or eliminating prejudices, individuals can begin to recognize the necessary personal commitment to living a more racially thoughtful, sensitive, and inclusive lifestyle.
In one approach, based on Johnson’s (1987) “C” group model, the primary learn-ing experience is an in-depth group interview. Here, individuals identify and exam-ine personal feelings and understandings in which their reference group, society (chronosystem), institutions (exosystem), disciplines (mesosystem), and racial iden-tity status (microsystem) have influenced the assumptions they make about them-selves and others (Carter, this Handbook, this volume). Process journals serve as a record for people to document their observations, opinions, and feelings as their racial identity attitudes have evolved by the time the training has been completed.
While some people are clearly more self-reflective and articulate about their own Table 5.3 Sample Issues of Responsibility Teaching Material
System Example of Teaching Material
Chronosystem Discuss the similarities and differences of current and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century research and anthropometric efforts to scientifically distinguish racial groups. Explore what research methodology can be used to avoid race-biased research.
Exosystem Discuss how local government officials and agencies inf luence allocation of resources for education, health, and safety and explore how racial identity attitudes can inf luence these decisions.
Mesosystem Discuss how university communities and professional organizations that are informed and value intragroup racial identity statuses create supportive racial environments.
Microsystem Write an autobiography at the beginning of training exploring how the role of race inf luenced your personal development. Given all of the information and awareness attained during training, revise the autobiography at the end of the training with extra attention to how race and racial identity issues have inf luenced previous unacknowledged life experiences and specific actions you have taken with this new information.
processes than others are, most experience the opportunity as a transforming pro-cess to examine and explore potentially provocative thoughts and feelings about race- and racial identity-based issues. This learning format also permits people to learn about the existence and value of intragroup variation, the lack of connection between expertise and racial group membership, and the recognition that exploring feelings and experiences about race, power, and oppression can be painful and iso-lating, yet immensely rewarding.
PROFESSIONAL APPLICATIONS OF THE RACIAL IDENTITY THEORY CORE MODE
Professionals from varied disciplines, including education, law, organizational con-sulting, and mental health, have become increasingly aware of the intentional and unintentional benefits and consequences of racism. While many have begun to voice their personal struggles over how to address race and racial identity issues in their own professions, accusations of racism, symbolic violence, and cultural imperialism have left many of them feeling helpless and paralyzed. Racial identity-based ing offers a proactive way of implementing race-based training in professional train-ing and education by modeltrain-ing race-based dialogues as possible, productive, and Table 5.4 New Racial Paradigm Matrix for Educators
System Power and Oppression Personal Relevance Responsibility Chronosystem Discuss the history of
the teaching profession and how various racial group affiliations have been represented in the profession.
Explore how your extended family expe-rienced the educational system and how zeit-geists and racial issues have inf luenced aca-demic achievements and/or failures.
Discuss how current test construction and uses inf luence educa-tion in admissions and academic placements.
Explore how educators can better use and interpret these tests.
Exosystem Study issues of affir-mative action legisla-tion and how it affects different racial groups’
access to and quality of education.
Explore how race and racial identity attitudes inf luence professional expectations, attitudes, and behaviors.
Discuss how school districts allocate resources for schools.
Explore how racial identity can inf luence these decisions.
Mesosystem Study how stereotyp-ing and perceived attri-butions inf luence teacher expectations of student academic per-formance.
Discuss what factors inf luenced your deci-sion to accept a job (e.g., racial composi-tion of colleagues, stu-dents, administrators).
Discuss how your knowledge of antidis-crimination laws inf lu-ences your teaching style and classroom management.
Microsystem Discuss how race and racial identity inf lu-ence student ability grouping.
Explore how your edu-cational experiences were inf luenced by a teacher’s attitudes about race.
Explore first experi-ences with feeling dif-ferent. How does this translate into the class-room?
useful. Specifically, the core didactic and experiential tripartite training model or-ganizes content and context issues for a wide array of professionals to learn how race and racial identity affect them. Context-specific applications can then be used as ongoing learning tools. Tables 5.4 through 5.8 illustrate sample teaching matrixes for various disciplines.
CONCLUSION
To understand the comprehensive nature of how personal, group, and institutional racism and oppression influences all people and groups, a continuous dialogue must exist. If meaningful race relations are to occur, that dialogue must allow for open and thoughtful discussion. Specifically, racial-cultural training must go beyond di-dactic “other ”-focused teaching methods and begin applying racial identity theory early in training so realistic understandings and conceptualizations can occur. For example, learning strategies have been shown to differ depending on when affec-tively based learning was taught. Students taught content knowledge early in their training often intellectually removed themselves from clinical interactions and fo-cused on gathering “culture”-specific techniques based on their assumptions about
Table 5.5 New Racial Paradigm Matrix for Attorneys
System Power and Oppression Personal Relevance Responsibility Chronosystem Explore how U.S.
immigration patterns have inf luenced race and national origins definitions and immi-gration law.
Explore how laws affected your family’s U.S. immigration.
Discuss how your racial group membership/
identity inf luences national policy. Explore ways you can advocate for more equitable immigration laws.
Exosystem Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence criminal law and death penalty cases.
For three or more gen-erations, discuss how property and estate law inf luenced how your family owned property.
Discuss how race inf lu-ences educational opportunities (e.g., clerkships). Explore ways you can inf luence equitable selection processes.
Mesosystem Discuss how attitudes about race in your state and labor and employ-ment law affect dis-crimination litigation.
Explore how race-based criteria (e.g., legacy, affirmative action) may have affected your law school admission.
Explore how race and racial identity may inf luence subspecialty choices; explore ways of achieving equitable representation.
Microsystem Explore how race inf luences child cus-tody cases.
Explore how race inf luences whom you choose as clients and who chooses you.
Explore how race and language ability inf lu-ence legal access;
explore ways you can create equitable access.
what racial-cultural others should be. These individuals viewed racism and racial identity as interesting but not clinically relevant. Students who had an integrated didactic-affective experience course early in their training (where the course material served as a primary learning scaffold) reported increased racial awareness overall.
When faced with cultural questions, their inquiries focused on how to better under-stand what race, cultural values, attitudes, and behaviors mean for themselves and their clients, rather than seeking culture-specific counseling interventions (Ota Wang,
System Power and Oppression Personal Relevance Responsibility Table 5.6 New Racial Paradigm Matrix for Organizational Consultants
Chronosystem Explore the history and historical significance of industrialization and how race and leader-ship inf luenced racial identity development.
Explore your own feel-ings and attitudes about the organization’s pur-pose and history;
explore how your feel-ings and attitudes affect consulting.
Explore how race has inf luenced the suc-cesses and failures of the organization;
develop individual and group interventions that will not perpetuate institutional forms of racism.
Exosystem Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence the organization’s capacity to collaborate and foster relationships with other community systems.
Within community and/or industry stan-dards, understand how race and racial identity inf luence the organiza-tion’s success/failure expectations. Explore how your feelings about success and failure inf luence the quality of services you provide.
Explore how race inf lu-ences f lexibility and adaptability of the organization. Create a written history.
Explore how manage-ment can use racial identity development in policy decision making.
Mesosystem Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence role definition, responsibilities, and organizational decision making.
Observe and explore organizational parallel processes. Explore how your racial identity inf luences what is maximized, mini-mized, or ignored.
Explore how the orga-nization understands the needs of the com-munity it serves.
Develop racially sensi-tive and responsive strategies for success-ful partnerships.
Microsystem Discuss how race and racial identity inf lu-ence individual and group work units and desired outcome.
Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence embedded inter-group relations for you and other members in the organization.
Examine how your own racial identity develop-ment inf luences orga-nizational intervention strategies.
Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence your commitment as a consultant to all clients.
1998). These findings suggest the importance and necessity of including education in racial identity development and racial socialization as early as possible if all stu-dents are to be legitimated for who they are in the learning process and experience their optimal learning and developmental potential.
Multicultural training has incurred criticism. Many people who are developing and implementing multicultural training programs have not had any systematic training in multicultural issues (Pedersen, this Handbook, Volume One; Ridley et al., 1994). In contrast, one of the strengths of using a racial identity-based training model is that many of those who are developing and advocating this paradigm shift are scholars and educators who have been formally trained in multicultural issues and are effectively applying their own multicultural training to curriculum develop-ment and practice. Their training has enabled them more realistically to understand the complexity of race and racial identity in conducting research, teaching students, Table 5.7 New Racial Paradigm Matrix for Health Care Professionals
System Power and Oppression Personal Relevance Responsibility Chronosystem Study the history of
medicine and how “sci-entific” research was used to understand population differences.
Explore how your understanding of the medical literature inf luences who receives care and under what conditions; explore health care disparities.
Explore how you have used racial categories in clinical practices and/or research proj-ects and how your uses may have implied or reified biological / genetic versus socially determined versus envi-ronmental interactions.
Exosystem Explore how race com-position and racial identity inf luence health practitioner training and research organizations’ research objectives.
Explore how race and racial identity attitudes inf luence professional admittance, expecta-tions, and advancement.
Develop mentoring programs for all racial groups to encourage and nurture the next generation of health care professionals.
Mesosystem Explore how race cate-gories are used when creating differential diagnoses.
Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence clinical and research medical edu-cation; explore how race and racial identity issues inf luence bed-side clinical practices.
Use accurate group/
population descrip-tions (e.g., ancestry, geography, self-identification) when doing clinical assess-ments and conducting research projects.
Microsystem Identify how race and racial identity can inf luence peer review.
Explore how your race and racial identity inf luence your atti-tudes about disease causation and patient responsibility for treat-ment compliance and management.
Explore how race inf luences insurance coverage for medical services; explore ways you can ensure equi-table access and cover-age for all.
and implementing interventions. Their training has also provided an essential guide for how to teach about the complexity of what it means to be a racial-cultural person.
Thus, the success of racial identity-based training depends on the commitment of those who teach and train to work constantly on further developing themselves as racial-cultural people. Ideally, providing people an understanding of the environmental and psychological realities of everyday racism can be a catalyst for exploring the im-pact that racial socialization has on quality of life issues for the oppressor and the Table 5.8 New Racial Paradigm Matrix for Mental Health Professionals
System Power and Oppression Personal Relevance Responsibility Chronosystem Explore how psychology
understood race using
“scientific methodol-ogy.” Discuss how race is understood in the context of mental health and psychopathology.
Draw a three- to four-generation family tree and explore your fam-ily’s understanding of race in the context of the prevailing zeitgeist of that time; explore how racial identity inf luences family members’ attitudes and behaviors.
Explore how race has inf luenced psychology research; through men-torship and course work, design relevant and nonbiased research studies.
Exosystem Explore how race com-position and racial identity inf luence pro-fessional mental health organizations with regard to membership and training objectives and goals.
Explore how race and racial identity attitudes inf luence professional expectations, personal attitudes, and behaviors.
Discuss how race inf lu-ences insurance cover-age for mental health services; explore ways you can ensure equi-table coverage.
Mesosystem Explore how stereotyp-ing and perceived attri-butions of mental health professionals inf luence client prefer-ence and treatment expectations (e.g., YAVIS clients).
Explore how race and racial identity inf lu-ence clinical supervi-sion. Explore how race and racial identity issues can be incorpo-rated into supervision.
Use systemic methods for accurate clinical assessments that take into account systemic qualities, personal qualities, and racial identity development.
Explore how you can do more racially responsive assessments.
Microsystem Identify microaggres-sions. Explore how indi-vidual microaggressions inf luence (1) issues of daily living and (2) the counseling process.
Explore how your race and racial identity inf luence your feelings and behaviors toward power and powerless-ness; discuss how this inf luences your clinical judgment and skills.
Explore ways of main-taining personal and professional racial iden-tity development (e.g., friendship networks).
Improve multicultural competence in research and clinical work through continuing education /postdoctoral studies.
oppressed. For race work to occur, a supportive environment must be created: Insti-tutional support must go beyond tolerance to engagement. Additionally, educators and trainers must work against the subtle and covert messages in educational and professional institutions that can create reluctant and unaccommodating environ-ments for faculty, students, and professionals exploring racial-cultural issues.
Racial identity-based training provides a supportive structure for discussing issues of race, racism, and racial identity development in an open manner. Students and pro-fessionals alike must come to terms with their existence as racial people and the ways in which their racial identity development is relevant to their personal experiences, motivations, and behaviors. Thus, in the spirit of Learning to Be, learning goes be-yond the struggle of helping others; what we must do is first learn to be ourselves.
As Carter has aptly stated:
Struggle that comes from knowing oneself requires a personal commitment that often leads one through a painful journey and soul searching to become comfortable with [one’s] racial socialization since race is treated as invisible in the social structure. (1995, p. 260)
If there is no struggle, there is no progress (Douglass, 1849):
The whole history of progress of human liberty Shows that all concessions
Yet made to her august claims Have been born of earnest struggle.
If there is no struggle There is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, And yet deprecate agitation,
Are men [and women] who want crops Without plowing up the ground, They want rain
Without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean
Without the awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one;
Or it may be a physical one;
Or it may be both moral and physical;
But it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did, and it never will.
Find out just what any people Will quietly submit to
And you have found the exact measure Of injustice and wrong
Which will be imposed upon them,
And these will continue till they are resisted . . . The limits . . . are prescribed
By the endurance
Of those [who] . . . [are] oppress[ed].
Men [and Women] may not get all they pay for
in this world, but they pay for all they get.
If we ever get free
from the oppressions and wrong heaped on us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be
by our lives and the lives of others.
—Frederick Douglass, 1849
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