Question

Pretend you are a therapist in private practice. Consider the following question. How do race and ethnicity affect the way you respond to persons of various genders? Notice what feelings come up for you during your interactions with men, women, gender-variant, and trans people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Answer 1

The following will take a theoretical approach using contrasting ideas about the nature of social reality to look at problems of race / ethnicity, social class and gender / sexual identity, and the impact each has on equality.   

Social constructivism is the idea that there is no one objective reality shared by everyone. The meaning of physical reality is created by individuals and groups through beliefs based on their past experience and predispositions . Social constructivism has been widely influential in the social sciences and humanities, and was shaped by a number of theorists including Vygotsky whose studies of how children learn emphasizes the role of a social framework for education, and also by Berger and Luckmann (1966), who popularized the notion in English speaking countries (Van Dusek 2006). Social constructivist approaches to race, class and gender suggest that the way we perceive each is a function of history and culture, rather than a given objective fact. Our views of women and men, and the roles appropriate to each, for example, is rooted in the political climate, and relates to social power structures (Hirschmann 2003)

By contrast, essentialism is the view that the characteristics ascribed to members of different races or sexual identities are fixed and objective. It suggests that the way things are perceived reflects the essential nature of that thing. The essence is a causal mechanism for the properties things display (Mahalingam 2003). When applied to sexuality, for example, an essentialist view suggests that orientation is based upon an inner state which causes a person’s sexual feelings and actions. The view also holds that the essence is either biologically caused or acquired in the first few years of development.

The feelings during interactions are

1. Commit to an ongoing practice of readings and trainings
The first step to address racism as a therapist is to commit to the ongoing work of addressing personal biases. Combating racism goes beyond the desire to believe that you are not racist – it requires the humility, time, and commitment of energy and resources to pursue trainings, actively identify personal biases, and understand how your own social positionings may impact dynamics within therapy.

.2. Focus your learnings outside the therapy space, not in your interaction with clients
Self-education is crucial so that the therapy can focus on the client's healing, not on the therapist's racial identity development.

3. Get curious about a client’s unique experiences, rather than stereotyping