We’ve all heard about cultural competence in clinical practice. And while it’s important, it’s also not enough.
So today, Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD will get into some first steps in becoming an antiracist practitioner.
Click here for full transcript
What are your biggest takeaways from what you just heard? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.
If you found this helpful, here are a few more resources you might be interested in:
Working with the Trauma of Racism
When Staying Neutral Isn’t the Best Approach
The Same Pandemic, Vastly Different Experiences
Thanks Thema for your comments and the hope that you give the Caucasian therapist community that we can be part of the healing process if we dare to listen with compassion to our non-Caucasian clients who have experienced racism. I remember being impacted deeply by a project I was given in my undergrad work to choose a disability to have for 24 hours. I chose to be without the use of my legs and be deaf. Although I desperately wanted to hide from the public after several hours, my parents insisted that I work my typical job in our family business. I can remember wanting desperately to explain to our customers that my disabled state was only temporary, but I didn’t. It was humbling to be looked at by people who didn’t know me and know that they thought I was permanently disabled. I felt the stares and experienced being ignored and not given eye contact. That project still influences my actions over 20 years later as I communicate with a person in a wheelchair. I will often kneel by them or sit to have a conversation. You mentioned that a compassionate encounter with someone from the group that caused the pain (males, whites, etc.) can even be more healing that if the compassion only comes from people who have also experienced the racism. That gives me hope….purpose. It allows me….as a person with white skin…to be a avenue of healing.
So much good info and so concisely laid down. I loved Thema’s instruction on how to identify an anti-racist mental health provide and her stating so clearly that cultural competence is not enough. I want to grow my ability to know my intentions but to be able to listen for and ask about the impact I have.
Hello Thema!
I’ve often thought of you since you left Princeton and I am delighted to see you pop up here. You continue to be a clear and compassionate voice for many issues, but especially those of multiculturalism and race/racism. I would love to hear more about anti racism, more from you and in general see more consistent black representation here.
Thanks nicabm for the work that you do, for helping to expand the conversation about racism and for acknowledging that there is more work to be done.
Oh, thank you so much Thema, for sharing your experience and wisdom and kindness around the healing work that is possible when a therapist can be open and empathetic around issues of racism as well as identity of self and other, in the therapeutic alliance–this is so beautiful and positive to hear. Your words resonate with me that there is gentle path forward; providing I am willing to stay in humility and awareness, and if I am open enough to hear, reflect and process the truth being spoken by my client – in my role as helper and advocate. Ruth, thank you for inviting Dr. Thema Bryant Davis to speak up about antiracism as an active stance in practice. So valuable, thank you both so much.
Thank you for this. It’s great to hear more empowered clarity for socially aware practice. I really like the emphasis on the active. Would be great to see more of this and also intersectional issues.
Natasha Picot PhD.
I appreciate Dr. Bryant-Davis stepping up to the plate to address anti-racism and NICABM for giving her the platform to present this important topic. Until there are more mental health workers who are anti-racist, satisfactory mental health for minorities who need these services will continue to be challenging, elusive or difficult to attain.
Her suggestion to filter potential therapists by asking the relevant questions she posed is helpful.
I really liked the observation that she averted her eyes from certain people in an effort not to stare but how it could feel like being erased.
I would also like to add that this has been a cornerstone issue for me in my coaching practice. I feel that “my people,” Asian, Hawaiian and other minorities in Hawaii are not being served appropriately because of the shortage of coaches of these cultures who are anti-racist.
I have been navigating the coaching world to figure out how to provide this service and it’s great to have words for the situation now. I think I have some research in this area to do….. Thank you for touching on this topic.
I am so glad to hear her perspective as the word “anti-racist” fills a gap for me. Cultural competence is important of course. However, to approach this issue from the “open non-judgmental accepting” place has felt more like “I have no stand on this issue” and that feels too much like silent acquiescence. That is not an acceptable position. I think it is possible to be an open non-judgmental therapist and anti-racist at the same time. Just like I can be a good relationship counselor and be anti-DV. Thank you for this posting.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! for bringing this conversation to the forefront. Dr. Bryant-Davis hits the nail on the head. My take-aways are the notion of sitting with the reality of your client’s experience, uncomfortable as it may be. And to come from a place of cultural humility. So we’ll said. Please share more as you can! We need these conversations, in both personal and professional settings, now more than ever. Thanks again & keep the dialogue going!
Thank you Thema. That was very insightful.
I must say that I always thought of myself as being anti racist but if seeing people and not colour or culture is wrong then I think I am racist and feel much shame. I prided myself on not signally out individuals as being different. Also, think I failed the looking test too. I’ve always thought it rude to look at disabled people unless of course they needed help. I have a nephew in a wheel chair and he hates people who look at him. Guess I have some processing to do. Thank you for the wisdom and compassion though. Stay safe everyone.
There are different ways of responding to this topic, Anon. One is projection.
This was very helpful.
First, to Hear how one can tell the difference between “I’m not a racist – people are People” and “I am against racism and will support anti-racism actively and in collaboration with racial ethnic minorities.” And also to hear how to affirm that I will never be able to fully understand the feelings of a Black person but I can demonstrate empathy and compassion and acknowledge the wrongs my clients have experienced.
That was very insightful and timely. I wanted more.
Thank you Ruth for posting Thema Bryant-Davis’s (PhD, and thank you Thema for you succinct, direct and compassionate approach! Humility certainly goes a very long way in our work as therapists, and I concur with the term ‘anti-racist’. The whole point of therapy is for us to become fully emotionally integrated adult, and being that demands the absence of any kind of intentional negative bias regarding race, sex, language, sexual orientation, education etc etc etc. Mental Health workers have a very important role to play, and we need to start being more vocal about all of this.
Thank you for this wisdom.
To heal we need to know we are seen – and know we are not invisible. We need to experience being heard and valued; To have the experience that the truth of our existence is witnessed and respected. Then healing can happen, the work can commence, restoration begins, bears fruit and creates change. Remember the “other” is “us”.
This is a marvelous woman! Where has she been?
I don’t remember anyone on this website ever talking about humility as a virtue in a therapist before.
Dr. Bryant-Davis, THANK YOU for your video! That really made me think. I have had that experience of looking away quickly so as to not appear ablist, and I really appreciate you using that example to illustrate that we must be really intentional in stepping out of our own defensiveness to be present for someone else. The truth is, we all have been raised in this culture and we all have racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic thoughts flash through our brains….even when we belong to those groups denigrated by stereotypes! I am embracing the term “anti-racist” as a tool to help me take action to step outside my own “stuff” to be present for black and brown folks and against the systematic racism we all learn in our culture. Thank you for this powerful lesson! Heather M. Owens
Wonderful! I didn’t have the word antiracist. But seeing that cop murder George made me ashamed to be white. Antiracist is a much better way to express it, because I was promptly corrected for not accepting who I am. I handled the objection but antiracist is the perfect word and she expressed her message calmly in an antiracist way toward whites. Thank you for this.
It is important for white therapist to accept that they work from a place of privilege and that being liberal and open is not enough. Accepting their limitation of knowing what it is like and being open to the very different reality of the black client and to learning about and acknowledging that that reality really exist is needed. Often the black client with a white therapist who is unable to even acknowledge the issues that race brings into the therapy room feels even more diminished by that experience.
Thank you Dr.Bryant-Davis for addressing this at this very emotionally difficult time. Unfortunately it often takes something difficult for the issue of racism to be put on the table and most often danced around.
I work 90% cross-cultural; I thought her points were relevant, helpful and articulate. The ideas don’t need to be new to be relevant, relatable and instructive. I’d invite you to rethink your approach, as it comes across as resentful.
This was very helpful for me. I am white and 71 and am dating now and have previously dated men of color and I think there have been moments where I thought that meant I “understand”. Yet, I am a dentists daughter and grew up in a white neighborhood and I have never been treated like my friends of color have told me about how they have been treated. So I have intellectual understanding -not experiential understanding.
Takeaway: As a white therapist working with a black client, if I can say (and with complete sincerity, as I for one would), for instance, “The impact of systemic racism on mental health is profound,” that can be doubly healing for a black client, since I — one of the race/skin color that continues to so damage them (out of our ignorance if not malice) — have validated their pain.
In effect I have said, “Yes, that stuff does in fact happen all the time and is in fact devastating. I see you, I understand you, I am ashamed for my race’s willful ignorance and inaction, I grieve for you, and I am taking action to wake up myself, to educate myself, and to nourish genuine friendships with black people so that I’m not always the one with the power of my role in the room.”
As an immigrant, I totally agree with Dinesh D’Souza who put it better than I am able to do – America is a great country and RACISM is cultivated by politicians, as well BEING VICTIMIZED attitude inserted in children from pre-schools. Racial separation is use now instead of old Marx’s theory of struggle between classes OR “rich” and “poor”. Divide the people in order to dominate them! Americans are not racist – the politicians use the mistakes of the past to grab the power and destroy the Republic from inside (as Alinsky teaches in his Bible). Is up to each person to free herself for misconceptions. Coming from a communist country I really appreciate the American Republic based on laws who created wonderful people that Americans are!
One possible reaction to this topic is defensiveness; another is the temptation to change the subject. Dinesh D’Souza. Hmm. Personally if I’m going to take advice from someone I prefer they be law-abiding, considerate, level-headed folk. Race baiting, embezzling, adulterous felons can have words of wisdom to share, and sometimes not.
Helpful! Thank you Dr Bryant-Davis.
Anti racist stance is “active and intentional.”
Great example of the woman in a wheelchair.
Difference between “ intention and impact.”
“Cultural humility”
“Recognition and openness”
Sit with, “what it might be like to live this experience”
Humility and compassion “could be a therapeutic and healing moment”
Dr. Thema,
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and ideas on moving from cultural competence to antiracist it was helpful. I saw a post from an ally this morning and it hit home the importance of speaking out. “Yes, I am a racist. And I support an antiracist way of being in my life. Yes I make mistakes and will as I work hard at recognizing my own and colonized system I have been brought up in does not support all people and cultural tradition and languages other than that of those of white privilege. As an ally I will be alert and address these racists behaviours….” As someone who is white I often find myself held back because of my own fears of making a mistake and offending. I need to step up if I wish to see the changes I believe in. So yes I truly appreciated the respectful way in which you got this point across. Kindly,Counsellor. Comox BC, Canada
Thank you! I will use these ideas in my work and pass them along to other clinicians and teachers I work with. I like the idea that giving a compassionate response with humility can be a healing experience for a person in an ethnic minority group. I’ve felt unqualified and not wanting to insult but I realize this is a form of turning away and avoiding rather than supporting. This gives me more confidence about what an anti-racism stance looks like. I appreciate you taking the time to speak on this topic!
With the volatile emotions occurring in reaction to the recent police brutality of African-Americans, this presentation was timely with much needed suggestions for white antiracist therapists. Thank you. As a retired Chinese-American psychotherapist and social worker, I fully agree with the suggestions she gave. Due to the president’s labeling COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus”, there has been a rash of violence towards all Asian-Americans. Much of what Dr. Bryant-Davis suggested for working with African-American clients also holds true in working with Asian-American clients.
That’s a good example. What I see is that everyone labels and lapses into prejudices and even to the extreme “racism” when they fear. There are always prejudices and reactions. Years ago I had read a paper about how African American patrons thought the Korean owners of a shop were “racist” because they didn’t speak a lot (which was not true as this was a cultural approach to all). I grew up and went to school in the US with many black and Hispanic kids and my best friend in high school was Haitian — she could not identify with “African American” and she got bullied for this. I got bullied because I was a white kid of foreign parents.
In this part of the world where I live now there is prejudice against Roma because of experiences of theft, and migrant groups, are prejudiced against each other (!). One group though who makes things worse by labels or racism to all is “Antifa” they join peaceful protests and then start spraying graffiti tags and wearing hoods often destroy shops “against the system” but what they do is continue to destroy an already suffering economy (all this since 1990s). So we need to look at all sides of the story and keep discussion going.
Don’t second guess anyone’s lived experience of oppression… Check your assumptions at the door. Tread humbly and call out violence for what it is.
Couldn’t agree more! Read my comment above …..
Dr. Thema I just want to say I enjoy your podcast The Homecoming very much and admire the work you do. In this video I appreciate the emphasis on cultural humility as it relates to working with clients who have different cultural experiences from my own. Being culturally competent is foundational, but humility is genuine and inspires trust, connection and rapport.
Great words. “That difference between intention and impact… it is an erasure.” Also keeping with the humility, I really do not know the answers nor can I, as a white person, ever know what it must feel like to be black in this country. But my heart is broken for those to whom wrongs have been done.
Thank you. Very eager to go all in on this discussion on being anti racist in all domains of life. Maybe we will go back from this very challenging time better.
Good reminder. Encouraging to know and think about empathy from a white practitioner being healing. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah …
at some point in our journey as “human beings” we need to move beyond the labels and notions of sexism… racism… nationalism …
and find … greater uplifting connective authentic communication to help us all heal our limitations
Humility surrender to move in safety and trust and probably grace thru our individual issues as well as collective issues …
Transmutation …
I challenge you to think through your reply as the evidence is everywhere that society is not set up so that all human beings are considered equal by institutions, systems, and individuals. You call “labels” what are considered by the majority as “identities” – identities that are intimately intertwined with their lived experiences. Thus, we cannot turn our heads and ignore the violent oppression folks experience because of these identities.
We will be able to move past these labels only after we acknowledge and address the pain and division that they create. We are far from that right now.
Ever killed any of your children? What should we call you Anne?
I found the comment about good intentions not being an eraser of what is felt or experienced by the person on the receiving end
As a Black therapist and social worker, I get tired if explaining culture and anti racism at times to others. She said something which was quite powerful and that ivhave often found….believe what your client is telling you about their experience. Do not dismiss it because you want to make things better. You make things better y acknowledging and believing.
Colette
London ontario canada
I am a retired Chinese-American psychotherapist and social worker, and I concur with your suggestion to believe what the client is saying about his/her experience. When you try to make it better, it just makes the client feel unheard and undervalued!
Gayook
Los Angeles, CA.
“Believe what your client is telling you about their experience” is spot on and good advice, in general. There is much harm from pathologizing someone’s lived experience – I would go so far as to say that’s true even when it doesn’t match consensus reality. I see the hearing voices movement for mental freedom as going after the root of all -isms. If humanity were truly open-minded enough to not shame or judge different mental frameworks, it would no longer make sense to have bias based on color, sexuality, ability, etc.
I am white so I am not certain this feels true to others, but from the outside it seems like racism would feel like constant gaslighting. I imagine having white society say racism no longer exists, or to have a person do something racist and then deny that it was.
Thoughts?
It doesn’t follow that someone who answers a potential client’s impersonal phone call question to the effect that “people are people” is not racially sensitive. It is not an assumed emotional hurt from a racially adverse encounter that the therapist will engage but an empathic attunement to a real individual’s specific self’s emotional experience.
Thank you for saying all of this. Just because you don’t share an experience with your client does not mean that it’s not real for the client. I like the way you separated cultural competence and anti-racist.
I think so often that you should acknowledge the person existence by perhaps saying hi as you would do with anyone else thereby averting the feeling of being ignored or excluded.
I have so much to learn. Feeling a great deal of emotional pain for those who have suffered at the hands of racism. What is the next step to take after listening to todays video.
Thank you
Thank you for helping me/us learn more about what works and what is not the quality of an antiracist. Please continue to enlighent us/
In that short excerpt I learned so much. Thank you. I too have been brought up with the “don’t stare, it’s rude’ mantra, without ever thinking about it from the other’s point of view. I’m still not sure of how to handle that – do you look? And how do you look? And how do you stop from going the other way – being too accommodating and sympathetic? If someone presented a course on that (Dr Bryant-Davis?) I’d sign up. (I am not a professional therapist, but a CAM practitioner who inevitably hears horrible things in sessions and has to cope with that.)
Excellent articulation of the therapeutic moment of connection, the vulnerability and humility of clinician creating a space for the the client’s tenderness To “land” and be received as sacred.
There is way a white Therapist Could even start to comprehend the spectrum of being a minority.
Great presentation. Thank you. I teach compassion meditation to healthcare workers and this is valuable insight. There are many of us working hard (I am a white woman therapist) to reduce prejudice and biases and increase compassion to wider and wider circles. It starts with self-inquiry and examination of ones own mind.
Thank you
The willingness to listen with humility and compassion and to sit with my own impulse to explain or defend
Super important learning and reminders. We must constantly ask ourselves: are we really making enough effort to imagine being in the shoes of our client/friend/neighbour, listening with humility and compassion? Or are we still too stuck in our perceptual habits and identifications, to foster a truly authentic and respectful relationship? Consider the message we are communicating, through each approach…
Super important learning and reminders. We must constantly ask ourselves: are we really making enough effort to imagine being in the shoes of our client/friend/neighbour, listening with humility and compassion? Or are we still too stuck in our perceptual habits and identifications, roadblocks to fostering a truly authentic and respectful relationship? Consider the message we are communicating, through each approach…
Before listening to this, i was wondering how i could transition from being just culturally competent, which i always felt was inadequate at best, to being an antiracist therapist. Now i know! It resonates within my heart and soul! Cultural humility!
Excellent presentation! One of the best pieces I’ve heard on this website. I loved example of ableism. My son is adult man who is Black; experiences intellectual and mental health challenges. A very marginalized person. It’s hard to find support from people with the culturally humility you shared. Thank you.
I have been so damaged by white women therapists. I gave up on therapy for good in 2012. After being asked by my white female therapist if my father does drugs because I mentioned being Jamaican and also that my father is a believer in meditation, I gave up, but not before I got a good passive-aggressive tracing out via letter after I told her, in person, that I’d miss the next two weeks so I could go and visit my parents for Christmas. White women therapists are a nightmare for black women. White men are not much better. When I was doing my doctorate upstate and 5 minutes late for an appointment because of a traffic delay the therapist I was seeing asked me, sarcastically, is it true that black people are always late. I decided my body, mind and spirit and wallet didn’t need to take the abuse much longer. Gross insensitivity. To say the least. They’re also completely inept in working with people who are sensitive to the trauma of systemic oppression.
I’m so sorry that happened to you Camille.
So very sorry this has been your experience Camille.
I’m sorry to hear your experience. I can’t imagine how painful it has been, but you’re not alone on this. I am Asian, who’s originally from Asia. I was told by a white female practitioner that it’s just my perception that I was occasionally harassed and oppressed by white people in my life here, North America. I don’t pass a day without feeling hyper vigilant around white people as I was occasionally harassed by them, especially by female, even when I was with my child. In my graduate studies, I was surrounded by white female students who insist they’re anti-racists, however they always turned aggressive or passive aggressive as soon as I voiced my opinions that are different from theirs in a way they never adopt to other white students. I do not seek for help from white female practitioners, because I know too well that it is not impossible but very hard to find one who are truly anti racist. It’s a shame that this psychotherapy field is dominated by white women. Hope more and more racial and ethnical minorities will be accepted by reputable counselling/clinical psychology programs without institutional racism, and help people who does not do harm on minorities.
That’s truly awful. I’m sorry you were treated that way. I can see why you’d be done with white women therapists.
I’m truly sorry that happened to you. Truly deeply sorry for those comments and attitudes from those you were suppose to be able to trust. May we find a way to heal these deep wounds humanity has caused. Wishing you love peace and respect each day forward.
I appreciate the insight Dr. Bryant-Davis presents particularly the emphasis on cultural humility also the calling out of responses often considered PC like “people are people” as being inappropriate to direct questions about one’s belief system in working with ethnic minorities. Thank you for posting.
Thank you Dr Bryant-David,
I felt a connection with you and sadness at the times I have been insensitive. You made me realize I have to be more intentionally anti-racist with every thought and interaction.
In terms of mental health, it has always pained me to realize that when a child is in fear, it interferes with their cognitive functioning. Racism may create fear. It can seriously Impact a child’s school experience.
Racism is a systemic trauma. All we know about trauma and how it causes overwhelm in the nervous system with freezing of the Instinctive fight/flight responses are relevant. Any sensory experience, image, behavior, affect and the racist meaning that accompanied them may be triggered on a daily basis.
I must practice what I preach minute by minute.
Thank you for your gift, Dr Bryant- Davis.
Mary J Giuffra, PhD
Thank you for the move beyond the concept of cultual competence and the view that “people are people”. Your ideas are not just relevant for the US but across the Atlantic to the UK and beyond