Talking about Race
I just finished watching the brand-new NICABM program, “How to Talk about Race in a Session”, and it’s one of the best things I’ve watched in a long time. I wish I could get everyone I know (both professionals and non-professionals) to watch it.
This course gave me ideas that will make me a better coach, but it also gave me ideas for how I can be a better person in general, and how to speak up effectively when I hear intentional or unintentional racism from family members and even strangers. I’ll be re-watching this one several times, until everything I learned from it becomes second nature to me.
My lived experience is different from yours, no matter who you are. I’m sure that I’ll continue to make mistakes and have gaps in my knowledge, and you’re welcome to point those out to me. I’m going to keep learning as much as I can, so that I can be as helpful as possible. I hope to have enough cultural humility to continue to learn from everyone around me.
This comprehensive program was developed by Thema Bryant, PhD and Shelly Harrell, PhD, with the input of about a dozen other therapists, mostly therapists of color. It gives examples of how to identify and talk about implicit bias (both our own and our clients’). It talks about how practitioners of any race can become more trustworthy listeners for clients of color, and how to regulate ourselves when talking about race becomes difficult.
I’m not a therapist, but there is a lot of overlap between coaching and therapy (more about that here), and I learn a lot from courses aimed at therapists. I know that my lived experience is very different in some ways from my clients of color, and sometimes “I don’t know what I don’t know”. So I keep learning as much as I can.
This course offers different ways of addressing both inadvertent and intentional racism that could come up in a session. It helps white professionals to help their clients of all races, and also gives ideas for how BIPOC therapists might choose to handle racist comments that might be intentionally or unintentionally directed at the therapist. I’m better prepared now to help my white clients address their unintentional biases without shaming them, and to validate and support my BIPOC clients.
This course also talks about the harm and biased that’s baked into the mental health field, and how the training that many therapists got was either inadequate or sometimes wrong when it comes to talking about race. For example, many therapists and coaches were taught to always remain neutral, and never bring “politics” into a session. But when a client is saying something blatantly racist, then that neutrality is harmful, because it appears to collude with lies that are harmful to everyone, including the client.
A few more highlights:
Many white folks were taught that “I don’t see color” is a good thing, but it does a real disservice to BIPOC folks who live every day with the very real effects of systemic racism. It also fails to fully appreciate the richness of non-white cultures.
The mental health field often stigmatizes behaviors from People of Color that are actually normal and healthy. For example, a client who is angry because they’ve been subjected to racist treatment is not displaying pathology: this rage is normal and healthy.
Cultural humility can strengthen our work with clients of any race.
It talked about how to help clients to see and take apart any internalized oppression they may be grappling with.
How to create social change within an organization (this one was really eye-opening).
If you click the link, it will give you lots more info, and if that doesn’t answer your questions I’m more than happy to try to answer them myself.
