Chelsea Small: Dr. Jacobs, in May you came to Michelle Harwell Therapy (MHT) and gave an excellent training on whiteness. In your article "Learning to Love White Shame and Guilt," you speak about the assumption of whiteness and white-centeredness. I am wondering if you can speak a bit about your experiences with white-centeredness in the therapy world. 

Dr. Lynne Jacobs: One thing I have noticed about white-centeredness in the therapy world is how ignorant white therapists are about what their whiteness means—both in the world and in the consulting room. Many white therapists seem to suffer from the “white fragility” of which Robin Di Angelo [a white academic and lecturer] writes. They feel personally insulted/assaulted by being asked to take a look at how whiteness functions in society (and therefore, in the consulting room). They take it personally rather than understanding that we are all caught up in whiteness, whether we like it or not. 

Lynne Jacobs, PhD

Lynne Jacobs, PhD

Aside from the sense of fragility and/or defensiveness that may inhibit necessary conversations, it also leads to a defensively organized disinterest in learning the history that can help one broaden their understanding of the differing contexts that we each bring into the consulting room. I am sometimes surprised and dismayed, I must admit, by the ignorance that some white therapists have about what it means to be a perpetual “other,” in most contexts. They don’t know much history of white supremacy and white privilege, and some seem uninterested.

I have also met many white therapists who ARE interested, and in fact, eager to learn. In that case, I recommend they start with DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” writings (and her talks available on YouTube), and then go on to find blogs by people of color, and also turn to books that can open their ordinary ideas about our history. 

CS: Do you have any suggestions for how we can begin to make this field more welcoming and inclusive to both clinicians and clients of colors? What conversations can we be starting in our work and other communities? What can we pay more attention to? 

LJ: This question reminds me of the remarks that one of the few people of color at my psychoanalytic institute said. She asked us to imagine what it was like for her when she came to the institute for the first time, walked into the main room, and found photos of our twelve founders on the wall. All white men and women. It concretized for her that she was going to be hyper-visible and pretty much alone in a white space.

While she was a candidate, some folks formed a “racism and homophobia task force.” They have put on some educational programs over the years, and they are sparsely attended. So, what this tells marginalized folks is that the institute is not willing to do its homework, not interested in doing the work of inclusiveness. When people wonder what they can do to make their groups more inclusive, I say, “Begin with self-study.” If that feels too difficult or time-consuming, then admit you don’t want to do the work, and just live with whatever guilt you might have about settling for what is easy.

I co-teach a now-required class on “diversity, power and privilege.” We have the candidates write a brief essay on contexts in which they are centrally socially-located and contexts in which they are marginalized. The essays are fascinating because it turns out most everyone has experiences of being “in” and being “marginalized.” That helps everyone get more interested in the complexity of all our contextual positions, and helps the candidates think more sensitively about the process of “othering.” This is another aspect of self-study.

In my gestalt institute, we have now set aside training scholarships for people of color, and that is bringing more diversity into our program. The faculty is all white, but that will change as people of color come up the ladder, I hope.

Anyway, you ask about conversations…the important conversations to start with, are conversations among white folk about what they need to learn, etc. Word will get around, if that starts to happen. Another thing is to do guest lectures at schools and colleges with people of color in them. 

Since our demographics are changing so much, people of color are going to be more present in the lives of whites, and the more self-study you (whites) do, the easier you will find it, to have conversations about race and ethnicity. 

CS: You mention shame and guilt in the title of your article. Can you speak a bit about how shame and guilt tend to show up in conversations about race and how they can be worked with?  

Lynne Jacobs, PhD.jpg

LJ: Theses feelings show up often when someone of color points out the difference between their social position and the position of a white conversational partner. The white person can suddenly feel the wash of guilt and then shame. A more direct experience of shame happens when the white person is confronted because of racially insensitive remarks they have made. Then, what often happens. is the white person either slinks away in shame, or visibly collapses, and either tries to explain themselves, or beat themselves publicly with their badness. This is the fragility Di Angelo writes about.

I recommend that we white folks develop a different practice. First, don’t make the conversation about you! Your guilt and shame are better addressed elsewhere. What is needed at such a time, is simply a straightforward recognition of your insensitivity, and an apology, and if you don’t understand what you did, and then ask (with curiosity), so that you can learn something.

If you focus on your badness, your guilt, your shame, you are adding insult to the injury you already caused, and you are burdening the other, who now is feeling the pressure to take care of you.

I have developed a strategy. This may sound like cheating, but it isn’t. It is a useful tool. When I find myself being confronted about my insensitivity, or my hurtfulness, or a racist or prejudiced idea I have, I can feel the rush of guilt and shame. But I immediately dissociate a bit. I can feel myself separate my guilt and shame from the rest me. I tuck it away my back pocket, to be dealt with later, and it frees me to be genuinely interested in the exchange I am having. 

This is the same thing I do when patients confront me. Whatever rising guilt or shame I feel gets tucked away for later so I can stay in the conversation. I hope this doesn’t sound too crazy. Because it does work. Then, when I get home, those miserable feelings come roaring back, and I try to learn from what happened, and I also try to explore how it is that I came to make the “mistakes” I made, I try to explore my ignorance, and explore how it is that I have been so ignorant. What am I not-seeing? Why? I do that exploration by myself, or with a trusted other white person.

CS: In your article you mention working with race and racializing your whiteness in your work with patients. Could you share an example of how you do that?

LJ: The more comfortable I become with “race talk” in generally, and amongst people of color and white folk, the easier it is to talk race with my patients, regardless of color. I bring it into the conversation pretty early. When working with a patient of color, I may be the first person who asks if what they are talking about as they describe a scene has anything to do with race, as in, “and was that critical boss an angry white person, by any chance?” Once I break the ice like that, race discussions can flow freely. When a patient of color hesitates in describing a race-based humiliating situation—getting stopped by cops, for instance—I look for signs that telling the story to a white therapist adds to the humiliation. I will often ask.

But let me provide something from my first article I ever wrote about working as a white therapist, because it shows my beginning awkwardness. The article is called, For Whites Only, and I included snippets throughout the article about my work with a black patient:

….

…. I found myself wondering why she had chosen to see me, a white therapist, rather than one of the many black therapists who practice in the LA area. I wondered if she knew of the availability of African-American therapists, if she purposely chose a white therapist, or if the fact of our race difference was unimportant to her. That last thought embarrassed me, confronting me with the reality of how her race WAS important to me, and I felt vaguely guilty, as though I ought not be having any awkwardness or discomfort, or to be thinking of her as, among other things, a “black” woman. I was being bitten by a common bug in our culturally diverse and racially divided country, and it is an element of the subjectivity of most white therapists. I call it white anxiety. I shall discuss it further at a later point.

“Many white therapists seem to suffer from the “white fragility” of which Robin Di Angelo writes. They feel personally insulted/assaulted by being asked to take a look at how whiteness functions in society (and therefore, in the consulting room). They take it personally rather than understanding that we are all caught up in whiteness, whether we like it or not.”

...At any rate, back to my story. You can see from what I have written, that I made the usual white background assumption that unless I picked up evidence to the contrary, the woman I was to meet would be white. Joyce is a sociologist with a particular interest in racial consciousness, and racial experiences in LA. When I did ask her, in our second meeting, if she had given any thought to finding an African-American therapist, she said that she had gotten my name from a colleague she trusted (a white sociologist whom I had seen for therapy a few years earlier), and the referral was more important to her than color. My question also seemed to raise her level of defensiveness slightly, and I knew that she was already quite embarrassed that she was seeking therapy in the first place, so I did not inquire further. 

Several weeks passed and the therapy lurched along with few references to her race, and none to mine. She would occasionally mention a difficult interaction or situation, and in the process of exploration I sometimes asked her for the race of the person with whom she was struggling. She would appear relieved and identify the person as white. At that point we would explore the possibility that the difficulties arose in part as a result of the racial prejudices or ignorance of the other person. But I always had to initiate the race-based discussions. 

I continued to be uneasy that we had not overtly acknowledged our racial difference. I could not see that she was uneasy, but I was. I became tangled in doubts of almost obsessive proportion. The doubts took my thoughts in various directions. I was reluctant to impose a figure into her process of talking about her own interests if that figure was an enactment of my anxiety. I wondered if perhaps I wanted to offer an African-American therapist so that she would leave and relieve me of my anxiety. Or, I wondered, perhaps I wanted the overt acknowledgment of our racial differences so that I could establish myself as different from “those other” whites. Then again, I wondered if perhaps I needed the acknowledgement of our racial difference because I was not as developed, in terms of my racial consciousness, as I thought I should be. On the other hand, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, such an acknowledgement might be helpful to Joyce, who might need me to take the initiative. 

One of the striking “symptoms” of my anxious self-doubt is the harsh tone of self- doubt and self-criticism in them.  This is a not uncommon experience for other whites who are racially sensitive. This may be a manifestation of white guilt, something I will address at a later point in the paper.

…. 

“I recommend that we white folks develop a different practice. First, don’t make the conversation about you! Your guilt and shame are better addressed elsewhere. What is needed at such a time, is simply a straightforward recognition of your insensitivity, and an apology, and if you don’t understand what you did, and then ask (with curiosity), so that you can learn something.”

One day Joyce started talking about the details of a study she was conducting. She mentioned that she always had to allow twice as long for interviews with white people than with other interviewees. She said it took the white interviewees an extra hour or so become comfortable enough with her to speak freely and openly. They had to overcome their anxiety over whether they would make a racial faux pas, and their worry of being harshly criticized by my patient. She said that the whites in her study lacked a vocabulary for addressing multi-cultural themes, whereas the other participants were highly articulate. 

I was reminded, as she spoke, of my first few awkward sessions with her: my anxiety, confusion, twinge of self-conscious shame, not knowing how to acknowledge our racial difference, not knowing how much it “ought” to matter. I decided to tell her what I was thinking. I described the tangle of doubt and confusion I experienced in not knowing whether I was being more racist by mentioning race, or by not mentioning race. We both had a good laugh, and the atmosphere between us underwent a palpable change for the better. I believe that this was a signal to her that we could talk about the effects of racism on her life, but also, and perhaps more importantly for the development of our relationship, that we could also talk about my “whiteness”, and my racial consciousness, and how both of these factors influenced our work together. We have both been looser, freer with each other since then.

My point in sharing this, is to say, awkwardness may haunt you until you get more practice. 

CS: What would you recommend to someone wanting to learn more about this topic and about themselves within the racist system? Any books, articles, podcasts, workshops, exercises you have found helpful? 

LJ: There is so much good material now.

Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., lives in two psychotherapy worlds. She is co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute and also a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis-Los Angeles. She has written numerous articles for gestalt therapists and psychoanalytic therapists. She has a private practice and is involved with the Soldiers Project in Los Angeles.

Chelsea Small, MSW, is an Associate Clinical Social Worker, ASW #78503 working under the supervision of Saralyn Masselink, LCSW # 28617. Chelsea believes in the wisdom of the therapeutic relationship to ignite transformative growth. She has extensive experience working with people impacted by trauma, domestic violence, and the effects of emotional dysregulation.