47133
istic Psychology XX(X)Perrin
JHP53110.1177/0022167812447133Jou
Humanistic Psychology’s
Social Justice Philosophy: Systemically Treating the
Psychosocial and Health
Effects of Racism
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
53(1) 52­–69
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission: http://www.
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0022167812447133
http://jhp.sagepub.com
Paul B. Perrin1
Abstract
Racism has held a prominent place in much of psychology discourse, but
humanistic psychology may not yet have realized its full potential to contribute in meaningful ways to dialogues about racism. The purpose of this article
is to help direct racism and social justice issues to the forefront of humanistic
psychology, outlining ways in which humanistic psychologists can draw on their
historical values and strengths to develop individual-level and societal interventions to reduce racism, as well as its psychosocial and physical health effects
on People of Color. This article discusses a number of domains in the study of
racism where humanistic principles have the potential to guide interventions.
These domains include internalized racism, race-based traumatic stress as an
American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders diagnosis, the role of White individuals in creating and combating
racism, the psychosocial costs of racism to White individuals, and the interactions of other forms of oppression with racism. Humanistic psychologists are
encouraged to move beyond the walls of academia, engage the community,
and reengineer systems that undercut justice for People of Color.
1
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Paul B. Perrin,Virginia Commonwealth University, 806 West Franklin Street, PO Box 842018,
Richmond,VA 23284-2018, USA
Email: [email protected]
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Keywords
racism, social justice, systems intervention
In many ways, the psychosocial and health effects of racism on People of
Color are the antitheses of humanistic psychology, which promotes an acceptance of individual worldviews, freedom from external control, full selfexpression and functioning, autonomy, and a proper environment for personal
growth and self-actualization (Bugental, 1963; DeCarvalho, 1990). Racism
has been defined as “a system of advantage based on race” (Wellman, 1977,
p. 4) as well as “an organized system, rooted in an ideology of inferiority that
categorizes, ranks, and differentially allocates societal resources to human
population groups” (Williams & Rucker, 2000, p. 76). Racism is such a pervasive and oppressive force that it influences and restricts every person alive,
both consciously and unconsciously (Spanierman, Poteat, Beer, & Armstrong,
2006). The stress it causes in the lives of People of Color is perhaps largely
responsible for the many disparities affecting ethnic minority communities,
restricting the full expression of human potential in some People of Color
(Brondolo, ver Halen, Pencille, Beatty, & Contrada, 2009; Meyers, 2009;
Williams & Mohammed, 2009).
Discussions of racism and of multiculturalism more generally have
come to hold a central place in much of the scholarly literature in counseling psychology, feminist psychology, multicultural psychology, and counselor education, such that multiculturalism has been heralded as a “fourth
force” in psychology (Pedersen, 1998). Topics often include an awareness
of one’s own cultural biases, values, assumptions, knowledge of culturally
different individuals’ worldviews, an ability to develop culturally appropriate interventions, and an understanding of how organizational forces can
hinder or advance individuals from ethnic minority groups (Sue et al.,
1998). A social justice movement has even emerged whereby psychologists
are not only researching racism but also working passionately to alleviate it
through education, advocacy, and systems-level interventions (Goodman
et al., 2004; Vera & Speight, 2004).
Humanistic psychology, the “third force” in psychology (DeCarvalho,
1990), however, may not yet have realized its full potential to contribute in
novel and significant ways to the “fourth force.” For example, there are major
gaps in the humanistic literature’s guidance for humanistic psychologists to
recognize the direct and indirect effects of racism on People of Color and to
use that recognition to engage in activism and social change. Humanistic
psychology has great potential to address the effects of racism at both the
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individual and societal levels (MacDougall, 2002), but doing so involves the
acknowledgement that social justice and activism are central pillars of
humanistic psychology (DeCarvalho, 1990). Accordingly, the purpose of this
article is to help direct racism and social justice issues to the forefront of
humanistic psychology discourse, outlining ways in which humanistic psychologists can draw on their historical values and strengths to develop
individual-level and societal interventions targeting the deleterious effects of
racism on People of Color. This article will provide a broad-based overview
and critique of several important areas in the study of racism: internalized
racism, race-based traumatic stress as an American Psychiatric Association’s
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnosis, the
role of White individuals in creating and combating racism, the psychosocial
costs of racism to White individuals, and the interactions of other forms of
oppression with racism.
In a multicultural-aware era of psychology, humanistic psychology is
already moving toward this future by amplifying individual voices within ethnic minority groups and discussing the applicability of humanistic principles
to multicultural counseling (e.g., MacDougall, 2002). Yet even as humanistic
researchers and psychologists cry out for social change, the walls of academia
too often confine their voices to professional conferences and journals for
other researchers, where activism has limited social impact. To truly address
the effects of racism, humanistic psychology must leave academia, engage
the community, and reengineer systems that stifle justice.
Race-Based Traumatic Stress,
Psychosocial Functioning, and Health
In the research literature, the term race-based traumatic stress has emerged to
identify and promote awareness of racism’s stressful effects on ethnic minorities (Carter, 2007). Though much has been written about the global effects of
racism (e.g., Sue et al., 2007), less is understood about the links between specific components of racism and their specific psychological effects on its targets (Carter, 2007). As a result, humanistic psychologists have little guidance
in recognizing the indirect and subtle effects of racism on People of Color.
Carter and Helms (2002) have suggested that identifying specific categories of
experiences with racism, such as discrimination or harassment, can help people
who experience racism, researchers, and psychologists link particular experiences to particular psychosocial and health effects.
For many People of Color, the excruciating effects of racism can last a
lifetime. Some White individuals may see racism as isolated events, feeling
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that minorities overreact to racism, but a single racist incident can focus
many other subtle and overt racist events that People of Color experience
throughout their lives (Thompson-Miller & Feagin, 2007). These racist
events can include being treated unfairly by others, profiled or accused of
doing something wrong, called a racial slur, made the object of jokes, and
threatened or hurt by racially motivated violence (Landrine & Klonoff, 1996).
Other more institutional forms of racism occur in incarceration, employment
(Western & Pettit, 2000), mortgage lending (Ladd, 1998), and housing and
residential segregation (Charles, 2003). Many of these forms of racism collapse into economic discrimination. For example, nearly 90% of Black
Americans come into poverty at some point in their lives, and Black children
are 14 times more likely than White children to live in a high poverty neighborhood (Rank, 2009). Blacks are much less likely than Whites to achieve
affluence and less likely to purchase or own a home at every stage of life,
therefore being less likely to accrue home equity (Rank, 2009). Additionally,
People of Color have been shown (with most of the studies being conducted
on Blacks and Latinos) to experience disparities in occupational status, job
stability, income, and assets (Massey, 2007; Shapiro, 2004).
Dealing with multiple daily racist experiences over a lifetime can result in
chronic stress and loss of energy (Thompson-Miller & Feagin, 2007). For
example, Pieterse and Carter (2007) found that in a sample of 230 Black men,
when controlling for general life stress, racism-related stress uniquely predicted an additional 4% of the variance in psychological distress for working
class men and an additional 7% of the variance in middle-upper class men.
Utsey, Giesbrecht, Hook, and Stanard (2008) similarly found that experiences of racism more powerfully predicted psychological distress than did
general stressful life events. These studies, though illuminating, hardly
scratch the surface of racism’s stressful effects on the psychosocial functioning of People of Color or the surface of the empirical literature documenting
these stressful effects.
A plethora of studies have also documented the connections between racial
discrimination and physical health problems among minorities, perhaps
accounting for many of the health disparities in ethnic minority communities
(Meyers, 2009). Racial discrimination has been linked to self-reported health
among Black adults (Borrell, Kiefe, Williams, Diez-Roux, & Gordon-Larsen,
2006), hypertension in Black women (Cozier et al., 2006), chronic health conditions among Asian Americans (Gee, Spencer, Chen, & Takeuchi, 2007),
low birth weight and prematurity among Arab women (Lauderdale, 2006),
breast cancer incidence among Black women (Taylor et al., 2007), nonadherence to cancer screenings among Latino women (Facione & Facione, 2007),
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HIV risk behavior in Black and Colored South Africans (Kalichman et al.,
2006), and drug use in Black families (Gibbons et al., 2007), among many
other examples.
Internalized Racism
One of the vehicles leading from experiences with racism to detrimental
psychosocial and health effects may be internalized racism. Speight (2007)
has astutely emphasized the importance of internalized racism in race-based
traumatic stress, calling it potentially the most damaging psychological
injury of racism. Williams and Williams-Morris (2000, p. 255) defined internalized racism as “the acceptance, by marginalized racial populations, of the
negative societal beliefs and stereotypes about themselves.” Steele and
Aronson (1995) notably demonstrated the effects of stereotype threat, a component of internalized racism, when their research found that People of Color
perform less well on cognitive tasks when primed about their race. Freire
(1999) has asserted that once internalized, oppression becomes self-sustaining,
as minorities look to the dominant culture to find negative images, which continually re-oppresses them. Accordingly, Speight (2007) has asserted that racism’s effects are cumulative and therefore not limited to a particular situation
or event but rather cast against the backdrop of numerous and daily racist
events in the lives of People of Color. Given the profound role of internalized
racism on People of Color, empirical research is needed to examine this construct as well as ways that its effects can be reduced through humanistic
principles. The scholarly literature is only beginning to examine internalized
oppression (e.g., Szymanski, Kashubeck-West, & Meyer, 2008), but much
more research on this area is needed.
Treating Race-Based Traumatic
Stress in Therapy
Goodman et al. (2004) have suggested that practicing psychologists must
create a warm environment in which People of Color can feel safe disclosing
racist experiences, mirroring the fundamental premises of humanistic psychotherapy. This may be possible through a trusting therapeutic relationship
established first with humanistic techniques, such as active listening and
empathy, and then with direct questions about a client’s experiences with
racism (Bryant-Davis, 2007; see also MacDougall, 2002).
Psychologists should avoid downplaying, ignoring, or intellectualizing the
effects of racism on a client (Comas-Diaz, 2000), because doing so could
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have detrimental effects on people who have been harmed by racism and
express it in therapy. Challenging clients of Color to examine cognitively
whether particular experiences were racist is a viewpoint opposed to the
majority of humanistic psychology theory, which asserts that psychologists
should respect the validity of clients’ subjective perceptions (Ansbacher,
1977). Parallels have been drawn regarding the psychological damage done
to women by defense attorneys and judges when women are forced to prove
in court that sexual harassment occurred in the workplace (Ross, 1992).
Many critics have argued instead a more contemporary position that sexual
harassment exists based on the perceptions of the victims and their ability to
demonstrate the patterns that informed their perceptions (Fitzgerald, 1993).
Equally, in therapy, it is often better to approach discussions of racism from
a humanistic perspective, validating the viewpoints and corresponding stress
and injuries of individuals who perceive themselves to be targets of racism.
Current psychiatric diagnostic systems do not formally recognize racism
as a stressor that injures its targets (Prilleltensky, 1995). Carter (2007) was
one of the first major proponents to suggest that trauma should be considered
a possible psychological reaction to racism. Controversy continues over
including race-based traumatic stress as a formal diagnosis in the DSM, or
perhaps as a subtype of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On one hand,
formal diagnosis could induce a stigma, as mental health providers would
label the individual as “disordered.” Accordingly, Carter (2007) has suggested
that the mental health disciplines refer to the psychological and emotional correlates of racism as “race-based traumatic stress.” On the other hand, BryantDavis (2007) has pointed out that PTSD is one of the few diagnoses that, by
definition, is precipitated by an event, so any association with PTSD can only
aid in increasing psychologists’ awareness of the effects of racism. Racebased traumatic stress may indeed have complications that produce multiplicative effects beyond straightforward PTSD, as with many People of Color
affected by Hurricane Katrina, who had to deal with loss, trauma, racism, and
poverty (Bryant-Davis, 2007; Perrin et al., 2008).
Application to a Clinical Example
To make these suggestions from the literature more concrete, I (PBP) can
illustrate some of the humanistic therapy techniques I used to treat the racebased traumatic stress of a former psychotherapy client. (Identifying details
have been changed.) The client was a married, middle-aged, male, military
veteran of Middle-Eastern descent who came to therapy because he wanted
help overcoming PTSD. His symptoms stemmed from a trauma that had
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occurred several years before I started working with him and several months
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. During his military service, he had been
severely beaten and raped by a group of White male service members while
aboard a submarine. He was now unable to leave his house (other than going
to the therapy clinic) out of fear of being revictimized, had frequent nightmares and intrusive thoughts about the event, had a profound distrust of most
people and especially of White men, was unable to go to work because of
dissociative flashbacks to the event while at work, was unable to be sexually
intimate with his wife, and was isolating from his family and friends, none
of whom knew about the rape.
In part because I am a White man, the client had a very hard time trusting
me initially. Over our first few sessions together, I used almost entirely a
humanistic approach, focusing above all else on building a strong therapeutic
relationship (Corsini & Wedding, 2005). To do this, I used a tremendous
amount of empathy and active listening (Rogers, 1951), and I very quickly
brought up the fact that I was of the same race and gender as the men who had
raped him. We processed how difficult it was for him even to sit in the therapy room with a White man, let alone talk about the rape. When he disclosed
the full details of the event to me during our second session, I used congruence, “being willing to express and to be open about any persistent feelings
that exist in the relationship” (Rogers & Sanford, 1984, p. 1379), to tell him
how sad it made me feel that he had experienced such a horrific trauma and
that it was now still affecting him as greatly as it was.
I brought up racism as a potential component of the perpetrators’ actions
before the client discussed it and asked him very directly what he thought about
the role of racism. He agreed that racism played a role, saying that he did not
think those men appreciated him being a proud, high-achieving Middle-Eastern
man right after the 9/11 attacks, and he felt that their actions had been due in
part to misplaced retaliation. At no point did I challenge his beliefs about the
racist nature of the assault or introduce other possible explanations. Instead, I
focused on his emotional reactions in the therapy room while discussing the
event, and I affirmed his view of the event (Rogers, 1951).
As therapy progressed, he was able to expand his view of how the rape had
affected him, not just as a person of Middle-Eastern descent but also as a
man, a veteran, and a husband. I used unconditional positive regard (Rogers,
1986) throughout all parts of our sessions and especially as he discussed his
“shattered masculinity.” He learned to trust me, and our strong interracial
therapeutic relationship became a corrective one. Indeed, humanistic psychology theory has emphasized the use of empathy and genuineness to
replace racial stereotypes with feelings of human relatedness (Raskin &
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Zucconi, 1984). Without a close adherence to a humanistic model, this relationship would not have been as strong as it was, and he likely would not
have made the gains he did. Toward the end of our work together, by his own
decision he was able to tell his wife about the rape, which she responded to in
a very supportive manner. Though at the end he still met the criteria for
PTSD, he was much more functional, could leave his house again, was working, had fewer nightmares and intrusive thoughts, and was learning to trust
his family and friends again.
White Dominance
As shown dramatically in the above clinical example, racism is one of the
most pernicious forms of oppression in that White individuals harm People
of Color and consistently benefit from their marginalized status. One need
only look to statistics: White men are 80% to 90% of tenured university
faculty members, 92% of Forbes 400 CEOs, and 99% of the U.S. senate
(Sue, 2003). In many ways, minorities are excluded from positions of power
such that White becomes the norm, and the White culture is universalized
(Young, 1990). Thompson-Miller and Feagin (2007) have asserted that most
research literature on discrimination diffusely places the responsibility of
oppression on society, when in fact the field should bring to the forefront the
central position of White individuals in developing and maintaining systems
of racism that damage the mental and physical health of People of Color.
These authors argue that “White actors—men, women, and children of all
social classes—are actively causing or generating the racialized injuries or
mental illness that are at issue” (Thompson-Miller & Feagin, 2007, p. 112).
Furthermore, Young (1990) has asserted that where racism exists, so does the
assumption that individuals from oppressed racial groups should serve members of the privileged group. Accordingly, Thompson-Miller and Feagin
(2007) have pointed out the need for research to examine the cognitive processes that enable White individuals to inflict harm on People of Color,
whether consciously or unconsciously.
Discussions of White dominance are a first step in understanding how the
field can motivate White individuals to work actively against racism, especially if White psychologists are to develop a better awareness of how their
own ethnicity plays a central role in their psychotherapy. One particularly
challenging area to examine for White psychologists and White individuals is
their own frequent and often unconscious racial microaggressions (Sue et al.,
2007), which are the verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities that
constitute derogatory racial slights to minorities. White individuals are often
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unaware of the harmful effects of their racial microaggression on People of
Color, or even of the presence of racist beliefs and actions. The Harvard
Implicit Project has spawned numerous studies documenting the implicit racist attitudes and preferences common among White individuals (e.g., Baron
& Banaji, 2006; Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003; Sabin, Nosek,
Greenwald, & Rivera, 2009).
As research has begun to recognize the effects of White racism and microaggressions on People of Color, it has also begun to recognize the effects of
White racism on White individuals themselves. The psychological costs of
racism to Whites include shame, guilt, fear of people of other races, limited
exposure to people of different races and cultures (Spanierman & Heppner,
2004), and lack of a developed racial identity (Croteau, 2002). These constructs are important foci both in the training of White psychologists as well
as in psychotherapy with White clients. Spanierman, Poteat, Beer, and
Armstrong (2006) found that in a sample of 230 White college students,
empathy felt toward people targeted by racism significantly predicted support for equal opportunity policy, whereas guilt did not. These authors have
argued that multicultural training will be more effective if it simultaneously
increases White individuals’ empathy for People of Color and makes White
individuals aware of the costs of racism to themselves. In a related study,
Spanierman, Poteat, Wang, and Oh (2008) found that White empathy, guilt,
and fear mediated the relationships between color-blind racial attitudes and
multicultural competence, as well as between multicultural training and multicultural competence. Taken together, these two studies suggest that helping
White individuals to be more aware of their racial attitudes and to feel more
empathy for individuals from ethnic minority groups may help White individuals become better allies in alleviating racism.
Intersections of Identity
The research literature has only begun to extend the examination of the
effects of race-based traumatic stress to the interactions among race-based
traumatic stress and the multiple oppressive systems affecting People of
Color with additional minority identities. Moradi and Subich (2003) have
argued that the oppressions affecting people with multiple minority identities
uniquely combine to create multiplicative detrimental effects. The various
minority identities and the effects of the corresponding forms of oppression
cannot be fragmented or viewed independently from each other, a holistic
philosophy that stems largely from humanistic psychology. For example,
Maslow (1971) emphasized “the profoundly holistic nature of human nature
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in contradiction to the analytic-atomistic Newtonian approach” (p. ix).
Bryant-Davis (2007) has similarly argued that psychologists must be aware
of intersecting identities exposing people to multiple potential traumas and
forms of oppression. These identities can include social class, sexual orientation, gender, physical and mental ability, mental illness, and religion, among
many others. An especially knotty intersection of racism and multiple minority
identities occurs in the international arena, for example, involving foreignborn U.S. citizens of Color, Muslim and Middle Eastern individuals, Jewish
people, and Blacks in South Africa (Bryant-Davis, 2007).
Moving Beyond Black and White
Most of the dialogue on racism and stress frames the problem as a BlackWhite issue, inadvertently implying that African American individuals are
the primary People of Color affected by the stresses of racism. This emphasis excludes others facing profound and persistent racism, who may identify
as Latino, multiracial, American Indian, Asian American, or other ethnic
minorities. For example, of the many articles on Asian Americans in the
psychology literature over the past several years, a number examine acculturation, ethnic identity, and collectivist worldviews, but very few (e.g., Yoo
& Lee, 2008) directly focus on the racism faced by Asian Americans. To
avoid the reductionistic lumping together of vastly different ethnic minorities
under the term People of Color, empirical research needs to examine the
specific attributes of racism, similar in some ways and very different in others, as experienced by distinct ethnic groups. Notably, Moradi and Risco
(2006) have moved beyond Black-White conceptualizations with their independent examination of mental health and perceived discrimination among
Latino individuals. Their study found that perceived discrimination was
positively correlated with psychological distress, a relationship partially
mediated by personal control, and that perceived discrimination was related
through personal control to lower self-esteem.
Strength-Based Approach
Researchers of racism and stress have spent quite a bit of time documenting
the psychosocial correlates of race-based traumatic stress and of ethnic
minority status in general, rightly emphasizing the impact of oppression
(e.g., Carter, 2007; Meyers, 2009; Sue et al., 2007). Although this type of
work is vital, so too is a more humanistic, strength-based, and self-actualizing
perspective (Rogers, 1951) in which researchers examine the resilience and
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growth that many individuals from ethnic minority groups display in a profoundly racist society. Studying race-based traumatic stress risks viewing
individuals experiencing it as weak, maladjusted, or pathological, a process
that may unfortunately underemphasize the resilience and growth in many
People of Color. Studies of People of Color with high self-actualization,
strong mental health, low internalized racism, and who are leading happy
and fulfilling lives can help shed light on methods to reduce the harmful
effects of racism. Utsey, Giesbrecht, Hook, and Stanard (2008) have incorporated this strength-based approach into their research, finding that in a
sample of 215 African Americans, optimism, ego resilience, and sociofamilial resources buffered race-related distress. One implication of these findings
is that clinicians can encourage African American clients to access in conjunction with therapy other resources, such as churches, cultural groups, and
community leaders.
A Social Justice Approach
for Race-Based Traumatic Stress
In recent years, a social justice movement has emerged in which psychologists
have started to become agents of social change, working to alleviate oppression
through activism and systems-level interventions (Goodman et al., 2004; Vera &
Speight, 2003). This approach moves beyond intrapsychic intervention to address
the interpersonal and systemic origins of racism and race-related stress. For
example, Bryant-Davis (2007) highlights the importance of transforming both
individuals and society to dismantle the systemic sources of racism. This systems philosophy requires an awareness that racism is not actually a problem of
ethnic minorities, but instead a problem of the dominant White majority. For
this reason, White individuals must take active roles in creating social change,
as well as change within themselves. Humanistic psychologists in particular
must become sensitive to and work against the effects or racism at the micro
(individual) level, meso (organization and community) level, and macro (social
systems and public policy) level (Goodman et al., 2004).
At the micro level, humanistic psychologists must first examine their own
racism and then incorporate social justice into clinical work by helping
People of Color examine the systemic origins of many of their problems, a
process that avoids pathologizing normal struggles with racism. This type of
oppression-sensitive psychotherapy can help clients examine the variegated
impact of discrimination, prejudice, and violence on their lives, with a key
goal to empower them to work against the oppressions they face (Szymanski,
2005). Humanistic psychologists can also work at the forefront of designing
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individual-level interventions to increase White individuals’ awareness of
how their own experiences, beliefs, and values may influence their interactions with and views of People of Color (Griffith et al., 2007).
At the meso level, humanistic psychologists can work to reduce racism by
leading therapy or consciousness-raising groups, speaking out within organizations against racist policies, and encouraging clients to join prosocial organizations (Goodman et al., 2004). They can also engage in antiracist
community organizing, which often involves a four-stage process (Griffith
et al., 2007). In the first phase, assessment, humanistic psychologists can
have one-on-one conversations guided by humanistic principles with community members and leaders to deepen relationships and identify racial
issues affecting a community. The second phase, research, involves analyzing the ways that power and structural racism operate within the community
and identifying potential causes and solutions. In the third phase, action,
humanistic psychologists can build multiracial partnerships, exercise power
created through organizing, gain support from community leaders, and implement the intervention. And the fourth phase, reflection, involves analyzing
the effectiveness of the intervention over time.
At the macro level, humanistic psychologists can work at the forefront of
movements to change oppressive laws and institutions that disproportionately
affect minorities. Fassinger and Gallor (2006) have even suggested that psychology move from a scientist-practitioner model to a scientist-practitioneradvocate model. In this effort, it is vital that the findings from psychological
research on racism actually reach policy makers. Psychologists must illustrate
to key elected officials and organizational leaders that addressing racism is
congruent with their values and goals (Griffith et al., 2007). But advocacy and
science are not the same thing, and when the line between science and advocacy blurs, bias creeps in, and agendas dictate the presentation of data. Clear
and unbiased science must inform advocacy (Shiller, 2007), and from that
crucial value, researchers should advocate as far as their data will allow.
One of the prime examples of systems interventions simultaneously targeting micro, meso, and marco levels is the work of Psychologists for Social
Responsibility (PsySR), a “non-profit organization that applies psychological
knowledge and expertise to promote peace, social justice, human rights, and
sustainability” (Psychologists for Social Responsibility, 2011). The organization was developed in 1982 and has had a long tradition of attempting to
transform social institutions in order to recognize and reduce the racial inequities and racism embedded within them. PsySR’s Program on Social Health,
Justice, and Well-Being specifically applies psychological principles to challenge sources of poverty, prejudice, discrimination, and inequality.
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Another example of systemic interventions targeting multiple societal
levels is the work of Dismantling Racism Works (DRW), a collaborative of
trainers and consultants who host workshops, programs, and organizational consultations “designed to help leaders and organizations who want
to proactively understand and address racism, both in the organization and
in the community where the organization is working” (DRW, 2011). Their
programs often involve an organizational assessment to help understand
racism within an organization, an analysis of the organization’s stage of
development in becoming an antiracist organization, development of a
plan for change, workshops on racism awareness, and follow-up consultation to evaluate the organization’s progress in reaching its antiracism
goals. DRW has successfully implemented workshops in many diverse settings, including county health departments, governmental agencies, universities, shelters (DRW, 2011), and health care settings (Griffith et al.,
2007), among others.
Conclusion and Future Directions
It is vital for humanistic psychologists to develop a deeper awareness of how
much potential they have to address the effects of racism at all societal levels,
as well as to contribute to scholarly dialogues on racism and social justice.
Indeed, this would require that humanistic psychology embrace its fundamental values of acceptance, personal freedom, full self-expression and functioning, autonomy, and self-actualization (Bugental, 1963). Though these
dialogues on humanistic psychology’s potential are beginning (e.g.,
MacDougall, 2002), they are still in their infancy. Ripe areas for future
humanistic research and intervention include constructs such as White dominance, internalized racism, the effects of racism in multiple minority groups,
intersecting forms of oppression, and personality traits that buffer the psychosocial and health effects of racism, among others. Racism and social
justice issues could very well become a next major frontier in humanistic
psychology as humanistic psychologists better learn how to recognize and
target racism at the systems and community levels, preventing the psychosocial and health effects of racism before they occur. As Sydney Jourard has
said, the humanistic movement in psychology emerged in part because “psychology lacked imagination and needed more dreamers” (as cited in
DeCarvalho, 1990, p. 27). If humanistic psychology truly stays close to its
core values, then humanistic psychologists must do more than talk and dream
about a society in which racism does not hamper self-actualization: they
must learn to work actively toward it.
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Perrin
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Bio
Paul B. Perrin is an assistant professor of psychology
at Virginia Commonwealth University, and he received
his PhD in counseling psychology from the University
of Florida. He researches multicultural health psychology, and his primary career goal is to use psychology
as a vehicle to work toward social justice against different forms of oppression such as racism, heterosexism,
and sexism as they manifest themselves in various
social systems, especially within the health care system. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on
multicultural and community psychology, health psychology, psychopathology, and research methods.
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