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Humanistic Psychology's Social Justice Philosophy: Systemically Treating The Psychosocial and Health Effects of Racism
Humanistic Psychology's Social Justice Philosophy: Systemically Treating The Psychosocial and Health Effects of Racism
Humanistic Psychology's Social Justice Philosophy: Systemically Treating The Psychosocial and Health Effects of Racism
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 contrib-
ute 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 interven-
tions 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 interac-
tions 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: pperrin@vcu.edu
Perrin 53
Keywords
racism, social justice, systems intervention
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 psy-
chologists 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 eth-
nic 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.
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 col-
lapse 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 neigh-
borhood (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 pre-
dicted 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 experi-
ences 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 function-
ing 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 con-
ditions 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), nonadher-
ence to cancer screenings among Latino women (Facione & Facione, 2007),
56 Journal of Humanistic Psychology 53(1)
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 inter-
nalized 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 com-
ponent 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 con-
tinually re-oppresses them. Accordingly, Speight (2007) has asserted that rac-
ism’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 con-
struct 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.
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 cor-
relates of racism as “race-based traumatic stress.” On the other hand, Bryant-
Davis (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. Race-
based traumatic stress may indeed have complications that produce multipli-
cative 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).
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 night-
mares 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 ther-
apy 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 congru-
ence, “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 psy-
chology theory has emphasized the use of empathy and genuineness to
replace racial stereotypes with feelings of human relatedness (Raskin &
Perrin 59
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 mem-
bers of the privileged group. Accordingly, Thompson-Miller and Feagin
(2007) have pointed out the need for research to examine the cognitive pro-
cesses 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, espe-
cially 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
60 Journal of Humanistic Psychology 53(1)
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
Perrin 61
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
62 Journal of Humanistic Psychology 53(1)
growth that many individuals from ethnic minority groups display in a pro-
foundly 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 incor-
porated this strength-based approach into their research, finding that in a
sample of 215 African Americans, optimism, ego resilience, and sociofamil-
ial resources buffered race-related distress. One implication of these findings
is that clinicians can encourage African American clients to access in con-
junction with therapy other resources, such as churches, cultural groups, and
community leaders.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication 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 psychol-
ogy, and his primary career goal is to use psychology
as a vehicle to work toward social justice against differ-
ent forms of oppression such as racism, heterosexism,
and sexism as they manifest themselves in various
social systems, especially within the health care sys-
tem. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on
multicultural and community psychology, health psy-
chology, psychopathology, and research methods.