What is pernicious is that the physical boundaries erected between the two territories—the old and new worlds/territories—were supposedly derived from irrefutable scientific evidence—namely, natural anthropological observation and the manipulation of variables through laboratory experiments that demonstrated stark group differences. In his theorization of the psychology of oppression, Bulhan (1990) provided a list of prominent philosophers and psychologists (e.g., David Hume, Thomas Malthus, Francis Galton, Lewis Terman) who, at one point or another, subscribed to and publicly endorsed biological/genetic or cultural discourses/explanations of difference. By compiling the list, Bulhan illustrated how enthralled and deeply invested early theorists and psychologists were in calcifying beliefs that these differences in technological development, for instance, were attributable to biological racial determinism, such as skull shape and size as proxies for intelligence or social deviance, or antiquated and naive sociocultural practices (e.g., correspondence/complementarity/harmony with nature).
Bulhan (1990) pushed the reader to comprehend how these figures and the monumental significance ascribed to their ideas (e.g., Charles Darwin’s doctrine of survival of the fittest, Galton’s politics of sterilization of the unfit, the Malthusian principle of famine and drought as solutions to global oversaturation/overpopulation of inferior people) helped substantiate a Manichean framework that structured the project of modernity (Castro-Gómez & Martin, 2002). The Old World (e.g., Africa as the Dark Continent) was considered a wild, savage, and unbridled space occupied by inadequate/adolescent and inferior beings; conversely, the New World represented refinement, sophistication, and immeasurable opportunities for expansion, prosperity, and wealth accumulation for those deemed acceptable based on Eurocentric standards of decorum, civility, and social life (Castro-Gómez & Martin, 2002; Stanfield, 1985). Promoting this Manichean dichotomy/ doctrine—the irreconcilable differences between the social and cultural practices of the Indigenous, the African, and other peoples of color (e.g., old, primitive, inferior world) and the sociocultural mores of European imperial powers—was of the utmost importance in the formation of the social sciences, psychology notwithstanding (Guthrie, 2004).
In addition, decolonial and postcolonial theories of the 1960s drew parallels between colonial domination that characterized the project of modernity, initiated with Christopher Columbus’s nautical exploit in 1492 (Clarke, 1998), and newer forms of surveillance, subordination, and oppression that were implemented as economic innovation and urbanization bourgeoned in this country (e.g., housing segregation and the confinement of Black people to urban ghettos during early American urban industrialization). For historians of this ilk, it is vital to fully comprehend how European enlightenment—in particular, the emphasis placed on reason and rational thinking as quintessential characteristics of human beings, and in particular, white men (e.g., autonomous and self-governed, individuated, competitive, ruggedly individual, and having a strong work ethic)—helped codify categories and taxonomies of individual and social group difference and social policies that remain salient to this day (e.g., residential and housing segregation).
Quintessential characteristics of European American culture and behavior have been so systematically integrated into psychological nomenclature (e.g., normalcy, abnormality, deviant behavior, approved therapeutic practices) that it is rare when we consider the adverse implications this hegemonic imposition of European American culture has had on the cultural other. As Stanfield (1985) wrote, “Economics, psychology, and sociology were dominated by middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males who sought to define and explain the human problems produced by the changing socio-economic and political order of their ethnic-based cognition” (pp. 404–405). Grier (2004) corroborated the assertion that psychological nomenclature has been an important and indispensable handmaiden in maintaining the status quo by recreating racial stratification, in particular during critical and socially contentious historical periods in this country (e.g., World War I, European immigration, Black northern migration), when he stated the following:
Psychological tests were devised and interpreted to demonstrate that not only were Blacks intellectually inferior to Europeans but that they were particularly suited to perform manual labor, as if this pseudoscience had as its purpose providing a scientific basis for slavery and peonage. (p. xii)
A fundamental starting point in reimagining the helping profession, then, requires appreciating how European standards and whiteness are veiled and universalized throughout the counseling profession (Cushman, 1996; Katz, 1985; Marsella, 2015). This reimagining is a process that requires a critical awareness not only of the innocuous and systemic presence of white supremacy within the field of counseling but also of how the white imagination, invested in maintaining the Manichean dialect, is impervious to rhetoric and pedagogical interventions (e.g., antiracist training, unconscious bias training; Wilderson, 2010).
Part of this interrogation means revealing how the hegemony of Western thought was operationalized in counseling and psychology’s fundamental ideological bedrock to naturalize and then codify common sense about the non-beingness of Blackness and how the Black stands outside of humanity (Guthrie, 2004). As countless literary critics and social scientists have pointed out, many of the espoused values of the United States (e.g., meritocracy) came by drawing a definitive line of demarcation between the formerly enslaved Black subject and the disenfranchised white settler. This understanding is indispensable to our departure from the colonial and imperialistic origins of oppression and the helping professions.
Articulating Departures From the Colonial Counseling Canon
Many analyses of European enlightenment often begin by critiquing the veracity of objective claims to knowledge construction about categories and discourses of social difference derived from Western episteme. This critique is important because Western episteme was crucial in justifying the violence that constructed the New World. This is important because these social categories (Black/non-Black) are the consequence of colonialism and power dynamics in this country rather than objective truths obtained through the institutionalized methods of Western empirical science. As Smith (2015) astutely pointed out, frameworks of multiculturalism (e.g., respect for difference and diversity that do not undertake analyses of structural position seriously) and liberal ideas of social justice, which claim to ameliorate forms of cultural and social exclusion Black people encounter, are often rooted in deficit-based social reform programs predicated on the notion of preexisting forms of Black cultural pathology (e.g., mentoring programs, social-emotional learning, standards of mind-sets and behavior).
When contemplating a departure from the counseling canon, we would be remiss not to ponder the words of James Baldwin (1962): “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (p. T11). The school counseling profession, a microcosm of America and broadly the Western world, perpetually avoids reckoning with its role in maintaining systemic racism. This avoidance creates incongruence between avowed values and tangible actions across the profession that is observed systemically and individually. For Black counselor educators who embody a critical standpoint, navigating incongruent landscapes in various spaces creates an internal twoness that illuminates the inconsistencies within oneself and throughout the profession (Du Bois, 1903/2015). Sometimes, in an attempt to reconcile these feelings while in this struggle, the desire to influence change within inherently racist spaces (i.e., counseling, higher education, K–12 schools; Arredondo et al., 2020; Watkins, 2001; Wilder, 2013) becomes paramount. This existential meaningless is compounded by the unspoken expectation that we rely on the very scientific discourses that problematized Blackness to achieve self-affirmation, professional acceptance, or professional recognition.
This conundrum is typified in Audre Lorde’s (1984) insightful articulation “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (p. 110). Although Lorde’s aspiration to deconstruct the master’s house resonates, feeling disempowerment to intervene in interrupting the structural nature of anti-Blackness is disheartening. Holding this awareness while attempting to create a community where future school counselors can authentically grapple with how they perceive themselves and the history of the profession represents a daunting challenge (Singh et al., 2010). To dismantle racism in the