4 What drives your notions of right and wrong? You might draw upon a story about yourself that highlights your sense of right and wrong behavior. Tell the story—what actually happened—and describe how you thought about right and wrong. You might want to discuss how the story would have gone if a similar situation arose in a different context, and how and why you might behave differently.
5 In terms of your social identities, how similar are your needs, motivations, values, and virtues to those of other members of the cultures to which you belong? Here, you can think broadly about culture. Mitch, for example, belongs to the cultures of trumpet players, contact lens wearers, and full professors.
6 What experiences have you had with members of cultures to which you do not belong and their notions of right and wrong? What feelings did you have about those experiences and about the members of those other cultures?
7 At this stage in your professional journey, what would you consider examples of right and wrong professional behavior?
8 Where do your ideas of right and wrong professional behavior come from?
9 How might your motivations, values, virtues, and social identities that you wrote about in questions 1–3 influence your decisions about right and wrong professional behavior?
10 As you’ve answered the preceding questions, what thoughts and feelings are stirred in you? How do your journal entries about needs, motivations, and values sound now as you re-read them?
What you’ve written is the beginning of a rough draft of your autobiography. Your autobiography, like your growth and development as a professional, will never be finished; your experiences, thoughts, and perspectives will change over time. So keep this portion of your journal accessible, as you will have occasion to refer back to it, reconceptualize it, and revise it many times.
2 Basics of Awareness Privilege, Discrimination, Oppression, and Social Justice
Social awareness, which includes issues of privilege, discrimination, oppression, and social justice, permeates many of the rooms in our mansion, and we need to create light around these issues to traverse the spiral staircase. Most of us have strong emotional reactions to literature, conversations, and media presentations that highlight such issues as racism, discrimination, and White supremacy. These emotions will vary depending on our social identities, socialization, experiences, and differences in worldview. Sue et al. (2019) remind us that being aware of our clients’ identities and their worldviews is critical, but even more critical is being aware of our own reactions to differing worldviews and issues of privilege, racism, discrimination, and oppression.
We are here to join you. As part of that, we realize that we need to be clear about our own potential tripping points. As two White, able-bodied, middle income, educated people who have our own biases, assumptions, and other points of privilege, we realize that we might be more likely to not see or call out all the possible tripping points along the way; however, we are committed to address what we do know and further the dialogue with you as we climb.
Food for Thought: Your Favorite and Not-So-Favorite Client
Clients have different identities and descriptors (e.g., tall, short, female, male, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, White, heterosexual, LGBTQ, homeless, rich, able-bodied, wheelchair user, motivated, unmotivated, clean, dirty, attractive, unattractive, old, young, genteel, foul-mouthed, thin, obese, urban, rural, liberal, conservative, communist, socialist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, orthodox, atheist, truck-driver, rock star, psychotherapist). Add whatever other identities and descriptors that come to mind. Picture (based on identities and descriptors) the “perfect” client from your view. List the emotions/feelings you have as you anticipate being in a session with this person. What’s in your core that prompts these emotions?
Next, picture your least favorite client (again based on identities and descriptors). Once again, list all the emotions/feelings you might have as you anticipate seeing this person. What’s prompted them from your core? Compare your lists of emotions and what motivated them. These emotions are a critical part of our experience with clients. If we let them, they can inform us about our prejudices, biases, preferences, and values.
Privilege
We begin this section with a story by Sharon:
I want to share with you some of my journey of coming to see my privilege (for an extended version of this story, see Anderson, 2018), which has been a very important part of my own uncovering and exploring my core and developing my professional ethical identity. I share this story to highlight several features and tripping points of ascending my own spiral staircase: First, becoming aware of one’s point(s) of privilege can be uncomfortable. Second, being willing to have what I call “difficult dialogues” with individuals different from ourselves about points of privilege, discrimination, and oppression is necessary. These dialogues help reveal values and motivations in our core. Third, growing awareness in the area of privilege, oppression, and discrimination is a journey that never ends—it is an ongoing process. Allowing our inner selves to let down the defenses and see privilege, oppression, and discrimination in a subjective way (including ourselves in the mix) is an important first step in the process. Fourth, awareness is only the beginning—action to address issues of discrimination and oppression needs to come next.
Context:
My family of origin is of White European descent, Christian, lower-middle class, and farmers/ranchers. I was raised in a mostly all-White, low- to middle-income, rural community. The country church I attended was all White and the K-12 school I attended was mostly White with only a handful of students and one staff member—the janitor—who identified as Mexican. My worldview was built on what I knew and had experienced as a White, Christian, heterosexual, non-disabled, lower-middle-class female.
My world and experiences expanded greatly through a position with federally funded programs (e.g., Upward Bound) after obtaining my master’s. I experienced disruptions of my socialization during those seven years due to the population we served and my colleagues of color. My doctoral experience brought more opportunities for disruption by way of the literature I read, friendships I forged, and a faculty member of color. However, my blindness to White privilege was deep in my core. Although I don’t recall ever hearing my parents or other adult family members make overt derogatory remarks about people of color, I also don’t recall any discussions about inequality, discrimination, oppression, or privilege. My family’s view on success and hard work was based on the Protestant work ethic and the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” notion. I believed this, too.
White privilege revealed:
Two events occurred that disrupted my blindness to White privilege. The first event, during my doctoral program, planted an important seed for the second event, a defining moment that occurred some years later. Allow me to describe them:
A seed planted: A friend, who identifies as an African-American female and who worked with me in Upward Bound, called me one night and told me about a recent experience she had had at a fast-food restaurant. My friend was in the front of the line, ready to order her food. “I am standing right there ready to order and the employee, a White woman, looked right past me and asked this person who was right behind me and who just happened to be White, ‘May I help you?’ …. She just ignored me—like I wasn’t even there.” My friend was hurt and angry, and clearly believed the act was discriminatory and oppressive.
Although I heard the anger and hurt in my friend’s voice, I remember having a difficult time accepting her explanation of the event. I remembered thinking (but not saying), “I’m sure you’re mistaken. People aren’t that rude. I’ll bet the employee just thought you were still deciding on your order and wanted to keep the line moving.”
Defining