Allies for Life? Lessons From White Scholars of Multicultural Psychology

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative investigation conducted to assess how White multicultural scholars have responded to critical questions raised in the 1990s about their roles and responsibilities in multicultural psychology. We used the consensual qualitative research method to analyze semistructured interview data from 12 leading White scholars of multicultural psychology. Findings revealed 10 domains with nuanced categories within each. Key themes addressed: (a) antecedents of participants' interest and commitments to multicultural theory and research, (b) how participants understood Whiteness broadly, and how it influenced their multicultural scholarship specifically, (c) rewards and challenges of conducting multicultural research, and (d) recommendations for future White counseling psychologists. Implications for training and future research are provided.

The White Racial Affect Scale (WRAS): A Measure of White Guilt, Shame, and Negation

“…The WRAS could be used in intergroup dialogue settings (Miles et al, 2015) to examine how People Of Color perceive and experience White people who score differently on various WRAS dimensions. Accordingly, the WRAS may be used ultimately to center People Of Color’s experiences of White racial emotions in the interest of promoting responsible allyship (Grzanka, Adler, & Blazer, 2015; Spanierman, Poteat, Whittaker, Schlosser, & Avalos, 2017). The WRAS might help clinicians identify and intervene in White racial emotions that are obscuring understandings of racial conflict or inhibiting White clients’ growth and development around racial issues (e.g., Finn, Fischer, & Handler, 2012).…”

White Supremacy and Counseling Psychology: A Critical–Conceptual Framework

“…Ally behaviors and actions toward specific marginalized and oppressed groups such as LGBTQ+ people have been widely studied (e.g., Asta & Vacha-Haase, 2013;Grzanka, Adler, & Blazer, 2015), but the scholarship on White antiracist allies has only recently appeared in the psychological literature (e.g., Atkins et al, 2017;Smith & Redington, 2010;Spanierman et al, 2017;Spanierman & Smith, 2017a, 2017bSue, 2017). Research on White antiracist allies often explores how People and Communities of Color conceptualize allyship.…”

“…Spanierman and Smith (2017a), for example, drew on a broad literature to underscore the potential pitfalls of White allyship, including paternalism (i.e., White savior dynamics), superficiality (i.e., rhetoric vs. action), overidentification (i.e., "my sexism is the same as your racism"), and hijacking (i.e., recentering Whiteness in social transformation). White allies become harmful when they reinforce systems of oppression instead of actively fighting the systems they benefit from, using their Whiteness to challenge the status quo and other White people (Edwards, 2006;Spanierman et al, 2017;Spanierman & Smith, 2017a). "White savior syndrome" where White people 'save' People of Color (Cammarota, 2011, p. 242) is particularly problematic because the focus of the interaction for White people is on saving People of Color as opposed to working alongside People of Color to challenge oppressive systems and White supremacy.…”

“…A generation (or more) of psychologists raised on the insights of critical race theory (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995;Delgado & Stefancic, 2010) and trained in the principles of multicultural competencies sought to challenge often-invisible forms of racism perpetuated in everyday social interactions by ignorant but well-meaning non-Latinx White people (Neville, Awad, Brooks, Flores, & Bluemel, 2013). Many of us, particularly White antiracist allies (Spanierman, Poteat, Whittaker, Schlosser, & Arévalo Avalos, 2017;Spanierman & Smith, 2017a), operated under the guiding assumption that microaggressions and nonconscious prejudice were the social justice challenges of our time and the responsibility of White people to combat through scholarship, teaching, and activism.…”

Counseling Psychology and the Amelioration of Oppression: Translating Our Knowledge Into Action

“…More recent publications in TCP have pushed the field further by examining cultural empowerment and social justice advocacy (Steinfeldt et al, 2012); Ethnic Minority Psychological Association (EMPA) perspectives (Delgado-Romero, Forrest, & Lau, 2012;Gray, Carter, LaFromboise, & Bigfoot, 2012;Miville et al, 2017;Obasi, Speight, Rowe, Clark, & Turner-Essel, 2012), critical Whiteness (Chao, Wei, Spanierman, Longo, & Northart, 2014;Spanierman, Poteat, Whittaker, Schlosser, & Arévalo Avalos, 2017); Islamophobia (Bhattacharyya, Ashby, & Goodman 2014); LGBT concerns (DeBlaere, Brewster, Sarkees, & Moradi, 2010;Elder, Morrow, & Brooks, 2015;Rostosky & Riggle, 2011;Tebbe & Budge, 2016); and religion (Ahluwalia & Alimchandani, 2013;Cornish, Wade, Tucker, & Post, 2014). Over the years, TCP has provided a space for scholars to operationalize, define, test, and enhance multicultural theory and practice, and it has done so by intentionally inviting this work through special issues and forums, and by welcoming a broad range of methodologies and constructs.…”