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Psychologically Correct Race Baiting? Kenneth R. Thomas, Robert E. Wubbolding, and Morris L. Jackson Whiteness and ethnocentric monoculturalism are powerful and entrenched determinants of worldview. Because they are invisible and operate outside the level of conscious awareness, they can be detrimental to people of color, women, and other marginalized groups in society. Both define a reality that gives advantages to white Euro-American males while disadvantaging others. Although most Americans believe in equality and fairness, the inability to deconstruct these 2 concepts allows society to continue unjust actions and arrangements toward minority groups. Making the “invisible” visible is the major challenge to liberating individuals and society from the continued oppression of others. —Derald Wing Sue1 he American Psychological Association (APA) recently conferred one of its most prestigious awards on Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. for his, “outstanding contributions to multicultural issues in psychology.” Although we have no problem with APA recognizing Dr. Sue for his long and distinguished career as a counseling psychologist who has focused on multicultural issues, we take considerable exception to the remarks he made in accepting the award.2 Those remarks were, quite frankly, among the most racially biased we have ever seen in the professional psychology literature. Regrettably, Sue’s article reads less like an article derived from psychological research and more like a litany of personally perceived slights that he and other people of color have received living in America. He accused white people of committing all sorts of unconscious indignities toward people of color and possessing what he called unearned “White privilege” (763). He did not spell out what whites would need to do to earn this “privilege,” but founding a nation that continues to attract millions of immigrants from all over the world was certainly not acknowledged
T
Kenneth R. Thomas is professor emeritus in the department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, University of Wisconsin, 432 North Murray St., Madison, WI 53706–1496;
[email protected]. His coauthors on this paper are Robert E. Wubbolding of the Center for Reality Therapy, Cincinnati, OH, and Morris L. Jackson, of American University, Washington, D.C.
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as a significant achievement. In fact, the history of the United States, according to Sue, is so replete with racial bias that one wonders why any non-white person could possibly want to live here, especially if she or he had to endure the hardships and risks of entering the country illegally. Sue’s article is so rife with exaggerations, distortions, and inaccuracies that space permits only a partial dissection of his assertions. He began by complimenting APA for the “historic step” it took in adopting the Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change in Psychology.3 These guidelines were substantially based upon the Multicultural Counseling Competencies, which were developed under the auspices of the Association of Multicultural Counseling and Development.4 Prior to APA’s adoption of the Guidelines, a comprehensive critique of the Multicultural Counseling Competencies appeared in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling, which revealed a number of theoretical flaws and potential clinical pitfalls if the Competencies were implemented.5 Later, in 2004, a series of six articles was also published in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling on both sides of the multicultural counseling competencies’ issue.6 This series of articles is notable because it is extremely rare in the multicultural literature for dissenting opinions to be published. Stated bluntly, advocates of multiculturalism, ironically, are less likely than most psychologists to tolerate intellectual diversity. In summarizing their reservations about the Competencies, Thomas and Weinrach concluded that it was unfortunate that professional associations such as APA, which emphasize and promote scientific methodology, would adopt or endorse a set of multicultural guidelines or competencies without providing a stronger research base for them.7 Sue apparently has no such reservations. After criticizing psychologists for not including a sufficient multicultural perspective in their practice, education, research, and training, Sue accused his psychology colleagues of being “trapped in a Euro-American worldview that only allows them to see the world from one perspective” (762). Evidently, Dr. Sue and all other people of color have a more enlightened worldview than white psychologists and they have superior empathy skills, as well. No research evidence, of course, was presented to support these contentions. Next, Sue talked about the evils of viewing people from a “color-blind” perspective. His point, amazingly, was that unfair treatment of minorities is promoted if the importance of race is de-emphasized (e.g., when a state enacts a race information ban or if a white person tries to see another person as a person instead of as a member of a particular race). Although one might agree with Sue’s contention that such “color-blindness” could mask disparities in terms of quality of services and education provided to people with different ethnic or racial backgrounds, rather few options are then available to the white person who is trying to overcome whatever racial biases she or he might have. That is, one is damned regardless of whether he or she makes distinctions between people of different races or treats them all the same.
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One of the arguments offered by Sue in support of his white privilege concept related to the number of white males holding powerful positions in American society. For example, he stated (763) that white males hold 80 percent of tenured positions in higher education. These data were presented as proof that the “playing field” is not level, because white males constitute only 33 percent of the population. Even assuming that Sue’s numbers are correct, it hardly seems fair to assume that for the past 40 years or so, the pool of individuals wishing to be, or qualified to be, professors would coincide with current demographic data. That is, the career aspirations and expectations for women have changed significantly during the past 40 years, the positive effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act are still being realized, and it often takes a generation or two for immigrant families to attain the social and educational status of individuals who have been in this country for many years. Besides, one could find a perfect correlation between being a white male and having tenured professor status and still not he able to prove statistically that discrimination, white privilege, or an uneven playing field had anything whatsoever to do with causing the findings. Using such statistics to impugn the behavior of white Americans is not only poor science; it is disingenuous as well. Throughout his article, Sue contended that Western culture is biased because it assumes that many of its values are, in fact, superior. Surely, Sue is not implying that practices such as the slavery in many third-world countries, the outrageous treatment of women in Arab countries, the wide-spread childhood prostitution and pedophilia in Southeast Asia, the mutilation of women’s genitals in parts of Africa, the forced abortions in China, or the wife burning in India reflect values that are morally equivalent or superior to those practiced in the West. The concept that all cultural values have equal status is simply untenable. Sue further accused white people of perpetuating the illusion of fairness; possessing ethnocentric monoculturalism; believing in superiority, “choseness,” and entitlement; and believing in the inferiority of other groups (764–65). All of these charges are offered as though white people constitute a homogeneous, racially biased, and unfairly privileged group with few within-group differences. To propose such universality among white people suggests an extremely limited life experience. It also constitutes what can only be labeled as racial bias, since it would be grossly inappropriate, if not professionally unethical, for a white psychologist to level such charges against members of any other race. Although one might forgive Sue for using a partisan political example during an election year, his use of President Bush, based upon a quote attributed to Molly Ivins, to debunk the “myths” of meritocracy, equal opportunity, and fair treatment is an unfortunate example of how many members of the multicultural movement have politicized the psychology profession (767). Disregarding whether President Bush’s educational background and corporate and governmental managerial experience qualified him for the presidency,
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Molly Ivins is hardly an unbiased source of political information, and she is certainly not a credible fount of psychological insights. That said, perhaps Sue has forgotten that two of the country’s last four presidents, Reagan and Clinton, came from exceptionally poor socioeconomic backgrounds. One of the real questions that needs to be addressed is “Who speaks for the diversity, cross-cultural, or multicultural movement?” Sue has clearly articulated his point-of-view, which has its own inherent bias. However, his monolithic perspective on the role of race in American society is not representative of the diversity within the Asian American population: nor does he speak for many scholarly African Americans, white Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans who have contributed to this specialty for decades. The days are over when a single minority group member can speak for the whole group. Also, regardless of what whites have done in the history of the United States, it is morally inappropriate to indict the whole race for the sins of their forebears. Our overall assessment of Sue’s statement is that he has identified with the aggressor.8 Instead of acknowledging the significant progress that has been made in the United States in the area of equal opportunity, he has chosen to attack the very people who created a context, despite its flaws, where upward mobility is more possible than anywhere else on Earth. Despite Sue’s negative assessment, the United States is the most successful multicultural, liberated, opportunity driven society the world has ever seen. Moreover, it hasn’t gotten that way because people whine about injustices; it has gotten that way because ambitious and enterprising people, both minorities and non-minorities, have seen opportunities and taken advantage of them. What is really needed to improve the status of underachieving minorities is to build on opportunities and personal responsibility, and to transform the conventional multicultural worldview from oppression to opportunity. When the multiculturalists criticize present-day American culture, they compare it to some utopian society that doesn’t exist and never will exist. Race baiting is a dangerous and inappropriate activity regardless of who is doing the fishing. Notes 1.
2. 3. 4.
Derald Wing Sue, “Whiteness and Ethnocentric Monoculturalism: Making the ‘Invisible’ Visible,” American Psychologist, 59 (November 2004): 761–69. This quotation is the précis of a print version of his speech accepting an APA award for Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology, which Sue had delivered at the APA’s 112th annual meeting in 2004 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ibid. Further references to this article will be cited with parenthetical page numbers in the text. American Psychological Association, “Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists,” American Psychologist, 58 (2003): 377–402. P. Arredondo, T. Toporek, S. Brown, J. Jones, D.C. Locke, J. Sanchez, and H. Stadler, Operationalization of the Multicultural Counseling Competencies (Alexandria, VA: Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development, 1996).
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5. 6.
7. 8.
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S.G. Weinrach and Kenneth R. Thomas, “A Critical Analysis of the Multicultural Counseling Competencies: Implications for the Practice of Mental Health Counseling,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 24 (2002): 20–35. The series comprised the following articles: P. Arredondo and R. Toporek, “Multicultural Counseling Competencies=Ethical Practice,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26 (2004): 44–55; H.L.K Coleman, “Multicultural Counseling Competencies in a Pluralistic Society,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26, (2004): 56–66; C.H. Patterson, “Do We Need Multicultural Counseling Competencies?” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26 (2004): 67–73; Kenneth R. Thomas and S.G. Weinrach, “Mental Health Counseling and the AMCD Multicultural Counseling Competencies: A Civil Debate” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26 (2004): 41–43; C.E. Vontress and M.L. Jackson, “Reactions to the Multicultural Counseling Competencies Debate,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26 (2004): 74–80; S.G. Weinrach and Kenneth R. Thomas, “The AMCD Multicultural Counseling Competencies: A Critically Flawed Initiative,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26 (2004): 81–93. Thomas and Weinrach, “Mental Health Counseling and the AMCD Multicultural Counseling Competencies.” A. Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (New York: International Universities Press, 1936).
The NAS has assembled a group of distinguished scholars and invited them to comment occasionally on breaking developments in higher education. We have been posting their brief articles as we receive them in our new internet publication—the NAS Online Forum. Access to this web log is open to all at http://www.nas.org/ forum.html.
