Culturally Diverse Mental Health

The Challenges of Research and Resistance

Jeffery Scott Mio, Gayle Y. Iwamasa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317794745
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

First published in 2003. The most comprehensive book on the topic of multicultural mental health, Culturally Diverse Mental Health addresses the challenge of counseling diverse populations including multiracial, homosexual, geriatric, and disabled individuals. Because many clients of diverse backgrounds have entered therapy in the last two decades, old models of treatment based on the mainstream majority no longer apply. This book compiles the latest research on a widely diverse number of populations and addresses the issue of resistance to the need to modify old practices to apply to these populations.

Section 1

Resistance to Multicultural Psychology

As most of us who teach multicultural issues know, this topic stirs up issues that are not present when we teach other topics in psychology, such as social psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, or physiological psychology. These other topics seem to stir up feelings of wonder or discovery about how psychologists conceive of these topics. However, multicultural psychology often challenges people’s fundamental worldviews, and this challenge stirs up feelings of resistance and defensiveness. The first section of this book addresses this resistance.

In Mio’s chapter, resistance to multiculturalism is conceived as a type of modern form of racism. Traditional racism was overt and sometimes even proudly practiced in some areas of the country. Modern forms of racism are subtle, covert, and often unconscious. Mio uses a cognitive dissonance perspective to both understand modern forms of racism and also address the resistance coming from these forms of racism.

D’Andrea’s chapter reports on his longitudinal study examining White resistance to multiculturalism across a wide range of settings. He has conversed with or observed over 1,500 White individuals in settings such as faculty meetings, professional conferences, White supremacy rallies, and diners. He has categorized these individuals into having five types of dispositions: Affective–Impulsive Disposition, Rational Disposition, Liberal Disposition, Principled Disposition, and Principled Activistic Disposition. D’Andrea offers intervention strategies for individuals with each of these forms of disposition.

McDonald and Chaney see resistance against including issues dealing with American Indians as a modern form of the “Indian Problem.” Historically, the White European-American culture attempted to wipe out American Indians through direct genocide and then through policies designed to eliminate traditional cultural practices. They see resistance to American Indian issues as stemming from ethnocentrism, where the worldview of the White culture does not understand the worldview of American Indians. This clash of worldviews resulted in justification of the Indian Reservation system and boarding schools through the religiously endowed Manifest Destiny doctrine. Modern forms of this ethnocentric view have been the society’s offensive use of sports teams using American-Indian nicknames and a refusal to see these as offensive, and through psychology’s complicity in the superiority of Whites through application of scientific racism.

Suyemoto and Dimas address issues of multicultural individuals and resistance both coming from the majority culture and also ethnic minority cultures. From a broader perspective, despite the fact that we are in an era of sensitivity to issues of diversity, only 28 articles published in APA journals and APA division-sponsored journals in the last 5 years have dealt with multicultural individuals. This represents only 0.13% of all such articles published. Exclusion of multicultural issues by the majority group results from issues related to a dilution of a “pure race” ideology, as evidenced by antimiscegenation laws that were in existence even as late as last year. Resistance from ethnic minority groups results from challenges to their conception of in-group versus out-group members and also a diminution of political power.

Arredondo suggests that because of the political nature of diversity initiatives in organizations, there is a need for support of the management. Diversity initiatives are fundamentally about change in the organization, and there are many ways of resisting this change. Arredondo contends that there are at least three paradigms of resistance: (a) reactions occur at the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels; (b) reactions are dynamic; and (c) reactions of resistance may be directed toward the facilitator of the change. Arredondo offers ways of conceptualizing these forms of resistance and addressing such resistance.

Finally, Mio and Roades discuss the issue of allies. Allies are individuals who cross demographic boundaries to advocate for groups on the downside of power. With respect to race and ethnicity, allies are White individuals who advocate for ethnic minority causes. However, allies can cross many different demographic boundaries, such as those dealing with gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ability. Mio and Roades identify historical and current figures who have made profound differences by their courage to advocate for those on the downside of power.

Chapter 1

Modern Forms of Resistance to Multiculturalism

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize

Jeffery Scott Mio

In his Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Eyes on the Prize, Juan Williams tells the story of Emmett Till. Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in the summer of 1955. He told some African-American boys down there that he had a White girlfriend. These boys challenged him to talk to a White woman who was in the store with him. Not one to back down from a dare, Till left the store and said, “Bye, Baby” to the woman. The woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, was outraged by this. He and a friend, J. W. Milam, went searching for Till. They found him at his uncle’s (Mose Wright’s) house around midnight that night.

Till’s body was found three days later. The barbed wire holding the cotton-gin fan around his neck had become snagged on a tangled river root. There was a bullet in the boy’s skull, one eye was gouged out, and his forehead was crushed on one side. (Williams, 1987, p. 43)

Bryant and Milam were put on trial for the murder of Emmett Till. The evidence against them was overwhelming. The NAACP and the Black press wanted to make sure that this trial received national attention. Charles Diggs, a congressman from Michigan, attended the trial to observe the proceedings. However, a defense attorney contended that the body was so mutilated that it could not be identified as that of Emmett Till. Williams (1987) wrote:

At the end of the five-day trial, John C. Whitten, one of the five defense attorneys, made his simple pitch to the all-white, all-male jurors: “Your fathers will turn over in their graves if [Milam and Bryant are found guilty] and I’m sure that every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men in the face of that [outside] pressure.” (p. 52)

As those who are familiar with this case know, it took the jury a little over an hour to acquit Bryant and Milam for the murder of Emmett Till. The jury bought the argument that, because the face of Till was so mutilated that he could not be definitively identified, it was uncertain that he was in fact murdered.

The picture of Till’s face was truly horrific. Moreover, after the subsequent trial, Bryant and Milam admitted that they murdered Till. They said that they had to kill Till because he refused to apologize for talking fresh to Bryant’s wife, and he refused to beg for mercy.

In his book, Williams (1987) also documented other examples of overt racism in resistance to civil rights in this country. Such examples included the 1957 resistance to integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the National Guard was called out in order to protect a handful of African-American students attempting to attend high school; the 1963 incident involving Bull Connor, police chief in Birmingham, Alabama, who unleashed police dogs and fire hoses on African Americans attempting to peacefully demonstrate against segregation; and the 1964 tragedy where Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney were found murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, during “Freedom Summer,” where Whites joined with African Americans to register African Americans to vote.

Overt, obvious forms of racism are generally a thing of the past, at least in terms of public complicity in the acts. Certainly, there are incidents of overt racist acts, such as the horrific murder of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas, by two racist White men (Sartwell, 1998). However, this act was not publicly condoned, and in fact, these men were convicted and sentenced to death for their heinous act. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (Dees, 1991) continually fights against organized racism in the country (e.g., Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations National Church), but again, such racist groups are considered “fringe” elements in this society whose ideas are not acceptable. As many have written, the problem of today is not these kinds of overt forms of racism but covert forms of racism (Jones, 1997; Mio & Awakuni, 2000; Ridley, 1995). The remainder of this chapter discusses such forms of covert racism and suggests ways of intervening.

Modern Forms of Racism

Jones (1997) identified three forms of present-day racism: (a) symbolic racism, (b) modern racism, and (c) aversive racism. These forms of racism serve to resist efforts to increase multiculturalism in our society. As a result, majority people benefit because this keeps their power in place.

Symbolic Racism

Sears (1988) presented the term symbolic racism as an indication of White hostility toward Blacks. Users of symbolic racism employ popular symbols of “traditional values” in order to appeal to otherwise unaware individuals to agree with positions against African Americans (or other target groups). For example, those who use this form of racism may first discuss the importance of the “Protestant work ethic” upon which the United States was built, then convince people that providing welfare to people violates this work ethic, so welfare should be withdrawn. Similarly, as Milloy (1999) pointed out, “gang” is used symbolically to refer to a group of ethnic minority youths (particularly African Americans and Latinos), whereas when a group of White youths get together, as in the killers in the Columbine High School massacre, they are referred to as a “clique.” Gangs, of course, violate the “traditional value” of individualism, where people should defend themselves, whereas cliques are social groups that are acceptable in the broader society. As Milloy pointed out, members of a gang are referred to as “animals” and are demonized, whereas members of a clique are not. Instead, the Columbine killers were referred to as being “full of academic promise” and one of them was even referred to as “a gentleman who drove a BMW.”

An example of how this form of symbolic politics can be applied to a nonethnic group occurred here in California during the 2000 elections. Proposition 22 was popularly known as “The Defense of Marriage Initiative.” If passed, this proposition would legally forbid recognition of marriage between same-sex partners. The appeal to the “traditional value” of marriage was first presented, then the antigay purpose of the initiative was presented as a “logical” extension of the traditional value. Proponents of the measure contended that if same-sex partners were allowed to marry, the entire institution of marriage would be demolished, because we would then allow adults to marry children, animals, and multiple partners.¹

Modern Racism

McConahay (1986) introduced the term “modern racism.” This form of racism suggests that racism is a thing of the past, and that modern cries of racism are merely pushing a “liberal agenda,” or crying wolf. So-called victims of racism are not really advancing up the economic and social ladders, but they are given breaks to allay guilt or avoid the problems of legal repercussions of accusations of racism. Thus, any gains by these so-called victims are fundamentally unfair because they are undeserved. Although symbolic racists are somewhat or quite conscious of their racism and try to conceal it via symbolic manners, modern racists are not consciously racist and in fact feel that racism is unpalatable. However, since they feel that racism is a thing of the past, they feel they could not possibly be racist, and that their views are merely based upon facts of modern society.

For example, many believe that those being assisted by affirmative action programs are receiving an unfair advantage. If racism no longer exists, we should not have programs that take race, culture, and ethnicity into account in hiring or college admissions decisions. In taking such factors into account, those not in the disadvantaged groups are themselves disadvantaged by the hiring and admissions decisions. They are, in essence, victims of reverse discrimination.

If we were to take a strictly legal perspective (leaving aside the moral arguments in favor if it), affirmative action could be justified by law as it is generally practiced. Affirmative action was initially designed to address past wrongs (Cheatham, 1999). This may necessarily have a negative impact upon those who did not have had a direct involvement in the past wrongs. However, any legal remedy can have this impact. Even conservative newspaper columnist George F. Will recognized this when he wrote of then Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates in the aftermath of Rodney King’s arrest:

Gates can be called The Eight Million Dollar Man. Just in the last year that sum has been awarded to victims of Los Angeles police misconduct. There will be two commas in the sum awarded to the man whose savage beating by some of Gates’s men was recorded by a citizen with a video camera. … Gates sees no racial aspect to the videotaped beating. But when three white men club and stomp a black man while a dozen other white men watch, well, people will talk. They did when Jamaal Wilkes, who is black and a former star with the Lakers, was handcuffed because his auto registration was about to—yes, about to—expire. Joe Morgan, who is a black and a Hall of Fame second baseman, was thrown to the ground and handcuffed when cops decided he looked like a drug dealer. (Later the cops said “oops!” and a court said: Pay Mr. Morgan $540,000.) (p. A17)

Certainly, Los Angeles residents did not brutalize victims held by the police, but the citizens of Los Angeles paid in the form of higher taxes and reduced city services because of Chief Gates’s renegade police force.

Another reason for affirmative action’s existence about which modern racists may not be fully aware is that the criteria for “qualifications” may not be completely captured by the “objective” measures that purport to measure one’s qualifications. In my own classes on multiculturalism, I point out that one reason why being a woman may be part of what qualifies a person to be a police officer is that if the police are investigating a rape case, a female rape victim may open up more and provide better information to a female officer than a male officer. So too, if one is studying ethnic minority populations, the ethnic minority subjects may open up more and give more accurate data to ethnic minority researchers than White researchers. Ethnic minority students may also have more insight into answers given by ethnic minority subjects. Thus, ethnicity may be a very important dimension of “qualifications” that one sets when searching for graduate students. Identifying gender or ethnicity as qualities that candidates must possess for the actual job or admissions qualifications would be illegal, but considering these qualities as important may be essential. As Justice Lewis Powell said in the landmark Supreme Court case Bakke vs. Regents of the University of California (1978), although the inclusion of race in evaluating the qualifications of applicants must be done with scrutiny and must only be conducted when it involves a compelling state interest, race or ethnicity may be used as one of the many factors weighed in admissions decisions. Moreover, diversity is a compelling state interest.

Aversive Racism

Gaertner and Dovidio (1986) presented the notion of aversive racism. Those who are aversive racists feel that racism is bad, and if they were accused of being racist, that would be at odds with their self-concept. However, the clash between the existence of racism in this society with notions of egalitarianism create a conflict in the aversive racist’s mind. Therefore, they become avoidant of interactions with African Americans (or other ethnic minorities) in order to avoid their discomfort. Aversive racists hold negative views toward African Americans but are not consciously aware of these attitudes.

Dovidio (2001) presented some compelling data in support of the aversive racist view (see also Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000). He measured White research participants with an aversive racism scale and had them make hiring decisions regarding Black and White job candidates who had clearly strong, ambiguous, or clearly weak qualifications for the job. The strong job candidate of both races had high qualifications on two measures of ability (for this example, I will use “experience” and “letters of recommendation”), the candidates with ambiguous qualifications were strong on one of the qualifications and weak on the other, and the weak job candidates had low qualifications on both measures. Therefore, there were fou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Section 1: Resistance to Multicultural Psychology
• Section 2: Diverse Ethnic Minority Populations
• Section 3: Diverse Nonethnic Populations
• Index