Confronting Racism

Integrating Mental Health Research into Legal Strategies and Reforms

Robert T. Carter, Thomas D. Scheuermann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351373111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Tort Law
• Index: Law

This book proposes a comprehensive approach to confronting racism through a foundational framework as well as practical strategies to correct and reverse the course of the past and catalyze the stalled efforts of the present. It will do so by focusing on those specific aspects of law and legal theory that intersect with psychological research and practice.

In Part I, the historical and current underpinnings of racial injustice and the obstacles to combating racism are introduced. Part II examines the documented psychological and emotional effects of racism, including race-based traumatic stress. In Part III, the authors analyze the application of forensic mental health assessment in addressing race-related experiences and present a legal and policy framework for reforming institutional and organizational policies. Finally, in part IV the authors advocate for a close, collaborative approach among legal and mental health professionals and their clients to seek redress for racial discrimination.

Confronting Racism provides a framework for legal, mental health, and other related social science professionals and leaders to acknowledge and act on the harmful aspects of our societal systems.

1

AN INTRODUCTION TO RACISM AND WHAT IT MEANS TO CONFRONT IT

In this book, we propose approaches and a framework for confronting racism by integrating mental health and legal practices. To “confront” means to face, challenge, or oppose; to accuse; or to deal head-on with something that is unpleasant. “Racism” has many definitions and meanings that have changed over time, from the end of the Civil War to the present; for instance, some would argue that racism was reflected mostly in how people behaved, and racism was supported and justified with thoughts, belief systems, and scientific evidence. Definitions vary in focus and connotations depending upon who is using the term and for what purpose. Racism is connected to individuals as well as to race and racial groups. Carter and Pieterse (2020) define race as “a social construction in which people in the United States are identified by their skin color, language, and physical features and are grouped and ranked into distinct sociopolitical groups with different degrees of [social] access and opportunity” (see also Marger, 2015). In the United States, racial groups include White and people of color (including biracial individuals who have a parent who is a person of color). “People of color” refers to disenfranchised Americans, Blacks, Latino/as, Asians, and Native Indian Americans (Carter & Pieterse, 2005).

Racism is “the exercise of power against a racial group defined as inferior by individuals and institutions with the intentional and unintentional support of the entire (race or) culture” (Jones & Carter, 1996, p. 3; see also Carter, 2007). We define racism as a form of personal prejudice in that it involves the use of group power through organizations and institutions as well as the imposition of the cultural preferences of the racial group in power. Therefore, in Confronting Racism, we refer to behaviors, practices, laws, beliefs, and policies that are created by the transformation of racial prejudice into individual racism through the use of power directed against racial groups and their members. Individuals, institutional members, and leaders define these racial group members as inferior, which is reflected in policies and laws with the support, both intentional and unintentional, and participation of the entire dominant racial and cultural group (Carter, 2007; Hannah-Jones, 2019b). Racial discrimination is the behavioral manifestation of racism; it can take distinct forms that have both direct and indirect harmful mental health effects.

For us, then, confronting racism means to challenge and take head-on the systems that have been embedded in our laws and our legal and health (physical and mental) institutions. Racism is a stressor, and it affects the mental and physical health of its targets. This book focuses on these myriad stressors and their injurious effects (Williams, 2018).

The rank order of racial groups in colonial America led to social and legal segregation that lasted for centuries; as a consequence, many groups of color retained distinctive cultural patterns and practices. While learning the culture of the dominant racial group, people of color also held on to their unique cultural patterns and values. Thus, race also reflects not only visible physical difference; it also means that American racial groups differ culturally (Carter & Helms, 1987; Marger, 2015; Stewart & Bennet, 2011).

Dominant American culture is derived from White European American ethnic group (i.e., country and culture of origin) values and beliefs (Marger, 2015). Some of the cultural norms that undergird the dominant White and White-identified groups in our society (see: Carter & Pieterse, in press; Stewart & Bennett, 2011) involve some of these propositions:

1. Social relations are governed by individual preferences over group needs.
2. Self-expression, measured by external criteria coupled with social conformity, is the basis for recognized personal achievements (e.g., school grades, good job).
3. Social structures (e.g., families and organizations) are ordered and controlled on the basis of authority and power invested in seniors and elders (top-down), and communication is valued only when it is verbal and in standard English form.
4. The focus is on things that are to come or are future oriented, wherein activities and goals are geared to what is next.
5. Moral and ethical principles are drawn from Judeo-Christian religious beliefs (e.g., original sin).
6. Family is strictly and narrowly defined as including only immediate members (nuclear), and other cultural systems are inferior.
7. European American cultural traditions and values hold that only the music, beauty, and social traditions (e.g. holidays, monuments) from Europe are the most refined and valued—other music and people who do not adhere to these standards are less valuable.

American institutions and professions are designed around the racial-cultural values and beliefs of the dominant racial-cultural group (White Americans), including the legal and health systems and the manner of establishing laws in the society, and even in defining health, both physical and mental (Carter et al., 2019).

“Mental health” is a key term in our work, so what does it mean? We define it this way: Mental health is the absence of a psychiatric disorder or one’s ability to meet the demands of daily living and provide for self and family. Racial-cultural scholars contend that “traditional Western mental health models have failed to set standards that would validate the experiences of . . . Americans [of color who live in] . . . a racist environment” (Landrum-Brown, 1990; p. 113). Another definition of mental health that we find applicable to our work is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being” wherein individuals can achieve their potential, cope with life stresses, be productive, and contribute to their community (World Health Organization [WHO], 2014). Mental health professionals comprise the helping disciplines of psychology, social work, education, psychiatry, nursing, public health, counseling, and related areas.

We have described racial groups and noted that the groups are rank ordered, but there is also a tendency to think and present the groups (e.g., Blacks or Asians) as a monolithic group, with all members having the same experiences and attitudes. It is common in the United States to refer to Blacks or to Whites each as a single demographic group. When a person proclaims his or her race, this is often thought to reflect their “race identity.” However, while race has social implications, people often associate race with psychological meaning from sociodemographic membership. Sociodemographic race has no psychological meaning, and it says nothing about what a person thinks about his race. Scholars and researchers have established that there is psychological meaning to race that is manifested in one’s thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs about their group membership, and—more important—the thoughts and beliefs can vary from rejection to integration of one’s race and culture. The psychological meaning and variation of racial group membership is an individual’s racial identity status, or one’s psychological orientation to their race, and it applies to people of all racial groups (Carter, 1995; Carter & Johnson, 2019).

With key terms and concepts defined, we now turn to looking back to the period before the nation was founded to explore both how the law (Constitution, statutes, court decisions) was established and used, and its effect on various members of society. Understanding how this history set the stage for the present demonstrates our need to confront racism today (Hannah-Jones, 2019a).

Looking Back

In the process of locating and discovering new worlds, the leaders of European societies invoked international law as a justification for enslaving and dominating the people they encountered and for taking lands they found on their journeys across the seas. The European explorers sought wealth and especially gold and spices presumed to be of great value. Initial contact between the Europeans and Natives in the New World was characterized by oppression and domination whether in the Caribbean, Mexico, South America, or in the early settlements of Virginia and Massachusetts. “When the Pilgrims came to New England, they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians” (Zinn, 1990, p. 13). The rationale for taking the land from those who inhabited it was based on a legal idea brought from the old world (i.e., land as property). John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, stated that the Indians had only a “natural right to it but not a civil right. A natural right did not have legal standing” (Zinn, 1990, p. 13), and therefore, it was lawful and possible to take their land and lives since they did not have civil rights. A similar fate, based on international law, befell Africans who were transported from their homelands to the New World colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean, and they were subjugated to systems of oppression and racism that persist, albeit in other forms, to this day. The law, based on English common law, has been central in erecting the social and political structures of American society as it was invoked during the exploration and settlements of the colonies. The law was used to promote the labor needed for colonization in the form of indentured servants and forced laborers. While the physical health and vitality of laborers (forced and indentured) was an important consideration, there was little to no concern for their mental health, however; many who were forced rebelled and some leaped to their deaths rather than accept capture and being taken to an unknown and strange world. In the New World colonies, people of different racial groups interacted with one another, Native people, Europeans, and Africans, and so on. What seemed important at that time was less about race and more about religion. Yet in time, race did take on meaning and significance.

Race differences can have meaning in the way people act and relate to one another. Fredrickson (1988) defines societal racism as the practice of treating people as less worthy than others, while systemic racism usually means an “organized system premised on the categorization and ranking of social groups into races that devalues, disempowers, and differentially allocates desirable societal opportunities and resources to racial groups regarded as inferior” (Williams & Mohammed, 2013, p. 1153). This book focuses on confronting racism as it is broadly and specifically manifested, and we use and integrate legal and psychological strategies and practices to do so.

We propose a framework for confronting racism—through theoretical approaches and practical strategies—and offer pathways to overcome racism and its vestiges. In the chapters that follow, we discuss history, scholarship, policies, and legal approaches that will inform legal, mental health, and other social science professionals as well as organizational and community leaders. Our framework and strategies can serve to challenge racism, particularly racial harassment and discrimination (Carter, 2007; Carter & Scheuermann, 2012), and confront our systems of racial injustice.

The people and institutions of the United States have put forward many symbolic efforts to limit racial injustices, from court decisions to laws aimed at changes in social norms and expectations (Hannah-Jones, 2019b). Even so, people in general and the legal and social science professions and professionals in particular have not always been willing participants or partners in efforts to confront and reduce racism and its effects (Bell, 2000). For the most part, our history is characterized by decisions about race and racism being made to promote the interest of Whites (Hannah-Jones, 2019b). The social science and legal professions, each and together, can be seen, based on their paucity of meaningful action, as reluctant to actually address how injurious racism may be to individuals and groups as well as to our broader society. In many instances, these professionals and the systems in which they work have, by omission or commission, been antagonistic to furthering racial equality and racial justice; in some instances, they have been responsible for promoting racial oppression. The history of race and racism in our society is paradoxical, shameful, and complex, filled with countless examples of legally sanctioned racial oppression (Bell, 2000; Carter & Helms, 2009). In many documented and often egregious cases, social scientists have been involved, negligently if not intentionally, in stigmatizing populations of color as culturally deprived or inferior and, by implication, not worthy of the effort to fully understand and address their injuries and oppression (Carter & Forsyth, 2009).

Regarding racial injustice, Bell (2008) observes that “blacks are more likely to obtain relief for even acknowledged racial injustice” (most racial injustices are not acknowledged) when the relief serves the ends and best interests, judged by policymakers, of society. Most people’s attention (both White and Black) is on the gratitude for the relief, not on the benefit to the country; the attributions tend t...