Being White in the Helping Professions

Developing Effective Intercultural Awareness

Judy Ryde

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781843109365
• eBook ISBN: 9781846427305
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

In this reflective yet practical book, the author challenges white helping professionals to recognize their own cultural identity and the impact it has when practising in a multicultural environment.

Judy Ryde reveals how white people have implicit and explicit advantages and privileges that often go unnoticed by them. She suggests that in order to work effectively in a multicultural setting, this privilege needs to be fully acknowledged and confronted. She explores whether it is possible to talk about a white identity, addresses uncomfortable feelings such as guilt or shame, and offers advice on how to implement white awareness training within an organization.

Ryde offers a model for 'white awareness' in a diverse society and provides concrete examples from her own experience. This book is essential reading for students and practitioners in the helping professions, including social workers, psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, healthcare workers, occupational therapists and alternative health practitioners.

PART 1

Experiencing
Whiteness in a
Racialized Context

Chapter 1

Being White

You can’t remake the world

Without remaking yourself

Each new era begins within.

It is an inward event,

With unsuspected possibilities

For inner liberation.

From Mental Fight by Ben Okri

Introduction

White people tend not to consider themselves as having a race. In fact there is often an implicit understanding among white people that they are racially neutral. So what would white people’s experience be if they did consider themselves to be racially white? This chapter is an exploration into racial whiteness and, in particular, what it is to be a white helping professional. Some of my own exploration was undertaken in a co-operative inquiry¹ research group and this is discussed in the next chapter. In this chapter I draw on the psychological and sociological literature including White Studies and postcolonial theory. It is theorists in these disciplines that alerted me to the apparent ‘neutrality’ of whiteness. This neutral attitude of white people to their own race – that being white is not considered in racial terms by white people – is inevitably present among white helping professionals.

When I first embarked upon research for a doctoral thesis, my focus was on how I related to others of different cultures and races. When I later began to understand that my stance ignored the fact that I also ‘had’ a race, I decided to give more emphasis to myself as situated within a racial environment. So I will start with an exploration of what it means to be a part of the white, dominant culture. This is not an easy undertaking. As I will show, whiteness is so around and within myself and other white people that it is hard to stand back from it enough to ‘see’ it and reflect upon it. I find that when I do so it elicits feelings of guilt and shame which are not easy to ‘stay with’ and I explore this further in Chapter 3.

In spite of those of European origin being scattered throughout the globe, it seems to be custom and practice to refer to the parts of the world which are predominantly inhabited by white people as ‘western’ or ‘the west’. Bonnett (2000, p.18) has shown that Europeans have appropriated the use of the word white to describe themselves, so that white people now found worldwide are the result of a European diaspora that occurred through colonization. Although many white people live in North America and Europe which are towards the west of the globe as it is commonly drawn on a flat page, this does not geographically describe the entire group. Australia, which is in the south east, for instance, was colonized originally by Europeans.

Although a cursory glance at this subject suggests that white people are those who have what is commonly called white skin, there are many people who have roughly the same colour skins as Europeans who are not counted in this group. (The colour of European skins can also be of various shades.) This includes people such as those from the Middle East and Far East, Roma people, South Americans, Native Americans etc. Even the Irish have not always been counted as white (Bonnett 2000, p.35). Whether these, on the whole, non-European people are ascribed a ‘colour’ by white people seems a more confused area. Those from the Far East have been called ‘yellow’ and Native Americans ‘red’. People with skin that is clearly more brown than is generally the case for Europeans, such as those from the Asian sub-continent and Africans, sometimes assert that they are black in order to make the political point that they are discriminated against by white people (Brah 1992, p.127). Others whose skin is roughly the same colour as Europeans often do not describe themselves as white. I found an example of this in a book that provides an opportunity for Thai refugees to tell their stories. It includes one who talks about white people behaving in a discriminatory fashion towards him (Refugee Action 2003).

Although it seemed quite possible to write in theory about a white western hegemony, I found it almost impossible to ‘feel’ what being part of that was like. It is clear, however, that, as a white woman, I cannot go about the world without being immediately identifiable as a western person because of my whiteness. Two things immediately struck me about this. One, that I felt guilty and two, that it was almost impossible to think about. Whiteness seemed a ‘nothingness’, an absence of a something, the ground from which other things appeared.

This made me wonder if white also seems to imply an absence of race. I am aware, for instance, that when questions of race are raised in a professional context, people tend to turn to a black person, if one is present, as if they must be experts on this subject. So I began to think that race is not just a matter of culture and identity, but a politically constructed concept (Gilroy 1992, p.50; Lago 2006, p.19). As I began to read White Studies literature this began to make more sense to me. I discovered that race has also been called an ‘unstable’ category in that it is based on assumptions that have been shown to be spurious since it was first used (Donald and Rattansi 1992, p.1; Appiah 1994, p.149; Adams 1996, p.8).

In the past black people have been thought of as closer to animals than white people when they first came to the west (Dalal 2002, p.201). It was assumed that there were different ‘races’ and that white people (Adams 1996) were the most intelligent and capable (Lago 2006, p.18). The 200-year anniversary of the abolition of slavery was recently commemorated. Painful reminders of the way that Africans were packed into boats as ‘cargo’ were everywhere to be found, together with images of black people in chains being sold to the highest bidder. The question of whether Britain should apologize for these atrocities has been suggested, which seems to result in complex and varied responses. Many feel that they were not personally responsible so shouldn’t be held to account and that ‘a line has to be drawn somewhere’. Although it is generally acknowledged that the conspicuous wealth of the 18th century is in large part due to slavery, that too is felt to be in the past. My own view is that our present wealth is based on the wealth of our ancestors and the poverty of blacks is also an inheritance they carry. Today’s racism is hard-wired in to our consciousness from the prejudices of the past.²

As I discuss below, much of our response to race is unconscious, so conscious rationale does not make much sense. Differences between ‘races’ have been shown to be insignificant and mostly based on superficial matters such as skin colour (Acharyya 1992, p.84; Donald and Rattansi 1992, p.1). Genetic characteristics of this sort have evidently been handed down the generations, resulting in the various appearances of people in different parts of the world. Cress Welsing interestingly turned the whole notion of white superiority on its head by suggesting that white people were originally born to black African parents, but had genetic deficiencies. She suggests that they were rejected by their black parents and found their way to Europe (Cress Welsing 1991, p.4).

A whiter shade of pale

Gradually, as I have started to look at it, whiteness has become less neutral and more figural for me. It is as if, through staring at a blank page, I have begun to notice contours and shades that were not at first apparent.

So what have I seen? I have noticed that I am advantaged by being white in many subtle ways. This was brought home to me in a paper written 20 years ago by McIntosh (1988) who found 46 ways in which she benefited by being white in all spheres of everyday life, most of which still hold true. I take for granted that I have a rightful place where I live and work and where my children went to school. Like McIntosh, I take for granted a privileged standard of living that includes electricity and electrical goods; motor transport; plentiful and tasty food with much variety; a range of entertainment, both at home on TV and in the community; a criminal justice system that does not discriminate against me, including a friendly and polite police force and an educational system which is embedded in my culture. (I am aware that some of these privileges involve class and age as important factors. They may not be afforded me if I were young and working class.) My material wealth is gigantic compared to most people in the world. Once I have really understood this I am almost bound to feel guilty.

One of the first things of which I became aware when contemplating my whiteness, was my guilt at being white. This led to much discussion in my white co-operative inquiry group (see Chapter 2) and, because of its central importance, I have devoted a chapter to the subject (see Chapter 3).

White Studies

At the start of my quest I was not aware of a body of knowledge about whiteness as a racial identity. I have since discovered that, during the last three decades, the discipline of White Studies has grown up in America, but is little found in the UK. Alistair Bonnett (2000), an Englishman who traces the way that white identity was formed historically, considers the area of ‘White Studies’ to be an analysis of whiteness from a North American standpoint. He shows how whiteness has been used in several societies – particularly in the Middle East and China – to denote purity and nobility (Bonnett 2000, p.16). However, in the process of colonialization, Europeans asserted that they had white skin in contrast to those in the colonized countries (Bonnett 2000, p.17). He asserts that ‘white identities are, if nothing else, global phenomena, with global impacts’ and that no part of the globe has avoided the impact of this. He describes the way the concept of whiteness is used by Europeans thus:

Modern European white identity is historically unique. People in other societies may be seen to have valued whiteness and to have employed the concept to define, at least in part, who and what they were. But they did not treat being white as a natural category nor did they invest so much of their sense of identity within it. Europeans racialised, which is to say naturalised, the concept of whiteness, and entrusted it with the essence of their community. Europeans turned whiteness into a fetish object, a talisman of the natural whose power appeared to enable them to impose their will on the world. (ibid., p.21)

Bonnett shows that, in identifying themselves as a white and ‘purer’ race, others were identified as black and inferior (Bonnett 2000, p.18). This idea, though now understood to be racist by all but a few extreme right-wing groups, does not so easily disappear. Although 30 years ago the Kerner Commission (Themstom and Woodson 1998) identified racism as a ‘white problem’, the Centre for the Study of White American Culture (n.d.) carried out a survey in which it found that only 7 per cent of that which is written about race in the last 30 years focused on white people. It seems that white people find it hard to think about themselves as having a race, thus making it seem as if race is the problem of those who do ‘have’ one – the ‘ethnic’ minorities. Certainly those who are not white feel the effects of racism enough to want to theorize about it as well as act politically in other ways. Of course, theorizing about a societal issue is a political act as it focuses attention o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Of Related Interest
• Title page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Foreword by Colin Lago
• Introduction: Looking in the Mirror
• Part 1 Experiencing Whiteness in a Racialized Context
• Part 2 The Practice of White Helping Professionals within a Racialized Context
• Part 3 White Organizations within a Racialized Context
• Conclusion: This is the Best Time to Dream the Best Dream of them All
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index