Published in collection, Bar-Yoseph, Ed., Making a Difference- The Bridging of Cultural Diversity, Gestalt Institute Press, 2005. An edited version was pre-published in the British Gestalt Journal, v.9, #1, 2000 FOR WHITES ONLY ABSTRACT This article is largely a stream-of consciousness reflection on being a racially conscious white therapist in racially divided America. It focuses specifically on working with African –American patients, addressing such themes as “white anxiety,” “white skin privilege,” lack of awareness of “whiteness” as a socio-political power construct, and “white guilt”. An illustrative case example takes the reader through how the themes listed shaped the therapists’ subjectivity and alternately enhanced and inhibited the therapeutic process. Keywords: Race relations, cross-cultural therapy, whiteness, black-white relations, and sociology of therapy Bio: Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., Psy.D. is co-founder of the Gestalt Therapy Institute of the Pacific. She is also a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She is particularly interested in relational processes in therapy, has authored numerous articles and co-authored (with Rich Hycner), The Healing Relationship in Gestalt Therapy. She teaches and trains nationally and internationally. Lynne Jacobs, Ph. D 1626 Westwood Bl. #104 Los Angeles, CA 90024 USA FOR WHITES ONLY1 I was startled when I first greeted my new patient. She was a tall (5’11”) AfricanAmerican. I collected myself as quickly as possible hoping not to insult her with my initial shock. On the phone, I’d had no inkling that she might be black. In fact, I had expected to meet a young, possibly quite shallow white woman. My reasons were that her voice had sounded young and thin, much like the infamous “valley girl” popularized in the ‘80's (the “valley girl” was a comic icon of U.S. culture, caricaturing shallow, vapid, materialistic, self-absorbed culture of some white, suburban middle-class families). As Joyce began to tell me the story of her decision to seek psychotherapy for herself, I chided myself for my assumption that I would be meeting a white woman at my waiting room door: Joyce had not “sounded” black. I was also amused and only a little chagrined as I continue to encounter my disparaging stereotype of how shallow Joyce must be if she speaks with “valley girl” lilt. Joyce was seeking therapy because she was unable to overcome serious depression and waves of anxiety that had beset her for about 14 months, ever since a male lover had broken up with her in a hurtful and inglorious manner. I was still trying to make sense of our beginnings. Joyce was obviously intelligent and psychologically astute, although more perceptive about others than about herself. As she settled in, her voice even deepened and became more resonant, much to my relief. But I found myself wondering why she had chosen to see me, a white therapist, rather than one of the many black therapists who practice in the LA area. I wondered if she knew of the availability of AfricanAmerican therapists, if she purposely chose a white therapist, or if the fact of our race difference was unimportant to her. That last thought embarrassed me, confronting me with the reality of how her race WAS important to me, and I felt vaguely guilty, as though I ought not be having any awkwardness or discomfort, or to be thinking of her as, among other things, a “black” woman. I was being bitten by a common bug in our culturally diverse and racially divided country, and it is an element of the subjectivity of most white therapists. I call it white anxiety. I shall discuss it further at a later point. This is almost a stream-of-consciousness article. I have used the writing here as a chance to reflect and to learn. I can only hope it is not as difficult to read as it was to write. The reader is warned that the article does not flow smoothly from one idea to the next. It jumps and twists in a reflection of the jumps and twists and side-trails my heart and mind took in the process of writing, which became an encounter with my “whiteness.” It jumps from one scene to another, from attempts at reason, to emotional memories, to passionately held beliefs and aims. I am reminded of June Jordan’s (1981) reference to an interview with Toni Morrison about her book, Beloved. Morrison spoke of pulling readers out of their familiar world, wrenching them into a strange and terrifying world, much as had happened to the Africans who became slaves. Whenever I try to walk through the minefield of explorations in race relations, I have the experience she describes. Familiar moorings and sensibilities are wrenched away. I have entered a strange, shadowy landscape that at once pulls me in and repels me. I am afraid, I am fascinated, I am impelled by my wish to contribute to the healing of the racial divide, and to heal myself. The next thing I must warn you, the reader, is that every time I have sat down to write this piece, the reasoned passages that I have mentally crafted disappear, to be replaced by passionate polemic at the keyboard. I am uncomfortable writing the chapter, I am anxious, I feel exposed, I dread being judged. And yet I want to contribute, in some small way, to healing the wounds of racism. I am writing a plea for my fellow white therapists to be cognizant of the effect of our dominant status on how we think, act and feel in everyday life and in the consulting room. The title of this paper is rich with multiple meanings, just as is any examination of, or dialogue about, race--certainly in American culture. One meaning of the title is to serve as a reminder to me of who my audience is, to whom I wish to speak. I am a white clinician writing to other white clinicians—most especially white American clinicians--about the phenomenology of whiteness for American whites, and its various implications for our work as therapists. The title, “For Whites Only,” is also a bitter reminder of how charged race matters are, how exclusionary white thought tends to be, largely unbeknownst to whites. “Whites only” was once a cruel segregationist clarion call, raining daily degradation down on black Americans. Unfortunately, there are still deeply embedded “whites only” constructs of thought and ideology that permeate our culture, largely outside of ordinary everyday awareness. These embedded mores affect our daily conduct and the conduct of our therapy, both with whites and people of color. Americans practice in a cultural field shaped by history and current practices which once existed "for whites only ". I feel almost embarrassed by the depth of my passion against racism and prejudice in American culture, most especially about subtle, often unrecognized forms of white racism and racial insensitivity. It puts me in a curious position: Throughout my life, I have been asked to account for why I am so impassioned. And I certainly can think of influences in my life that might at least partially account for it, such as the fact that I was raised in an area of the US that had a marked "color line."2 In fact, my parents belonged to a small advocacy group that fought to remove impediments to housing integration in our town on the outskirts of Washington, D. C. There are also more uniquely personal, as opposed to sociological, threads of my life history that incline me to feel a close identification with disenfranchised people. And yet, being asked to explore where my interest comes from seems to me to be a way of participating in the very racial insensitivity I am attempting to overcome. For the question supposes that I am a bit unusual, and should account for my difference (how often I have heard African-Americans complain of having to “explain” their “difference” to well-intentioned but ignorant whites!). The more intriguing question for me is why so few whites are even aware of, and distressed by, the extremity of the racial divide in the US. How is it that an interest in one of the most cancerous problems of American culture is viewed as unusual and in need of explanation when a white person expresses interest, and yet it is viewed as self-evident--if a bit overwrought, from the perspective of many whites--when expressed by a person of color? The fact that the question hovers in the air at all is, I believe, one of the manifestations of how isolated whites are from a problem in which they are dominant participants. As an example of the problem of lack of awareness among whites, I had a conversation recently with two white colleagues; one had been raised in east Texas--part of the American south--and the other had been raised in Los Angeles, California. Both had attended “all-white” public schools. The southerner said that the shadow of knowing that he and the entire white community were doing something morally egregious hung over all, even the segregationists. The Angeleno had given no thought at all to her all-white schooling. Unlike the situation in Texas, the segregation in Los Angeles was not accomplished through the use of visible and tensely enforced laws, but rather through the more hidden processes of real estate brokers, mortgage lenders, and various other social and political practices that allowed the segregation to be seen as “accidental” rather than designed. For the southerner, our racial history is a major part of his sense of identity as an American, whereas for the Angeleno, it is a minor theme. I contend, however, that the racial divide in America has shaped what becomes (or does not become) figural in her sense of herself and others as thoroughly as it has the white southerner, or any black American, but the shaping factors remain lodged in the background, an ignored dimension of her field, whereas for the white southerner, the “racialization” of his consciousness can more readily become figural. “Whiteness” I have identified myself as a white person, and an American, two signifiers which are often treated as if they are interchangeable--at least by white Americans. Authors generally do not use the signifier of “white,” or “Caucasian,” unless, as I am doing now, the author needs to establish whiteness in relation to non-whiteness. In most other instances, there is an assumption, at least among whites, of whiteness unless stated otherwise. The assumption of whiteness is not ordinarily figural. It is simply one of the many background assumptions that, without awareness, shape the world-view of most white Americans. As Grace Elizabeth Hale (1990) asserts at the very outset of her intriguing book, Making Whiteness, Central to the meaning of whiteness is a broad, collective American silence. The denial of white as a racial identity, the denial that whiteness has a history, allows the quiet, the blankness to stand as the norm. This erasure enables many to fuse their absence of racial being with the nation, making whiteness their unspoken but deepest sense of what it means to be an American. If you are a white reader, imagine yourself with a patient. You most probably thought of a white patient (certainly the overwhelming majority of my current and former patients are white). But the fact of their whiteness was probably meaningless to you. In all likelihood, the meanings to each of you of working together as a white dyad have rarely become figural. I can think of only a few white patients in my current practice who give any thought to the fact that we are a white therapist-patient dyad. The most striking characteristic of whites’ consciousness of whiteness is that most of the time we don’t have any. I call this the transparency phenomenon: the tendency of whites not to think about whiteness, or about norms, behaviors, experiences, or perspectives that are white specific.” (Gotanda ,pp. 72-3) Examine this quote from Jane Flax (1990), below. She is writing about the lack of consciousness among males of the context of “maleness.” I shall amend her paragraph by substituting racial terms in brackets next to her gender terms. . Rarely have male [white] scholars self-consciously studied the “psychology of men [whiteness]” or “men’s” history [history of whiteness] or considered the possibility that how men [whites] feel about women [people of color] and their own gender [white] identities may affect every aspect of their thinking about and acting in the world. This denial of men’s [whites’] own location in and determination by gender [race] systems has practical consequences as well. Male [white] scholars tend not to read feminist [racialization of culture] theories or to think about possible implications for their own work. Women [people of color] are left with the responsibility for thinking about gender [race], but because we do it, such work is devalued or segregated from the “mainstream” of intellectual life. (p.24) I could just have easily have substituted “heterosexual” for male, and the paragraph would have much evocative power and heuristic value. Males, whites, straights, all occupy positions of dominant status in our culture, and studying any one of those perspectives would be illuminating. In fact, Barbara Thomas (1997), who has developed a curriculum which integrates gestalt theory and multi-cultural perspectives, makes a good case for how the exploration of any multi-cultural theme is likely to increase our skills as a therapist for any patient, because learning about other cultures enriches our ground. It expands the range of themes that might emerge into figural awareness as we listen closely to all of our patients. She writes: Phenomena such as the invisibility of culture and privilege, the operation of the “absent standard” and the heightened visibility of tokens provide excellent examples for teaching the concept of figure/ground.... Development of theme is an important component of Gestalt Therapy process. Within this context, knowledge of other cultures, sub-cultures, ethnic and social groups can be conceptualized as material which increases our sensitivity to themes which may arise in our work with clients. By enlarging our ground we gain access to possible themes which otherwise would not become figural for the therapist who does not share the cultural background of the client. (Pp.6-7) Having witnessed the phenomenon with some of my colleagues (and having participated in it myself), I concur with her warning that there is a danger of applying one’s cultural knowledge so rigidly or enthusiastically that the uniqueness of the patient is annihilated. I am sure we have all had the experience of talking with someone who “knows” us because they claim to be familiar with our culture. The “knowing” stops at the level of cultural generalization. I have certainly had that experience in conversations about my female gender. Somehow, general statements about the cultural norms of a different group sound most offensive to me when they are spoken with conspiratorial delight with, or pride about, one’s knowledge of the “other”, and especially when the speaker is a member of the dominant culture. It is ironic, because although certainly some knowledge is better than none, the uniqueness of individuals is still ignored, and a major complaint among African-Americans, for instance, is that they are invisible. I would expand Thomas’ thesis a further step. Gestalt field theory posits that reality is ambiguous, open to multiple interpretations, and is perspectival. Therefor, learning something about other cultures and sub-cultures also helps therapists to contextualize, and therefore become more aware of, and relativize our own cultural norms. This seems to be to be an especially important heuristic tool for American white therapists, because we are less likely to have encounters in our daily lives that open the doors to such awareness. As I noted above, for various personal and political reasons, racial inequality burns my heart. Moreover, insensitive and ignorant use of power makes me irate when I am not demoralized by it. These passions show in my choices as a therapist: I gravitate towards theories which call upon therapists to be continuously self-reflective as to their impact on their patients (in gestalt therapy, this shows in our commitment to the necessary awareness of our impact which a dialogic relationship embodies). Self-reflectiveness and openness to correction by the patient are the best safeguards against ignorant abuse of our power as therapists. So, while I think it behooves white therapists to be open to learning from and about our patients from other cultures in order to work more sensitively with them, I also value such study and engagement for their value in helping white therapists deconstruct our own “whiteness,” and in so doing help us to recognize the white norms and advantages we tend to accept as universal givens. Such deconstruction, or contextualization, is part of the process of equalizing power between races, one encounter at a time. Although I feel awkward and anxious in this process, as I said earlier, I also feel inspired by it. I agree with McConville’s (1997) assertion that “any system of privilege not only oppresses the disenfranchised, but poisons the spirit and diminishes the humanity of those who are advantaged.”(p.13) White Privilege “White skin privilege” is a term that came into popular usage in the liberal days of the sixties and seventies. It was a way of connoting the cultural and social advantages of whiteness in American culture. One of the white skin privileges exercised by most of us who can lay claim to it, is a total lack of consciousness of our whiteness, as described above, and then the privilege that goes with it. To become aware of our privilege as a reflection of our whiteness immediately contextualizes something that for most whites is experienced as a universal, not perspectival truth. Contextualizing our privilege immediately makes our empowerment something which is fluid, and may shift and change, rather than something that is eternal and immutable. When such notions are raised in gatherings of whites, one can often detect an uncomfortable shifting of chairs in the room. Peggy McIntosh (1995) believes that whites are taught not to recognize white privilege. She writes that white privilege is “an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks.” (p. 77) The signifier of whiteness and white skin privilege is the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). I have the look and carriage of a WASP, and am treated accordingly. Actually, I am not a typical WASP, but was raised very much as if I am, which is again a white skin privilege. I am the grandchild of immigrants. My maternal grandfather was born in England, and was WASP. But my other grandfather was a Jew from Poland. My two grandmothers were both Irish Catholics, one arrived in the US at age 17, and kept her brogue until her death. As McConville (1997), has pointed out, in the ever-shifting boundaries by which whiteness is defined, the IrishAmericans were initially considered non-white. So, technically, I am not a WASP, but I most certainly am white, and I look like a WASP (blonde hair, light complexion, light eyes), and in one of the conceits afforded to whites in this country, I was raised as if I came from no culture in particular, but was, simply “American.” It was as if my family had sprung up suddenly on American shores through the process of spontaneous generation. I never had a sense that we came from somewhere else first. Of course, WASP’s do have a specific culture, and “whiteness” is a historically situated, sociopolitical designation (Hale, 1998). WASP cultural norms include a valorization of individualism, stoicism, and conquering or rising above obstacles (as opposed to “adaptive fatalism” [McGoldrick, Pearce and Giordano, 1982]). There is a strong emphasis on the nuclear family, and on “correctness,” on having the family and its individual members successfully achieve whatever values are held in esteem at the time (McGoldrick et al). These values have come to be fused into what Margaret Mead called an “American culture.” They constitute an invisible standard by which others are measured, and the measuring happens without our awareness because whites do not recognize the standards as cultural norms. Rather they are assumed to be universals of healthy or correct living (Thomas, 1997). The invisible standard wields an enormous power at all levels of culture and government, in large part because it operates as a silent, unacknowledged background, so the various mores that comprise the standard are taken as objective givens rather than as perspectival. I shall explore it further in a later section on Social Darwinism. Racial Consciousness I was intrigued by a reference Thomas (1997) made to a statement by Carter (1995), pointing out that all people go through a developmental process in the formation of a racial identity, and that their developmental stage may be more crucial than their color when it comes to cross-race conversation. In writing this article I have had many associations to my own history, and most of my association have been about my whiteness as a racial phenomenon rather than my WASPness as a cultural phenomenon,. I certainly have a sense, heightened in the process of revising this article, that the development of my racial identity is a developmental process, activated even as I write. I find myself wondering again how much to tell of the details of the development of my racial consciousness. The details seem mundane in the telling, although they are emotionally powerful to me. Probably more important than any particular story, however, is that my mother and her family were always racially conscious. My grandmother was an Irish Catholic, my grandfather an English Baptist. They had witnessed and been hurt by religious intolerance often enough that it was a small step for them to develop antipathy for intolerance and discrimination of all kinds. My grandmother and my mother and father all were active, to varying degrees, with groups that sought to equalize justice and opportunity between blacks and whites. It was not uncommon in my house to view our life stories through a racial lens. I can cull out two major trends in the development of my racial consciousness. The first is that, unlike McIntosh (1995), I was aware of my white privilege in conjunction with my awareness of black disenfranchisement. The second is that I have a lot of what I call racial self-consciousness. Of the first trend, learning about racism has always had a two-fold focus of attention for me: “what it means to be black in America,” and “what it means to be white in America.” They go hand in hand for me, having grown up in a town where the differences between white and black were quite visible. As I described earlier, I was raised in an area of the US that had a prominent, albeit de facto, “color line.” Whites lived in the suburbs surrounding a city largely populated by African-Americans. This was the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. The area was also a focal point for the legislative thrust of the civil rights movement. The inequities of life along the color line are seared into my racial and social consciousness. The second theme I can cull out is one of racial self-consciousness. My interest in race matters makes me acutely aware of racial differences. I tend to be very interested in talking with others, white and black, about racial issues and experience. I have a sense that this is a “stage” along the way in the further development of my racial consciousness and sensitivity. What I imagine is that if I had the chance to engage in race-based dialogues to my heart’s content, I would no longer seek that kind of conversation at every opportunity. The problem for me now is that, when my conversational partners are African-Americans, I run the risk of rendering them invisible again if at that moment they are in a more color-blind mind-set. I do not move easily from racial consciousness to color-blindness, and both mindsets are necessary for intimate contacting between blacks and whites. This has implications for therapy, which I will address at a later point. At any rate, back to my story. You can see from what I have written, that I made the usual white background assumption that unless I picked up evidence to the contrary, the woman I was to meet would be white. Joyce is a sociologist with a particular interest in racial consciousness, and racial experiences in LA. When I did ask her, in our second meeting, if she had given any thought to finding an African-American therapist, she said that she had gotten my name from a colleague she trusted (a white sociologist whom I had seen for therapy a few years earlier), and the referral was more important to her than color. My question also seemed to raise her level of defensiveness slightly, and I knew that she was already quite embarrassed that she was seeking therapy in the first place, so I did not inquire further. Several weeks passed and the therapy lurched along with few references to her race, and none to mine. She would occasionally mention a difficult interaction or situation, and in the process of exploration I sometimes asked her for the race of the person with whom she was struggling. She would appear relieved and identify the person as white. At that point we would explore the possibility that the difficulties arose in part as a result of the racial prejudices or ignorance of the other person. But I always had to initiate the race-based discussions. I continued to be uneasy that we had not overtly acknowledged our racial difference. I could not see that she was uneasy, but I was. I became tangled in doubts of almost obsessive proportion. The doubts took my thoughts in various directions. I was reluctant to impose a figure into her process of talking about her own interests if that figure was an enactment of my anxiety. I wondered if perhaps I wanted to offer an African-American therapist so that she would leave and relieve me of my anxiety. Or, I wondered, perhaps I wanted the overt acknowledgment of our racial differences so that I could establish myself as different from “those other” whites. Then again, I wondered if perhaps I needed the acknowledgement of our racial difference because I was not as developed, in terms of my racial consciousness, as I thought I should be. On the other hand, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, such an acknowledgement might be helpful to Joyce, who might need me to take the initiative. One of the striking “symptoms” of my anxious self-doubt is the harsh tone of self- doubt and self-criticism in them. This is a not uncommon experience for other whites who are racially sensitive. This may be a manifestation of white guilt, something I will address at a later point in the paper. “White Anxiety” I am anxious when I meet a new patient who is from a cultural, ethnic or racial group different from my own. I am also anxious when I begin to work with someone from a markedly more elevated social class than mine. Some of my anxiety is a simple fear of strangeness or newness. That anxiety is quickly overcome by establishing contact and getting to know the patient a little better. Then anxiety turns to interest. Some of the anxiety is a heightened concern about whether I will be competent with this new patient. This concern, common at the start of any new therapy, is heightened by my worries that I am a “multi-cultural illiterate.” Finally, there is a darker anxiety that nibbles around the edges of my awareness, lingering for some time, specific to working with African-American patients. I think it has to do with a vague feeling of threat to my sense of innocence or goodness. I anticipate that our work together will throw me into an encounter with my complicity white privilege, and also that our relationship will have an edginess based on the patient’s silent accusations of me for enjoying white privilege, and of my racial guilt and shame. One day Joyce started talking about the details of a study she was conducting. She mentioned that she always had to allow twice as long for interviews with white people than with other interviewees. She said it took the white interviewees an extra hour or so become comfortable enough with her to speak freely and openly. They had to overcome their anxiety over whether they would make a racial faux pas, and their worry of being harshly criticized by my patient. She said that the whites in her study lacked a vocabulary for addressing multicultural themes, whereas the other participants were highly articulate. I was reminded, as she spoke, of my first few awkward sessions with her: my anxiety, confusion, twinge of self-conscious shame, not knowing how to acknowledge our racial difference, not knowing how much it “ought” to matter. I decided to tell her what I was thinking. I described the tangle of doubt and confusion I experienced in not knowing whether I was being more racist by mentioning race, or by not mentioning race. We both had a good laugh, and the atmosphere between us underwent a palpable change for the better. I believe that this was a signal to her that we could talk about the effects of racism on her life, but also, and perhaps more importantly for the development of our relationship, that we could also talk about my “whiteness”, and my racial consciousness, and how both of these factors influenced our work together. We have both been looser, freer with each other since then. Often, my biggest problem in the treatment with Joyce now, is I must resist my temptation to engage in talk about race matters. She has people with whom she engages freely in such conversations, but I don’t. I am hungry for the chance, and she is astute and articulate about racial themes. I remember a visit I made to the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and how nourished I felt by frequent conversations about race matters. Their integration of multi-cultural consciousness with gestalt theory and training looks seamless to me from the outside. I especially relished conversations among whites about race matters. I found several other whites who were passionately interested in deconstructing whiteness and in attempting to cross the racial divide, and even one white man who had read many of the same books by AfricanAmerican writers that I had read. I was in “race matters”3 heaven. Once, shortly after my visit to Cleveland, Joyce and I were exploring her distaste for public speaking. We began to look in greater detail at different public speaking experiences she has had. Joyce is a perfectionist, loathe to show vulnerability or awkwardness to all but her dearest friends. She feels threatened with exposure when she speaks in public. We had explored the familial roots of her perfectionism, and to some extent the race-based roots as well. I suggested we explore more closely whether there were any differences in her experience based on subtle differences in her speaking contexts. It turns out that one particular speaking engagement had been easy, even relaxed for her. The difference was that her audience had been primarily black, not a common occurrence for her. This experience allowed us to examine more closely an internal critic she had, who turns out to be white. She has begun to wonder if her strongest sense of shame is in relation to this white critic. Although this was a surprising and freeing discovery, it has also been enormously painful for two reasons. The first is that she feels diminished by her vulnerability to “white” judgment. Her mother crusaded very hard to inoculate her against the stings of encounters with white prejudice. Second, she feels mournful and almost overwhelmed by the realization that no matter what she does, she cannot escape prejudice, racism, and the woundings that come from breathing the air which makes her invisible as a person. West (1994) refers to this as the “white normative gaze,” and asserts that blacks must be able to gain some distance from this gaze in order to know themselves deeply. The dilemma of invisibility is quite figural for her now. Joyce is considering branching out from her institution, where she feels strangled, into doing independent consulting. She has been puzzled by her inability to write a proposal for funding. We have come to understand her inhibition as related to a fear of being totally invisible as she reaches into the white world for recognition. Her sense of herself as invisible is not a new awareness. But she is surprised and chagrined to see just how much the effects of racism continue to impinge on her. I remember in one poignant session we saw how much of her life was dedicated to proving herself to whites. With sadness and bitter resignation, we mourned together that she would never be able to prove herself, once and for all, to the white world. White Guilt After Joyce left I thought of some of my white patients, and the struggles they face when they stand on the verge of personal and professional risk of the kind Joyce faces. For most, some sense of personal efficacy can carry them across the threshold. Joyce knows that all of her efficacy may not mean anything, so she is robbed of a sense of personal agency at a time when she needs it most. It was a moment of stark awareness of how different two lives may be, based only upon a difference in color. I was reminded of a passage written by white author, Willie Morris, in his autobiographical book, North Towards Home (1967). Morris was born and raised in Yazoo, Mississippi. In his autobiography he reported on a letter he received from an African-American man who had read an essay Morris wrote about pleasant memories of his childhood in Yazoo. The letter-writer asserted that he, too, and been raised in Yazoo, and that “Your Yazoo is not mine.” Trustworthy colleagues, to whom I am grateful, criticized my first draft of this paper, because they found in it an agenda to win the understanding and approval of my black colleagues, and by doing so, to expiate my guilt. Interestingly, in attempting to explore the phenomenology of being white in racially charged America, I had neglected to explore a very common phenomenon, known as “white guilt” but I had brought it to life in action in the construction of my paper. I felt chagrined, embarrassed, and guiltier still, as I did not want to “use” anyone, particularly my African-American colleagues in that way. This time I shall not omit a discussion of white guilt I am particularly interested in how white Americans, such as Morris, come to terms with their complicity in something larger than themselves which oppresses others but not them. How do they reconcile their simultaneous responsibility and their good will? I wonder where we might derive a sense of goodness and dignity when we live a life shadowed by racism and white privilege. I also remember reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I had finished reading it about a month before Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was a senior in high school, and I realized, to my horror, that my suburban school education was a lie. We were being fed a highly sanitized, white-dominated vision of American life and politics. My interest in reconciling the shadows and light of guilt and innocence reflects not only my racial sensitivities, but also my family history. My personal history and my racial/social history at times converge in shaping my consciousness and politics. In my family, there was also a “sanitized” version of who we were as a family, and it differed greatly from my direct experience of serious, messy family disturbance. And much like blacks at the time, I could not find a voice for, or others who could listen to, my perspective and my pain. Within my family I came to feel ashamed, guilty, dirty, and plagued by doubts about my personal goodness and dignity. So the parallel currents of racial sensitivity and personal history drive my question about complicity, responsibility, and goodwill that Morris addresses. Probably better known to most of us than our race-based anxieties is our race-based guilt. Many of us feel guilty about the history of slavery and inequality that is so inherently contradictory to our democratic aspirations. The ugly and self-defeating combination of anxiety, guilt, shame and ignorance makes it all but impossible for even the most minor of cross-race interactions to proceed with the natural grace that is common in white-white interactions. That is partly why this paper, as I write, is so graceless. I am strongly aware that a graceful paper would be a lie, of sorts, a sanitized and careful tiptoe through a highly charged, incredibly complex and tangled emotional landscape. My guilt is part of what fuels my passion to try to set things right. Social Darwinism, Belonging and Superiority Certainly one of my most guilt-provoking reactions when faced with the realization of my privileged status and freedom is my smug sense of “belonging”. My heart may be big enough to want all of us to belong, but there seems to be another current of thought and feeling which captures me, the one where I feel vaguely superior by virtue of the fact that I “belong.” At such a moment I am confronted with one of the unshakeable consequences of having come to maturity in such an individualistic, competitive and racialized culture: for me to be “inside,” someone else must be “outside.” Another remnant of my acculturation into the strong individualistic ethic of WASP American culture shows in my private thought that if any particular patient is so alienated, so much “outside,” perhaps his or her outsider status is somehow deserved. This phenomenon of blaming the victim emerged from the “Social Darwinism” of the late 1800' and remains present as a background influence today. Social Darwinism combined the individualistic values of Protestantism with capitalism and Darwinian evolutionary theory to create a social/scientific theory which held that those who succeeded in the new industrial culture of the US were those who worked hard and had the proper genetic endowments (survival of the fittest), and those who were impoverished deserved their poverty by virtue of their personal weaknesses and deficits. It is a profoundly racist theory, whose currency in the U.S. was born of the anxiety and defensiveness of white property and factory owners at a time when immigrants and newly freed slaves were flocking to work for them, but threatening their secure sense of place and of ownership of the resources and the culture of America. It is only a small step to go from the notion of personal failings to the notion of defects and weaknesses of a racial or cultural group. Thus, the dispossession and disadvantages of African-Americans in the US have been attributed to personal defects of character and ability of the African race rather than to racism in American culture. Even such seemingly benign assessment instruments as the intelligence test began in the racist crucible of efforts to prove the inferiority of AfricanAmericans by measuring skull sizes. It is extremely difficult to convey the strength and embeddedness of Social Darwinian thought. It is an aspect of our cultural, social, historical field, which shapes, quietly but pervasively, our figure-formation process. One small example that might be useful, is the example of psychological studies done in the 1970's, on a phenomenon called “field dependence/independence.” The gist of these studies was various experiments designed to test to what degree research subjects’ perceptions were influenced by field conditions. The prevailing wisdom of the day was that relative field independence was a sign of mental health, whereas field dependence was a sign of weakness. Until well into the 1980's, there was no critical appraisal of the individualistic ethos that permeated the conclusions drawn from the research findings. Current criticism argues that field independence privileges individualism at the expense of interconnection. Thus, ironically, the research findings were organized according to the researcher’s “field dependent,” embeddedness in their WASP and Social Darwinist perspectives, which would prize individualism, but that prevalent field condition remained in their background, never brought into the foreground for examination! I remember going “on strike” in 1961. I was 11, President Kennedy had been inaugurated, Martin Luther King was one of my heroes, and I thought now was a time to take a stand. So I wrote a letter to the President asserting that I would no longer recite the daily “pledge of allegiance” to the flag of the United States. Schoolchildren throughout the country recited this daily pledge as a morning ritual to begin the school day. But the last line read, “with liberty and justice for all.” Where was the justice for so many African-Americans who were still prevented from voting in the American South? So I announced to the President that I would not recite the pledge until blacks could vote. My point in telling this amusing and fondly remembered tale of my childhood, is that I have not been ignorant of the racial politics and inequality in this country, and yet, despite the racial sensitivities I have worked conscientiously to develop, I am engaged in a never-ending battle to deconstruct and disembed myself from the remnants of WASP, Social Darwinist acculturation. I frequently encounter moments of what McConville (1997), in describing crossrace conversations, describes as “bewilderment.” It is a dawning sense of my own ignorance, and with that, a realization that I am not as innocent as my good intentions claim. Beyond my intentions, there is an impact of my behavior on others, and an uncomfortable realization that I’m not owning enough responsibility for that impact, and worse yet, that I’m not owning up to my responsibility for this ignorance. These half formed awarenesses are fueled by my knowledge that bigotry indeed exists, that it is all around us, that it permeates the air we breathe, even this air, right here, present in this room, as we speak. It is, in other words, the simultaneous prehension of my innocence and my guilt, my non-racist intentionality and my immersion, in an atmosphere saturated with inequity and bias. This is bewilderment. (P.3) Whenever I find myself bewildered by someone’s response to an action of mine, it is because I am blind to the ground of their experience. My advice to myself here is simple: get interested in the impact, particularly when it surprises me. (P.14) To McConville’s painful and inspiring description, I would add that the bewilderment is also a sign that we are also ignorant of an important dimension of our own ground. Which brings me back to Social Darwinism and my own bewilderment. I remember my bewilderment upon first reading a seminal book on institutional racism by William Ryan (1971), called Blaming the Victim. One form of institutional racism he deconstructed was the notion that the reason AfricanAmericans as a group were unable to attain economic equality, even after legal equality had been advanced greatly and educational opportunities were supposedly more plentiful, was that the impact of generations of racism and slavery had yielded a culturally deprived black community. I regret to say, but must, for the sake of my argument, that his reasoning created a moment of bewilderment for me. I had been thinking that the notion of “cultural deprivation” was a more compassionate understanding of the struggles of poor urban African-Americans than the ideology I had heard spouted that they were simply lazy and eager to take advantage of the welfare system. But Ryan pointed out how the notion of cultural deprivation allowed governments to focus the problem within the victim instead of within the field. An example he used was that of schools. I present a lengthy quote below to provide an example of his deconstructive thrust, that was so enlightening to me. [The researchers] found that lower class children, particularly lower class minority children, have had less exposure than middle class children to certain kinds of experiences that are helpful in the school situation.... Middle class kids are better able to distinguish between words that sound alike, are better able to perceive colors and shapes, and, in imitating their parents’ speech, have learned to talk in a style similar to that of most teachers. Thus, the middle class child is somewhat better prepared for the school experience than is the lower class child. But it would not be unreasonable to present this proposition in its reversed form: The school is better prepared for the middle class child than for the lower class child. Indeed, we could be tempted to state further that the school experience is tailored for, and stacked in favor of, the middle class child. (P.35) [underlinings mine] While many white Americans may not have heard of the concept of Social Darwinism, it is so closely linked with WASP values and with science, that we were all raised in its thrall, regardless of our racial or ethnic past. Tracing Social Darwinism as a historically situated political device has helped me contextualize some of my own norms as they have come into my awareness. Although my intention here is to make various meanings of “whiteness” more figural, in order to illustrate more fully the impact of the Social Darwinist ambience on my own forming figures, I turn to another relationship in which I have superior social standing compared to Susan, a white lesbian patient. She was repeatedly sexually abused in childhood. Our therapeutic relationship has been emotionally intense and quite stormy at times, knotted with distrust, testing, mutual defensiveness, and yet deeply honest. She yearns for an intimacy with me that feels safe, not threatening. She reported a dream to me: “We are at a party, but not standing near to each other. You are carefree, and happily eating a delicious filet mignon steak. I am in a shadowy corner, relegated by my health problems to eating vegetables. I resent your greater freedom to taste rich foods.” Susan’s dream brought home to both of us the painful mix of feelings that were evoked after sessions in which she had felt particularly close to me. She bemoaned the resentment and envy she experienced when she felt at once close to me and yet alienated because of my “heterosexual privilege.” At one point she spoke bitterly of how if each of us met our respective lovers outside after the session had ended, I would be able to walk off hand-in-hand with my male lover, while she and her female lover would have to walk with a discreet distance between them or risk ostracism or worse. My own reaction to this dream was a complicated one. I was mournful, sobered by the reality of her disdained minority status. At the same time, I felt a sense of patronizing smugness at the sureness of my sense of belonging and safety relative to the wider culture. I then felt ashamed of myself, and guilty to be reveling in my status as cultural insider. I also felt proud of myself for being able to help unearth and face squarely the painful gap between us which existed in that moment of realization. I imagined myself in her shoes, and began to burn with humiliation and anger. All of these reactions tumbled pell-mell throughout my body. In this moment it was crucially important to Susan that I reach across the space between us with heartfelt understanding of how different we were, and how unfair it was that, through no doing of her own, she was an outsider, and I was an insider. It was equally important that my efforts to feel my way into her bitter outrage and sense of victimization not be motivated by my wish to “close the gap” between us; to attempt to erase, if only in the moment, the bitter truth of our different standings in the culture. Whether working with gay and lesbian patients or with people of color, I find I must resist the temptation to be self-effacing. I am tempted to do or say something that brings me into closer alignment with the patient’s sense of being disenfranchised. I think I am trying to avoid my guilty feelings of smug belonging, and also to reduce the strength of the patient’s envy. I have found it is better for our work if I can simply “take the heat,” knowing full well that the patient’s envy and my guilt are consequences of my privilege. Another patient, Carla, a terribly isolated young black woman with daunting fears and inhibitions, was struggling to establish a foothold in her profession. She never mentioned our race difference, and was uncomfortable on the rare occasions when I made my whiteness more figural. I finally asked her why that area of discussion was so off-limits. She said with some trepidation that she was afraid that our connection would break entirely if we talked about our racial differences because there were dimensions of her life that I could never fully understand. She thought that she was damned either way. If I could not understand her deeply, she would be lost and alone again, a painfully familiar psychological landscape. Yet if I endeavored to understand her as if I thought I actually could, grasp in all it’s depth, what it means to be black in this culture, than she would lose all faith in my self-awareness, and my racial awareness. Carla was hopelessly despondent at the end of the session. It happened that our local paper that week posted an editorial about the racial divide, and about how blacks and whites could only begin to meet each other without rendering blacks invisible if whites could acknowledge the unbridgeable gap of understanding that exists between a life lived with privilege and one lived under the constant shadow of racism. I brought the editorial with me to our next session. To my surprise and delight, Carla had read the same editorial, and was quite receptive to placing our relationship in the context of “meeting-byseeing-where-we-cannot-meet.” She was relieved and heartened also that I had not been insulted, and had not wanted to give up, even when she felt hopeless. Over the course of our work together, she gained enough confidence and trust in me to tell me some excruciatingly painful and shameful stories of her childhood, something she had thought she would never be able to do. White Shame A moment like the one between Carla and me is pregnant with the awful possibility of shame for the patient; shame over expression of hurt and bitterness, shame over caring about being an outsider, shame over being exposed as an “outsider” at a moment of vulnerability in the presence of an “insider.” Des Kennedy (1998) said that shame is represented by the statement: “You are without meaning as a person in my world” (P.94), a sentence that resonates powerfully with my patient Joyce as well as with Carla and Susan. Of course, the moment is also pregnant with possibilities for healing, because there is a good chance that the patient will be exposing herself to another—the therapist—who cares and can stay in contact, and by being there and being affected, the patient may have the experience of actually having meaning to another. The moment is also ripe for guilt, shame and defensiveness for the white “insider” therapist. I certainly feel guilt over the privileges I have, heightened at moments when someone I care about who is an “outsider” is acutely aware of my privilege and his or her disenfranchisement. When that someone is African-American, I sometimes burn with a sense of shame, not just about present injustice, but about history, as well. In the case of Susan, I was singed with a complex sense of shame and guilt. I felt some shame over a moment of pleasure I had had with her recently. She had affectionately referred to my style of attire as “dyke chic.” I had been flattered by my temporary admission into being an insider in her outsiders club. Now I felt ashamed of my selfish experience of flattery. I felt guilty that I could move so easily from inside the straight world, to inside the lesbian world, and back to the straight world again, whereas she could not. Her “straight life” left her with a secret life. I felt ashamed of availing myself of the pleasure, from the safety of my dominant culture status. At various times, Susan and I speak freely of the complicated interplay of our gay and straight lives. But at this time, I said nothing of my own self-absorbed doubting. I simply felt her outrage and hurt along with her, and the shadows of humiliation that hovered in the air. And I felt my own outrage and heartache along with all else that I described above.4 Shifting Relational configurations The twists and turns in my relationship with an African-American patient, Louise, have been instructive for me about the shifting figure and ground of our racial differences and of my whiteness. I will never forget how she first introduced herself to me. She had seen me give a lecture on shame at a local clinic. She said she knew she needed to look at shame in her life, after all, she was “black, lesbian, and a woman. A three-time loser.” She said this with amusement, and a glint of defiance in her eyes, but her sense of shame was also palpable. Over the course of our work, she asserted that her lesbian identity was more of a home to her than her black identity. She said blacks were intensely homophobic. Our relationship, as it progressed, was generally comfortable, graced with humor, exploration, and also laced with occasional fits of exasperation on both our parts. In the early days Louise seemed quite closed, mistrustful, and provocative. I was dogged in my pursuit of the “Louise-behind-the-armor” (her description), alternatingly gentle and sassy with her, and occasionally defensive when I felt hurtfully dismissed by her. We could talk about all of this openly, freely, and with vigor. We have come to feel quite close, intimate, and trusting of each other over the years, and what is intriguing is how little we talk about our racial differences. We do sometimes talk of what “blackness” is to her, and what my “whiteness” means to her, but more often she seems to engage with me in a way that renders our race difference irrelevant. In these periods, our differences of race and sexual orientation are in the background, not because they have been suppressed, but because we are, for the moment, busy with another way of relating. I cannot describe well what the other way is, except to say that we sometimes end those sessions with a feeling of having emerged from an altered state, maybe a state where perhaps our intimacy had transcended usual parameters by which we define ourselves. I have brought the wisdom gained from Louise into other cross-race or cross-orientation therapy relationships. I am more keenly sensitive to the times when my patients want a chance to just talk as if we can know each other very well, way under the skin where those categorical differences do not live. The therapeutic atmosphere is a “play-space,” where only the limits of our creativity affect the permutations of the therapeutic relationship. I have many identities with any given patient, and they with me. Relational configurations shift with the shifting figure/ground of contacting and awareness. In the shifting figure/ground of contacting, various self-states, or organizations of selfexperience are activated. Each of these self-states is also a self-with-other state. I think that when a therapeutic process is going along well, there is an easy suspension of the “givenness” of one’s identity, and patient and therapist readily engage in various constructed relationships. For instance, there may be times when a male therapist is a “mother” to a patient’s “hungry baby self.” Working across racial lines, the “givens” includes my white self, and the patient’s black self. These givens tend to be experienced as givens, the same way gender is experienced as a given, because they are treated as immutable facts in subtle and gross ways, in the preponderance of our everyday lives. Of course, the meanings of this “givenness” are constructed, and the therapeutic process involves continual co-construction and deconstruction of various meanings, including the meanings revolving around racial identity. Some of this constructing and deconstructing process occurs when patient and therapist find different self-organizations being activated by each other. For instance, at times when Susan speaks with some embarrassment about her sex life with her lover, she is strongly aware that I am straight, whereas at that moment, I am usually not very much centered in my straight sexuality. Rather, I have entered her sexual/relationship world, and “gayness” or “straightness” (hers or mine) has faded to the background. At times when Joyce is speaking of her encounters with white racism, she looks up with a sudden shocking remembrance that I am white, whereas, I may have been “unaware” for the moment, that she was talking with “white” me. Her look of shock and fear alerts me to be cognizant, once again, of my whiteness as a powerful part of her visual field as well as her emotional field. Sometimes with Louise I am aware that I am a white person listening to a black person, while what is figural for her is that she is lesbian, speaking with a straight person. Any one of these moments where we are mismatched has the possibility of opening up a chance for therapist or patient or both to disembed themselves from a culturally constructed “self.” However, they are each also moments in which my misattunement may be hurtful to the patient. These shifting relational configurations are important to me as a reminder that there may be long stretches of time where my African-American patients and I are working on issues which are experienced, for now, as deeply personal and “color-blind.” At such times, it is important for me to de-center from my own racial self-consciousness. And yet, I think it is also important for me to keep in mind the different worlds we enter when the session ends. Final Thoughts Given the impossibly complex dynamics of power which run throughout the ground of any black-white interactions, I sometimes feel pessimistic about whether it is really possible for a white therapist and African-American patient to establish a safe enough climate for deep, transformative therapeutic work. The very structure of therapy replicates the "power structure" which has disenfranchised them. We meet at a place of my choosing, and the times and fees are more for my convenience than for theirs. The power imbalance lives in the room. And while it may be merely a personal issue for a white person, the racialized grounds we bring to the meeting make it more than that when the patient is not white. But my work with Carla leads me to think that one thing which may be affirming for a patient in this situation is the very fact that the intimate contact of therapy changes both participants. When a white therapist, representative of dominance, power and privilege, is willing to be changed by close engagement, the power balance shifts for both of them. I doubt that African-Americans often have the chance to have a white person listen closely to AfricanAmericans' experience of their lives. When so many of their experiences are implicit criticisms of the therapist's cultural status, generally African-Americans are only heard by insisting on being heard. In the consulting room the atmosphere can be one where their experiences and perceptions are welcomed, not just tolerated. Could this possibly be a healing dimension in a cross-racial dyad? I feel presumptuous in even suggesting it, but I think it might be so. The process of writing and re-writing this paper has raised for me more questions than it has answered. After my first draft, I wondered whether I ought not accept African-Americans as patients. I looked back upon the work I have described above, and I wondered if I have been too race-based in my orientation to the African-American patients, or in a way the opposite, not sensitive enough about the impact of my whiteness on them. I felt in need of instruction, but probably more important, in need of consciousness-raising discussions about whiteness. I am also acutely aware of how much I value and enjoy working across racial lines. I learn so much, but I wonder if I get more than I give vis-a-vis my African-American patients5 By the time I did some more soul-searching and reading and conversing in response to the criticisms of the first daft, I had a sense my own racial consciousness had shifted and developed. For one thing, my ease with the fact of my whiteness, and its concomitant privilege, has increased. Although I strongly disagree with Carter (1995) who asserts that the most developed racial consciousness would include the experience of pride in my whiteness. I think “white pride” is a problem, especially since “whiteness” is an arbitrary and political, rather than racial category anyway! Ethnic pride makes more sense to me. I can take pride in various ethnic influences on my development and on the development of the broader culture, but the assertion of a “white” identity, I am convinced, now more than ever, is a major stumbling block to racial harmony. For another thing, my ease around people of color has grown enormously. I do not find myself worrying about intruding; I do not feel shy about engaging in race-based as well as other conversations. I no longer see such an “other” when I look at someone who is African-American. This is hard to explain, because I do not mean to say that we are alike, another person and myself. And yet, now I have done more of my intellectual and emotional homework so that there is increasing overlap in the grounds, or fields, which shape our consciousness. An interesting question in my mind is, what about white therapist-patient dyads? So often the question is raised, ought an African-American work with an African-American therapist? Ought a lesbian work with a lesbian therapist? The push in that direction has to do with a search for the best conditions for the enhancement of an affirmative identity. But when I think about whites, I wonder if we would not be better served by working with someone who is not from our culture. Because of our very dominance, the cultural themes that may be shaping our problems, even how we frame what our problems are, are in the background. The same is likely true for our therapists, and hence we may not be able to raise the questions that may be most helpful for us to explore! I also wonder if I should notice if a white patient never notices his or her whiteness. I have found that I feel free to contextualize comments in terms of gender, or to WASP culture. But rarely do I contextualize patients’ themes in terms of whiteness. Helping a patient to understand how WASP values have shaped his or her phenomenology is not the same as helping a patient to understand how racial thinking has shaped his or her phenomenology. Racial thinking is rarely figural when I am working with a white patient. Finally, in a surprising irony, as I have explored my relationship to my whiteness, and traced some of the sources of my interest in black-white relations, I find myself interested as never before, in working with people from diverse backgrounds. Despite my doubts, pessimism and worry, I wish to be able to work competently with African-Americans. And also, in the process of wending my way through contextualizing my whiteness, my interest in “culture” has expanded, and I feel some excitement at the possibility of working with people of other cultures and ethnicities. This is a confirmation, once again, of the paradoxical theory of change. By staying with my experience as it evolved, twisted, turned, by not throwing anything anyway, I end up changed, and to my delight, more open to, and inclusive of, otherness. For Whites Only: Afterword One of the most interesting and perplexing aspects of writing this article is the tension that developed between my aims and the aims of the editor and originators of the book project itself. It seemed only right that a book exploring bridging the divides between differing cultures of all kinds, would utilize co-authorship format. Such a format could bring together people from differing cultures, and the ensuing conversation would be part of the texture of the book, the ground from which the particular articles would emerge. I preferred to write my article alone, and efforts to persuade me to find a coauthor were to no avail, even though I knew this placed a burden on the editor, disrupting the structure and aesthetics of the book project. Generally, I prefer writing on my own, as writing solo is certainly more efficient than co-writing. But there is more to my decision than this stylistic preference. I had to write my own story. When I was asked to join the book project, I declined at first, claiming (truthfully) my cross-cultural illiteracy. But I changed my mind the next day, realizing this project afforded me an opportunity to have a reckoning with my own “raceconsciousness development.” I had been so moved when I had read earlier drafts of Mark McConville’s personal odyssey through his own consciousness-raising process, I became eager to use writing to continue my own explorations. I am also, quite possibly, enacting the very thing I describe in my article as the WASP cultural norms. There is an emphasis on individual achievement, not collective achievement. And the sense of place, or belonging, that allowed me to insist on doing it my way. The explorations were much harder emotionally than I had anticipated, as I have pointed to in my article. And although I had a vague sense that my first draft had a subtle agenda to win approval and recognition from my African American colleagues, I was not able to make that agenda figural without the help of some insightful editorial questions from Tali, and some thoughtful and kind conversations with some colleagues. So ultimately, although I am very gratified to have had the opportunity to write this article on my own terms, the article became different, vastly improved, “cleaner” and more useful for my development by the dialogues into which my first draft drew me. I am not surprised by this; I have tremendous faith in dialogue. I am, however, deeply grateful for the honesty and insights of my colleagues and of Tali, the editor. REFERENCES Carter, R. T. (1995). Race and Racial Identity in Psychotherapy. John Wiley &Sons. New York. Flax, J. (1990). Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. University of California Press, Berkeley. Gotanda, N. (1997) “Tales of Two Judges,” in Lubiano, W. (ed), The House That Race Built. Vintage Books, Random House. NY: pp66-86. Hale, G.E. (1998). Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940. Pantheon, NY. Jordan, J. (1981). Civil Wars. Touchstone, NY. Kennedy, D. (1998). “Gestalt: A Point of Departure for a Personal Spirituality,” in the British Gestalt Journal, Gestalt Pub., LTD:London, v.7, n.2, 9 (pp 88-98). McConville, M. (1997). “The Gift,” in McConville, M (ed.) The GIC Voice, GIC, Cleveland. McGoldrick, M., Pearce, J., and Giordano, J. (1982). Ethnicity & Family Therapy. Guilford, NY. McIntosh, P. (1995) “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies,” in Anderson, M., and Collins, P., (ed.’s) Race, Class, and Gender. Wadsworth Publishing, NY. Morris, W. (1967) North Towards Home. Dell Pub., NY. Ryan, W. (1981) Blaming The Victim. Vintage, NY. Thomas, B. (1997). “Integrating Multicultural Perspectives in Gestalt Theory and Practice.” in McConville, M (ed.) The GIC Voice, GIC, Cleveland. West, C. (1994). Race Matters. Vintage Books, NY. 1 I owe special thanks to Gordon Berger, Robert Morris, Donna Orange, Lolita Sapriel, and the editor Talia Levine Bar-Yoseph. They each made important contributions that improved this paper. Final responsibility for the content, however, rests with me. 2 A color line is an invisible dividing point, common in many eastern cities and towns, which segregates residential neighborhoods according to race. Historically, some of theses lines were established by law, but most were by “custom,” (which really meant by the assertions of the white power elite). Nowadays the lines still exist de facto. 3 With a nod of thanks to Cornell West, for his book with the same title: Race Matters (1994), in which he plays with the double meaning of the phrase; that race does matter in US culture, and that we need more discussion of race matters. 4 ..By the way, in conversations I have had with lesbian therapists, they have pointed out an interesting way in which my comfort as a dominant culture therapist has shaped my work. I am open and freely selfdisclosing in my work. A gay or lesbian therapist whose personality is suited to work with self-disclosure as mine is, may not adopt such an open therapeutic style. They worry that answering questions like, “are you married?” may be freighted with more complicated issues than the patient may desire to deal with (including possibly the patient’s homophobia). 5 . I do recognize, on the other hand, that sometimes an African-American patient may prefer to work with a white therapist, for reasons both simple and complex. For instance, I think Joyce may be worried that a black therapist would disdain her for being black “the wrong way,” much as I once feared a woman therapist would disdain me for not being the right kind of woman.