Person-Centred Approach and White Privilege
Its April 21st 2021. For me it’s a significant day. I am a white woman (she/her) and, today, or probably yesterday taking in time differences, a white man in America who was a policeman, has been convicted of 3 counts of murder and is unlikely to see ‘freedom’ for 40 years for murdering a black man who was reported for handing over a dollar bill identified as a counterfeit dollar. Mr George Floyd was murdered as a result of Chauvin kneeling on his neck for Nine minutes and Twenty Nine seconds. Witnessed by his fellow police officers, Chauvin and his fellow officers, evidently considered this an appropriate action . What he may not have realised was that it was filmed by a courageous teenager, Darnella Frazier. I am unsure how Darnella managed to contain her shock and horror as she held her phone, but I am white. How or why could I know how she maintained her steady determined gaze. For her, in some ways , this would be an all too familiar scene of a person , a black person, being apprehended by white officers, but, in this instance, not a random immediate FATAL shooting by an officer, but a considered, physical, intentional action where the person involved was near the heartbeat,on the skin, in physical contact, and willfully ignoring the gasps and fear ‘we’ all heard from Mr Floyd, through the internet as a result of Darnella’s tenacious courage, during the first few months of the global pandemic in May 2020, for the entire horrific 9 minutes and 29 seconds.
The global outrage was unprecedented.
My sorrow for Mr Floyd, for his family and for the millions of others subjected to this brutalisation over centuries is impossible to articulate in words.
Roaring Fury is what I can say and is what I live through.
For me as a person-centred therapist, I was devestated by the ‘white’ silence. People are used to me posting about issues regarding racism and the need for white people to wake up to their collusion. I wonder sometimes if I am essentially a noise , an uncomfortable noise, an irritating noise that will pick up these aspects and my public posts can be ‘liked’ on social media, but then the silence on their public profiles deafens me. The audience remains self referential, discreet, cosy, and then sustains the collusion. Don’t rock the boat, life is hard enough without considering white privilege and why would a person-centred therapist need to confront racism as its all there, all in the theory, ‘we’ evidently dont ‘do’ racism. Yet the evidence is very very different.
The evidence is, in my view, in exploring how many black doctoral person-centred academics are employed by Universities in the UK?
Please let me know.
In 1993 I set up a network for families in East Anglia whose children were considered black as a result of their parentage. In the 80’s,(not the boom version, the radical version), ‘Black’ was a term used to identify anyone who was not part of ‘white privilege’. I’ll let you work out who that includes.
As a result of that, I met a remarkable woman . We struck up a friendship and I suggested she may be interested in the work of Carl Rogers. It turned out this was actually something she was interested in, and by quirks of fate , she ended up on a course studying the approach. The tutors, who were running the programme left the course. I , unaware that she was there, applied to the position and was appointed and delighted to see her there. I was dismayed to discover that the cohort had basically found it too difficult to meet her in her expereince as a black woman born in east anglia who had a lived experience of racism. Not from within her own family, but in other more specific, general social and institutional ways. When I became the tutor, I was able to engage with and validate that experience and invited Colin Lago in to run a conciousness raising day, on white privilege for the delegates willing to participate. Twenty years later, I am facilitating a personal development group in the same region and when I raise the idea of white privilege am accused of calling the ‘white cohort’ racist. Unsupported by the course leader, I resign from my post as essentially the dominant white group refused to work with me. Fortunately that course no longer exists, but there will be others, and I suspect ‘equality’ will be on the tick box agenda. Whether it is fully encountered will depend on the courage of the facilitators. Without encounter, without being met, the potential for meaningful change will be lost.
I maintain that the person-centred approach is rooted in social justice, in challenging privilege and by its essence, encounters the most difficult and uncomfortable feelings of the human experience in a way which promotes growth.
Today, my ex student/ally friend, (who has a significant and influential post in a very important local service for children and young people),offered her time to facilitate a group of person-centred trainees at the university I work in, on the subject of privilege. difference and racism. The moment is one I wish to acknowledge and celebrate. It is not insignificant and it matters.
‘We’ can never give up, the fight is lifelong, it is essential, it is at the core of person-centred philosopy .It is powerful, effective, compassionate, complex, complicated and not part of a tick box ‘to do’ list. It is about BEING a PERSON.
Being Human Being 