So, in this time of unprecedented civil unrest I feel compelled to talk about where we as a practice stand on the issues. In my practice and in my personal life I have been watching for years the way in which systemic racism continues to impact people I care about. Black and Native people continue to be killed for no reason and whites usually just sit by and do very little. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and Sean Reed are the latest casualties. These are people with families and futures cut short. We can’t just sit by and treat this as just business as usual.
In most times the government seeks to quell these kinds of protests by making small nods to police accountability and trying to create a peaceful situation. Right now, the government is using tear gas and rubber bullets on its own citizens who are protesting peacefully just blocks from our downtown office. It reminds me of watching the protests in Tiananmen square as a child. We have never been a great beacon of freedom considering the way we have always treated people of color as less than, but we have moved further into the realm of totalitarian regime with these actions.
In these times we continue to support people of color with their trauma around systemic racism. We acknowledge that black and brown people experience disparities not just in police violence but also in economics, education, healthcare and almost every measure of the way a society treats its citizens. We continue to offer sliding scale support to people with economic struggles who need therapy. We also offer discount supervision to clinicians of color looking to become sex therapists so that people of color can have therapists of color to work with.
We will also support white people in their individual journeys around understanding racism and how to work to address their own complicity in the system. We understand white fragility and can help clients come to their own understanding of what it means to be anti-racist. This also means that as therapists we continue to examine our own internalized racism and work to undo it and be accountable.
Black lives, black dreams, black ambitions, black emotions and black people matter.