Index

· ARE YOU (STILL) A MEMBER?
· CONSULTATION AND EDUCATION PROGRAM IS FORMING
· SAVE THE DATES! JUNE 13 AND 14: CMTP REUNION AND NMTP ANNUAL MEETING
· LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
· Excerpts from: WhenThe Pot Doesn't Melt: Power, Politics and Identity

ARE YOU (STILL) A MEMBER?
As NMTP develops its Consultation and Education Program for the Culturally Competent Practice of Psychology, membership in NMTP can make a material difference in your professional life. Only current NMTP members are eligible to participate in this program, which offers recognition and income to the partcipants, as well as revenue for NMTP . Through the voluntary efforts of the Board of Directors, the organization has made major developmental strides since its incorporation in November, 1995, including establishment of federal nonprofit status and circulation of the newsletter. We allowed ourselves an "organizational first year"" of eighteen months, in order to get our basic structure in place.
The rules and procedures for renewing membership are now in place. Membership in NMTP is annual membership; dues are annual dues. The membership year begins May 1, with an allowance for members who join between January 1 and May 1 to count their initial year's dues through the succeeding May 1.
If you joined NMTP between November, 1995 and December, 1996, your second year's dues came due May 1, 1997, and your third year's dues will come due May 1, 1998. If you join before May 1, 1998, your "first year's dues" will be good until May 1, 1999!
Please photocopy the form at the back of this issue and join or renew today!

CONSULTATION AND EDUCATION PROGRAM IS FORMING

In the spring of 1997, NMTP member and CMTP alumna Mabel Sau-Ching Lam proposed to represent NMTP at the (then) forthcoming 12th Annual Development Symposium sponsored by the Society for Research in Adult Development and by Massachusetts Mental Health Center. With the Board's enthusiastic support and appreciation for her initiative, Dr. Lam organized a panel presentation including herself and NMTP members Shani Dowd (a member of the CMTP faculty) and Alice LoCicero (a member of the Newsletter Committee). "Getting Out of the Box: Models for Multicultural Training" was warmly received at the Symposium, convened in Boston in June, 1997.

In recognition of their work, the Board requested at its April, 1997 meeting that the three colleagues "constitute a working committee on Consultation and Education, to develop policies and procedures for NMTP to offer consultation and education services on the practice of culturally competent psychology." At the June, 1997, Annual Meeting, the Board made development of a Consultation and Education Program NMTP's organizational priority for the forthcoming year, and asked newly-elected Director Catherine Wong to join the C & E Committee, and to serve as liaison between the Board and the Committee. This core group has been meeting to develop mission and strategy, to identify the key functions of a Consultation and Education Program, and to articulate the structural organizational requirements for carrying out those functions. They have deferred the selection of a Chair for the Committee until their April meeting, when they plan to clarify the particular responsibilities of governance, based on their deliberations about structure and functions.

The mission of the C& E Program is embodied in the language of NMTP's Articles of Organization, which describe our organizational purpose as "education, training, dissemination of expert knowledge...in furtherance of the competent practice of multicultural psychology." The service products developed by the C& E Program will be marketed, but the organizational goals, not the market, will determine the products. Although generation of revenue is a central function, the primary organizing concept is development of the multicultural community, with particular emphasis on recognizing, publicizing, and acknowledging the CMTP network's 25 years of building a home for enterprise by and for People of Color.

The Committee has sketched out a three-year plan, envisioning a transition from "preaching to the choir" to "leaving the safe neighborhood," i.e., starting with offers of services to natural, sympathetic constituencies, and moving to include approaching and involving dominant-culture institutions (e.g., hospitals, for-profit businesses, public and private educational institutions). Over time, they envision building beyond a national level toward entry into international markets. They set the revenue goal of $300,000 over the first three years.

The Committee has articulated five functional domains, which may require the structuring of five subcommittees. They are, product development/programs, fee structure and contracts, facilitator training, marketing/public relations/networking, facilitator training, and evaluation.

Product development/programs: Service products/programs will be based on the intersection between diversity/multiculturalism training and competent practice of psychology, including organizational evaluation. The service model envisioned involves multiple levels, addressed to consumers, providers, organizations, and businesses.

Fee structure and contracts: Fees for services would be sufficient to compensate facilitators for their professional services, and to provide substantial revenue for NMTP. They would reflect the current market fees for diversity/multicultural training and for psychological services. The costs of facilitator training, of client orientation, and of program evaluation would be calculated in the fees. The Committee recognized the dilemma of charging substantial fees to "friendly entities" who are already connected with the CMTP network (in the early, "preaching to the choir" phase). In order to recognize the collaborative nature of early provision of services, where the "choir" helps shape the service itself, and at the same time to prevent establishing an image that might be interpreted by some to reflect lack of quality, the C & E Program will offer "scholarships" or "grants in aid" to those of the early customers who need the price adjustment, thus maintaining the integrity of the pricing structure.

Facilitator training: All facilitators providing services through the C & E Program will be Members of NMTP, and qualified to provide the particular professional services offered. There will be several levels of training, including general orientation to the mission themes, familiarization with NMTP C & E Program policies and procedures, and specific training relevant to the specialty area of the particular services offered.

Marketing/public relations/networking: A survey of NMTP Members' skills and interests will be necessary to develop a C & E Program Resource Directory. As the Committee seeks to broaden the range of appropriate service offerings, new NMTP Memberships, for example, the Institute for Asian-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, may be recruited. (The Board of Directors has in fact authorized a mailing to everyone on the NMTP Notes mailing list, soliciting new Memberships and renewals, and inquiring as to skills and interests.).

In addition to organizations already connected with the NMTP network, existing providers of cultural diversity training may have "niches" suited for our particular expertise in culturally competent psychological practice. NMTP Director Kermit Crawford, Executive Director of the Multicultural Mental Health Research Center, has offered to share his linkages with the network of multicultural training and research enterprises.

The Committee envisions use of "seed money" to develop and distribute public relations materials, including polished brochures with appropriate logo, and establishment of an NMTP website.

Program evaluation: Evaluation processes will be built into all services, for feedback on efficacy and utility.

All network members will be receiving a questionnaire which will help the C & E Committee define the broad range of expertise offered by members. Meanwhile, NMTP Members (including new applicants!) interested in learning more about the C & E Program are encouraged to make contact with the members of the Committee. They are:

Shani A. Dowd, L.C.S.W.
Harvard Vanguard Associates
1611 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
sdowd@voyager.net

Mabel Sau-Ching Lam, Ph.D.
16 Chauncy Street, #33
Cambridge, MA. 02138
mabelsauchinglam@juno.com

Alice LoCicero, Ph.D., Assoc. Prof.
Graduate Counseling Program
Rivier College
Nashua,NH 03060
alocicer@rivier.edu

Cathy Wong, M.Ed.
194 Independence Avenue
Quincy, MA 02169
Cathy_Wong@brookline.mec.edu

SAVE THE DATES! JUNE 13 AND 14: CMTP REUNION AND NMTP ANNUAL MEETING

Please mark your calendars for the weekend of June 13 and 14, 1998, when the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology (CMTP) celebrates its 25th anniversary, and the Network for Multicultural Training in Psychology (NMTP) convenes its Second Annual Meeting.

Founded 25 years ago as the Minority Training Program, a psychology internship program at then Boston City Hospital, CMTP challenged the professional training Establishment with the proposition that the training of People of Color to serve People of Color required explicit attention to issues of race, class, power, and social justice. It was the inspiration of Guy Seymour, its first Director. Guy was "godfather" to a network of professionals and human service agencies, committed to the CMTP mission, who provided training sites and supervision. Carolyn Attneave consulted on the development of the program and its network, and for many years convened annual assemblies of interns, staff and network members, for purposes of program evaluation and organizational revitalization. These network assemblies carried the Program through its difficult early years, when our work and our mission were barely tolerated by the mental health professional Establishment. Our informal structure and spontaneous process were sources of our strength, and of our concerns, as we struggled with the challenges of developing new knowledge in a field which did not welcome that knowledge.

We persisted, and lived through victories and defeats in our own organization, and in the wider social context. Our social justice commitments expanded to include gender and sexual orientation, as well as issues of race, class, and immigration. We survived transition into formal organization, achieving accreditation from the American Psychological Association during the tenure of Dr. Seymour's successor, Rita Dudley-Grant. Current Director Herb Joseph took the reins from Dr. Dudley-Grant's successor, Gisela Morales, and maintains the vitality of a Program which selected this year's interns from over 150 applicants. At our 20th Reunion gathering, we celebrated contributions of our graduates to the developing field of culturally competent psychology, still a challenge to established psychology, but with a voice, a seat at the table, and real influence on professional practice and social policy.

This year's 25th year celebration affords opportunities to catch up with old friends and colleagues, and to apply the culturally competent practice of psychology to problems of racism. The program for the day on Saturday includes viewing of the film, "Skin Deep," followed by intensive discussions, in large and small groups, of how to apply a culturally competent psychological perspective to problems of racism as they affect children, adults, and families. Saturday evening offers a Reunion Banquet and dance.

The Network for Multicultural Training, Inc., is the formal organization which emerged out of the informal network of professionals and community members who have supported CMTP from the beginning. NMTP's Second Annual Meeting convenes Sunday morning, providing a community gathering in the spirit of the network assemblies which sustained CMTP through its early years of development. The community meeting gives the membership a voice in evaluating the progress of the organization, and in guiding the Board of Directors as they set NMTP priorities for the year to come. It is a vehicle for the guidance, governance, and sustenance of the organization.

Please set aside Saturday and Sunday, June 13 and 14th, for these very special events, which will be convened at the Harrison Avenue campus of the Boston Medical Center. Look for the announcement and registration materials in the mail.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I found time to read the recent NMTP Newsletter. The dialogue about teaching from a multicultural stance is very rich. Perhaps you can give this voice through a panel discussion at a future gathering. To do so raises the reality of the daily challenges and also can give all of us more language to enable difficult discussion we face regularly.
Patricia Arredondo, Ed.D
We want to hear from you! Your feedback and critical responses to our articles are strongly encouraged.

Excerpts from: When The Pot Doesn't Melt: Power, Politics and Identity

Shani A. Dowd, L.C.S.W.
Ass't Clinical Prof. of Psychiatry
Boston University
Faculty, Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology
Boston Medical Center, Boston MA

Dominant groups have the power to define who is and who is not an acceptable member of their citizenries. Dominant groups allocate status and rights to its members and codify these allocations in the laws of the land. In most cultures, religion is a major cultural carrier of these codified allocations and serves as a non-legal force for social control. In nearly every instance of profound oppression of a group of people, religious rhetoric is a powerful support for discriminatory treatment or political exclusion. Activists who wish to exclude or legally oppress a group of people must usually find a way to justify such exclusion using the rhetoric of the dominant religious voice. In the first hundred and fifty years of the history of the United States, the Christian Bible was frequently used as a reference point both for the rationale of denying women access to the privileges of citizenship, and for the legitimacy of slavery, as well as for other exclusionary cultural and legal practices.
The power to label and define is in many ways linked to the power to control the behavior of group members. The dominant culture takes quite seriously its power to use inclusionary and exclusionary labels and to define who is and who isnot acceptable. Once these definitions are culturally established, they represent ways of marking the perceptual boundaries of the group. These boundaries are then communicated to the citizenry by both explicit statements, such as those embodied in law, education or religious doctrine, and implicit statements that are codified communications around acceptable standards of behavior, for example "no real man would..." or "a normal person would...". Such statements often are coded comments about groups or individuals which occupy subordinate positions in the status hierarchy. Social and behavioral boundaries, once set in place, can then be maintained by threatening individuals or groups with exclusion if their behavior or associations bring them into too close an alignment with subordinate or excluded groups. On the other hand, individuals can be rewarded when their behavior is in conformity with culturally appropriate status designations. For example to tell an American man that he is "acting like a faggot" is a powerful way of inducing an active fear of exclusion and of propelling him to modify his behavior to be more in alignment with perceived standards of appropriateness. In addition, one may introduce similar anxieties in other men who merely overhear or witness the remark, whether or not it is directed at them. Thus a single remark, can profoundly influence the behavior and perceptions of an entire group of people. On the other hand, telling an African-American that one couldn't tell that they were not white by the person's manner of speaking was a compliment, a way of inducing social distance between that individual and other African-Americans, and a promise of greater social acceptance by the majority culture, all generated in a single remark. Because these remarks are occurring in a supportive social context, one need not be explicit. One need not define exactly what "acting like a faggot" or what "talking like a white man" is: it is socially implied. The social anxiety
generated is sufficient to induce the individual being targeted to submit his or her own behavior to intense scrutiny, even when the person is unclear what the offending behavior may be.
Such subtle and indirect messages serve as a primary tool for the cultural inculcation of children because they are both indirect and informal, and support cultural beliefs in a quite efficient manner. These mechanisms also are an expression of the power of the dominant culture. A dominant culture or group need not express its beliefs directly: it may resort to inference and assumptions. On the other hand, a subordinate group must argue for its beliefs and articulate them clearly in a challenge to the dominant group. Because a group is in the subordinate position, it must find ways to manage the experience of being constantly reminded of its inferiority. It must find ways to define itself, define its membership and to articulate a positive self-image. Because a subordinate group lacks the power to define itself, a common pattern is for the names of the subordinate group to undergo continuous revision, while the names for the dominant group rarely change. For example, at the turn of the century when the N.A.A.C.P. was founded, "Colored" was the only socially acceptable self-name for American Blacks. African, Negro and Black were considered insults. To call a "colored man" an "African-American" at that time was a deadly insult. A similar pattern can be seen among gay and lesbians, with the self-names changing from "invert", to "homosexual" to " gay" to "gay men and Lesbian women", and more recently with the ascendancy of the label "queer". The subordinate group is continually reacting to and finding accommodations to the maneuvers of the dominant group. At the individual and family level, one of the consequences of this process is to exaggerate the social distance between the generations of the subordinate group. A person who grows up identifying as Black or African-American, has a parent who grew up identifying as Negro or Afro-American, an a grandparent who grew up as colored. A white person grows up with a parent who was white, and a grandparent who was white, providing a sense of connected as opposed to disconnected identity symbols. A parent who grew up as Black or African American is likely to have some conflict with a child who routinely uses the label "nigger" to refer to him or herself and to peers.
In the United States defining citizens by the color of their skin is one of the primary ways of structuring the social order of the nation. From the 1650's to the early 1800's, a variety of legal definitions of Black emerged, but by the middle of the 19th century the legal definitions began to converge to agreement that anyone with "any traceable amount of African ancestry" was to be considered Black. This legal definition became known in the South as the "one drop rule". By the 1920's, the "one drop rule" was universally accepted, and legally codified. The "one drop rule" seems to be unique to the United States and is found in no other nation in the world (Who Is Black: One Nation's Definition by F. James Davis, Pennsylvania University Press: University Park, PA; 1991).While many debates rage in this nation about the relative privileges, rights and progress of blacks in America, there is virtually no debate about the definition of black: the one-drop definition is so embedded in the culture and so taken for granted that it is both automatic and unconscious (Davis, 1991). A predominantly white mulatto is readily classed as black. Spanish-speaking people, if they are not too dark skinned, are exempted. On the other hand in the New England area, even dark skinned Portuguese and Cape Verdeans are classed as white. American Blacks are perceived as being potential problems if they are light-skinned enough to pass. Blacks may assume they are requesting special treatment, e.g. treatment not accorded to the bulk of African Americans; while white Americans may feel tricked or manipulated if they are unable to immediately identify the person s black
Because of the uniqueness of the one-drop rule, the associated phenomenon known as "passing for white" is also unknown in the rest of the world. As the one drop rule applies only to Blacks, a person who is one-fourth or less Native American or Korean or Filipino is not regarded as passing if he or she intermarries and joins fully the life of the dominant community. Thus the minority ancestry need not be hidden. While it may be argued that the physical differences between these groups and the dominant Caucasian groups are less extreme than those between Blacks and whites, this argument collapses when one realizes the small degree of difference, genetically speaking between say an "octoroon" or "mestizo" and a "white" person. For the physically visible color groups other than Black Americans, miscegenation has promoted assimilation. When the person's ancestry in a "visible" minority does not exceed one-fourth, that person is no longer exclusively defined by membership in that group. For Black Americans, however this route to assimilation is blocked. In the United States, the one-drop rule insures that individuals with mixed black and white ancestry automatically share in the status of the subordinate racial group. For a Black American to become fully assimilated into the dominant culture, he or she must "pass" as white, and cut off all ties to the black family, community, and ancestry: an extraordinary price to pay (Davis, 1982).
A person whose skin color and facial features do not immediately lend themselves to identification by others as "white" and who emigrates to the United States, must immediately find ways to both manage the automatic assignment to a denigrated minority group, and to assert a positive in-group identity in the absence of external sources of cultural supports. The current climate of anti-immigrant of color rhetoric has increased the social pressures and distortions even further. For example, although the greater Boston area is host to a large number of undocumented Irish immigrants, it is the undocumented Dominicans and Haitians who have become the focus of legislative debate. Again the dominant culture defines who is an undocumented immigrant, quite apart from the legal status of the members of each of these groups: Irish immigrants are not called upon to justify and defend their presence in the U.S.
We as providers of health care are often unconscious of the ways in which we ourselves are struggling to manage our own responses to the power of the dominant culture to define and label us. We may unconsciously vacillate between the experience of being the victim of the power imbalances, to the experience of the more powerful other who has the power to label and define those in the less powerful position. For example, many of us are members of less powerful, less respected cultural groups in this country. We may be Asian, African-American, Latino, gay, Moslem or poor. To the degree that our skin color assigns us to membership in a disparaged minority, we may be under even greater pressure to demonstrate our conformity and allegiance to dominant culture value sets and belief systems. Because our identification as members of a discredited group makes us different from the bulk of our colleagues, in a professional setting, we must manage to find ways negotiate a reasonable sense of membership in our professional work group. If we are unable to do so, we will likely find that our professional competency comes under scrutiny, and our judgment is questioned and distrusted. Our ability to feel comfortable in the work relationship, to feel trusted by our colleagues and to feel like valued members of our work group is likely to be impaired.
As members of the less powerful group we may become watchful, suspicious and paranoid; or we may become depressed and insecure. We may act out by becoming defensive and aggressively striking out, by over identifying with the dominant group, or by withdrawing and isolating ourselves (Understanding Race, Ethnicity, & Power by Elaie Pinderhughes. The Free Press: New York, 1989). In order to reach a comfortable relationship with the dominant group we must surrender some of our capacity to act in powerful ways. We must be cautious about challenging to dominant beliefs or perceptions of the dominant group, we must titrate our vigorous expression of our own cultural identity and suppress aspects of our behavior which are not consistent with the standards of the dominant group. The dominant group need not adjust its beliefs or behaviors in any way to accommodate us.
It is in these complicated social contexts that we meet our clients, who must engage in a similar set of negotiations with us. In the context of our consulting room, we now become representatives of the dominant culture, and we have the power to define (diagnose) those in the less powerful position. Assuming we are not thoroughly disreputable people, we will likely experience some feelings of ambivalence toward our clients and what we learn of their own efforts to accommodate without surrendering too much of their control, authority and autonomy.