White Clinicians’ Way of Being with Their Black Clients

Abstract

Within the context of pervasive racial social inequality in mental healthcare (Lund, 2020), this dissertation sought to explore how white people who inherently hold racial bias according to critical whiteness theory (Olcon, Gilbert, & Pulliam, 2019), navigate this within their therapeutic work and relationships as clinicians with Black clients. Using the framework of clinician way of being, the conscious attitudes and beliefs that clinicians hold towards clients (Fife, Whiting, Bradford, & Davis, 2014), this phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews with key informants, practicing white clinicians (N=19). Content analysis of verbatim transcripts suggests that whiteness and conscious navigations of emotions and pre-judgements about race influenced clinicians’ ways of being, therapeutic relationships, and techniques with Black clients oriented on a continuum from ignoring to reckoning with race. Findings suggest further research on how whiteness is implicated in interracial clinical dyads and offer insights into white clinicians’ need to interrogate their own whiteness