Culture, Diversity, and Identity: From Margins to Center

Art Therapy Journal of the American Art Therapy Association ISSN: 0742-1656 (Print) 2159-9394 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uart20 Culture, Diversity, and Identity: From Margins to Center Savneet Talwar To cite this article: Savneet Talwar (2015) Culture, Diversity, and Identity: From Margins to Center, Art Therapy, 32:3, 100-103, DOI: 10.1080/07421656.2015.1060563 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2015.1060563 Published online: 17 Aug 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 538 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=uart20 Download by: [AIC/SAIC Libraries] Date: 26 January 2016, At: 09:30 Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 32(3) pp. 100–103, © AATA, Inc. 2015 guest editorial Culture, Diversity, and Identity: From Margins to Center Downloaded by [AIC/SAIC Libraries] at 09:30 26 January 2016 Savneet Talwar, Guest Editor Within the last decade, discourse surrounding multiculturalism and cultural competence are now an accepted fact, even central to the education of art therapists. Although less energy is spent on convincing art therapists that culture, diversity, and identity are essential concepts in art therapy practice, there remains a need for literature that contextualizes “multiculturalism, cross-culturalism, cultural competence, and other diversity-acknowledging frameworks” (Goodman & Gorski, 2015, p. 1). Art therapists are at a critical juncture in understanding the links between practice, culture, diversity, and identity as they relate to social justice. This past year, the United States has been wracked with racial tensions from Ferguson, Missouri, to New York City to Baltimore, Maryland. The deaths at the hands of police of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, to name only three, followed by nationwide demonstrations for racial justice, highlight the urgent need for the United States to examine issues of culture, diversity, and identity as a nation. In response to the historic marginalization of the Black body, Poet Claudia Rankine (2014) questioned what it means to be Black in the United States in her book Citizen: An American Lyric. Using prose and poetry, she exposed her experiences of everyday encounters with racism and offered a powerful example of how poetry becomes her counter-narrative to examine the social and cultural representations of her Black body. Rankine’s poetry and prose take us into the everyday, exposing the unjust systems that “inscribe” the Black body and the ways in which culture and identity regulate citizenship on the basis of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She has highlighted how Black subjectivity is reproduced through the power of language, popular culture, media, and various texts. Rankine’s book reminds us that examining identity and difference, issues of power and privilege, and systemic inequality have never been more urgent for the field of art therapy than they are now. Although a lot has changed since I first started teaching art therapy in the late 1990s, more change is needed to move multiculturalism/diversity from the margins to the center of art therapy theory and practice. Association (AATA; 2011) stressed the need to recognize the importance of identity and difference in art therapy practice, and it offered the language to do so. In essence, the document highlighted the importance of cross-cultural, intercultural, and culturally competent frameworks. Yet all too often the cultural competency framework only replicates the power arrangements that it purports to dismantle (Talwar, in press; Goodman & Gorski, 2015). When teaching diversity/multiculturalism becomes focused on “political correctness,” or promotes the idea that race, gender, sexuality, and disability are natural aspects of biology and development without understanding the historical ways power and privilege have operated in representing minorities, educators run the risk of maintaining the status quo. Goodman and Gorski (2015) argued that “multiculturalism without a social justice framework is dangerous because it creates the illusion that our practices address the oppressions of marginalized people and the oppressiveness of hegemony, even if its attention to marginalized people and hegemony is superficial” (p. 2). The language of cultural competence has endorsed the idea that our experiences are located within culture. By centralizing culture in our practice, we only learn to label as negatives racism, ageism, sexism, and homophobia, among other -isms. Conceptually the term culture often alludes to ethnicity and behavior, thus running the risk of making culture a static concept, misrepresenting those with less power on the basis of race, appearance, language, nationality, gender, religion, and sexual orientation (Kumagai & Lypson, 2009). Stereotypical explanations help us avoid questioning the way power and hegemony have structured human relationships. I am not suggesting the abandonment of diversity frameworks; rather I am asserting a counter discourse to highlight the spaces that are still hostile to or merely acknowledge diversity. As such, I question how can we build a collective vision, not one that only advocates for increasing awareness, but one that is transformative and grounded in equity and social justice. Culture and Competence What Is Social Justice? The “Art Therapy Multicultural/Diversity Competencies” document of the American Art Therapy Although, there are several social movements that have informed social justice, historically, four social 100 Downloaded by [AIC/SAIC Libraries] at 09:30 26 January 2016 GUEST EDITORIAL movements—civil rights, feminism, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), and the one that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—have informed and shaped discourses of multiculturalism, identity, and the politics of the body in mental health practice. Each of these social justice movements overlapped to fight for equality on the basis of social, economic, and political conditions. The civil rights movement of the 1960s fought to end racial segregation and discrimination against Black Americans, demanding that their legal and political rights as American citizens be recognized. Drawing on the civil rights movement, feminism advocated for economic and political equality on the basis of gender. While the first wave feminists led the suffragist movement, gaining women the right to vote in 1920, the second and third wave feminists, especially feminists of color, worked for social and economic equality, advocating for political rights that govern women’s bodies and reproductive rights. In the 1980s the AIDS epidemic led the gay community to demand an effective AIDS policy to stem the loss of lives in the community. Drawing on this history, queer studies scholars have made significant contributions in complicating the concepts of gender and sexuality, challenging the dominant discourse of heteronormativity. Similarly, in 1990, the United States Congress passed the ADA, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities, opening the way to equal access to employment, public transportation, accommodation, and communications. As a result disability studies arose as a prominent platform and an academic discipline. Examining the meaning, nature, and everyday consequences of disability, scholars in the field have made significant contributions, arguing that disability is a social construct and complicating the concept of “normal.” Each of these social justice movements centers on the history and memory of cultural trauma experienced by those who have lived on the margins of society. As art therapists we need to consider how representations of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and religion bring into the present the intergenerational trauma of the past, as represented by slavery, violence, patriarchy, heteronormativity, economic and class-based oppression, ableism, and other forms of systemic oppression. Social, cultural, and historical frameworks must become central to our art therapy practices when we explore with our clients the embodiment, language, feelings, and memory of trauma. This means that we have to think beyond the narrowly defined, medicalized models of art therapy to envision ways to empower our clients, rather than pathologize the realities they cannot escape. To have a more nuanced understanding of culture and identity we need to consider moving from single models of identity construction to intersectional ones. Drawing on antiracist, feminist, and anticolonial discourse, Grzanka (2014) illustrated how intersectionality can be a framework for critiquing superficial notions of multiculturalism, which only perpetuate oppressive 101 conditions and maintain the regressive agendas of hegemony. Discourses like this have been critical in revealing how scientific inquiry has deployed “truth” claims about the body in its search for universal norms of emotions and behaviors. Although it is not within the scope of this editorial to offer a critique of the historical abuses by science (e.g., theories of biological inferiority), I argue that an intersectional approach helps us envision alternative ways of knowing and imagining just paradigms of care. Envisioning new paradigms of care means developing “critical consciouness,” which includes increased awareness with enhanced agency and empowerment of underrepresented minority groups. This means we have to critically examine the “pervasive damages caused by patriarchy, heteronormativity, class oppression, ableism, and other forms of systemic, institutionalized discrimination” (Shin, 2015, p. 18) from an intersectional perspective. Such conversations are difficult and uncomfortable. Although safe spaces are important, I suggest that experiences of discomfort can be transformative. Conceiving of “safe space” as “critical space” is important if we are to commit to a social justice framework. Finally, the dialogue around power and privilege has created a negative association with these concepts. Often students ask, “What should I do with my privilege?” Having power and privilege is not a bad thing, but it must entail empathy toward those who have been less advantaged and include an understanding of their suffering. Power and privilege are directly related to access and agency in our lives. Cohen (2005) called for destabilization, but not the “destruction or abandonment of identity categories” (p. 50). We need to consider how the multiplicity and interconnectedness of our identities provide promising avenues for destabilization and radical politicization. In the current call for “post–identity politics” we need to build future alliances by recognizing and realigning “a new humanism with our hard-won nonessentialized understandings of how race, class, sexuality, and other identity vectors make us different as well as similar” (Dolan, 1997, p. 75). Why is any of this important to art therapy? As Lupton (2012) stated, art therapy has been mostly conceptualized as a practice that seeks to resolve personal problems and gives utmost importance to self-expression. She argued that loss, sorrow, anger, marginalization, and oppression are agents in the formation of identity, not discrete psychic wounds that require healing. Our feelings arise directly from our social positions in culture and society. Art therapy from individualized, privatized models will do little to challenge oppressive conditions on a sociocultural level. To this end, when we locate art therapy within a social praxis, art making is no longer an intuitive process rooted in the unconscious; rather it becomes one that is collective, critical, conscious, and communal. Social justice is achieved when our clients move from listening to speaking, from the personal to the social, and from observing injustice to naming injustice (Frostig, 2011). Downloaded by [AIC/SAIC Libraries] at 09:30 26 January 2016 102 TALWAR The contributors to the following pages take up the issues I have raised in this editorial. Lynn Kapitan’s exemplary article “Social Action in Practice: Shifting the Ethnocentric Lens in Cross-Cultural Art Therapy Encounters” offers an intercultural perspective to examine ethnocentric bias. She demonstrates the value of self-reflexivity when engaging with cultures and communities different from one’s own. Most importantly, she addresses the large numbers of art therapists working in developing countries who frequently use Western frameworks in the spirit of “making a difference.” She sees art therapy as a culturally specific practice that requires an ethnorelative stance. With the increasing number of art therapy educational programs taking students to various corners of the world to fulfill the multicultural content requirement of their educational experience, Kapitan’s article is especially timely in asking us to consider the complexity and ethics of practice in a crosscultural context. Three articles focus on race and ethnicity in art therapy from different perspectives. Issues of recruitment, mentorship, and retention of students of color remain central to our programs. At the same time, increasing the number of faculty and practitioners of color poses a challenge for AATA. Yasmine J. Awais and Ann Marie Yali conducted a study: “Efforts in Increasing Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Field of Art Therapy.” Using an anonymous questionnaire they surveyed approved art therapy programs in the United States and Canada. Their data reveal a strong desire among program directors to increase racial and ethnic diversity, but few strategies leading to successful recruitment. Awais and Yali offer thoughtful short- and long-term suggestions for increasing the number of students of color in art therapy programs so as to also provide a more enriching educational experience for all students. Jordan S. Potash, Cheryl Doby-Copeland, Stella A. Stepney, Brittney N. Washington, Lindsey D. Vance, Gwendolyn M. Short, Charlotte G. Boston, and Mercedes Ballbe ter Maat examine the contributions of AATA’s Multicultural Committee in “Advancing Multicultural and Diversity Competence in Art Therapy: American Art Therapy Association Multicultural Committee 1990–2015.” They discuss the several hurdles overcome by the Multicultural Committee over the years. The committee members have worked diligently to provide valuable education, mentorship, and networking opportunities for art therapists. The viewpoint offers several robust ideas for the future, calling on AATA to develop a diversity statement in order to strengthen its mission. Finally, Leah R. Gipson’s viewpoint, “Is Cultural Competence Enough? Deepening Social Justice Pedagogy in Art Therapy,” offers a provocatively critical reflection on the limitations of a cultural competence approach when it is not linked to a social justice framework. She shares her challenges as a Black art therapist and educator, and the importance of developing critical consciouness to disrupt normative spaces. Her article directly speaks to Awais and Yali’s call for increased diversity in art therapy programs, as well as the need stated by Potash et al. for critical reflection on AATA’s organizational competence and commitment to diversity. I want to underscore the importance of these three contributions and highlight the urgency of increasing racial and ethnic diversity within the art therapy field. Moreover, in order for art therapy classrooms to reflect the demographic reality of the United States, we need more African-American students in our classrooms and in the association. Girija Kaimal’s brief report, “Evolving Identities: The Person(al), the Profession(al), and the Artist(ic),” gives a glimpse into the value of examining the multiplicity of identity and the power of our personal narratives in defining our experiences. Seung Yeon Lee’s article, “Flow Indicators in Art Therapy: Artistic Engagement of Immigrant Children With Acculturation Gaps,” an art therapy qualitative study, explores the experience of flow with three children from families that had immigrated to the United States from South Korea and were struggling with acculturation. Finally, Karen Parisian, in “Identity Formation: Art Therapy and an Adolescent’s Search for Self and Belonging,” offers a case study that foregrounds the framework of intersectionality in the author’s treatment of a Filipino American client and his family. I conclude with a call for all art therapists to become allies in decolonizing art therapy. Allies are those who, as part of the dominant group, use their power and privilege to join with marginalized groups seeking social justice. By embracing a commitment to critically examine our practices and the foundations of art therapy we can commit to moving diversity frameworks from the margins toward the center of art therapy practice so as to form coalitions with our clients, colleagues, and students who have been negatively impacted by systems of power, privilege, and oppression. References American Art Therapy Association. (2011). Art therapy multicultural/diversity competencies. Retrieved from http://www.artther apy.org/upload/multiculturalcompetencies2011.pdf Cohen, C. J. (2005). Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics? In E. P. Johnson, & M. G. Henderson (Eds.), Black queer studies (21–51). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Dolan, J. (2005). Utopia in performance: Finding hope at the theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. GUEST EDITORIAL Frostig, K. (2011). Arts activism: Praxis in social justice, critical discourse, and radical modes of engagement. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 28(2), 50–56. doi:10.1080/07421656.2011.578028 Goodman, R. D., & Gorski, P. C. (Eds.) (2015). Decolonizing “multicultural” counseling through social justice. New York, NY: Springer. Grzanka, P. R. (Ed.). (2014). Intersectionality: A foundations and frontier reader. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Downloaded by [AIC/SAIC Libraries] at 09:30 26 January 2016 Kumagai, A. K., & Lypson, M. L. (2009). Beyond cultural competence: Critical consciouness, social justice and multicultural education. Academic Medicine, 84(6), 782–787. doi:10.1097/ ACM.0b013e3181a42398 103 Lupton, D. (1997). Foreword. In S. Hogan (Ed.) Feminism and art therapy (pp. xii–xix). London, England: Jessica Kingsley. Rankine, C. (2014). Citizen: An American lyric. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. Shin, R. Q. (2015). The application of critical consciousness and intersectionality as tools for decolonizing racial/ethnic identity development models in the fields of counseling and psychology. In R. D. Goodman, & P. C. Gorski (Eds.), Decolonizing “multicultural” counseling through social justice (pp. 11–22). New York, NY: Springer. Talwar, S. (in press). Creating alternative public spaces: Community-based art practice, critical consciousness, and social justice. In D. Gussak, & M. Rosal (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of art therapy. Oxford, England: Wiley Blackwell.