African American experience and the healing of relationships by Kenneth V. Hardy
The following interview appears in the book: 'Family therapy: Exploring the field's past, present and possible futures' edited by David Denborough (Dulwich Centre Publications 2001). This book is available from Dulwich Centre Publications and Narrative Books (www.narrativebooks.com). Kenneth V Hardy lives in New York where he works at the Ackerman Institute for the Family.
DCP: Could we start perhaps with how it is that you came to be engaged with the field of family therapy? I grew up in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia as the oldest of six siblings. Throughout my childhood there was significant emphasis placed on the importance of the family. My maternal great grandmother lived with us until I was a junior in college. She was the grand daughter of a slave and I cant think of another person whos had a more profound influence on me. She taught me what cant be learnt from books. She told me stories about humanity and human beings, about the potential for kindness and the potential for inhumanity. I heard so much from her about the ugliness of slavery and the impact it had on her parents life and my parents life.
I knew very early on what I wanted to do with my life. I had an insatiable yearning for some greater understanding of what we had become as a people and why. When I was exposed to the whole area of psychotherapy, I found that there was some attention being paid to issues of poverty, race and ethnicity but only in superficial ways. This was when I got excited about family therapy. I think my own family predisposed me to be interested in this area.
As an African-American working in a field that is dominated by white people and white values, Ive had to get in there, step in the mud, make mistakes, have people laugh at me, feel ashamed and just continue. There certainly wasnt a manual as to how to act and I had to endure the humiliation of not really knowing how to act in the white professional world.
One of the reasons why there are so few people of colour, so few African-Americans in the field of family therapy, is because family therapy has been a somewhat marginalised discipline in comparison to mainstream psychology or psychiatry. Its very difficult for those of us who have membership in devalued and marginalised groups to invest heavily in a profession thats in some ways marginalised and devalued. Theres something about getting educated and finding the right job as an African American thats supposed to be freeing. There are meanings involved in employment and education for African American people that are different than for white Americans.
For African Americans to engage with family therapy it requires us to practise unrequited love. It requires people of colour to love family therapy more than it seems to love us! The curriculum in universities is not designed to look at marginalised experiences so I had a lot of discouragement along the way. I recall in Graduate School a Professor saying to me, Maybe you should look at some other area because white families probably wont think about going to see a black therapist, and a lot of black people dont believe in therapy. I had my own ideas about this however, and if I had my life over again I would live it the same way. Id be a family therapist.
DCP: Much of your work has involved trying to articulate the skills and steps required in healing relationships, especially those affected by differences in power. Can you speak a little about this?
In terms of healing any relationship, I believe there has to be some willingness to look at dynamics of power. Power is an integral part of our relationships and until thats acknowledged it is often very difficult to move forward. Once there is an acknowledgement of the relevance of addressing issues of power, I am interested in drawing distinctions between those who are privileged and those who are subjugated. I think that while both have responsibilities in relation to healing relationships, the responsibilities are not equal. In situations where a relationship has broken down, Ive attempted to define what some of the different tasks are for those in privileged positions and those in subjugated positions. Of course, I dont think these categories of privilege and subjugation are absolute. The same person can occupy positions in different categories on different issues eg. culture, gender, class, sexuality. And yet I have found it helpful to try to articulate what the different responsibilities might be for those in privileged positions and those in subjugated positions in order for relationships to be healed.
One of the first responsibilities for the privileged is to overcome mistaken notions about equality and inequality. I believe its customary for the privileged to just assume that everyone and everything is equal. One of the privileges of the privileged is to be able to be oblivious to the life experiences of the subjugated. I dont believe healing can take place in a context where the privileged have not come to terms with the existence of inequality. Not only must the privileged acknowledge the existence of marginalisation, they must find some way to appreciate the inequality and the suffering of the subjugated.
There is also a critical distinction that has to be made between intentions and consequences. In my experience, the privileged almost always deal in the realm of intentions, while the subjugated almost always deal in the realm of consequences. Often this means that there cant be a dialogue between the privileged and the subjugated because their reference points are so different. Its important to realise that you can have pure intentions that render very damaging consequences. In order for healing to take place, the privileged must stop routinely using their position to clarify their intentions in ways that disregard the very real effects of their actions.
Furthermore, it amazes me when people of privilege say, I tried to reach out to this group of people but they were so hostile and angry that I just cant do it anymore. I think that such statements are an expression of privilege. They are a cop out. I get frustrated because I think that sometimes privileged folks, whether its men, or white people or heterosexuals, seem to require a manual before they will take action. They want to know how to approach these issues in the right way, a way that involves the least amount of risk to them. Perhaps they are used to being guided through life, perhaps they are used to being able to follow guidelines that are set up to enable them to progress through life. This is not true for people in subjugated positions. We are familiar with the feeling of not knowing what to do. We are used to facing hostility and anger when we step into unfamiliar territory. If relationships across difference are to be healed then people of privilege cannot turn away at their first experience of rejection or hostility. If we, as members of marginalised groups, gave up when we experienced hostility we would get nowhere in life.
For the subjugated, there are different responsibilities. The most important of these is to find some way to regain ones voice. One can not experience domination and subjugation and retain the whole strength of ones voice, it quickly becomes compromised. I think that there has to be a concerted effort to regain that which has been taken away, that which has been lost. There have to be steps taken to reclaim ones voice, ones heritage, ones history.
I think another major task for the subjugated is to find a way to have some willingness to allow the privileged to come to terms with their participation in injustice. It is very difficult for gay and lesbian people to sit there and watch a heterosexual get agitated or upset in relation to issues of heterosexual dominance, because most gay and lesbian people know that if heterosexual people get angry it can culminate in some form of violence. It is very difficult for African-Americans or people of colour to sit there and watch a white person get agitated and
