Racialized Labor, Racial Battle Fatigue, and Cultural Health
Racialized Labor, Racial Battle Fatigue, and Cultural Health is organized by Vermont Psychological Association (VPA).
Description:
Although little may be new with respect to the lived experience of racialized labor for Black people navigating Whiteness and White spaces, the ability to name this phenomenon is key to understanding and intervention. This session includes a description of the first published study of racialized labor in everyday life, where racialized labor is defined as the ongoing process of navigating hostile environments steeped in a White racial frame. In addition to introducing racialized labor, this presentation will also include a discussion of racial battle fatigue—a likely outcome of all the racialized labor in people’s lives. Naming the unnamed, i.e., racialized labor, provides an important analytical tool for distinguishing the ongoing process of navigating racism from negative consequences such as racial battle fatigue. These concepts also have critical implications for creating spaces that facilitate cultural health, where scholars have criticized the individual psychotherapy framework as one-to-one counseling does not fully consider the person in the context of their environment. In fact, this may be one reason why Black and Latino communities tend to underutilize professional mental health services. Moreover, the interracial context of counseling and therapy represents a microcosm of the larger society. Hence, in this presentation Dr. Grier-Reed will integrate previous research findings to underscore the need for moving toward an orientation based in cultural health rather than simply mental health.
Learning Objectives:
• Identify racialized labor in everyday life.
• Distinguish between the process of navigating racism and possible negative outcomes such as racial battle fatigue.
• Define cultural health.
Additional details will be posted as soon as information is available.