Download Janet E. Helms, Ph.D. Augustus Long Professor, Department of

Janet E. Helms, Ph.D.
Augustus Long Professor, Department of Counseling, Boston College
Interviewed by Carlos P. Zalaquett, Ph.D., L.M.H.C
Department of Psychological & Social Foundations
University of South Florida, Tampa
CZ: What defines you as a person and as a professional?
JH: Hard question, I don't know... I don't know that I know how to answer that. That's the
question? What defines me as a person?
CZ: And as a professional, yes.
JH: I haven't a clue how to answer the person part of the question. I think I'm a person because I
am. And what defines me as a professional? I must admit I'm perplexed as to how to answer
those good questions. Maybe if you could give me a hint as to what you mean by defines.
CZ: What are the elements that you see as most distinctive of yourself, that you identify the
most with when you think about yourself.
JH: Okay, well, to be honest, I really don't spend much time thinking about myself. If I were to
think about myself I suppose what defines me is that I see my role as thinking more about other
people and how to help other people. That must mean that the defining role for me as both a
person and a professional is collectivism. A view of myself as just part of a larger system or
systems.
CZ: What led you to become the person you are, what contributed to your development?
JH: I think, probably, that I grew up in a large family and so to survive in a large family you
certainly learn to think about the other person's well being, because if you don't your own well
being is in danger. But, I think it might just be a result of growing up in a culture where one is
taught to think more about other people than about oneself. Do unto others...
CZ: I know that you have made many contributions to our field. From your own
perspective, what are your major contributions to our field?
JH: I think the major contribution is to help people think beyond racial or ethnic categories. To
think about how we treat people. When we think they belong to one of those categories that
influences the quality of life for those people as well as the quality of life for those of us who are
treating people as if they belonged to those categories. What I introduced was the notion that just
putting people into categories was not psychology; rather, what we have to do is to identify the
constructs that result from treating people differently because they are assigned to those
categories. Another thing that I contributed is the notion that if we are going to assign people to
categories, it's not only people of color who are assigned to categories but also white people are,
and that has implications for their psychology that are just as significant as the implications for
people of color.
CZ: What challenges did you face in your path toward becoming the person you are and
what helped you make it through those challenges?
JH: I think the primary challenge has always been being the only person of color in a
predominantly White setting. Being the only person of color meant that I often had to contend
with the stereotypes that people had or the lack of awareness of the kinds of issues that one
would encounter being in those kinds of settings. I think what helped me with those challenges,
interestingly enough, was developing a system for understanding what was happening to me in
those settings. Developing White Identity Theory, for instance, helped me to understand the
different ways that White people could react to me and that it wasn't so much a matter of me
internalizing it, but rather being able to understand it better. I think I was able to overcome many
of the challenges because I was socialized in an environment where I was able to learn what my
strengths were, and so it's easier for me not to internalize some of the negative messages that I
had received. I think I have been able to survive because I have been able to find colleagues and
graduate students who could understand the challenges, and we could help each other work
through those challenges.
CZ: What led you to an awareness of the multicultural and social justice movements?
JH: I'm not sure I was led to an awareness of it; I think I played a part in initiating it.
CZ: You were part of it...
JH: ...and I think it was maybe just an accidental process because I often found myself in
situations where people were being treated badly because they were people of color, or because
they were poor, or because they didn't speak English as their first language. I recognized that
these were not things that told us anything about the abilities or skills or talents that these people
had. It just seemed natural that someone had to speak up for the people who weren't in a position
to speak for themselves. That gets back to my notion that I think I'm responsible for making
things better for other people. So in an effort to make things better for other people, I guess I do
things which now I consider to be social justice things.
CZ: I see. What kind of challenges did you face in trying to bring, to initiate, the
multicultural and social justice movement?
JH: Mainly that people who needed to be more aware of the issues that were negatively
impacting people of color and not dominant cultures did not want to hear about those issues. And
they were... and for that matter probably still are, quite angry at me for particularly trying to get
them to focus on the racial issues and their part in contributing to the oppression of people who
were not White people. So people refused to publish my work; when I managed to get something
published people would stereotype me in the literature as opposed to responding to what I had
said. People tended to devalue what I did because they thought it was sociopolitical rather than
scientific. People would view me as the aggressive militant black woman because of my
insistence that we had to deal with these issues rather than pretending that they didn't exist.
CZ: That was very challenging. I sense that developing a White Identity Model was not
very well received at that time. What helped you at that time?
JH: Well, interestingly my... maybe I should tell you the story of how I started working on the
White Identity Model. It was actually quite accidental. I was working on issues of Black racial
identity and, whenever I would submit a manuscript about Black identity, people would turn it
down, and they would say well why don't you study White identity? How do you know there's
any difference between Black identity and White identity? And so because they kept saying
study White identity, which it never occurred to me, I decided to study White identity. And that's
actually how the White Identity Model came into being.
CZ: What an interesting story...
JH: Once I had developed the model it made people ... well some people were very happy to
have a model because it allowed them to understand their own developmental process... but other
people, who I would characterize as being in various stages of the model, were very angry. If you
read a lot of the published literature about the White Racial Identity Model, you can see that they
are very angry at me for developing that model. They are consistently writing about how this
can't possibly pertain to them and that there are better identity models. For me that's kind of
funny because when I started it they didn't even believe that there was an identity model. But
now they're at the stage where they are arguing about which is their best identity model. So I
guess to make a long story short, what gets me through it is I have a good sense of humor and so
now I think it's kind of humorous.
CZ: I hear you. What are your reflections about the status of the multicultural and social
justice field today?
JH: Well, I am happy to say that one of the things that's happening is that people are getting out
into the field more rather than limiting the movement to academic settings and armchairs. That
pleases me because I think we need to have more activism. With respect to scholarship in
multiculturalism I'm less happy because I think we focused on esoteric issues that really don't
have much meaning for the people we intend the models to serve. For example, if you look at
much of the literature on racial identity or multiculturalism more broadly defined, it's usually
focused on developing good measures, or discovering how one measure is related to another
measure. It's never clear how that is going to help people. It's never clear if those of us who study
those things actually do anything about applying them in the real world. I think the next step in
multiculturalism is that now that we've proved that we are a legitimate scientific discipline, we
have to take that out into the field and show people how to use the kinds of constructs that we've
essentially developed.
CZ: So that's where you think the field needs to move in the future.
JH: That's where I think we need to move in the future.
CZ: I see...
JH: Right now I think that multiculturalism in the field is not very scientifically based. So what
I'd like to see happen is that we integrate the science that we have about multiculturalism with
what's happening in the field... I want a better connection than we have now.
CZ: Thank you. What advice do you have for professionals who want to increase their
multicultural and social justice competencies?
JH: Well, they could have attended my summer workshop. Quite generally, when they think
about—particularly those who need continuing education credits for licensure and certification—
they should think about attending training sessions that have some focus on multiculturalism or
social justice, rather than limiting themselves to just the traditional kinds of educational
experiences.
CZ: What are your reflections about the status of our field today? Not just the
multicultural and social justice, but the field overall?
JH: Our field meaning?
CZ: The field of counseling and psychology.
JH: Well, I think our field, particularly counseling psychology as reflected in Division 17 of
APA, which I am most familiar with, is certainly more social justice oriented than it has been in
the past. This is entirely consistent with its history of being concerned about contacts and its
impact on people. So I'm pleased to see that we are a field that's continued historically to be
welcoming of people and that's growing as we become more aware of the ways that we are
similar and different. I'm pleased that we are involving a diversity of people in a variety of roles.
If we look at the presidents of Division 17, for instance, many of those have been people of
color, and I see that as a major asset—not just because they are people of color—but because
they bring particular perspectives to the discipline that were not there before. I think as a field,
with respect to our knowledge base, we're integrating a whole variety of different knowledge
bases and I'm pretty happy that as a field we actually have people, professionals, who have
committed ourselves to doing things in the world that matter. So in terms of my view, I think the
field is moving in a very positive direction.
CZ: Now, I would like to focus more on your contributions. I would like to ask you about
the Black Identity Theory and the White Identity Theory that you have developed. Of
course, you can briefly describe for us your models and also what's the current status of
your theory and model?
JH: Well they're different theoretical models. White Identity Theory, as you probably know, is
based on the notion that White people are socialized to be advantaged in society because of their
whiteness. To function effectively in a multiracial, multicultural environment they have to be
able to relinquish the notion that they are entitled to privilege. So my White Identity Model
essentially deals with how one relinquishes privilege and becomes a part of the collective human
condition. I actually originally talked about that in terms of stages of identity; people understood
that to mean that they could be in one or another stage, and usually they thought that meant that
they were in the highest stage of development. I have since changed the terminology because my
intention was never that people should think about the stages as mutually exclusive. I now talk
about them as identity statuses, which means that you can essentially have all of the statuses I
described as part of your personality, but it's just that one or the other is maybe dominant under
certain circumstances. I think where we are with respect to the theory is that we continue to fight
over whether or not my measure is the best measure, but I think in terms of the theory, it's been
actually pretty well accepted, interestingly at least to me, internationally as well as nationally. So
I think the theory is still viable and people find it useful.
CZ: You have invested quite a significant part of your lifetime in this development. Why
are you so passionate about this issue?
JH: I'm not sure I'm actually that passionate about it. I keep trying to do something else, but as I
do something else then people keep wanting me to talk about or write about, or do something
about White identity because there are still large groups of people who don't know anything
about it. In some ways, it's a theory that I developed that I can't get away from. The passion may
come in this way: if I have to do it, then I think has to be done right; and to me right means that
you can't talk about White identity without talking about race. So if I have passion, that passion
is that well if you're going to talk about White identity, you can't talk about it in euphemisms,
you really have to talk about what the major underlying dynamic is.
CZ: And at some point some people may agree with you that race is a nice thing to have...
JH: At some point they may.
CZ: What special issue in counseling psychology would you like to address?
JH: Well, right now my current passion is to help people deal with what I call unfairness in
testing, in cognitive ability testing. By that I mean if you look at all of the tests that we use in
society to make major decisions about—especially people of color—it's very clear historically
that those tests have never worked effectively for people of color. Now, the problem is even
more major because the scores are not even standardized and tests are not well developed, but
scores on tests are being used as the major criteria for whether people of color can be promoted
and/or graduate.
CZ: This is major...
JH: Well, the problem with that is that nobody knows why it is that people of color score lower
than White people on those tests. They just don't know. They've never investigated it. My major
passion is to get us to recognize that you can't use those measures if you don't know why people
differ. To begin, we not only need to get people to look at the characteristics of people and how
those characteristics interact with test scores, but also to get them not to use the test scores until
they can demonstrate that they know why there are differences between people on the test. So
that's my passion at the moment. That's what I talk about whenever I get a chance to talk about
something different from racial identity.
CZ: I see. What would you like to see happening in the future for the profession?
JH: For counseling psychology?
CZ: Yes.
JH: I think we need to be more involved in the mental health research-funding infrastructure in
defense of mental health. Now, while we are in fact doing these things, if I look at the larger
system we are not in the government agencies that fund research for instance. As a consequence,
we can't get funding for our research from the government even though I'm sure we pay a lot of
taxes ourselves. If we look at the science directorate of APA, we are not in that directorate,
although we do science. And when people think about us, they do not think about us as scientistpractitioners, they think about us as practitioners. So I think what needs to happen is that in the
future be begin to be more political, if you will, about what it is we do, and what it is we do, I
think, more effectively than many of the traditional mental health disciplines do it. So I see that
as where we need to go.
CZ: What advice do you have for professionals as they face the next 20 years of counseling
psychology's practice or teaching?
JH: I think practicing and teaching will have to differ in the future. Part of the reason why they
will have to differ is because the populations that use our services are becoming more diverse
and they don't think about being helped in the same way that the traditional populations thought
about being helped. So being helped may involve more outreach community interventions. So
that means that in academia, for instance, we need to be involved more in training people in how
to become active participants and service deliverers in communities. How do you get into those
communities, what do you do? How do you engage yourself in relationships where you are
actually meeting the needs of the communities rather than telling the communities what they
need? So, we need to develop more community oriented skills in academia than we currently
have. I think we need to change how we think about mental health because many of the people
we will be working with don't like to think that they need mental health services, but they might
be willing to take some psychoeducational services. So we need to go back to our history and
discover creative ways to communicate to people information, mental health information that
they need to have. I think that's true for academics as it is for service providers. I think if service
providers think that they will be able to make a living just by sitting in their offices, waiting for
people to come; they are probably going to be mistaken because there are certainly mental health
disciplines that can do that more cheaply than counseling psychologists can do that. And, one
might argue that they can do it better for the populations that they are interested in. So, I think
the practitioners also are going to have to begin to think more creatively about who they mean by
clients. Clients may be communities, or groups, or agencies rather than individuals who come to
your office.
CZ: Dr. Helms, is there a question that I should have asked you and I didn't?
JH: Not that I can think of.
CZ: Is there any other comment that you would like to add?
JH: Well, the only other comment I would add is that people often say that I said things that I
didn't say. So, if you read or hear that I said something that was entirely ridiculous, my
suggestion is that you ask the person for a citation, and go and read that citation for yourself to
see whether or not I really did say that.
CZ: I would do that. Thank you.