Proposed Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Client
Katera Watson
A racial microaggression is an indirect, subtle, unconscious racist action one exhibits often due to a stereotype. For example, if a Chinese man walks into a departmental store, one may have an urge to assume the Chinese man does not speak English well. They may put up a sign in Mandarin for him to read, prior to figuring out the Chinese man speaks the same language as them. Although this was not intentional racism, it shows an event of how stereotyping based on race can affect one's actions toward another person. In this poster, four guidelines cover ideals for therapists dealing with clients of African descent: 1) Know how to recognize when a racial microaggression is happening. 2) Understand cultural backgrounds of those with African descent and the amount of diversity there is for each culture. 3) Have the awareness of common events that happen to individuals of African descent, such as police brutality. 4) Do not be afraid of facing their own racial incidents that have happened in order to help them grow. These four guidelines help people move forward past racial incidents. These guidelines are ethically safe for a therapist to use to help an individual of African descent in racial incidents, without the use of racial microaggressions themselves. Lastly, these guidelines can be seen as a way to bring awareness to racial events in not only therapy and workplace settings but non-professional settings as well, and can inform those who are unaware of the impact of a microaggression.
Katera "Kat" Watson is a sophomore business major and music minor originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but moved to the Clemson area with her family six years ago. She is the communication director of Black Student Union, and a member of Lander University's Piano Ensemble. During her free time, Kat is either practicing piano, writing, taking photos of what catches her eye, or being an advocate for many human and animal rights and organizations like Black Lives Matter and the #Metoo movement.