“Addressing White privilege in family therapy: A discourse analysis”

Abstract

For this qualitative study, four family therapists were interviewed about the significance of White privilege to their therapeutic practice. The interview data were analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. The study highlights the relevance of White privilege to systemic family therapy as a historically contextualised social reality, manifested in unequal experiences, outcomes and relationships. Constraints to addressing White privilege are identified in the form of alternative discourses, such as ‘colour blindness’, which problematise the naming of race and contribute to ‘race anxiety’. ‘Talk-about-talk-about-race’, acknowledging the contradictions and uncertainty inherent to dialogue around race, may help overcome the mutually negating imperatives of these discourses. Acknowledging White privilege requires ‘relational risk-taking’ (Mason 2018); to neglect this task risks complicity with the maintenance of White privilege, which, “depends for its power on silence” (Berndt 2008: 190).

Practitioner points

• Naming race and spelling out the possible implications of White privilege can help puncture White normativity and warm the context for further exploration of racial subjectivity.
• Making White privilege explicit via appropriate use-of-self can help challenge the ‘myth of meritocracy’ which reinforces narratives of individual deficit.
• Metacommunication in the form of ‘talk-about-talk-about-race’ may help practitioners overcome the double-binds of ‘race-anxiety’.