How to Be an Anti Racist Therapist: 5 Impactful Action Steps

Becoming an anti-racist therapist means going beyond cultural humility training to active, sustained engagement with anti-racist education, community accountability, and the use of your clinical skills in service of racial justice. The five action steps below cover live training, recorded webinars, book clubs, documentary discussions, and direct skill deployment.

Why does anti-racist therapy matter?

Racial justice and inclusivity for Black communities belong on every therapist’s mind and in every therapist’s practice. As a Licensed Psychologist, I’ve been looking for ways to ensure that talk about anti-racism and social justice is backed up by serious, committed action. This applies especially to therapists and other mental health professionals. Because of the power granted to us in the counseling relationship, we have a weighty responsibility to inform ourselves, commit to anti-racism, and participate in dismantling white supremacy and the structures that maintain racial inequality.

The resources below come from activist educators, counselors, and community leaders. My hope is that with some inspiration, other therapists, mental health professionals, social workers, and counseling practices can grow in their racial awareness and become better equipped to serve the full range of human experience. While anti-racism in therapy has many dimensions, anti-Blackness underlies racism in all its forms, and that’s where the work often has to start.

Action Step 1: Engage in a live training

Several therapist and educator activists offer live facilitated trainings and workshops for teams, at costs manageable for a small or mid-sized practice. All too often, colleagues of color are asked to bear the burden of educating their privileged, White counterparts. Don’t let this happen in your practice.

• Mica McGriggs, PhD: The Racial Equity & Social Impact Course
• Shawna Murray-Browne, LCSW-C: Decolonizing Therapy for Black Folk guided learning experience
• Mary Pender Greene, LCSW-R: Culturally and Racially Attuned Workshops and Training; by need
• Robin Schlenger, LCSW: Explore the Impact of Structural Racism In Your Workplace and Life
• Debby Irving: Racial justice keynotes and workshops
• White Awake: Educational consulting
• Joy DeGruy, PhD: African American Multi-Generational Trauma and Implementing Models of Change: Create Meaningful Change in Your Community
• Dwayne Buckingham, PhD: I Can’t Breathe: Understanding Cultural Trauma, Grief & Mourning Experienced by African Americans

Action Step 2: Engage with a recorded training or webinar

If you can’t make a live training work, educate yourself and your colleagues through recorded formats that combine anti-racist teaching with exercises and discussion.

• 6 Crucial Steps to Decolonize Your Therapy Practice – Shawna Murray-Browne, LCSW-C
• Tending to Racial Trauma During Crisis – Sam Lee, LPC and Melodi Li, LMFT
• 101 Racialized Trauma Course  – Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP
• Spiritual Activism 101 – Rachel Ricketts
• Beyond Our Wildest Dreams: Racial Equity Learning Modules – Racial Equity Tools – they also offer Transforming White Privilege: A 21st Century Leadership Capacity
• How to be (Less Harmful): Training White Helpers to Serve BIPOC Clients – ARTIC (Anti-Racist Trauma-Informed Care Training)
• Anti-Bias Workshops from A World of Difference Institute – ADL (Anti-Defamation League)

Some single-instance webinars worth watching and rewatching:

• Moving from Cultural Competence to Antiracism – Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD
• Hey, White Therapist, Here’s Where We Start – Frank Baird, LMFT, LPCC
• Treating Mental Health in the Black Community – Donna Oriowo, PhD, LICSW, Shawan Worsley, PhD, LMFT, LPCC, and Michael Jones, EdS, LPC-S
• How Racism Impacts Those We Serve and How We Serve: Are We Meeting Participants Where They Are? – Community Technical Assistance Center of New York
• Legacies of Pain and Resilience: Clinical Implications for Understanding Historical Trauma and Race – Community Technical Assistance Center of New York
• Race, Poverty & Trauma: Microaggressions and the Therapeutic Alliance: Exploring Ethnically and Racially Diverse Clinician-Participant Relationships – Community Technical Assistance Center of New York
• Race and Trauma: The Role of Racial Trauma in Psychotherapy – Community Technical Assistance Center of New York

Action Step 3: Engage in conversation over a book club

Gather your organization, therapist friends, or chosen family to deep-dive into a book that encourages awareness and action around racial justice. Hire a facilitator who can structure the discussion around shared exploration and calling in. A person of color on your team can’t do this job for you.

Action Step 4: Watch a documentary and be anti-racist together

Sit down for a dedicated viewing and facilitated discussion on a documentary or film that illuminates the history of racial injustice or celebrates activism. Don’t just get angry; have an extended conversation with your team, led by an anti-racist activist you compensate for their time.

• 13^th (Netflix)
• 16 Shots (Showtime)
• The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (PBS)
• The Children’s March (Teaching Tolerance)
• Dark Girls (Amazon Prime Video)
• I Am Not Your Negro (Amazon Prime Video)
• Injustice (Vimeo)
• LA92 (Netflix)
• Let the Fire Burn: Tragedy in Philadelphia (Kanopy)
• Time: The Kalief Browder Story (Netflix)
• When They See Us (Netflix)

Action Step 5: Deploy your clinical skills directly

As trained mental health professionals, we hold a skillset that can be put to work in support of Black, Indigenous, and people of color and to dismantle the systems that have historically pushed them out of care. Unfortunately, non-Black therapists have historically perpetuated racism and prejudiced practices, including through racial microaggressions against African American clients. Black, Indigenous, and people of color continue to encounter serious obstacles in accessing mental health care. This is where you come in. Engaging your therapist skills and anti-racist aims, you can:

• Offer to lead a mindfulness workshop for communities of color;
• Teach activists about self-care and self-compassion through a free course;
• Join insurance panels or offer more low sliding scale spots;
• Educate your white peers on the White Racial Identity Model, a continuum of development that may lead to anti-racist action; and
• Especially if you’re a training site for pre-grads, interns, or post-grads, make sure your workplace is racially inclusive, anti-racist, and doing the work BIPOC therapists need to feel welcome and engaged. When only 4% of psychologists are Black, it is essential to ensure that your colleagues and therapists-in-training are representative of the populations you (rightly) want to access as an anti-racist therapist.

Anti-racist therapists — and other helpers too: what action steps are you committing to for your own growth, for your clients, for your practice, and for the communities you serve? What resources did I leave out here? Share in the comments below.

At Panorama Therapy, anti-racist and culturally responsive practice is foundational, not supplemental. If you’re a client looking for a therapist who has done this work and continues to do it, reach out to learn more about working with us.

Image credit: a katz, Shutterstock.com / Netflix