VOLUME 30 , NUMBER 3 -March 1999

Multicultural summit cheers packed house

The two-day dialogue aimed to foster creative strategies of inclusion.

By Patrick A. McGuire

Monitor staff

Americans should view their multicultural society as a blessing, not a curse, APA's president, Richard M. Suinn, PhD, told researchers, educators, practitioners and students gathered at a unique summit boosting the inclusion of more diversity in psychology.

Held in late January in Newport Beach, Calif., the National Multicultural Conference and Summit marked the beginning of Suinn's presidential year, during which he has made the advancement of minority issues a priority.

The two-day conference, co-sponsored by APA, brought together leaders of ethnic-minority populations as well as representatives from minority groups based on gender, sexual preference, age and physical disability.

"Diversity," said Suinn, "should be truly valued rather than despised, should be actively sought rather than intensely fought. Because diversity should be seen as benefiting everyone, rather than as taking away from someone."

Those benefits include new energies, creative perspectives, and problem-solving skills, said Suinn. He also cited research showing that cultural experiences provide healthy lifestyles, which could help non-minorities cope with their lives.

"The conference did what we wanted it to, it stimulated the heart and the mind," said Rosie Phillips Bingham, PhD, one of the summit's organizers and president of Div. 17 (Counsel-ing). Booked for 400, the conference registered 532, and turned away more than 100.

Keynote speakers were minority leaders in research and practice, who offered pointed visions of the status of ethnic psychology in education, historical development and research design. Their ideas ranged from a suggestion that psychology learn from the philosophy of liberation theology, to the charge that ethnic-minority research has been stymied by selective enforcement of scientific principles.

One of the keynoters, Thomas Parham, PhD, assistant chancellor at the University of California-Irvine, drew applause when he argued that educators need to add more training to assure that graduates are culturally competent and effective with minority populations.

"I respect the process that says you've got to study five years to be a psychologist," he said. "I think that will make you reasonably competent. But how are you going to go out and work with folk of color when you've had just one course? They're going to pretend like you're supposed to be competent. Somebody needs to be screaming about that."

Psyche of the imposer

Parham also said that the underpinnings of intolerance shouldn't be examined by studying just those who have been imposed upon. "We know enough about victim analysis," he said. "We don't know a dog-gone thing about the psyche of the imposer. That's where our psychology needs to be going."

But Lillian Comas-Diaz, PhD, professor of psychology at George Washington University, suggested the journey her profession needs to embark on would take it even further. She likened the challenge of multiculturalism to the dilemma faced by Don Quixote. "He said, 'I want to be someone else without ceasing to be myself.' Our journey is similar, a journey that unfolds the enigma," she said, "finding who we are, what we have been and what we can be."

The journey, however, can't be completed, she said, or even begun while long ingrained feelings of inferiority and a lack of identity among people of color, block the way.

"The concept of trouble bonds many of us here today," she said. "In many ways we are warriors of similar struggles. Veterans of similar wars."

She said many people of color suffer from what she called post-colonization stress disorder--from her belief that racism equates to oppression, which in turn is a form of colonization.

Traumatic connections

"People of color bear the mark of historical subjugation," she said. "We have been conquered enemies, slaves, political possessions. And within this perspective, colonization, trauma and terror are intimately connected."

What is needed, she argued, is a "psychology of liberation," which criticizes "dominant psychology" for "its individualistic focus and ahistorical perspective." She said psychology should "give priority to developing research that proceeds from real needs rather than theoretical imperatives."

First, though, said Stanley Sue, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California Davis, psychology should get its principles of science straight.

"My beef is with the way science is practiced," he said, decrying the lack of psychological research on ethnic-minority populations, and also the lack of funding.

Sue charged that two guiding principles of science--the idea that rigorous methodology is the backbone of credibility, and that a scientist draws no conclusion without all evidence--are selectively enforced when it comes to ethnic-minority research.

"In America," he said, "the overwhelming subject of research is white Americans. The U.S. constitutes less than 5 percent of the world's population, yet from that population we develop theories and principles assumed to be universal."

The problem, he said, is that psychologists designate certain treatments as being empirically validated.

"We don't say that the treatment is valid with a certain population. If we haven't tested it with other populations, how can we say the method is empirically validated? Whatever happened to the scientific notion of skepticism, where little is taken for granted, where conclusions are drawn from evidence and not from assumptions?"

Skewed validity

At fault, he said is mainstream research which overly relies on questions of internal validity when designing and testing projects, while ignoring issues of external validity.

"To achieve perfect internal validity--the extent to which conclusions can be drawn about the causal effects of one variable to another--a lab setting is often necessary," he explained. "To achieve perfect external validity--the extent to which we can generalize the results of the research to the populations and settings of interest--we must do the research in the real environment, with all the noise that occurs in the real environment."

But such research, he said, is being discouraged because the criteria used to judge the suitability for publication and funding of potential research projects, are selectively enforced.

"Internal validity is elevated over external validity," he said. "In addition, because ethnic research is not as well developed as mainstream research and is more difficult to conduct, internal validity criteria act to suppress research progress. This acts to keep ethnic research from becoming better developed."

He urged researchers to state the population basis on which their theories and principles are built. "If they are built on limited populations," he said, "they should be considered 'local' theories until they are validated."

Among other keynoters were Gail Wyatt, PhD, and Joseph Trimble, PhD. A special ceremony also recognized the work of multicultural pioneers Martha Bernal, PhD, Carolyn Payton, EdD, and Reiko True, PhD, and paid a posthumous tribute to Carolyn Attneave, PhD.

"Hearing from the trailblazers in the field was a feeling of hearing from your elders," said Deborah Altschul, a pre-doctoral intern at the University of Florida counseling center in Gainesville. "There was a lot of energy, a real collective feeling of people coming together. I felt mentored and welcomed into the field."

"The time was right for this," added Bingham. "Psychologists must be able to meet people and know and understand them. Our actions have such powerful ramifications that it's crucial we understand society and individuals. I can't imagine anything more fundamental."

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