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THE
Speight,
COUNSELING
Vera / SOCIAL
ARTICLE
A Social Justice Agenda:
PSYCHOLOGIST
JUSTICE AGENDA
/ January 2004
Ready, or Not?
Suzette L. Speight
Elizabeth M. Vera
Loyola University Chicago
This commentary highlights the innovative inclusion of social action groups in the 2001
Houston Conference and expands on their significance to the conference and the field. If
the 2001 Houston Conference has correctly forecast a (re)establishment of social action
as a mainstay of counseling psychology, then an in-depth exploration of how we train stu-
dents, conduct research, and engage in practice is warranted. Given the political nature
of social action and its inextricable connection to social justice, the implications of such
a stance for the future of the profession are discussed.
conference participation” (p. 50). Perhaps the convictions of the authors are
responsible for this hyperbole. To a certain extent, one must ask whether the
values of the organizers and group participants are truly representative of
those of the membership of Division 17. Nevertheless, the bigger concern is
whether there is a potential danger in “jumping on the justice bandwagon”
without adequately examining what social justice and social advocacy really
mean for our research, practice, and training. Without such an examination,
social justice, social action, and social advocacy may become buzzwords
rather than substantive cores of the profession.
An important question is, Do we really know what we are getting into?
Social advocacy is more than a service learning project at the end of the
semester where students volunteer at a soup kitchen. Commitment to a social
justice agenda might require fundamental changes to the way we currently
think about, define, and carry out our work as counseling psychologists. Are
we ready, or not?
point from which to (a) examine the processes involved in maintaining sys-
tems of oppression and (b) provide strategies for combating the demoralizing
psychic impact of oppression for targets and perpetrators alike. Oppression
as a state and a process (Prilleltensky & Gonick, 1996) becomes the key
construct within a social justice agenda.
Prilleltensky and Gonick (1996) defined oppression as “a state of asym-
metric power relations characterized by domination, subordination, and
resistance, where the dominating persons or groups exercise their power by
restricting access to material resources and by implanting in the subordinated
persons or groups fear or self-deprecating views about themselves” (pp. 129-
130). Oppression is structural, not the result of a few people mistreating oth-
ers. Oppression is “systematically reproduced in major economic, political,
and cultural institutions” and operates through “the normal processes of
everyday life” (Young, 1990, p. 41). Bell (1997) emphasized the interlocking
quality of oppression, stating that the “pervasive nature of social inequality
[is] woven throughout social institutions as well as embedded within individ-
ual consciousness” (p. 4). Oppression is felt in the mundane activities of daily
life and in the violence of discrimination and bashing. Oppression is cumula-
tive and omnipresent, invading one’s psyche while constraining one’s body.
Oppression yields political and psychological consequences for individu-
als, groups, and societies (Prilleltensky & Gonick, 1996). There exist com-
mon processes and similar consequences of oppression across various
groups (e.g., African Americans, the homeless, and gay men), as well as
unique experiences across these groups. According to Bell (1997), oppres-
sion in all its forms is pervasive, restricting, hierarchical, and internalized,
involving complex, multiple relationships. Across the various types of
oppression (e.g., sexism, classism, racism, and heterosexism) there exists a
common imbalance of power and a resultant domination and privilege sys-
tem. Hence, “For every oppressed group there is a group that is privileged in
relation to that group” (Young, 1990, p. 42). The oppression based on gender,
sexism, is thought of as having a target subordinate group (women) and a
privileged, dominant group (men). Because identity is multidimensional,
one can have privileges and disadvantages owing to one’s various group
memberships.
Targets of all forms of oppression suffer constraints on self-determination
and self-development. There is not a hierarchy of oppressions. Davis (1998)
cautioned against participating in the “Oppression Olympics,” a futile exer-
cise in ranking whose suffering is worse and more deserving of recognition.
Although oppression is similar across groups, there are important differences
in experiences. Young (1990) provided five criteria that can be employed to
determine whether and how individuals and groups are oppressed. Accord-
ing to Young, oppression is characterized by the presence of any one of the
Speight, Vera / SOCIAL JUSTICE AGENDA 113
To be an ethical APA member, one need not actively fight racism, sexism, or
heterosexism or other forms of oppression in the profession and in the world.
114 THE COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGIST / January 2004
One merely needs to avoid being discriminatory in an overt way and break no
enunciated rules. No ethical sanction is placed on the psychologist who stands
by silently while oppression occurs, because there is no rule against such pas-
sive collusion. (Brown, 1997, p. 59)
Thus, counseling psychology would step out beyond the APA Ethical
Principles and Codes of Conduct (APA, 2002) to assert forthrightly that it
was committed to using psychology as a tool for social justice. Counseling
psychology as practiced would be neither neutral, objective, nor value-free;
instead, it would be “visionary and aspirational” (Brown, 1997, p. 61). Fox
(1993) said it clearly: “Psychologists should have a professional bias in favor
of significant social change” (p. 239). Counseling psychologists would be
proactively utilizing the transformative potential of psychology in working
for the liberation of oppressed peoples through our various professional roles
as clinicians, consultants, educators, and researchers.
Our explicit commitment to social justice and liberation would necessitate
the removal of individual counseling or psychotherapy from its current hege-
mony. Our traditional training and education has emphasized counseling to
the virtual exclusion of any other methods of intervention. “There is a distinct
tendency to frame human predicaments in apolitical, intrapsychic, and defi-
cit-oriented diagnoses” (Prilleltensky, 1997, p. 526), which predictably
results in solutions that are remedial in nature and individually rather than
system focused. Individual interventions will not provide liberation for
oppressed people because they do not alter the prevailing social conditions.
Liberation cannot only happen to one person at a time. “The oppressed can-
not attain liberty by individual means” (Bulhan, 1985, p. 274). Liberation is a
social project requiring concerted, focused effort by a committed, conscious,
interdependent collective (Freire, 1990). Consequently, counseling psychol-
ogy will have to rethink its reliance on individualism. We are typically trained
to conceptualize problems as individual ones, and while our multicultural
emphasis may punctuate the recognition of the insidiousness of systemic fac-
tors (e.g., racism, sexism, and heterosexism), too often our interventions
overemphasize individualized solutions (Vera & Speight, 2003).
By ignoring the collective, psychologists, perhaps unintentionally, justify
social inequity by
To live the value of social justice means that we must take some risks. By
becoming more outspoken advocates, our credibility as professionals and
researchers will be challenged. At a minimum, those who uphold the status quo
will label us as “biased” or “political”. In some cases, our jobs in human ser-
vices, research institutes, and universities may be in jeopardy. (Prilleltensky &
Nelson, 1997, p. 183)
Arredondo and Perez (2003) and Helms (2003) have asserted that the multi-
cultural counseling movement in counseling psychology has always been
inexorably linked to social justice. Fouad et al. are making the case that the
wheels on the wagon are turning, propelling counseling psychologists into
the cutting-edge, socially relevant, political territory of a social justice
agenda. To the extent that Fouad et al. have documented the future path of
counseling psychology, we hopefully embrace their vision and congratulate
them for their efforts and foresight.
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