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Key points
- Racial essentialism is the belief that people of different "races" have inherently different race-based identities.
- In a highly racialized society, people tend to equate racial classification with racial identity.
- Not every person believes that they have a race-based identity, including many immigrants.
Racial essentialism originally was defined as the belief that people of different "races" have inherent biological differences. Nowadays it is well accepted that race is a social construct without a biological foundation. As the definition of race evolves, racial essentialism evolves into the belief that people of different "races" have different race-based identities, which manifests as inherently different needs, experiences, values, beliefs, and perspectives (Smith, 2019).
I am both a behavioral scientist and a consumer of psychotherapy. This post discusses how I, a Chinese immigrant, think that racial essentialism's dominance in therapy would affect the quality of care.
Racial essentialism, or any group identity essentialism, is about a person's sense of self—how they see themselves, how much they see themselves as a group member, and how important that membership is to them. Some people see race as one of their identities, or their primary identity, while some don't. I write this post as a person who does not consider "race" as a personal identity. I say "I am classified as 'Asian'," I appear Asian," or "I check the Asian boxes." I don't say that my racial identity is Asian. If people ask me "What is your racial identity?" my answer is either "I don't have such an identity" or "human."
How racial essentialism shows up in daily life
I started to realize the existence of racial essentialism when I encountered a civil rights violation situation. When I asked for suggestions and resources, every person recommended that I contact some "Asian American" civil rights groups. I was confused, not understanding why all the recommendations had something to do with "Asian." After this happened many times, I became frustrated and asked a white friend if she was in a similar situation where she and other white people would seek help. She said she would go to the ACLU. I asked her why she didn't seek help in these Asian organizations. Do we have different needs, because of different ancestry, so we seek help from different entities? Her eyes widened. Then both of us laughed because this was absurd.
The most paradoxical thing was that later I became a devoted board member of an "Asian American" organization. Many people probably thought "Asian" had finally become my treasured racial identity. In fact, it is an advocacy role for an issue I am concerned about. I would be more than happy to have people of other "races" serve on the board. If a white person joins the board, are they then Asian Americans? If my racial identity is "Asian," then, applying the same logic, this white person's racial identity is "Asian" as well. That is absurd, right?
Usually, American people don't see the absurdity of automatically assuming that a person's identity is a man-made category until I called it out.
This automatic assumption is a typical example of racial essentialism.
Based on my observations, America is a highly racialized society. Thus, for an average American, racial classification equals racial identity. Instead of seeing race as something forced upon people, Americans tend to internalize racial categories. People say "I am white," "I am black," or "I am Asian."
Racial essentialism in psychotherapy
As a result, racial essentialism is everywhere, the therapy profession being no exception. I read an article (Young, 2021) in the academic journal Family Relations: “Race was something we didn't talk about: Racial Socialization in Asian American Families." The title was based on a quote from an interviewee’s (Pseudonym Kathy, age 23, South Asian) conversation with her immigrant mother. The interviewee described her conversation about race with her mother as follows:
“Race was something we didn’t talk about….My mom was the one that really taught me to, like, never judge someone based on their race. I think race was something my mom never wanted me to focus too much on it. She was like, 'Focus more on the individual. Don’t really focus on if they’re White, they’re Black, they’re Chinese, they’re Korean.' She’s like, 'That doesn’t matter unless you think it matters.'”
In a later section, the authors noted that Kathy's mother taught her specific ways of coping with racist remarks.
From my perspective, the mother gave a clear message about race being a self-limiting factor that disrupts human connections, as well as teaching her daughter how to deal with racism. Yet the child thought her mother refused to talk about race. Actually, what the child really wanted to talk about was the intimate meaning of "Asian identity" for her, but her mother seemed to think such an identity should not exist at all.
Understanding this dynamic has significant meaning for the field of therapy. All the coauthors, reviewers, and editors of that article agreed with the daughter that the mother refused to talk about race. If this mother and daughter saw a therapist who thought like the authors, to address the tension caused by the conversation about race, or the lack of it, the therapist would potentially be gaslighting the mother, and the quality of the therapy would be in jeopardy.
Ironically, despite the reality that this mother and daughter have the same ancestry, they have different "racial identities." One is "Asian American," and the other is "a person who refuses to have a racial identity."
Countering racial essentialism
In the field of therapy, the lack of understanding of people who don't essentialize race could have negative consequences for these people, who are usually immigrants. Their behaviors would be pathologized as "self-hate," "refusing to embrace their true self," "hating their own people," or even "refusing to acknowledge racism," or "colorblind denial of racism," when the reality was that they held the belief that they and other people should not be categorized by "race."
In the case of the immigrant mother and American daughter case, the racial essentialism assumption is a bias that needs to be countered. The antidote is humility, curiosity, and a willingness to learn about different lived experiences and perspectives from people who don't want race to be part of who they are.
References
Smith, E. (2019). A critique of anti-racism in rhetoric and composition: The semblance of empowerment. Lexington Books.
Young, J. L., Kim, H., & Golojuch, L. (2021). “Race was something we didn't talk about”: Racial Socialization in Asian American Families. Family relations, 70(4), 1027-1039.
