#Resist: Using Expressive Arts

Therapy to Foster
Psychopolitical Well-being
for Youth of Color
Whitney McLaughlin, MA, LPCA, NCC
Latonya Graham, MA, LPCS, NCC
 Agenda
• Activity
• Who are Youth of Color?
• Racism in U.S. Schools
• Effects of Racism on YOC Mental Health
• Psychopolitical Well-being – What is it?
• Ethnopolitical Theory
• Expressive Arts Therapy
• Examples of Interventions
• Q&A
“One of the worst
things about
racism is what it
does to young
people.”
– Alvin Alley 3
(American dancer, choreographer, & visionary)
Activity – I Am
Poem
Part I
I Am Light - India Arie

4
Who are Youth of Color (YOC)?
• Children and adolescents from the largest minority
racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. which include: Asians
(including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders),
Blacks or African-Americans, and Hispanics or Latinx.

• Also used as an umbrella term to incorporate all youth in

the education system who are not White Americans

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November 8 ,
th

2016

6
10 Days Post-Election

7
 Hate Incident Locations
Nov 2016 – Feb 2017
K-12 (224)
4%1.5% Businesses (233)
4%
5% 18% Higher Education Institutions
(219)
Private Property (182)
8%
Street (163)

17% Place of Worship (113)

12% Driving (73)

Public Transportation (59)

13% 16% Public Parks (57)

Government Building (21)

(Southern Poverty Law Center, 2017)

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Racism in U.S.
Schools
• Education policy (Tate 1997; Spencer, 1998)
• Curriculum (Tate 1997; Capper, 2015)
• Tracking (Mathis, 2013; U.S. Department of Education, 2014)
• Dress Code (Duster, 2017)
• Discipline (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010; Smith & Harper, 2015)
• Racial Microaggressions & Racist Bullying (from peers,
teachers, staff, & administrators)
(Cook,1975; Noh et al. 2007; Sue et al. 2007; Wintner, Almeida, & Hamilton-
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Mason, 2017)
 Effects of Racism on
YOC Mental Health
• Reduced self-esteem
• Internalized hatred
• Emotional stress
• PTSD symptoms
• Depression/Mood disorders
• Anxiety (significant spike in stress responses)*
• Substance Abuse
• Behavioral Problems 10
(Racism and Mental Health, American Psychiatric Association, 2017)
What does this
mean for youth
of color in K-12
settings?
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Focus on
Psychopolitical
Well-being
What is psychopolitical well-being?

An integrated approach to well-being

based on psychological health and political
structures (Prilleltensky, 2003) 12
Domains of Psychopolitical
Well-being

“Well-being comes
about through the
synergy of values in
collective, relational,
and personal spheres”
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Ethnopolitical Approach
Lillian Comas-Diaz, Transcultural Mental Health Institute

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Ethnopolitical Theory,
Praxis, & Action
• Emancipatory psychological perspective

• Helps to study the psychopolitical effects of oppression,

racism, terrorism, and political repression on individuals,
groups, and societies.

• Expands the individual focus to a collective one

• Serves as the basis for psychologists to aid people who have

suffered racism, discrimination, and repression. 15
 Naming the Terror
LIBERATION PARADIGM + ETHNOPSYCHOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE = ETHNOPOLITICAL THEORY

PURPOSE OF NAMING THE TERROR

• Develops a language that gives voice to the silenced
traumatized self.

• Acknowledges racism (in all its forms) as a form of

colonization

• Acknowledges racism as a human rights violation (by the 16

US government, medical professionals, mental health
system, etc.)
 Post-colonization
Stress Disorder
According to ethnopolitical theory…
• Post-colonization stress disorder (PCSD) is the
result of contending with racism and cultural
imperialism, whereby the mainstream culture is
imposed as dominant and superior.

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Ethnopolitical Praxis:
Bearing Witness
Ways ethnopolitical psychologists mirror the experiences of people
of color and address the effects of political repression:
• Bear witness
• Refuse to succumb to the pressure to revise or repress experience.
• Embrace conflict rather than conformity.
• Endure anger and pain rather than submitting to repression (Tal,
1996).
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Enthopolitical Praxis:
Bearing Witness
• Listen to testimony

• Promote political change

• Facilitate identity reformulation

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Ways To Aid Youth of
Color in Identity
Reconstruction:
• Indigenous approaches
• Support for oppressed individuals to find their own voice and the
language to name and describe their condition (Freire, 1970)
• Mainstream psychological tools (CBT techniques, Critical incident
stress management)
• Racial stress inoculation
• EMDR for racial trauma
• Adjunct 12-step program of attitudinal healing circles
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Ethnopolitical Action:
Creating a Safe Society
Ethnopolitical Practitioners = Change Agents

“Failing to combat racism is racism

(Ridley, 1995).”

Ethnopolitical practitioners take an antiracist

stance and condemn discrimination. 21
Expressive Arts Therapy

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What is Expressive Arts
Therapy?
A multimodal approach to psychotherapy that
“combines the visual arts, movement, drama, music,
writing and other creative processes to foster deep
personal growth and community development”.

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Expressive Arts Therapy
& Social Justice
• Recent focus on using EAT interventions to promote actions toward liberation
and social justice.

• “We [expressive arts therapists] need to provide alternative narratives that will
minimize or even eradicate the damage that these oppressive dominant
narratives do for people who are not in the advantaged groups, we need to
establish anti-oppressive practices in the creative arts therapies which strive
for greater social justice” (Hadley, 2013)

• Using a critical lens such as ethnopolitical theory in EAT, practitioners can

use interventions with YOC that incorporate psychopolitical well-being into the
therapeutic process.

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Expressive Arts Therapy
& YOC
• Using EAT with YOC provides an outlet where
their personal narratives can be shared and
validated.

• Critical Race Theory addresses the importance of

personal experience shared via narratives of
people of color

• YOC create counterstories to the dominant (white)

norm at the individual, interpersonal, institutional,
societal, and epistemological levels because they
make visible the daily microaggressions and
systemic racism that people of color experience.
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Interventions
Creative Arts – Drawing

Draw a picture of a time when you felt sad about your

skin color.
Draw a picture of a time when you felt happy about
your skin color.
• Foster solidarity
• Bear witness
• Participants construct their stories, experiences
of racism & discrimination
• Promote resilience, positive self-image, and empowerment
Examples
A young child (about
four years old) draws
himself crying. The
face of the other
figure is blacked out.

A child’s portrait of
feeling happy about her
skin color while playing
on the playground with
a diverse group of
peers.
Other EAT Interventions
Community-based Expressive Arts Activism
to promote personal, group, and community wellness
(psychopolitical well-being).

Filmmaking
• Therapeutic filmmaking (Rubin, 2016)
Music
• (HealthRHYTHMS®)
Mindful Drumming/Drum Therapy

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Activity – I Am Poem
Part II
Scars to Your Beautiful - Alessia Cara
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 Equality
by
Maya Angelou
(American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist)

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Questions?
Contact Information:
wgmclaug@ncsu.edu
lmgraha2@ncsu.edu

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References
American Psychiatric Association. (2017). Racism and mental health. Retrieved from https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-
blogs/apa-blog/2017/10/racism-and-mental-health

Bolger, M. (n.d.). Race & me. Retrieved from http://www.socialjusticetoolbox.com/activity/race-me/

Comas-Diaz, L. (2000). An ethnopolitical approach to working with people of color. American Psychologist, 55(11), 1319-1325. doi:
10.1037/0003-066X.55.11.1319

Duster, C. R. (2017). Parents outraged over school’s ‘discriminatory,’ ‘racist’ dress code. Retrieved from
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/parents-outraged-over-school-s-discriminatory-racist-dress-code-n759821

Eberhart, H., & Atkins, S. (2014). Presence and process in expressive arts work: At the edge of wonder. London, England: Jessica Kingsley
Publishers.
Freire, E (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.
Gregory, A., Skiba, R. J., & Noguera, P. A. (2010). The achievement gap and the discipline gap: Two sides of the same coin?
Educational Researcher, 39(1), 59-68.

International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. (2017). Who we are. Retrieved from http://www.ieata.org/who-we-are.html

Macon, A. F. (2015). Discrimination and forced performance of race through racially conscious public school hairstyle prohibitions.
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, 1255, 1-8.

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Mathis, W. (2013). Moving beyond tracking [PDF document]. Retrieved from Lecture Notes Online
http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/pb-options-10-tracking.pdf
 References
Prilleltensky, I. (2003). Understanding, resisting, and overcoming oppression: Toward psychopolitical
validity. American Journal of Community Psychology, 31(1/2), 195-201.

Ridley, C. R. (1995). Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and therapy: A practitioner's guide to
intentional intervention. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Smith, E. J., & Harper, S. R. (2015). Disproportionate impact of K-12 school suspension and expulsion on Black
students in southern states. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Center for the Study of Race and Equity
in Education.

Southern Poverty Law Center (2017). Post-Election bias incidents up to 1,372; New collaboration with
ProPublica. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/02/10/post-election-bias-incidents-
1372-new-collaboration-propublica

Tal, K. (1996). Words of hurt: Reading the literatures of trauma. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press.

U.S. Department of Education. (2014). U.S. Department of Education announces resolution of South Orange-
33 Maplewood, N.J., school districts civil rights Retrieved from https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-
department-education-announces-resolution-south-orange-maplewood-nj-school-di

Wallace, S., Nazroo, J., & Bécares, L. (2016). Cumulative effect of racial discrimination on the mental health of
ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. American Journal of Public Health, 106 (7), 1294 doi:
10.2105/AJPH.2016.303121