In a powerful new collection of essays, psychologist Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter exposes the deeply embedded racism within mental health education and training programs. His personal account reveals how mandatory diversity initiatives often perpetuate the very problems they claim to address.
The Diversity Assignment That Missed the Mark
Dr. Lassiter recounts sitting in a conference room at the Indianapolis Midway Academic Medical Center, surrounded by four white women supervisors during his doctoral internship. The diversity committee, comprised entirely of white heterosexual professionals, had developed an assignment requiring interns to experience being a minority for two hours and report back on their learnings.
"My inner voices protested immediately," Lassiter writes. "What did you say? Are you telling us to go be a minority for two hours? Ma'am, that's called my life." Despite his internal turmoil, he followed his Southern Black father's warning: "Never tell white people the truth. They can't handle it."
When Lassiter questioned how the assignment applied to him as someone who is always a minority, Dr. Westwood-Court, the training director, suggested he "put yourself in a situation where you are a different type of minority."
The Problematic "Gold Star" Example
The supervisors shared what they considered a successful diversity project from a previous intern named Caroline, who attended a service at an all-Black Protestant church. Dr. Westwood-Court beamed with pride as she described how Caroline discovered the congregants were "welcoming" and the service was "lively" with "rhythmic music" and "big, colorful hats."
Lassiter was appalled. "Caroline's diversity project was voyeuristic and dehumanizing," he writes. "It was as if she was visiting a foreign land that was rumored to be dangerous. To her surprise, she left with the stunning revelation that the inhabitants were civilized."
He notes that the assignment failed to require Caroline to confront what she represented as a white woman in that space or reckon with the legacy she carried on her skin.
A Traumatizing Personal Experience
Lassiter eventually settled on visiting a sports bar as his diversity project, reasoning that as someone unfamiliar with sports culture, he would be a "different type of minority." The experience proved traumatizing as he navigated anxiety about appearing "too gay" and fears of potential harassment or violence.
"I made eye contact with the man. 'I'm Jonathan,' I said in my best man-voice. 'Who's your favorite team?' The guy looked at me with skepticism," Lassiter recalls. The interaction triggered memories of childhood shame and feelings of inadequacy for not being "the right kind of boy."
Despite his efforts, the diversity committee deemed his project insufficient and required him to redo the assignment. Lassiter had failed the diversity project - a crushing blow that highlighted the systemic problems embedded in such initiatives.
Call for Cultural Humility Over Diversity
Reflecting on his experience, Lassiter proposes replacing diversity-focused approaches with cultural humility, which he defines as "the active engagement in an ongoing process of self-reflection to better understand ourselves and others with the goal of establishing and maintaining honest, mutually beneficial, and healing-oriented relationships."
He contrasts this with diversity initiatives that often emphasize "welcoming and indoctrinating people into the whiteness mindset or 'the norm.'" The mindset and systems behind it, he argues, are rarely examined.
Lassiter also critiques the American Psychological Association, noting it took 110 years before publishing multicultural guidelines and only issued an apology for its role in perpetuating racism in 2021.
The psychological cost for students of color is immense, Lassiter concludes. "Many Black and other students from the global majority must do more than just put in long nights of studying. We have to not only effectively regulate the intense emotions that arise when working with suffering clients, we must also suppress our pain when our culture is ignored and our intelligence and skills are challenged because of our supervisors' and professors' subtle and overt bias."
His essay collection, "How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories," represents both a personal catharsis and professional call to action for meaningful change in mental health education and practice.
