New Member Reflection

By Judith Lockard

It was a thrill to be there, to see and hear and dialogue with people whom I·ve heard about, read, studied with and admired for 20 years. To have conversations at every level·in dialogue groups, at forums and roundtables, in the ladies room and the bar·about the issues that interest, excite, and frighten me, was deeply satisfying. Further, to have my first year be one during which the Academy chose to expand its borders and invite the leaders in family therapy from Latin America was especially encouraging. Having grown up in New York City, where the attitude is that no one thinks (let alone exists) West of the Hudson I am very familiar with the provincialism of the privileged. I·m proud to have joined AFTA at a time when the idea that others around the world have a great deal to teach us about systems and therapy, and that, if we are going to make any headway toward saving the planet, it is not the people in the most privileged country in the world who will have the most far-reaching and innovative ideas or be the leaders in that venture. The level of discussion was amazing to me, and I often found myself stretched intellectually and moved emotionally. One area where there seemed to be some discontinuity with this surge forward, though, had to do with cultural diversity. I would have liked to have seen a more evenly distributed responsibility for addressing the issues of oppression. I attended the Forum on Oppression and I also heard Paulette Hines· courageous description of racism in her own life. At the Forum discussion, there were seven people of color who were asked to describe their experiences of racism. This process seemed redundant in many ways. For the sake of comparison, consider the gender dialogue. In the case of discussions of gender oppression, we do not ask women to sit in a fishbowl and describe their experiences of abuse in front of an audience of men who have never addressed their own privilege or been asked to be publicly accountable for their own behavior in the concerning oppression. So, the question I raise is, Why don·t we do that? And if it isn·t acceptable in that arena, why is it acceptable to have people of color participate in such a process? Is it that the very structure of liberation that we are attempting to create is in fact another structure of oppression? I was grateful to be part of these discussions and to hear Paulette·s courageous indictment of the system as it impacted her life. But where were the stories and the forum for whites speaking to what they have done to address the issue of oppression and privilege, not to mention the ways in which we are currently benefiting from that oppression.