For too long, says therapist Ken Hardy, Black Americans have been living in a wall-less prison where they must adjust the way they live and act to accommodate the white mainstream.
In this highlight from his Networker Symposium keynote, Hardy makes a call to therapists everywhere: even if you don’t interact with clients of color much in your job, make allyship a part of your larger life’s work.
In his Networker article, Hardy talks about growing up in the wall-less prison, the professional hurdles he encountered as a Black man in a predominantly white profession, and the clash with a white supervisor that ultimately served as the turning point in his career.
“Increasingly,” he writes, “my work has become centered on issues like the anatomy of racial rage, learned voicelessness, and an array of other invisible wounds of racial oppression… I’ve come to see my mission as being not only a therapeutic healer doling out help in one-hour appointment slots, but also an activist and a bridge-builder.”
Kenneth V. Hardy
Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, is President of the Eikenberg Academy for Social Justice and Clinical and Organizational Consultant for the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in NYC, as well as a former Professor of Family Therapy at both Syracuse University, NY, and Drexel University, PA. He’s also the author of Racial Trauma: Clinical Strategies and Techniques for Healing Invisible Wounds, and The Enduring, Invisible, and Ubiquitous Centrality of Whiteness, and editor of On Becoming a Racially Sensitive Therapist: Race and Clinical Practice.
