Bridging Cultures: Black Immigrants and Cultural Integration

1:46AM Feb 24, 2025

Speakers:

Keywords:

black immigrants

cultural integration

identity development

acculturation processes

educational psychology

mental health

racial stressors

immigration policy

cultural humility

peer socialization

racial identity

higher education

immigrant experiences

mental health implications

community support

Music.

Hello and welcome to the thoughtful counselor, a podcast dedicated to bringing you innovative and evidence based counseling and mental health content designed to enhance your life, whether you're a clinician, supervisor, educator, or a person wanting to learn more about the counseling process. We are here to demystify mental health through conversations with a wide range of counseling professional powerhouses. In each episode, you'll learn about current issues in the field, new science and real life lessons learned from the therapy room. Thank you for joining us on our journey through the wide world of counseling. There's a lot to explore here, so sit back, take a deep breath, and let's get started.

All right. Hello everyone. Welcome to the thoughtful counselor podcast. My name is Dr Daisy Daniel, and I'm really excited to have my friend and colleague with us today, Dr Barbara, thel Amar. We're going to be talking about her research, all the amazing things that she does, but first, we're just going to kick off with an introduction. So tell us about who you are your work and kind of like what you're currently doing.

Well, hello. Hey. They said, thanks for having me. So I'm Barbara thelmore. I am an associate professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, just outside of Philadelphia, and I do a lot of things, as I think so many of us do, so I most of my work focuses on young people of color, so really with a lens towards immigrants and so in many ways, my work focuses on the kind of cultural adjustment acculturation processes of immigrant young people, largely adolescents and emerging adults, but I've done work with early childhood, and some of the processes under that umbrella include identity development, kind of cultural adaptation processes, as they happen within the context of school, outside of school, and the population that I'm most interested in under that under within immigrants are black immigrants, so those from African and Caribbean backgrounds, and so yeah, I think among all of that, I'm an educational psychologist by training, although in the department, the area that I've been hired to teach focuses on multicultural psychology, which really for me, is about race, ethnicity, culture and navigating power and privilege within the context of the United States. And so for me, black immigrants are really fascinating and personal population to study, and how at the intersections of race and immigrant status we can learn a lot about a lot of these kind of dynamics. Personally, I am the child of black immigrants, and so I have been before I had the vocabulary to think about a lot of these topics. I have been thinking about these topics for a long time, for most of my life, and so, yeah, those are, those are kind of the things that I'm I'm concerned about.

All right, so I know we kind of planned, I'm going to change the plan, obviously. Um, so I wanted to briefly start with just your background, and I just realized that you're one of few education psychologists I know. And so, like, what does that feel look like? And like, what is, what is that process? Like, how did you become an ED psychologist? Or, like, why?

So it's a great question. I was an undergrad in college. I was a psychology major, and when I graduated, I have no idea what I wanted to do, and a lot of people have a path in life, and they know it, and they stick to it. I was not that person. I, in fact, said I would never get a PhD because conducting research sounded terrible to me and mine and and I said that knowing that, you know, in my mind, research wasn't going to sit in a lab all day and test tubes and pipettes like that was my conceptualization of research. I did not realize that I could do this and call it research, right? And so, yeah, I had no idea what I wanted to do. When I graduated, I got this really great job. It was just a summer job working with Emory University's Department of what was then their education program. That program no longer. Exists, but I was hired to effectively be like a counselor for a summer program for Atlanta public school kids to come to campus. And it's basically school in the summer, but with really awesome, dedicated teachers who would have these creative spins on the kind of content that they would learn in school, if that makes sense. So like a math teacher, would teach really creative and applied ways of doing math as an example. And so my job was to make sure the kids didn't, you know, wander off on campus and, you know, bust their cracker heads open. You know, they're middle schoolers, so you never know what they're going to get into. And at the end of the summer program, they would present the work that they were doing in their classes. And, you know, I'm spending time with these young people. And so at the end, they were so excited to show their parents and their friends all of the projects that they it's lots of project based learning, so all of the projects that they were doing in school, or rather in that summer program. And I just remember a getting emotional, as I do when young people are very excited about the things that they're doing, but B thinking, what is it that has them light up like that, like this was kind of my first research question. You know, that kind of led me to grad school, and so I started thinking about education as an area to kind of explore my own kind of intellectual interests. I started talking to people at Emory specifically, one of whom Frank pajaras, who passed away a couple of years after I got into graduate school. But huge, huge motivation scholar. I did not realize at the time that he was such a huge motivation scholar, but he was so generous and met with me having not seen me, met me at all. I was supposed to have taken his class, and it didn't take and so we ended up not not meeting, but he met with me, and I was like, I'm interested. What does this education, psychology field? And he told me. And I was like, you know, this research thing, you know? Do you know, can I do this? And he said, and I'll never forget it. He'll say, he said, Barbara research can be seductive. And I was like, oh, you know, like, wow, that's, that's kind of cool. And so, yeah, I applied, got into school in here I am. So educational psychology is effectively the study of how people learn and are taught. So the definition when I teach an ed psych class, is someone learning something from someone else in some context, in some setting, right? I love that definition, because I find educational psychologists can come in at any point. So the someone learning something, we think about students and how students can learn anything right from someone else. So often we think about that as being teachers, but I think that someone else can be anyone as well, including peers. So this is the where I'm really interested in is like peer socialization and how peers teach each other about things and, you know, and not just academic things, right? Doesn't necessarily have to be the context of school or the content of school, but could be anything in some setting. Again, oftentimes Ed psychologists are thinking about the classroom, but there are also educational psychologists who can think about any of this. And so most of the work, by far, is really focused in the context of schools, but I do know as psychologists who use their kind of learning and understanding about learning theory and motivation and apply it to other settings as well, I often tell people that I am a weird educational psychologist and that i don't I my work is related to school in a lot of ways. About I'm really on the someone end of things, right? So who are the students who are coming into schools? What are the ways that culture and adjustment can impact them in school? But I'm I'm not necessarily always focused on the content of school, but I'm on the people in school. So how you know those young people, immigrants specifically, are making connections to with their teachers, making connections with their friends, how those connections and relationships influence them in terms of their own identities, their their cultural adjustment, and then ultimately, what that may have to do with their achievement, their goals, etc, etc.

That was amazing. I was just like, Yes, girl, teach me. I was like, that's cool. How did I not actually know what you did? I really appreciate that you said. At the intersection of race and immigrants like that was just such a good way to also visualize your work and then really understanding that you're doing work in the someone something else, just in terms of like, your storyline, right? Of like not being sure you wanted to be a researcher, not wanting to go to grad school, but now you're like, freaking tenured. So like, look at young Barbara coming through. And so like, you know, side of black woman. But I digress. So as we're now, we have, like, your foundation, we kind of understand how you got here, but then also the power of mentorship, of like, who kind of helped continue the spark and fire you had your someone is mostly immigrants, young immigrants, but also black immigrants. And so what does that category look like, like, who's in that category, age identities, like, what does that look like

in general? So black immigrants, kind of presence in the United States has been increasing fairly steadily since about the 1960s mid 60s immigration policy opened up the door more or less for more diverse immigrants to come in during that time, that decade, and so this included immigrants from African nations, especially. But we've been seeing immigration from the Caribbean for, I think, some time prior to that. And so right now, I think By most estimates, immigrants make up roughly 10% black immigrants, excuse me, make up roughly 10% of the overall immigrant population, and roughly the same number of of the black population in the United States, so roughly 10% of black people in the US, so a not insignificant number and growing, right? As immigrants, as more immigrants are coming to United States through various channels, right? So some go through the kind of immigrant visa, green card, etc, process, right? The kind of what we would, what, I guess, in mainstream language would be like the legal process or the documentation process, right? Documented process. Some come as international students and find, and, you know, end up getting jobs and or settling down in the US, in some way, some come through, what, over the last, what, five, seven years, have been like Temporary Protected Status, depending on country, there's, you know, trying to find work and make lives for themselves. So there's like a special designation for those individuals who can come, typically, on a temporary basis to come and work in the United States. And then we do have an undocumented population whose visas either lapse in the US, among other ways that people are migrating here too. So lots of kind of means through which people are coming to the to the black folks are coming to the United States. In my research, currently, I am examining black immigrants from a variety of perspectives. So I have a project that I've considered black immigrants within the context of higher ed. And so I've done this work in collaboration and honestly, so all of my work around immigrants has to be done collaboratively. There's no way you can do this without collaborating with folks across institutions who either for access purposes right as well as just kind of bouncing ideas off of each other. This is a fairly new but I'm excited. It's growing, but fairly new. Kind of area that psychologists are starting to engage with. Other disciplines have done very well, not very well, but done more with this. Political Science has been super important for my thinking. Sociology has been great, considering this, even history, but psychology is like starting to now kind of grapple with this particular intersection. I digress. So I've worked with higher ed scholars on projects around black immigrants in colleges and universities across the US. I've worked with other developmental psychologists, with doing research with black immigrant, again, emerging adults, right between the ages of 18 and 29 roughly, I'm currently doing research looking with with immigrants at a particular high school in Philadelphia, many of whom are. Are Dominican and Haitian, and have their own kind of understanding of what it means to be black in this country, which is why this particular intersection is so important to me, right? We are a nation that is very one of my students said this earlier, obsessed with race, and so the ways that black immigrants who to varying degrees, haven't really had to contend with race, or if they have certainly not in the same kind of institutional ways that the US kind of forces people to and so immigration to the United States means they're racialized in a particular way. And so where immigrants, tribal, cultural, ethnic, national identities previously were so salient here there's this kind of top down layer of and your black and so immigrants having to contend with that is a really, sometimes challenging experience for them, sometimes illuminating, but how they're figuring out their identities, and which is why adolescents and emerging adulthood is so rich for me, right, as these developmental stages that are so that, you know, have been studied so much as being so important for identity, yeah, makes it all of this kind of helps me to kind of explore the kind of immigrant experience in a very different way, but also the black experience in a very different way too. Hence, you know why that intersection is so so important. I think I'm rambling, but I hope I answered your question.

No, that was perfect. I think as you're talking, I I wrote down that you're a leader in psychology on this conversation, so I just want to make sure everyone knows that I don't care if you agree or not, I've already decided, and then I'd also just write like what your student said about the United States being a nation obsessed with race really made me think about also the mental health implications of your work, right? Because too often, like folks who are doing any kind of like black folk adjacent work, we see this over and over again, especially when we think about black racial identity, of coming from a place where that is not the first salient, most important thing, maybe, of how you grew up, or where you're at and then being, in a sense, like pushed into the deep end of the United States, having a very black and white identity model and such that almost every other identity doesn't matter which is just a whole different podcast, different conversation, and like what it's like to like, migrate into this community, into this this country, try to understand the cultural relevant differences, just in, I think, especially right K through toll system or even higher ed system, while also trying to catch up on what black American identity and customs and racism looks like as well. And so like in your work, like, what, what are you seeing mental like in the mental health wise of, like, how folks are adjusting, or, let's actually just start with, what are their experiences with their mental health now, being in a US based system, yeah, them.

This is one of the things I find, like, really, really fascinating. So a lot of the work around here kind of talks about the implications we're not I think there's a wealth of research to be done about the mental health space. However, what does come through is so in acculturation research, we often talk about acculturative stress, right? Or the the stressors that kind of come with adjusting to a new country. You have to learn a lot, right there, the customs, the behaviors, language, how to engage interpersonally. There's so many ways that that immigrants adjust. That can be quite stressful. But there are also ways that there are racial, acculturative stressors too. So to your to your point, it's important part of it is experiencing discrimination we are currently in a context that is, I mean, incredibly xenophobic, sounds trite to say at this point, right? Like it's, it's, it's, can be it's dangerous for a lot of immigrants, um, especially if you are embodying the signs of foreignness. So if we have an accent, if you dress in a way that is as perceived as different, right? Like you can you. So it's, it's quite harmful. So obviously discrimination is one, racial, xenophobic, discrimination is one way, but also just just general stressors of if you get these things wrong, right, if you, if you do not speak in a way that that that labels you, or flags you as being a part of the larger society, or, for black immigrants, part of black American culture, right? All of these things can be seen as stressors, right? If you're unsure, can be stressor, stressful for the immigrant. So it's one of, one of the ways that I see some of this come up, even things like, and this is really interesting research for Afro Latinos, especially how the very labels that people are asking you to So, like census, right? You're constantly having to choose a particular race categories that you know, sociologists have studied like, how, how do Afro Latinos, what? What boxes do they check? Right? Can be particularly stressful trying to figure out, like, what? What even does this mean? And I've been in rooms with adolescents when we ask that these questions, like, what they've asked, like, I don't understand what, what is this race? Huh? I'm Guatemalan. Like, this is, I don't understand what is being asked of me. And trying to explain it isn't much easier either, right? Like, so how, how we even try to capture race of the United States can be stressful and kind of like a sense of cognitive dissonance, a little bit like, I know, I'm this in this country and in my home country now I have to be this, and it doesn't fit and Latina. What does that mean? You know, like this kind of, this is like constant adjustment processes,

I think also, and I'm not necessarily doing this just yet, but I because of the political climate that we're in, it's coming, right? And other folks have considered the kind of undocumented or rather the immigration policy that is seeking to kind of rid the country of undocumented immigrants, the kind of stress of deportation, of incarceration, is one that, because of the work that I'm currently doing in Philadelphia, that for all intents and purposes, prior to the last month or so, has been a sanctuary city is Now seeing an increase in ice is now seeing. So what this can mean for anxiety, what this can mean for kind of parents, preparation, what this can mean for a host of mental health outcomes. We know this in in populations that are are not necessarily black, right? So the research that has been done with Latinx immigrants at the border, like we know what this can mean. But how does then, when we're adding blackness to the equation, how does this then further impact? So a statistic I saw from the from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Baji said that when it comes to police detention of black immigrants, what ends up happening is because, by virtue of just being black in the country, of course, people, we know that black individuals are targeted stopped more. You know, when stop and frisk was written law right and you are we can speak about, you know, it's enactment outside of its written law. Black people got caught up in the criminal justice system. Black immigrants, right, disproportionately more than any other immigrant group just by virtue of being black. And so you couple that with what's going on. Now, we're talking about compounding stressors on the on the immigrant person. And so, yeah, when we talk about mental health, particularly now, kind of paints a scary picture. Yeah, for black immigrants,

yeah, absolutely. Like, as you're talking, I was thinking about so I worked on this, the YALI project, which used to be this, like, like Obama led initiative to bring folks from Africa to have, like a leadership experience in the United States. And I remember one of our fellows broke his leg, and I took him to the hospital. And at the time, I was in my PhD program, so I already had a little like underlying background of mental health as, like a licensed therapist. And I remember trying to explain to the nurse that he identified as African, even though he was not black in like skin tone, right? So it's like he. From South Africa. South Africa has very like, a lot of different phenotypes, right? And most all of them still identify as Africans. And so it was just such a moment, right, when we think about, like, for our listeners, like, if you're in mental health, it's like, what is the implications of this? On my work is, how do you explain to someone in an adjacent field, in nursing or in medicine, right? Like, we still work in that system in a way that what they know about race is not necessarily applied to every single person, right? And so, like, at the end of the day. Like, I think she put other that it was like, Yeah, and I, and I remember telling the student, the fellow, like, I know this is stressful, but we just right now, we just need you to get this X ray Right. Like, but to have all of these interactive experiences, while you also don't have an insider, right, like me being there as a representative for them because they're visiting a sense or university like I think about what that stress looks like to try to explain to Someone your cultural standing when they only know the census, right? Like in in another episode, Dr watt talks about the census a lot, right? Like the census ends up being such a measurement of not just who you are as a person, but almost your value in the US system, right? So it's like, without the census, you essentially don't count as a person. And so then we just continue this xenophobia, both in record and like paperwork, as well as in everyday life experiences. This is what

I think you know, for in so many ways, we often talk about, like, the social construction of race. You hear that all the time, diving as deeply as we have so some another set of collaborators and I so like Naila Smith out of the University of Virginia to see the tormala Palo Alto University and Carla Hunter at the University of Illinois. The four of us have kind of been tag teaming a deep lit review on black racial identity. And so again, this is where the Afro Latino piece comes along. So race as a social construction. When I teach my students, I say race is also an organizing factor, right? Like its definition and its kind of impact, it varies so much from one country to the next and how we categorize race in all these ways. So shout out to Gigi Awad for her kind of a contribution to that work, right? Means nothing. Oftentimes, when you step outside of the US and South Africa is such a to me, such a fascinating it's another so called multicultural country, and it's very literal definition that multiple cultures and how we would conceive of races live in the United States, but their very labels are different. How a race is codified and institutionalized, right? Is different. And then again, coming here, it's like, wait a minute, right? I would be x here, but I'm y here. And what that means for me varies. And yet, I have an African national nationality that may or may not be recognized as I get here, all of that, right? Um, it's, it's very meanings shift by context. And so this work has really driven home for me, like, just how how much trying to help people understand that social construction in various domains, so healthcare is one that I'm just like, Yeah, we really Need to get this down mental health care, especially because of all of the kind of assumptions that can come with one's embodiment of a race, how we understand it,

yeah, and as you're talking, I was also thinking about just the siloing of like, how we do the work and also the conversations, right? So I'm thinking about your work. I think about like Hector Thomas and Nile Chavez, who do a lot of work on, like this Afro Latinx, like identity, and then also, right? Like, how do we make sure we transition this very academic conversation into practice for folks who are essentially on the front lines, right? So, like, as we're recording this right now, around February 6, we're seeing a lot of folks in the streets, a lot of folks protesting, a lot of conversation right now about dismantling ice, and there's a hashtag going around which has changed Maga into Mexicans aren't going anywhere. Her, right? And so like folks are, in a sense, like stealing back their power of like, what it means to make America great in this idea of an immigration identity, right? Like America is who she is, right now because of the people who've built this country, which for decades, have had black identities like even before, with enslaved people. And realizing and why I'm so grateful you took time out of your day to meet with me is the conversation being led right now is very like Latinx based, but we can't forget about all the other immigrants who are coming in as well, right? Like, I think of Annie saw her work with Asian immigrants, right? Like, there's all of these different labors of work we're doing, and it's really easy for folks to get lost in the shuffle when one Group is being targeted on the news. But all of these folks of different persuasions, different families, different backgrounds, are having a very same I like experience with us, immigration, while also trying to figure out how they just survived. Their day to day is so heavy as well, right? So it's not just how do I survive this system that I don't know. It's also like, can I afford these eggs? Like everyone's just trying to afford eggs right now. So it's like, that is very real for us, and we're all having that experience. But having a secure immigration status is vastly different mental health wise, in something I don't necessarily worry about as a black American.

Absolutely, it's just where, like when I think about kind of the fights that are being fought on so many fronts right now, right and especially for for black people in the United States, what's the I think it's Maya Angelou quote, like, until all of us are free, none of us are free, which really forces us within racial categorization. I think, you know, just speaking to my work for black people is to think about, what does that mean at a bunch of intersections. So the kind of eggs conversation when it comes to our socioeconomics, that is so funny. This morning, I was making eggs for my my kiddo, and we had one more left, and I was like, Ooh, you're getting a luxury breakfast this morning, right? Because I gotta think about, you know, you know, in this eggs conversation, and how expensive everything is. And he did not get the joke, but so, but it's so, it's, you know, the intersection of race at our socioeconomic status, for me, the intersection of race and immigrant status, you know, the kind of LGBTQ community, and you know, those intersections, right? Like there can be the temptation and this work for me, kind of ties really nicely with kind of what can sometimes be divisions within the black community around who can participate in black American life and all of its many connections and intersections, right? And so this kind of understanding of upon, you know, just really upon arrival, and this racialization process that black immigrants go through, for better or for worse, like right? We are part of the same struggle as I've had participants in previous studies say no police officer is going to ask you, What country are you come from? Once pulled over, you are black, like that, you know. And we can point to the statistics of how many black immigrants, first and second generation, get swept up, right in law and in the kind of criminal, so called criminal justice system and the all of that. So yeah, so much of this work kind of thinking about like these different intersections and finding community, finding synergy. You know what other scholars will talk about linked fate, right? How we're all connected under this kind of black umbrella. Really, I don't know it's kind of a one of the driving motivators for my work too, right? To kind of see that, yes, there is so much diversity within the black experience in the United States, so much diversity that, again, I'm really excited we're as psychologically tapping into, but also there is a connection there, and we, we ought not let I don't know kind of preconceived notions, or sometimes i. Um, I don't know, like preconceived notions under sometimes underdeveloped conceptualizations, what kind of, what can sometimes be harmful narratives, right about the different groups kind of get in the way of in this country, we are on, on the same boat. And I say this kind of speaking to black immigrants as well as black Americans, right? Like, there are all these kind of stereotypes that we hold about respective groups that can get in the way of us understanding that we are connected and so. So, like, the work that I do is kind of leading me in this direction of like, ultimately, what does this mean for the black American population as a whole?

Yeah, it makes me think I was, I've been reading this book called resist by Rita umoka, and I, I'm probably did not doing that justice, but it's called resist. It's how a century of young black activists shaped America. And she identifies with her African heritage and like as an African immigrant, and talks about a lot of things we're talking about right now, but also heavily connecting it to these like civil rights folks and like the young activists who have created this like pathway for everyone right, while also realizing that although, like Brad Hampton, try to create pathways for everyone, people have very much like put A lock on who can have access to that pathway. And like, I'm going to create a detour for us, because I'm interested in we've had this conversation a little bit before, but on Tiktok, especially, this conversation of how being biracial means you can't contribute to black dialog, black conversation, right? And I don't think I've even considered the like, immigration status piece of that, right? Because it felt very much like an argument in the black community with, like, your black cousins on, like, who's black enough? And as you're talking, I'm like, wow, we really did lock out a whole group of folks who don't have access to this conversation because folks have deemed them unqualified by their immigration status, And I don't understand the the heat in this conversation, and so as you're talking, I was thinking, like, Am I too educated to have a conversation about if you were black enough, right? Like, am I too red to understand why folks feel so upset about this, like, because if, if all of us aren't free, like, no one, right, no one's free. But maybe I just don't understand why people are mad. I

I am thinking. So, you know, this is so I one of the things that's been really interesting to me is the, I guess, speaking out of what is called the ADOS group, so the American descendants of slaves, who say, in many ways, what it sounds like people on Tiktok are saying, right, like you may be here, but you have not lived the black experience, and this is me deeply paraphrasing their argument, but you may be here, but you have not lived the black experience, like we've lived the black experience, and in many ways, and actually, this is kind of true in some in many ways. Angela Davis has written about Lina that where immigrant status, being a foreigner, is seen as a minoritized group in the United States, in an interesting way, it offers black immigrants some privilege, right? That foreignness means you're not black African American, and you don't have all of the so called institutionalized baggage, so to speak, that is tied with the African American group, right? The Deep marginalization, the deep kind of locking out of the promise of America, right? And as such, we'll often kind of navigate the institutions in the US with a little bit more success are treated sometimes better, right? As a virtue of being foreign. There's a particular like scene, I guess, from Angela Davis, is like autobiography. Where she's talking about being in Alabama with her sister, and going to, like, I think it was like a shoe store or something. And the the was, it salesperson not paying them any mind. But then her sisters, or she, one of them, starts speaking French, and all of a sudden it's, oh, what can I do for you, right? And that as a salient moment for her. So it's kind of foreign. This as making black immigrants distinct can weird in a weird way. Sometimes work. It's like a paradox of sorts, right? In some immigrants favor, but and seeing what can sometimes this has been an argument for decades, seeing what can be sometimes disproportionate admissions to elite institutions of higher learning, right? So this idea as you're black, but you're not like us, to quote Kendrick one more, you're you're black, but you haven't lived this life, right? You don't, you're not so. So where the American descent or the ATO group comes, comes in, is making this argument of because of that, discussions around, I think reparations is really a driving force around a lot of this, but being able to have access to whatever reparations may or may not look like ought not be a Part of the black immigrants, we need to be careful around that like we need to there might be a dividing line between what we're going through and what y'all are going through, which so much of what I read and see and, you know, engage with in terms of work is like, It's not that simple, right? Because of time and history, there's so much kind of how immigration has, how immigrants, black immigrants, have been interwoven into the fight for justice in the United States. It's like, I can point to activist Oakley Carmichael, if I can't remember if he, himself or his parents, immigrated from Trinidad, right? Like the one was it Opal to medi is an immigrant, Nigerian, I believe. And so, like, from Black Lives Matter. And so the kind of, over time we do become kind of interwoven into the black American community. How do we draw that line? Right? What generations look like where, you know, those of us, those of us like, you know, born in the United States to immigrant parents, like we have a foot in both worlds in an interesting way. But then the third and later generations again, that time piece comes into play. It's super complicated. And I don't know that I necessarily have an answer, but I do kind of think that

examining closely the the diversity of experiences within the community and and again, I think this is sometimes an issue With with immigrants too, who sometimes hold somewhat negative stereotypes and ideas about what it means to be black in the United States, and will sometimes want to distance themselves from being black in the United States, because the assumption is, well, if I'm seen as black, like they're seen as black, then it's not going to be good for Me, or I'm also going to have the same be, be ascribed the same negative stereotypes are often put on black individuals in the US, right? And so let me find other avenues, right, to find success in community, in this, that and the third like I, in no way do I want this to sound like this is the fault of one side or the other, but it's like a confluence of kind of social factors and ideas and all of that about different groups that I'd some sometimes can lead to this breaking down just in community within, you know, the black Rachel group, which is why I'm excited about the work of folks who are thinking about linked fate and the the work of community organizations like the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and other kind of organizations that are really starting to think about what, what does this kind of like? How do we continue to refine and unpack what the black community really is, right, and where immigrants, among other groups, have a seat in that community?

Yeah. I mean, it's not unlike us to talk about Kendrick Lamar, but I'm just very sure that he didn't mean different types of black folks when he said, not like us. That's just like, what I'm throwing out there, right? Like, when he said people were colonizers, I'm just saying I don't think he was, like, raise your hand if you're from this descendancy, right? Like really thinking about how that shows up. But for me, this, this conversation is important, right? Because when we think about mental health, it's often the nuance, which is why mental health shows up, right? So it's not. It that you ever had a bad experience with the police or with immigration or anything like that. It's how the conversation in your communities and what you've seen other black folks go through that causes that mental dissonance. And so like tying this into like for our audience, cultural humility, right? Like this is why, even me as a black woman, black identifying woman, it's incredibly important for me to have that cultural humility, because just because you look like me and we have a shared history, I don't know what it's like to have an immigrant like an immigrant parent, right? And that is just enough to say that, like, how we deal, how we cope, how we conceptualize our experience in the United States, even on the same day, is vastly determined by our historical narrative. And so, like, when we think about power and privilege, it's also important to think about the marginalization part, right? So like in cultural humility, we think about like, how much power do I have, how much privilege do I have, and what's my marginalization? And it could be too easy for me to sit in all of my marginalization without realizing that I have a lot of mental health privilege, and you have a lot of immigration privilege, and until we come together and decide how we share that experience and how we work together, then like our communities will continue to fight against each other because we don't have a shared a shared story of how we move forward together, right then it becomes just A Do you know better, or do I know better instead of like, this is a community event, community conversation and mental health is killing all of us. It's not picking and choosing. So how do we make sure that everyone's needs are met, regardless of their immigration status.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I appreciate the from the practitioner standpoint of the cultural humility framework, you know, right, checking, in many ways, checking your assumptions at the door about who or what is black, what you think blackness is, even sometimes what you've learned what blackness is in school, right? Like the living it can be, can look quite different, right? And so checking those assumptions, and you know, to the extent that we're getting, or rather, practitioners are getting training around immigrant status as well as race and how those things can combine, right? So much of the research is driven by Latin X immigration, which fair. They're the, by far, the biggest group in the United States immigrating, but not the only one. And so where there's overlap and where there's difference, you know, these are kind of areas I think are super important to understand. You know, I will say too, like I don't I as as much, I think as there is work to do around the we are, you know, we can, we can appreciate the ways that immigrants versus non immigrants are navigating race in the United States, right, and where privilege is conferred to some groups over, you know, like relative, obviously, because we're all but relative privilege is conferred to some groups over another. I think I get really excited just, you know, to see where there is kind of synergy and speaking to each other and trying to understand and unpack these differences kind of differently. And, you know, one of the scholars who's inspired me the most on my kind of journey to this, to really researching this group, right as my as my kind of passion line of research is Gail Ferguson and her research she's at the University of Minnesota, and her research around the ways that like her work started with Jamaican immigrants, and I think people including myself have taken up this work with other groups. But how black immigrants are, in many ways, adjusting to black US culture too, right? You can't not do that as a black girl like to varying degrees, but find themselves like adjusting and how that can be another oftentimes we talk about like for folks of color, for black folks, perhaps especially, this kind of connection to one's kind of culture can be an asset, right? Can be a source of strength or resourcing, and oftentimes, can buffer the experiences of discrimination. There's some evidence that even. Black immigrants like figuring out not just like who I am as the descendant, as, you know, as a Haitian descent person or a Ghanaian descent person or whomever, but also who I am as Black can be an added resource for immigrants, right? Like I am part of a larger diasporic family, and, you know, I stand on their shoulders right from wherever, that can be an added resource. So that work really excites me to that end, because it's like, yeah, that in many ways, that's racialization process has been, is stressful, but when I see scholarship, that points to but now I'm understanding. I'm starting to understand what that means and how I need to, you know, as I show up in the documentation, like, you know, filling out the census as an example, or, you know, indicating my blackness in all of these ways, because I want, I'm thinking of a quote specifically from a study, like, I want to be counted in the number, because me being counted helps us all right? Like stuff like that. I'm just like, Yes, right? Like, there's, there's, it's, we're moving in a particular direction. I just think, as you mentioned, ongoing conversation across these this particular difference is certainly, certainly needed,

absolutely, I think, right for my my white students, and they'll be very used to me saying this all the time. Of like, it's just as important for them to know where they come from and, like, what their family backgrounds look like, right? Because it's like, I was born and raised in California. I spent most of my life in southwest, but my family's from Detroit, Michigan, right? Like, from Pontiac, Michigan, and so, like, without me understanding my blue College, like blue color background narrative, like what it's like for my family to live in a Michigan setting, then I essentially am almost throwing out my history and saying that I'm not the people I come from, right? So it's like, Who do you belong to, you, and what does that look like? And some of those cultural narratives are shared Right? Like, like, I wouldn't do well in Michigan because it's very, it's like, really cool there. And also it's like, very like Midwestern and I like my very westernized experience. But I'm also aware enough, if I'm in Louisiana or Georgia to know that, like, my experience is not the same experience of folks, just like, regionally wise, because United States is so big, right? Like, people are just like, Oh, you're, you're in the med state. I'm just like, like, the United States covers entire continents, so it's like even our cultural dynamics, like in the immigration process, right? Like, Denver is a sanctuary city, and as we're seeing, the attack on sanctuary cities happening, also realizing that, like, the community response to that will vary depending on not just immigration status, but the identity of the immigrants, right? And if we're willing to let them in, or open our arms or like if we let them live in our communities, right? Like all of these things have very heavy connotations, but also without us really exploring our biases and doing that cultural humility work, it's impossible to know if we're unintentionally upholding the same violence that we're teaching our students and ourselves not to do.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the big kind of question around something you said about like talking to your white students about their their identities, right? You know, one of the things I often teach, like we go through the psychological models around white identity development, but even outside of kind of its measurement and conceptualization, just kind of thinking about how identity politics with a capital P and a lowercase p, right shape white people's lives too. So I give you know, you know, a shout out to trustee McMillan cotton, who's doing this work, and kind of, who's, who's talking about so much of this in a mainstream New York Times Z

way right now. I love her so much. She's just killing it. Yeah,

um, and so, but scholars who have been kind of thinking about the ways that once I, like, you know, where white people often say, Oh, I don't have a racial identity or a cultural I'm just white, like, I was a regular white, right? Like a regular American, like, kind of unpacking what that means for you and how your identities plural, shape how you're viewing the world, like we do so much of this work as individuals of color and who will come or those of us in minoritized backgrounds, right? Because we have to, by virtue like navigating the world forces us to those with relative privilege ought to do the same. Ought. Definitely ought to do the same, especially again, back to the mental health practitioner perspective, because where use, where you see Alliance, and difference between yourself and your client can completely shape the client practitioner relationship, like we know this, right? But you also want to be careful about where you're assuming privilege or difference and similarity as well, and so those assumptions can only really be checked as you're challenging yourself about who you are, where you grew up, all of these different kind of facets of your your identity. This is for everyone, but I think you know it can sometimes be unexplored with certain demographics.

Yeah, absolutely right. And the struggle is like, and I'll just speak to like mental health counseling, clinical mental health and school counseling. Like, the burden of our profession to be able to open doors, continue to have open access to all folks. Is on white folks, right? Like the counseling profession, like, still, 70% of counselors are identified as white, right? And so like, I love the conversation of like, like clients just see people who look like them, hopefully one day. But it also depends on, like, your environmental location, right? So it's like, in Denver, like, I'm the only black therapist in my college currently, right? So it's like, I can't see all 900 of our black identifying students, right? So without our white professors, counselors, colleagues doing this work to make sure that they are able to process their own identities and their own biases in a way that allow them to open doors for others. Our profession will continue to live in the like 30s or 40s, right? Like without us doing that hardcore work, we there's no way for us to move forward.

I mean, psychology is in the same boat. We're something like 81 to 83% the workforce is white, so we're it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like,

it's been, it's like 3% of all licensed mental health providers. So social work, psychology, mental health, it's been 3% since I was a young lad in grad school, like in my master's program. So I'm like that 3% is still 3% since 2015 right? So it's like 10 years. Feels like a long time, but when we think about professional growth and development, 10 years is a couple of years in terms of, yeah, right, especially in identity development. So as we're wrapping up, like for students listening for folks who one are excited, are just as excited about your work as I am, like, what should they know? What should they know about this population or the work you're doing, or just overall, like, what should students those either masters, graduate undergrad? What should students know who are listening to this?

I think the big take home message, it's a phrase that my colleagues and I have used in the different settings, this idea of making the invisible visible, and so kind of understanding that, yes, black immigrants share kind of the racial categories, it's really unpacking, like the diversity within the black categorization, right? And for the research that I do, and owing in part to immigration status, like the kind of cultural diversity that comes as a result of immigration status. And I gotta take a quick tangent to say I definitely appreciate you bringing up like this is another way that we can think about in the field, like the cultural differences is located geography in the US, and it's this, you know, thinking about the research that's done with black immigration, where you know same thing, right? Like so many like immigrants are settling all over the country, and their experiences as a result, are shaped by those contexts too, right? So an immigrant, for example, so a Caribbean immigrant who goes to New York will have a quite different experience, right, than a Caribbean immigrant who settles in for, say, Texas or whatever. So that's just another layer of this diversity. And so one of the things that I, you know, encourage people to pay attention to is when you're reading or doing the work right, and you're seeing research on black people continue to kind of probe like, Who exactly is is part of this conversation, or who is, who is being understood right in that, in that text, is it, you know, is black the way it's described, just like, that's it. Are we unpacking who is in this category and what? What does that, you know? What are some of the questions? That may get left out right if we're not thinking about the kind of cultural, ethnic, generational diversity within that larger, larger category, and the same, I would say, for immigrants. So as you're reading texts, especially right now in the news, as one policy after another is coming or one, you know, order after another is coming down. Who is getting left out in this conversation? Who can be disproportionately affected by these orders? Right? And honestly, ask, why? Ask, why?

Yeah, and something I'll add right like, when I think about all students, like I'm doing a lot of work and just understanding what immigration means, like most folks know, I've lived in New Mexico, and so being in New Mexico as a border state, you have a very different view of immigration. When you're in a majority minority state where, like white folks are the lower percentage, and like Latinx indigenous communities make it more than 80% of the state population. But even as someone who's learning like, like, regardless of your immigration status, you're valued and like you deserve to be in this profession. But more than anything, like, we like, God Almighty, we need you in this profession. Because like, I need I like, I can't be the only one leading this conversation, right? Like my colleagues with like, immigration status cannot be the only ones leading this conversation, because we also can't be everywhere, right? So if you're if you're feeling challenged in this mostly white profession that doesn't always understand, it even shows more that we need you more than ever and again, find your community and find folks who help you get through these programs and help you graduate, because you are valued and needed right now, you're even more valued, needed as a licensed practitioner,

this is where I mean the advocacy allyship, like how whichever term right resonates with you? Oh, it's so deeply important, especially now right, I think across issues, across group, right, like folks who have the privilege, who don't have to worry about certain facets of life being threatened. And I know, obviously we're speaking to the mental health population, but in any domain of life, really, it's time. It's time like we're value meets at work, beats behavior. You know, a lot of groups are, are, yeah, standing to COVID, standing and ready to cooperate, right? And so let's, let's figure out how to do that. Absolutely, absolutely,

yeah, I totally agree, right? Like, the the way for us to address the mental health crisis is, as a nation, everyone working towards it, not just folks who are educated or licensed with the expertise. Like, we need folks at every area, at every stop point, at every level of advocacy. And something I told my colleagues, Dr Vardy and Dr hustle this morning was like, when you're ready, your voice is needed in the revolution. Like, I'm not gonna, like, drag you kicking and screaming into the regular I'm like, I'm not gonna do that. But when you're ready, your voice is needed. And, like, we need you to, like, tap in. So like, prepare for that, and then get ready. Because I don't know, we write at dawn. I don't know which Dawn, but like, when you're ready, we're ready just like, so yeah, we're building it. Uh, it's time. So whatever we need to do to get there, let us know and then join the fight. Absolutely. Mm, hmm, alright. So in the few minutes we've left, what are you doing next? What do you have going on next? Where can people find you? All of that jazz

just working. That's what I'm doing. I am. I've got a few really interesting like manuscripts and chapters coming down the pipeline. So specifically about immigrants. So a manuscript with my collaborator, niela Smith at UVA, hopefully soon it just is kind of tentatively accepted, but a manuscript about the impact of policy on identity, but policy state of state one migrates to on immigrant identity development, so we can look out for that. In the coming months, we have some really interesting High School research that's being done, a couple of pieces that are either in review or will be under review soon, looking at immigrant high school students and their relationship with their teachers, and how to care for teachers who are caring for these young people. Because, you know, again, we're all connected. We're connected. And so that that is coming as well, as you know, kind of intercultural dynamics and how young people are able to navigate those super important so, yeah, lots of work coming out, hoping to translate some of that work into more public media. So stay tuned there. Where can you find me right now? My website, so fellow more, lab com, so T, H, E, L, A, M, o, u r, lab com, and you can see publications as they're coming out and all of that. So yeah, awesome.

You also immediately left out that we will both be at era, and we'll also both be at 8e R, Denver, Colorado. So if you're adjacent to different Colorado, or you're coming to a era, please say hi. We should be there. Mostly, maybe haven't decided how much I'm conferencing yet, but you know we'll be around. Yeah, we'll be around two

projects, my students in my lab, my collab. Collaborator in my lab, Elena lard here, also here at Swarthmore. We're doing immigrant projects, and, yeah, if you're interested in any of these topics, holler at me. I think that'd be really great to chat for sure. Building,

building the fan base.

Just building up my beautiful queen of a friend. I mean, we talked about a little bit of everything. We really started talking about just what education psychology is, and like your work with the people, the someone right, like you're focused on the someones. And I thought that was really powerful. You highlighted how this work is very collaborative, and in an academic setting where we talk about being the first on everything all the time, I just very much appreciate the collaboration and the community in that I'm going to shout out your soon again, like the United States really is obsessed with race, and I just feel like that's the quote of this episode, like your student nailed it on that one, and something that I'll think about a lot just this week. And with everything happening in US policy is that, like this idea of embodying the ideas of otherness in that immigration status, right? So it's not just like, how you grew up and who who you are and who your family is. It's also like, Oh, I'm in a system now where I am othered, even without agreeing to that, right? Like, I've just been opt in to this other, other othering status. Um, yeah, I'm really excited. I feel inspired as well, but also just a reminder of how it's important for for mental health providers and folks listening to this, whether you're an educator or school counselor, to know about this work and to know about this background information, but more than anything, to hold in your heart that even if the immigration status is similar the identity or how Dr thelmore said, the intersection of race and immigration is what makes that experience, not Just who folks are on face level or the nuance, is incredibly important, and being uncomfortable in the nuance will help you serve your students, serve your clients, serve your community, significantly better than assuming that you already know.

I love that being uncomfortable with the nuance and working through that discomfort for sure. I love that. I love that. Thank you. All

right, so, I mean, that's a wrap for us. I hope that you love this episode as much as I did. Wait.

Do I get to give my advice to grad students? Oh,

yeah, yeah, go. I've been prepping for this. Oh, I am a fan

of the pod. Okay, let's go. Let's go. So my advice, and this is something that actually days and I collected, or Dr Daniel and I connected on, is as graduate students so many times, you know, when we think about networking and mentorship, we look up to the elders and those who have been in these spaces for a very long time, and you know, will see that crowd, but I don't, I always love to encourage people to also think across so where you can mentor each other as graduate students. So kind of peer to peer or peer based mentorship is also incredibly important, and I dare say, sometimes more important, because your peers are going to be your colleagues one day, and they're going to be the folks who store you knock on, either for instrumental help or just emotional help. And so to the extent that those connections are also strong, as we do, continue to look up and get advice from. Those who have paved the way, or whose shoulders we stand on right will allow us to have a more well rounded mentorship experience. I didn't want to interrupt you, but I did want to throw that out there, because that was the thing I was like, I got to make sure I'm tight right there.

But I got all misty eyed. I could not have graduated from my program without your last, without your guidance, without your support, and so I am a huge fan of mentorship, but if anything else, just for the giggles, like what this world is hard these people are out to get us. So the laughing the community, right? Like the community is what makes us like we heal trauma in community, and so, yeah, I mean, like you that was a wrap. Like you did it justice. I am speechless now I'm like, I'm gonna go write in my journal about all the wonderful things I've learned and just how grateful I am to be on the same earth as you

the feelings mutual for sure, for sure.

All right, so you can learn more about Dr thelmore in the show notes, we will also have the transcript attached as well, and her website will be there too. So look out for all of her upcoming amazing stuff. If you are in Denver in April for era, don't be shy. Please come say hi. I'm a little social awkward, but I would love to meet you, and I'm just grateful for you spending your day, your night, or whenever you are listening to this, we will see you in the next episode. Bye.

Thanks again for tuning into the thoughtful counselor today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This podcast is made possible through our partnership with concept Palo Alto University Division of Continuing and Professional Studies, learn more about the thoughtful counselor and some of the other amazing continuing education offerings provided by concept at Palo Alto u.edu forward slash concept, as always, if you are a fan of the show, we would love to hear your feedback and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you subscribe. You.