Christine Robinson || Community Psychology

She has worked as a consultant to the White House, the Ford Foundation, Harvard Medical School, the Women of Foundation, other notable organizations. Christine studied at Vassar College, Randeis University, and the University of Pennsylvania and has trained as a developmental and community psychologist. In fact, that's the topic of our chat today, community psychology. It's an exciting new field

and Christine has really impacted the field innovative ways. In order to nurture a culture of well being, Christine says it's crucial to acknowledge the multifaceted identities of individuals instead of seeing marginalized groups as others. She encourages us to view diversity as a valuable asset to society. She argues, we need to listen to everyone's perspective before we can bring social change and co create an inclusive and equitable community. This is a really fun chat with a dear friend,

and I'm excited to bring it to you today. So without further ado, I give you my discussion with Christine Robinson. Christine, I'm so excited to chat with you today on the podcast. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so very much for the invitation. Yeah. Well, I've been a great admirer of your work for many years now, and I'm excited to get it hind a spotlight on it on the podcast.

I thought we would start off with a quote from Margaret Wheatley that says, all social change begins with a conversation. Why do you like that quote so much? Because I feel as though if we can't talk about things, we're not going to make any headway. And I think this is true. First of all, it's kind of a foundational precept in looking at not only psychology, but every single discipline in our personal lives, our professional lives, and the

societal life and societal discourse. I think that we all find that if we struggle through conversations, if we don't share common meanings and understandings of words and concepts that we're really at a disadvantage, and I think that just the capacity to talk sometimes talking puts us at loggerheads, which is really interesting, particularly if we do not have this share the same meaning or understanding around terminology. Yeah,

I completely agree. Well, we haven't really covered the topic of community psychology that much in this podcast, so I was really excited to be able to feature that and then of course feature your enhancements to the definition of

it that exists in the field. But could we start off with sort of the traditional definition of community psychology, how it tends to be thought of, some of the maybe a little bit of the origin story of the field, who are some of the key players in the beginning of it, and then we'll kind of we'll start talking

about some of your redefinitions. Sure, I think it's important to say that community psychology is an applied discipline first of all, so it really tries to take a lot of psychological precepts and put them into practice where they're actually lived and part of the fabric of our lives, as opposed to being an academic exercise, even though that clearly is an academic discipline in addition, community psychology goes beyond individual cultural It goes beyond an individual frame to

really look at a lot of the cultural, political, economic, and environmental frames. And so the multidisciplinary piece, I think is really important because it draws very heavily on a number of other disciplines, being sociology and anthropology and public health and a number of other perspectives. It also tries to expand a lot of concepts, so beyond the psychological precept of helping, it really looks at this whole question around wellness and what is wellness and what is well being?

And so the paradigm shift is in some of the nuances there. The field is very much focused on action oriented research, and so a lot of it is field research looking at practitioners in the field, making certain that theory is related to practice and that it is something that is actually accessible by people in community. A very high value on lived experience and so not only those who have a lot of expertise from an academic perspective,

but the voices of people who are directly affected. Built on a foundation of collaboration relationships, so looking not only at interpersonal relationships about how organizations and systems are aligned as well, and there's a strong interest in looking at government, civic life, civic health, civic discourse. And finally there's a commitment to really address inequities and social inequities and impression.

And so the framework is much more expansive than traditional psychology that may be much more focused on the individual. And in addition, it is a field that finds no challenge in taking research to practice and also invites an authentic dialogue where people can come in as equal partners as to how we address community issues. Very strongly influenced

by the work of a doctor Uri Bramfordbrenner. A full disclosure, I should just state that I had the wonderful opportunity to be one of his students when I did graduate

work at Cornell. So the socio ecological framework is a foundational piece of this work and the ability the reciprocity if you start with how an individual is nested within a family, nested within a neighborhood, a community, a church, a school, a workplace, within a region, a municipality for example, a state, and the nation, and so if you go in and out, there's a reciprocal effect of actually how that nation state has implications for us all as individuals,

and we're seeing that pronounced now, for example, in COVID nineteen So the field actually developed in the nineteen sixties, and I hope that that's helpful, Scott, incredibly helpful. I was such a fan of Brothen Benner's work in grad school.

I mean, I'm still a fan, but when I first discovered it, I became an instant fan, and personally, I was trying to see how it could be applied understanding of intelligence and how we kind of measure intelligence and treat it sometimes as though it purely comes from within

and isn't influenced by the socio cultural environment. And I really loved, really the nuance and the rich sort of tapestry of the theory and how it combines lots of different factors, doesn't ignore ability, but it also includes the community. So I'm a big fan. And I think that's amazing that you met him, that you worked with him, he was your mentor can you kind of tell us a little bit more of what he was like as a person. I've never met. I never met him, so I'm just curious.

A brilliant, salt of the earth kind of person. No pretension, very very open, and incredibly expansive in his thinking. So he was one of my professors when I did graduate work in Cornell at the College of Human Ecology and Human Development and Family Studies. I was fortunate enough to be one of his students as he was in the process of refining his work on human ecology and putting

together this theory which was incredibly expansive. But what was fascinating in that opportunity at the time was the deep conversations that he had with graduate students at that time about his thinking, which, quite frankly, for many of us, and I'll be honest to myself very much and I'll speak for myself here, was very hard to grasp because it was so multifaceted on so many different layers and

so many different levels, very complex and extraordinarily intricate. And I don't think to this day that we've really fully appreciated the magnitude an incredibly generous man, very very gracious, always had time and always had room, just an extraordinary person. And I'm deeply grateful for having had that opportunity. Well, it sounds like such a good person, and I love when a good person is also a good researcher. When

those two things match up, that's wonderful. And Stephen CC was in that department as well, right, was he there at the time. He was? He was, He was there at the time. And what I should also mention about bronfrem Brenner is I don't think that he ever overcame his own background. As you probably know, he was from Russia, a Russian family originally, and so this whole issue around context and the environmental context and how the culture has

implications for our lives. Coming from Russia to the US and being raised in a family with traditions in a Russian kind of context, being then coming to the US and a US context. I think that that is an example of how lived experience can be really powerful in the lives of researchers and actually bringing also it parallels with bringing the voices of those directly affected, because part of that voice was his his own experience and understanding

and his own family's history. So here you're getting into issues around historical psychology and biographical psychology and a whole host of paradigms that one could use and look at more intentionally. And he personified and actually encouraged his students to do so absolutely, and I thought, maybe you could even unpack his theory a little more, in the sense that he emphasized that all areas of the puzzle of a healthy ecosystem are inextricably linked to each other. Could

you maybe unpack that a little more? In the world? Does that mean what I just said? Well, I see brown from Brenner in the extraordinarily powerful words of Reverend doctor Martin Luther King. And because we are doing this podcast, we're recording it on even though it won't be released today. I just want to read a quote that I pulled up this morning in preparation, and it's from his letter from a Birmingham jail. In a real sense, all life

is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

This is the interrelated struggle of reality. And I think that that quote kind of laid on top of the socioecological framework that Brown from Brinter developed are It's another way of saying exactly the same way, the same thing in slightly different language. But the interrelationship and the interdependencies which I think we sometimes miss. Unfortunately, so many scholars and academic fields are very wedded to a certain type

of approach and a paradigm. And I'm not saying that they're not a value, but I think that we silo at our peril and a lot of times if we are so narrow in the frame, we cannot recognize the interdependencies. And both the quote from doctor Martin Luther King and the socioecological framework talk about our interdependencies, and sometimes I do believe that in the US and our culture and psychology is a field sometimes looks at this notion of as an independent individual, how you ought to be and

how you can move forward. Another MLK quote is it's a cruel joke to ask somebody who has no boots to pull them up by their bootstraps, and I would add to that, it's a cruel even crueler to ask someone who has no feet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. So we have traditionally marginalized, for example, people who are disable, and so looking at some of the terms that we use and the assumptions that we make, and a lack of reality of various life experiences opportunities,

and how groups have been marginalized. And so I think that both the work of King and the work of Bramf and Brenner provide frameworks for which us to explore those realities more intentionally. Yeah. Absolutely, And your work all on its own is pretty darn awesome, if I must say so myself. You mention how well being is far from uniform, and you talk in your work about certain concepts.

I'd love to unpack a little bit. Two concepts in particular I thought were really interesting, the idea of community well being and the idea of collective efficacy. Could you talk a little bit about those two concepts, And I mean, they're obviously very much linked to each other, of course, And I think that part of this whole question around community well being is how communities have an ethos where

there is an issue of both. And a lot of my work I should also honor the work and another mentor person I've had the great privilege of working and thinking with in one who I know you know is doctor Isaac Bralotinsky, and he talks about the whole issue around mattering, and so mattering as he defines it, I believe is both adding value and being valued. And so

in a community well being, there is a value. And this is very much premised in a lot of principles of positive psychology when we look at assets, but unfortunately in many communities we do not necessarily look at people with a disability, or someone who is an English language learner, or someone who is an undocumented immigrant or a refugee and looking at their assets and if we really believe in the inherent dignity of all people, to me, that's

a foundational precept of community wellbeing because therefore it means that we will value you on what you bring and how your worldview, what your worldview is, how you see

things has value. It's very different from a very stark black white, right wrong framework, which means that there's a lot of room for nuances there and it invites people in as they are, and so looking at the opportunity for us to really have an inclusive community of grace where we value those assets, to me, is at the heart of community wellbeing, and I do think that sometimes we've lost some of those elements, particularly as we speak

now this is a January of twenty twenty two. There are a lot of polarization that I do believe is really stressing people on an individual and a community level. COVID nineteen is certainly bought to the four. This whole notion around interdependency. I don't wear a mask, and I'm putting other people at risk. I don't get a vaccine

and I put other people at risk. And I'm speaking to you from Massachusetts, where hospitals have asked people and rescheduled surgeries even for people who have cancer, to say that we don't have enough space here for you to come in. And they're beginning to prioritize because physicians are caring for people in hallways. There just isn't the person power, not only in Massachusetts, but as I understand from listening

to news clips, it's happening across the country. So if we indeed do prescribe to community wellness and collective efficacy, and going back to Brown from Benner and doctor Keing, it's an acknowledgment of our interdependencies and what I do does matter. It affects my neighbor, my family, my friends, people in my workplace, in my school, in my community,

and my participation also can enhance others well being. The way that I look at things my worldview may be a paradigm shift for you and a conversation that you and I have, Scott, that may encourage you to look at things at a different way. And I certainly should honor your brilliant Scott and saying you certainly have encouraged

me to look at things in a different way. And this to me is at the heart of a conversation, in saying it starts with a conversation at the heart of community well being and also at the heart of collective efficacy. Yeah, I was going to say the conversation part for sure. Yeah, I'm going to read a quote of yours I really like because I think inextricably intertwined with what you're just saying are is the idea of social identity And this gets the heart of a lot

of your work. Known you for a couple of years now, and I know that this is something you're really, really deeply passionate about and you've done great work around So I'm going to read this quote about it social identities. You say, our multiple social identities and the cultural externalities of our lives are inextricably linked and ground self perception, behavior relationships, and the evaluation of others. Can you kind

of unpack that quote able bit more? And why is our social identity such an important part of our humanity?

Of course, and a lot of my work really prescribes and it's based very strongly on the work of Kimberly Crenshaw, Law professor at UCLA and intersectionality, because every single one of us has more than one identity we can identity, and it's really a question of you know, some people call a master a master status or a master identity, but almost all of us have a razor ethnicity and some gender identity, be it male, female, gender non binary. A lot of us very strongly identify with a religon,

with a cultural background, with a language background. Many of us identify with a profession. Here we are talking about on psychology the podcast, So how who we are? It has a lot to do with how we've been socialized. Those of us who are Christian or socialized, for example, differently than those of us who are Jewish, or Muslim or Buddhist for example. Our traditions and our culture have a lot to do and inform our worldviews. And I do believe that a lot of times this puts us

at logger heads. It also is a question to me, Scott, of also looking at meaning making, because it's a question of if we look at these qualities of our identities, an essentialist might say that there's an essential distinction or difference between someone who comes from any one of those identities. And even though we look at the science, we know that there's not a biological difference between someone who is black or so one who is Jewish or someone who

is Muslim. But a constructionist believes that these kind of identities are constructed through a social process. And I think that that and of itself, when we just talk about identity and how we make meaning of those identities, is this a biological predictor or something? And unfortunately, the biological prediction, as we all know, has gotten us into a slippery slope of deciding who matters and who doesn't, and who's

better or not and the whole issue of stigma. And so I'll pick disabled people for example, is looking at them as broken people as opposed to looking at their brilliance and the numbers of folks who live with disabilities and live glorious lives and are extraordinarily productive. And so that doesn't you don't have to be consigned to the margins.

But unfortunately, identity it's a question of how it's the meaning making question to me, that definition in and of itself, of you believe it's a social process, which to me clearly is where I stand versus an essentialist who thinks that this is a predestination almost and it's an objective category. And I think that this is part of the challenge and the clash that we are having presently in the United States. What specifically are you referring to as a

social category? Are you talking about identities like specifically yes, yes, yes, our identity socially constructed meaning through how we're socialized. Or are they a biological trait? So if you are born with a disability, or you are born as a black person, is that an essential trait that is part of you and part of your genetic makeup that makes you essentially

different from someone else? And that's the essentialist piece. Constructive pieces looking at the political and legal and economic and religious institutions, the socialization process and sees it that's a social construction. I would hazard to say that every single person who is black, or who is Jewish, or has a disability, whatever the case may be, is not exactly the same. There's some people who really want to try to boil it down to categories that are very linear

and very discreet. I do believe that clearly the psychological feel allows the individual manifestation of various identities to differ. So one person who has an LGBTQ identity is not the same as another who has an LGBTQ identity. Some folks would view them as all being the same, all being deficit damaged, and that's more of the essentialist perspective.

Are you following me, Scott? Yeah, But a big part of my identity for most of my life was and still is is neurodivergent, you know, and that was influenced by some biological characteristics. I think what you're saying, which I'm very much on board with, is the idea that well, first of all, you're saying a lot of things. I mean, let's unpack this because this is really important. So identity is something that you can choose to integrate into your

identity or not integrate regardless of your characteristics. Right, Like, I know some people in the for instance, the gifted education community don't want that as part of their identity, and some of them really do. Some people really embrace it. They say, you know, I'm a gifted person. You know, when I was a child in school, I was a gift education. That's a really important part of my identity. And some people want to escape that identity from their

school early childhood. So, and that's just the one example comes to mind, because I'm really interested in like under representation of people in gifted education programs and that topic. So I think that's something that we're definitely both on board with. It is that idea that your biology is there's an a one to one mapping there between your biology and your identity. Yes, that's very true. I do

not think that there's a one to one mapping. And I think that the whole question of meaning making, of how we make meaning of our own identities and what

that means to us. I do believe that the socialization process in the US is extraordinarily powerful, and I often use the work of Bobby harrow and looking at socialization that we're basically born as a blank slate, But then our families, the communities we live in, our schools, workplaces, even messages, billboards, song lyrics, television ads define us and sort us and give us a sense of who matters, if you will, and who does not matter. And unfortunately

some of these categories have been dehumanized. And I do believe that the whole stigmatization of idea identities is really where we have a problems. You Scott are talking about the neurodivergent community. Some people would really the whole issue of stigmatization in various identities is really really problematic. So it's the distinction between how I view myself and how

others view me. I'm a good friend who grew up in the Bronx in the middle of a Spanish speaking community, and her first day of kindergarten when she was five, was told, if you can't speak English, don't talk Spanish is a dirty, nasty language and we don't use it. And she's thinking, as a five year old, these are my family, These are the people who love me, who've cared for me, and everyone I know, my priest, the

person who has the corner bodega. You know, my aunties, my grandparents, and what kind of statement is that about

me and my culture. So it's the issue of how it's defined externally and how we find it ourselves, and a lot of us are forced to code switch and do a lot of spanning of kind of a community we feel safe in to really flourish, Taking from Seligman's words, in a community where we have to be very guarded and the whole motion around chronic vigilance that's brought up in the work of doctor David Williams and what chronic vigilance does to us over time because we're constantly protecting

our identities on ourselves for fear of being damaged, traumatized, the stress levels. Yeah, I completely agree. It's a great, great point and it relates to your point that other ring can be a significant barrier to all being. Can you talk a little bit about that, and you know what is how do you see othering? What's your definition of that? Well? I see other ing as being one of the major challenges of the twenty first century was a challenge of the twentieth century. If you look at

the Nazi concentration camps and the civil rights movements. But now I think that we are really in another wave of some of these dark marginalization, and I think in the US it doesn't really matter African American, LATINX, Native Indigenous with a disability LGBTQ, neuro divergent in a land of relative affluent. It's a struggle to be other. It's

this notion of constantly trying to assimilate. Kin Ji Yoshina, a professor at Yale, has written a book called Covering that talks about how we try to assimilate and cover our identities that we want to fit in. It's the issue of that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, and the more that we assimilate and fit into a norm.

In the United States, there's very much a norm around a white, dominant male culture and it's brought to the four very strongly in the work of Elizabeth Wilkerson, as she talks about in the book Cast and basically aligning the US system as a cast system. A cast as we all know, anybody who's broken a bone, it immobilizes that bone you cannot move, and so in a cast system, coming from the comparison of the US social system, with the system in India is the notion that there's no

way to move, there's no mobility. So the othered, all of those who were othered, be it because of race, ethnicity, documentation status, immigration status, they've been in the they've been incarcerated, they've been in the foster care system. How they can actually move out of that marginalize identity into an achievement

of well being? And sometimes it is very difficult because of the socialization process of being devalued by systems and culture and the internal messages that we get that I am less than women, are less than men, lack folks are less than white folks. People who don't speak English as a first language are less than people who do speak English as a first language. The whole issue of heteronormativity and LGBTQ folks are other. And then we go through a round of legal battles and everything else to

get rights. But rights an actual oh, kind of embracing perspectives and recognizing your inherent dignity are not the same thing. Yeah, yeah, A big, big, core theme of your work is respecting the inherent dignity of everyone. Where do you think we are in our society right now in terms of progress. You know, you see, you know, there is a lot of cultural messaging that is saying that women are just as good as men, and that black lives some black lives matter, and me too. So let's just take those

two big movements. Certainly, that's that's a development shift in our culture that didn't from like even ten years ago, right, certainly fifty years ago, sixty years ago. Oh my gosh. So you know, so where do you think we're at right now? And obviously we still have a long way to go, But I would say in a lot of ways, our cultural messaging writ large, isn't that, you know, only white men matter. I mean I'm seeing I'm seeing a huge cultural sort of shift. Are you seeing the same

shift or are you not? In some places, I think people are talking about it. It's as you said, Scott, we're seeing more messaging. And I agree with that. It's a distinction between messaging and taking theory to practice and to action. So I know that President Obama, for example, signed into law the Lily Ledbetter Act, and so when you look at pay equity, there's still gaps. You know, it takes several more months for women of color to reach pay equity with white women. It takes white women

several months to gain pay equity with white men. So why is it that if you have the same education, same degrees, you are not valued as much as a capitalistic system. A lot of us is based on a market, and so the market based economy kind of really is the ultimate arbiture of if we're moving towards that, there is more dialogue with some of the history, particularly as you look at assets, strategies, and struggles, is hard to overcome.

A lot of the work that I'd done earlier on was in looking at economic security and assets, and I was privileged to do work with the Ford Foundation in looking at the whole notion of closing the racial wealth gap. And when you have a history where land ownership was denied to African Americans, land was taken from Native and Indigenous folks, LATINX people a lot of them had land taken from them and were not allowed entry into and so the history of such things as redlining and land

loss is something that's still being fought and litigated. So the history that we have has automatically put some groups clearly at a disadvantage over others. So it's the question around equity, and people are still trying to gain parity. So it's a daily struggle, I do believe. Yeah for many people. Yeah, and for many people, they it's not the daily struggle. So because it's not part of their lived experience, it might be hard for them to recognize that it is very much a part of the lid

experience for many people. So I think that that kind of perspective taking is absolutely essential, and I agree you know, it's important to recognize this is this is a daily struggle for millions and millions of Americans and obviously are globally billions. Let's talk a little bit about equity because you just mentioned that word, and I have not kept a secret that I absolutely adore your definition of equity, So I'm going to read it right now because I

love it. You say equity means giving everyone what they need to succeed, with the understanding that not everyone has had the same opportunities or ability to be heard. It seems like you, which I very much agree with, equate equity with equality of opportunity. Is that right? It's the opportunity parts a part of it. The opportunity part and that being heard part going back to the importance of

a conversations God is perspective sharing. So you mentioned bron from Benner and I talked a little bit about being in Russia and coming to the US. If I'm an immigrant, it doesn't matter where I'm from, if I'm from Vietnam or Cambodia or Mexico, are from Rwanda, My perspective and the assets I bring can actually deepen the richness of pluralism in the US. And I think that it's the combination of both of those elements. It's really really important.

I also like you use the word ability. I mean you very rarely see the word ability, you know, in any definition of equity. So there's a lot of components of your definition. I really like same opportunities or ability to be heard. So let's unpack that. Let's do a cook on that. That's an area of mutual interest of ours, among other areas we've already discussed today, and that's you know, this idea of you know, even just people with disability,

people with mental disability. So it doesn't just have to be physical disability when we use the word disability. Some people may have a certain abilities or skills that makes it difficult for them to be heard or be seen, to be recognized for the amazing strengths that do lie within them, but they're not able to express them as well. So how does that play out in some of your own work that idea? Well, the ability piece and I'll

just be personal here for a brief moment. My only sibling was born severely brain damaged, and so growing up in the household with a brother who didn't speak, his ability to be heard was primarily, unfortunately, in the time that we grew up in the sixties and seventies, was through my mother, who was the one who basically had

to be the translator advocate. Why is it that there are no schools for at the time so called retarded children in the Cleveland, Ohio area, And so the ability piece was my mother often would ask the question do people understand? And I would say, at this point in time, no, I don't think they do, because they haven't lived that kind of life. And so the ability to be heard is can you It's the old adage we use is

can you walk a mile in my shoes? Can you look at this from the way that I see it and understand that it may be very much different from the way that you see it, but my perspective is just as valid as yours. And so we have whole classes of people who don't speak English, who have a variety of communication challenges, who may be deaf and speak asl and how much do general legislative bodies hear them

to people who have different perspectives. And our ability to hear is influenced by our ability to understand and to be open to those perspectives. And so if the world views aren't the same as we started off talking about definitions and words and meaning making, they can be confusing and often discounted because your perspective and worldview is not the same as mine, and there for I am marginalized

seeing or negating your reality. Yeah, So building on that, what is intersectional equity, because that's a subset of equity more generally that you talk about. So I want to give a chance to talk about intersectional equity as well. Well. Intersectional equity again comes out of the work of Kimberly Crenshawn.

It's really looking at this whole question that we have so many identities and so just I'll take myself for example, you all can look at me and tell that I'm a woman of African American ancestry, and so there are two definitions that are right there, And I could be marginalized because of the female part of you and certain enclaves. People may be fine with the fact that I'm of

African ancestry, but I'm a woman. I could also be marginalized in other enclays because of my racial and ethnic identity. And intersectional equity is really being able to look at a whole person who may embody numerous identities and still see their values in assets. Crenshaw's work looks for example, I'd use a woman who is Haitian, who has a disability, who is LGBTQ, and is an immigrant. Now, all of those identities would be marginalized in a traditional additional frame.

She wasn't born in the US, she speaks Haitian Creole, she has a disability, and she's LGBTQ. And so consequently it's a question of how you look at the inherent dignity of that person, and it should not be in spite of it's the invitation of bringing the glory of all of the assets and strings that that person has as opposed to categorizing them and marginalizing them. And so it's the opportunity for her to have ability to be seen, heard, connected, and recognized. And I think that this is a big

challenge at this particular moment in US society. It's back to the comment about silos and how we tend to silo people. And it's also a question of perspective sharing and can we be patient long enough to listen to perspectives which may not be ours and understand the value and validity in those perspectives. What is the paradox of differences? The paradox of differences, This is just a simple kind of All of us are members, are part of the

human family. All of us are human, and so we have a ton in common if we really look at it. We are not polar bears, we are not seals, we are not jellyfish. But we are also like some people. So in looking at these categories, I may have more in common with people who are women. I may have more in common with people who grow up in Ohio, which is where I grew up. I may have more

in common with people who are of African ancestry. But I myself am unique and so it's this issue of I do have things in common with certain groups, and I can make connections probably a little bit easier because we're basing it as we're talking about worldview and perspectives on a common perspective. But I am unique myself, and

so I think sometimes we get into trouble. I'm concerned that we don't necessarily have a full appreciation of us all being members of the same human family, and can we really all recognize our inherent glory and dignity and assets. Going back to the positive psychology frame, because that positivity then should tell me if I'm a member of a human family and this Haitian woman with a variety of identities is a member of the human family, there is

something glorious in all of us. And a lot of times we are focused far more on deficits and differences than we are on the human connection and then the individual identity. How can we also begin to appreciate the uniqueness that each of us bring. There is not another Scott Barry Kaufman, you and your glory. Scott, You're unlike any other person in the in the world. You call me weird. I didn't say weird I didn't use that word.

I said, you're not, you're unlike and you are. You are the one and only, you are the very best. Scott Barry Kaufman is it's true, and it's true for

better and worse. We're all in perfect humans, right and but we're all you know, well, most most of us are trying trying to do good in the world, which is I think I believe you know, Christine, this is a really really interesting sort of toggle here between On the one hand, you want to emphasize the importance of recognizing social identity, and you talked about intersectionality, But on the other hand, you say, we really want to recognize the commun humanity we have with each other, and some

people kind of treat those things as either or, you know, like there are people, there are people and even listeners of this podcast that are heavy, heavy critics of the intersectionality kind of ideal. They say, you know that it's actually dividing, it's doing more more harm than good. It's it's causing us to divide each other and see each other based on these categories like race and sex and sexual identity as opposed to what we have in common. And I don't want to put words in your mouth.

But I suspect you're you're saying, look, it's not either or folks, it's not you either have a common humanity or I appreciate any But we can appreciate lots of aspects of a human and what we have in common. And might being word in your mouth? Is that a fair summation? No, you're being fair. And I do think this gets to the notion of being seen that all of us, I think want to be seen. It's a

part of being recognized. It's the thing in us as little children pulling on our parents or family cotail saying look at me. You know, It's what a two year old will do and kind of say me, me, me, me. We all want this. We want to be value and seen and loved, played and simple, you know, looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it's an innate component of each of us. But seeing that means I want you to be able to see my beauty. The fact that

I am of African American ancestry. I can't change that fact that I'm a woman, the fact that you know, and so if you look at people, the fact that doctor Brown from Verneur is from Russia, the fact that doctor Preylotinsky is from Argentina. I mean, these are things. This is who this person is, and so can you value them in their inherent dignity and beauty and wisdom?

Though that experience may make them slightly different from someone who is from Iowa, someone who is of a different gender, or religious or sexual orientation, whatever the case may be. So it's not the division. What it's saying is their assets here in this frame. And so to me, it's a question in a world if we move away from this notion around scarcity and abundance. It's not a zero

sum game of there's less for me. If you have a seat at the table, can we get a bigger table so all of us can be at the same table and it's not displacing anyone, it's additive. So in my mind, it's a question of adding value some of

the perspectives. I have a dear friend who immigrated as a child from Vietnam, and when I talked to her about her experiences completely different than Christine Robinson, who grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio, I learn I learn about a different experience, worldview, perspective, what it's like to come in your formative years and make a new home and come from a family where many of your family members

have been murdered, and how profound that experience is. We both experienced trauma, as I talk about my own background growing up to twenty four hour police protection when we moved into an all white neighborhood as a child. But my trauma was very different than her trauma fleeing, you know, and leaving Hanoi and getting in a boat and coming with her parents. Totally different story. But it's a fascinating

conversation of our commonalities. And I'm just using that as an example of we share a common human family we also share. I am like some people. I can share in some of those experiences of how you overcame trauma and challenge and being othered and being ostracized and singled out and being told by a dominant culture that you aren't valued for your gender, for your racial and ethnic identity, for your accent, which he still has to this day.

She doesn't speak English is fluently and how could she? So? I think that the intersectional piece. There is a way of greeting in Africa that basically says when people see each other, it is I see you, and I love that because what it's saying, it's an affirmation. If I see you, Scott, I'm seeing you and I'm thrilled. If you are neurodivergent, if you are a male of your Jewish ancestry, these are all assets. I'm interested. I want

to know more. Tell me more about the assets within those various identities and many others that you bring to the table, and I want to understand. And seeing you does it make me feel divided from you? It makes me It encourages me to learn more. I believe from you. This is so interesting. It seems to me like it shouldn't. It's not really seeing, it's listening, because you know, you could see things about me that are not my identities.

I mean, I do think I'm male, I do, but I'm saying in terms of how strong is that a part of my identity? You know, there are other things that I would much more rather like even psychologists, I would rather put above that, or like you know, just a lot of other things that would come first in the line of identities and that so it seems like just made me think, like the word seeing is it's it's more of a it's a it's a dialogue, right, And it goes back to your whole thing about conversation,

it's about listening. Well, I think that what you're saying is very powerful because I think is an issue of self definition and we all know now that how people define themselves and choose to be seen. I think there's another step and respectful interactions of asking people just as you very respectfully asked me about my pronouns as I

sound signed onto your podcast. Yeah, yeah, cool. So let's for the remainder of today, let's talk a little bit about your changes to the standard definition or your modified definition of community psychology. You've a modified definition of dignity. Let me call you. You said, the revised definition of community psychology urges us to build on human and communal assets and move from tragedy and trauma to dignity and restoration.

What is the shift you're trying to make here? You know, like, yeah, really I want to I really want you to be able to articulate that to our audience. This is looking at an asset frame as opposed to a deficit frame. And so I strongly believe in the co creation, meaning how do we build with people? What do we do with people and not to them? And so as we move from an expert stance to a partner stance, and I think it is something that merit's thought in academic

realms is who are the real experts in community? I think an operative word in community psychology, of course, is the word community. And so if you look at community being a neighborhood, or you could look at it from a societal perspective, who are those who really have expertise? And if we're looking at dignity, do I get to define that or is it an expert on the outside

who decides what dignified treatment is? And a lot of times when you ask people what their needs are, what their wants are, what their priorities are, they may be different than what you may think as an outside expert. And so I believe strongly that it's important for us to leave the expert stance at the door if we are going to be open and ask how can I help?

What would be of use? I learned part of this and my work in philanthropy of going into communities and systems change work saying well, these are the things that we could offer for the community. And when you ask the community, their response may be, well, what we really want here are street lights and a full service growth restore.

And that may not be in the purview of that particular foundation to build a full service grocery store in the middle of the neighborhood, But if it's a neighborhood where there's a food desert, that could indeed be one of the most important things for the people who live there. And so often this notion of philanthropy, of social change, social engineering, if you will, of what we think populations may need or want may not be the same thing that they need or want if you sit down and

talk to them. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point again, and come back to listening. The listening part. There's a couple of changes you made to the standard definition of community psychology. One is you replace the term communities that's often used in the community. It's in the thing deaf community psychology. Maybe you should be change it too. You're saying change and maybe the inclusive society psychology. Maybe that's that's one change. Well, yeah, and I talk about incive

society because of Bramfreenbrenner's influence. I think the community, and I get where it's coming from. It's our communal interactions with each other. But some people would take that to be a neighborhood, if you will. And because we are structured as a nation the way that we are, with systems and policies and infrastructure from the federal to the regional to the municipal and or county level into neighborhoods,

we have to look beyond just the community. The community, of course has power, but not when we're looking at a lot of the systemic structural changes that could actually enhance well being. So I think that that's an important thing, and not that the entire name of the field should be changed, but I think that it goes far beyond in quotation marks a neighborhood. And it's here we go again talking about words and definitions. Is a community, is it a neighborhood or now we could talk about a

virtual community. Now in this COVID world, they're communities that span geography, and they're communities of positive psychologists. For example, that spanned the globe and it is part of a community, but it doesn't have a neighborhood footprint. It's not these two square miles for example. Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point. And also the distinction in community and society.

I mean, society seems to think more like nebulous, abstract and you know, who is a society we keep talking about when we say society doesn't believe in XT society doesn't like why, Well, certain communities sure, ken, you know, and what are the communities? Right? That's to me. Communities just feels more concrete. It feels more like, you know, what are you embedded in? You know? And so I

like it. Another change here, definite to the definition of community coology is the insertion of co creation alongside capacity building you say, quote co creating potential pathways to address the numerous cycles of socialization, unbreeding, deficit narratives and work spanning all levels of civic discourse, address structural and systemic causesive I'm coptraling causesive factors in community psychology practice. Can you unpack that a little bit? That's a yes, that's

really there's a lot there. There's a lot there. Well, the co creation piece is doing things with people instead of doing things to people. And so we're backing into the having a conversation and listening. There's an assumption about causation, and I think that so much of the psychological research with theories that base the root cause of elements and what is the root cause really? And I think here we go again back to this whole question around meaning

making and analysis and perspective. If you ask the root cause of certain things that have happened in certain populations, you're going to get very different answers across the country. And so I think it's really a call in community psychology to make certain that you've got room at the

table for very diverse perspectives. I know in the paper I quote the disability rights movement talking about nothing about us without us, and I think that that spans all of the various communities that you could be in us. That if we are going to do something a community, it's not just the in quotation marks city fathers or city mothers, or the city council or the board of selectmen, or some academic institutions who would come in and develop

a blueprint. It's the residents and the people who work there, who live there, who worship there, who walk the streets every day. Their perspectives could be very very different and for some reason, here we go again with the power dynamics, we tend to discount the voices of those people. So that's going back to the way that I grew up with my mother, who's basically saying, let's find a way my son was born brain damaged. Is there not a way that we can have an educational system that is

inclusive and includes children who were developmentally disable? And is this not in the societal interest? So the co creation a lot of that, certainly, I've learned over my career, but I also learned it as a child growing up because it was her vigilance. When I was a kid, I never knew where we were going. She would pick me up from school. We'd be in the mayor's office, the superintendent of schools, the county commissioner's office, and she would say, I have a child. He is not a disgrace.

He is eight years old and he's unable to go to school, and he was born severely brain damaged. Is there a way that we can work across this county to develop an educational system that's inclusive of all children. Yes, amen, Amen, I definitely agree with that, and and these things, these forms of discrimination have very significant impacts on chronic stress and our biological functioning and our ability to self actualize. This is this is why this inextricably intertwined nature of

all these different elements matters right now. Can you talk a little bit about some of that research. Sure, a lot of the work of doctor Bruce McEwan, who was a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University. He passed about a year ago, unfortunately, but he did amazing work on alistatic load. And so what we find is children who experience discrimination, it can be their own experience of it or observing a parent. You know, I go into a restaurant and my parents

are not seated. I go into a store and they just overlook us and let us sit there. Bullying on the playground, looking at police brutality, looking at racial profiling in the various media outlets. And this is traumatic and what it results in is, quite frankly, everything that we don't want to see in an educational system. Decrease in self efficacy, an increase sense of hopelessness, increase in depression,

and we know that life long. In his research, he's documented impacts and effects such as increase in low birth weight in the children of these children who've been affected, increase in immune deficiency, which is one of the major issues we're dealing with now with COVID nineteen, and increase

in a number of chronic stress conditions. So we all know a lot about health disparities and hypertension and stroke and cancer, a number of illnesses that are chronic, but the stress component that's part of these illnesses can be directly traced back to a lot of the chronic stress and stressors of struggling in a world that does not

recognize your inherent dignity, and back to chronic vigilance. Doctor David Williams tells a story of a black man who, every time he goes to the corner store just to the seven eleven, puts on a suit coat and a white shirt and a tie because he knows that he will be treated differently, and just being under that kind of pressure every time I leave my home, I need to pay attention to how I speak, to how I'm dressed,

to what I say, to what I do. Puts our entire system under a lot of stress in comparison to someone who's got a T shirt and a pair of shorts. I need a gallon of milk. I'm going to hop in, hop out, and keep on going. It's a different type of living, if you will. This is why I started wearing a suit on my podcast, because people weren't taking me seriously. So there's a new thing, a new development. It's true. Okay, So I want to well, let's end

with this idea of cultural intelligence. Well, this idea, Ting Toomey write nineteen ninety nine seminole paper outlined four stages for stage process to move toward culture intelligence. Let's get us move in there. Let's leave on that note, getting us all moving. You got it, You got it. Ting Toomey's work, and she her area of expertise is actually

International Communications, University of California, Fullerton. And I've been really struck by her work because she first of all tells us that Americans drastically over estimate their ability and fluency with other cultures. The reality of their ability to take on other perspectives, the actual ability of Americans to take on other perspectives is not very high, very much. Seeing things in a very prescribed view, she calls that unconscious incompetent.

Unconscious incompetence. Excuse me, we are unconsciously incompetent and unaware of what we don't know, and that ignorance in and of itself is a problem because we're stumbling over our own two feet and making assumptions about who other people are and who other people aren't. What she wants us to move on to as the next step is moving to be consciously incompetent. And it's interesting here because it's recognizing the fact that I don't know much about you.

You're from Rwanda, and I realize that I don't know a lot about people from Rwanda, or from Venezuela or from Bhutan, and so could you tell me a little bit? Can I understand a little bit? And how can I understand more about these realities? Moving up that ladder is is getting to conscious competence, where I can feel comfortable in these communities, and actually, unconscious and competence is the

highest level where we actually have proficiency and mastery. And so I make this akin almost to professional endeavor if I was. The medical equivalent is that I have to become aware of the challenge I have to practice. I have to internalize the skills before I come a master. I have a number of friends who are physicians, some

extraordinarily talented surgeons. We're talking about twelve, fourteen, even sixteen years with some of them of what it takes to be the person in the middle of the night if you're in an automobile accident and you end up in the emergency room. I am unconsciously competent because I know exactly what I need to do. And so I think that we are at an inflection point as a nation where many people feeling, Oh, I read a book, I listened to a podcast to respect Scott, and now I've

got this. I got this downpat And if we look at the number of identities that we need to address, be it race, ethnicity, LGBTQ, socioeconomic status, people who are housing in secure, who are food insecure, who speak languages other than English, just a black white dynamic in the US is not going to cut it. And so it's really beginning to develop the listening skills the patients, the questioning skills to understand that my worldview is indeed valid.

It is my worldview, but it may not be your worldview. And so entering into a conversation, how do I understand where the other person is coming from and if I really honor and value them as an equal, that's the co creation part. I invite their reality into the dialogue, and therefore I'm moving to a realm of cultural competence. I have a quick story that I want to just share, and it goes back to my own experience when I

started to really talking about bringing theory to practice. I had the fortunate opportunity when I was in graduate school to work for the Department of Public Health on an infant mortality project and very much the same with We didn't call it health disparities then, but that's exactly what it was. And why were we seeing such a disparity in infant mortality and morbidity among African American, latinx Haitian,

Cape Verdean, Mick mac Indian, Vietnamese, Khmer Laotian women. And I worked in inner city Boston, and one of the first questions in doing the focus groups with these various communities, and they were all translated, so I had the wonderful opportunity to go into different communities. They said, your grocery store is really hard for me. You wrap your fresh fruits and vegetables and plastic and I can't tell how

fresh they are because I can't touch them. I go into the dairy section, but I don't understand this because there are no cows in Vietnam the Cape Fair Islands Haiti, and so I don't eat anything there. I go to your fish section, and you fill ay all the fish. You cut the heads off, so I can't tell how fresh they are by the clarity of their eyes. And

you take the bones out. And I used to chew the bones as a source of calcium in my country, but the bones aren't there, and instead I look, even though I don't speak English, I'm standing at the bus stop. I see the ads on the side of the bus. I see the billboards, I see the pictures on TV, and I want to eat like an American. The Americans

are the richest country in the world. So I buy Coca cola and potato chips and candy bars and pizza, because why would the government put those things on television and advertise for them if they weren't good for you. And so, just in that story, it was fascinating. These are people coming from countries where the government controlled the media, and so their assumption is that everything advertised is good

for you. Their world experience and what they know, and so it wasn't a surprise to me when you're looking at nutritional intake that there are huge nutritional deficits and you would expect the very outcomes that we were seeing, But it was. I just think it's a really interesting example of I used listening. I listened to their voice and I'm understanding, okay, from their perspective. This is where

the co creation piece comes in. I myself, as a black woman growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, would never have come to those kinds of conclusions without their input and helping us figure out as a public health system how we should address some of these challenges. Yeah. Yeah, this is such a great point, and thank you for sharing

that story. It certainly relates to our political landscape and messaging from your favorite politicians and leaving them about certain things, and how that influences how you interact with others and how you particularly those that may differ from you. Right, I'm being very abstract here, you know what I'm saying. Look, Christine, I just want to thank you so so much for being on my podcast today, for being my friend, and

for the amazing research you're doing. I really hope that I really hope we get this out there more your work, So thank you, me too, me too, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation, so I wish you all the best, and thank you very much. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion that the Psychology Podcast or on our YouTube page thus

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