Week 7

              I honestly thing that I have to begin by addressing my genuine feelings of surprise when we had the discussion about race in our last lecture.  I think that was the first time that I had even considered how much race could play a part in group therapy dynamics and how much it had to potential to affect the members.  It's really easy to assume that either 1) people in groups are likely going to be adults, and would therefore have gotten past their feelings about race and other parts of their identities, or 2) people would be too fearful to address things like race.  However, I know that these assumptions are absolutely inaccurate and based on nothing more than my personal speculation. What I'm trying to say is that I really had given little to no thought as to how race could play out in group therapy.  Maybe, thus far, we really haven't been given enough training about racial differences in our Social Work education.  It is certainly surprising, but I'm glad we're going a little more in-depth now.

           The article about race was very interesting and allowed for more specific examples of how issues of race and ethnicity can play out in a group.  The vignette about the African American woman and her internal conflict about the SHADE of her skin color was very interesting.  Something that to me would be seemingly insignificant played a huge role in her identity.  Even though it could make for some very difficult conversations or uncomfortable moments, I guess group could almost be a perfect place to address these internal conflicts.  If the group was made up of racially diverse members and the facilitator was competent, group would be a very useful place to work through some of these feelings.