Articles Written by Valerie Galante, ph.d

A buck may be defined as either a verb “to oppose or resist something that seems oppressive or inevitable” or as a noun “lowest of a particular rank;” both definitions apply to my career as a Licensed Clinical Psychologist within the context of Racial Injustice that is systemic to American life.

I have long lamented over the many dissatisfying experiences of my career, despite the fact that I have also had many successes and made significant, meaningful contributions. 

Fittingly, my career came into clear focus in the year 2020.

The year 2020 represented the culmination and confluence of numerous dynamic factors at the national level and the interpersonal level for me. 

It was as if my internal experience reflected my external experience; or was it vice versa?

In the beginning, externally, at the national level…

America was founded on racial injustice. Although the current focus is on the Black Lives Matter Movement, racial injustice in America began with discrimination, exploitation and systemic annihilation of Native Americans. 

“Just a reminder: the system in what is currently known as the US isn't ‘broken.’ It was designed by male white supremacist slaveowners on stolen Indigenous land to protect their interests. It's working as it was designed.” ~Dr. Adrienne Keene (Cherokee)

When Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and landed in America, his journey ended and the systemic robbing, raping and ravaging Indigenous people of their land, their culture, and their lives began.

Fast forward to 1619 when the first African captives aboard the ship called San Juan Batista were stolen by White pirates who brought the captives to America aboard the White Lion, thus beginning the institution of slavery in America upon arriving in Virginia. 

As we know from history, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 declaring “all persons held as slaves… shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free;” however, it was not until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 – Juneteenth - that explicit slavery was formally abolished, and yet oppression and subjugation of Blacks continues to this day because it is steeped within every aspect of American life.

When President Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, some White people in America lost their minds, so much so that they elected Trump in 2016. Over the four years of Trump’s disgraceful, disruptive administration, White Supremacists have been emboldened and legitimized. The social injustice between Whites and people of color has been so egregious, that it has finally forced America and the rest of the world to acknowledge the ugly truth…Racial Injustice has been constantly simmering in the US since 1619, ever-ready to boil over – which it has often done – and as it is doing right now. 

As I type this sentence, Trump-Supporting protesters just breached the Capitol steps and are noisily walking between velvet ropes through Statuary Hall of the Capitol Building thus forcing the building to be evacuated and putting a halt to the Electoral College Certification of the 2020 Election results.

What 2020 has revealed is that people in power will do anything to remain in power, and they will squash those who interfere with their comfort and superiority – even other white people.

Which lead me to connect the external with the internal.

In the beginning, internally, at the interpersonal level…

For the purpose of context, not for pride, my career was founded on solid education and training. I earned a Ph.D. in Clinical and School Psychology from an APA-Accredited graduate program. A Ph.D. is a scientist-practitioner degree, meaning that it is founded on the ideology that trained professional psychologists should be knowledgeable in both research and clinical practice and are able to successfully integrate science and practice. As a Clinical Psychologist, I provide continuing and comprehensive mental and behavioral health care to individuals and families; consultation to agencies and communities; training, education and supervision; and engage in research-based practice. As a School Psychologist, my focus was on learning and behavior to help students of all ages from Kindergarten to graduate school to succeed academically, socially, behaviorally, and emotionally.

I have almost 30 years of diverse experience. I have mindfully made it my life’s work to achieve beyond the required knowledge, skills and abilities in order to provide services to people from all walks of life. I have deliberately chosen to serve traditionally under-served populations including people at all socio-economic levels, incarcerated people, at-risk youth, Native Americans on the reservation and military members. I have served people with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, people from many different religious/spiritual traditions, and from every sexual orientation – LGBTQ. My clients have presented with the full range of human challenges and problems, and the full range of formally diagnosed psychological disorders. 

I have worked in varied settings including private practice, hospitals, substance abuse rehab centers, schools, colleges & universities, community-based centers, prisons, and military bases. I have routinely intervened with everyday stresses as well as serious crises. I am prepared to confidently competently and compassionately handle all imaginable circumstances. My psychotherapeutic orientation is evidence-based, meaning that it has been proven to work effectively after being subjected to rigorous research. I am thoroughly trained in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness-based CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Positive Psychology, Strength-Based/ Solution-Focused Interventions, Effective Communication and Conflict Resolution Strategies.

I have been of service to literally thousands of people over the years, received wonderful endorsements, Letters of Commendation, Commander Challenge Coins, and the gratitude of many.

Perhaps most importantly, I genuinely love being of service to others. It is my passion to facilitate the growth and healing process; to empower, inspire and motivate other people. 

And yet, in every setting, in every position that I have held throughout my career, I have felt like a salmon swimming upstream; like a bird flying against the wind; or a buck opposing or resisting something that seems oppressive or inevitable. 

Yes, that is it – I am a White Buck, the lowest of a particular rank of professional, which is to say someone who is not perceived as a ‘team player’ and is therefore rejected, resisted and sometimes removed.

Why I seemed to continually experience this kind of reaction from my peers when I was such a high performer, genuinely collegial, and dedicated to service was so perplexing…until now.

The year 2020 brought my career into clear focus just as it brought racial injustice into full focus. 

America was founded on racial injustice. Racial injustice, and alternatively White Supremacy, is steeped into every aspect of our society – including our education system and our social service organizations. 

Remember…

“Just a reminder: the system in what is currently known as the US isn't ‘broken.’ It was designed by male white supremacist slaveowners on stolen Indigenous land to protect their interests. It's working as it was designed.” ~Dr. Adrienne Keene (Cherokee)

I started my career as a School Psychologist in 1990 advocating for children diagnosed with learning, intellectual, emotional and behavioral disorders. The 1965 federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was in effect which legally protected and promoted equal opportunity for all students. This law was further strengthened by the No Child Left Behind Law in 2002, the focus of which is to close student achievement gaps by providing all children with a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education by making public schools: 1) accountable to ensure that those students who are disadvantaged achieve academic proficiency; 2) allows school districts flexibility in how they use federal education funds to improve student achievement; 3) to emphasize research-based education programs and practices; and 3) to increases the choices available to the parents of students attending Title I schools.

I quickly learned that how things were supposed to be and how things were in actuality were two different things. Special Education Teams held meetings, developed Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for students identified with educational/behavioral needs, and yet time after time no progress was made, plans were not implemented, and children were often left behind.

My response was to ‘buck’ the system and advocate for those whom I was hired to serve. The result was that I was often rejected, resisted and sometimes removed. 

Fast forward to 2001, I was hired as a Psychologist to work with Indian Health Services in Northern California where I provided services to local Native American tribes including the Yurok and Tolowa Tribes. Again, I quickly learned that how things were supposed to be and how things were in actuality were two different things. I saw firsthand the disproportionate number of Native American Youth arrested and put into the juvenile justice system, adults in the prison system, the outrageous number of indigenous people struggling with substance abuse, the substandard living conditions on the reservations, their rights violated, their culture disrespected. And still, they were being cheated, their land taken, their babies adopted into White families unable to have children of their own, and their elders having to fight to preserve their language, beliefs and practices in whatever way they could. 

Members of the Tolowa Tribe often spoke of “the day the river flowed red” in reference to the massacre on Prince Island, just north of the Smith River, by White settlers eager to seize the land. The killings began in 1853 after the Tolowa gathered for a world-renewal ceremony. Instead of celebrating, men, women and children were slaughtered by the hundreds, their bodies dumped into the river in such numbers that “the river flowed red. 

And in 2001, there I was, a White lady from New York there to help these Indigenous People. They used to tease me that they thought I was in the Federal Witness Protection program because they could not believe there was any other reason for my presence on their land. To earn their trust and respect was one of the greatest honors of my life. To be rejected and resisted by other White people because I advocated for the Indigenous People was one of the greatest perplexities of my career.

Five years later, while working in a Department of Corrections prison within a state that will remain nameless, I again learned that how things were supposed to be and how things were in actuality were two different things. It quickly became clear that rehabilitation was never the goal; rather the goal was to punish, exploit and dehumanize the prisoners while also denigrating those of us who worked within the Programs Department by calling us “Hug-a-Thugs” and undermining our goals to end the cycle of reincarceration. Given that the prison system was a money-maker for the state and/or the private industry who ran them, the goal was never to rehabilitate. When I advocated for prisoners and spoke out against violations of their rights because they were medically neglected, sexually abused, and generally mistreated, I was fired.

In subtler ways, I have witnessed the ways in which people of color, low-income status, sexual-orientation other than heterosexual, and followers of faiths other than Protestant, and gender other than male have been marginalized, neglected and/or abused.

I have been a “White Buck” throughout my career; someone who is rejected, resisted and sometimes removed because I dare to go against the unspoken, deep-seated, and systemic “White Privilege.”

Indeed, the year 2020 brought my career into clear focus just as it brought racial injustice into full focus, because the two are inevitably entwined. Because I dared to advocate and lift up those who are deemed to be a ‘threat’ to White Privilege, I have been is rejected, resisted and sometimes removed by other White People.

Knowing what I know now, I would make the same choices. The only difference is that I am no longer perplexed by the responses of my professional peers. 

My clarity regarding the interpersonal response of others whom I have encountered during my career parallels America’s clarity to the national response to racial injustice. We know exactly what we are dealing with, and why. The ugly truth has come to light.

Through no fault of their own, Blacks and other People of Color have been rejected, resisted and sometimes removed by White People. 

Similarly, through no fault of my own, I have been rejected, resisted and sometimes removed by White People. 

To suggest a parallel in no way should be construed that I am equating my experience to that of Blacks. But what I am saying, is that my experience has taught me empathy, sensitivity and compassion for what it must be like to be Black because I know the pain, worry, disillusionment and fear that I have experienced in my career. 

My experience, which is only a small fraction of what the typical Black person’s experience is in every aspect of their lives, has reaffirmed for me just how vitally important it is that we in America insist upon racial and social justice for all.

I gladly relinquish my White Privilege for justice and peace.

No justice, no peace. I choose justice. I choose peace. 

* Valerie Galante is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Book Author and Interfaith Minister living in the US.