More Pie Minutes

APA 2003 (Toronto)

Attendees present included: Barbara Palombi, Beth Cohen, David Whitcomb, John O’Brien, Punky Heppner, Lisa Spanierman, Jim Croteau, and Shana Hamilton. Gargi led the meeting.

First a short description of More Pie History was discussed as far as how it was developed and what the group had done to this point.

Gargi discussed the “Handbook of Social Justice and Social Psychology.” Call for proposals was discussed. The book was described as an interface with social justice and multiculturalism and the link to the community. It was decided that they were agreeable to receiving more abstracts for the call for proposals for that book.

The future of Counseling Psychology and how we as psychologists must promote social justice was briefly discussed.

John O’Brien discussed the Pie Recipes that had been an idea for the More Pie group at the last APA meeting in 2002. This was an idea to have individuals submit recipes with a story of how the recipes were founded. Gargi stated that not many recipes had been submitted. The group discussed the idea as a whole and decided that perhaps we should revive this idea again. It was decided that Gargi would put this on the listserv in order to get more recipes.

The listserv was discussed next regarding the many great introductions that had been received recently. It was noted that there had been a lot of production on the listserv and that most of that seemed to be coming from newer Counseling Psychologists.

Books were then discussed including Jim Croteau’s book which will be a collection of personal narratives experiences around the discourse of sexual orientation. This book was described to include narratives based on questions such as how do we define the closet, how tension regarding sexual orientation and multiculturalism is intertwined, how would someone describe the current discourses in the profession. This book will be a part of the Sage multicultural series which will be coming out in mid-2004.

A discussion regarding whether or not sexual orientation is being incorporated into multicultural issues was happening. It seemed that there was a movement toward sexual orientation being incorporated; however, it was thought that it wasn’t happening in many places. It was also discussed as to whether sexual orientation perspectives were race conscious or not and to what extent does it dilute race in ways that are destructive. It was suggested that perhaps these thoughts were coming from “white guilt” as other individuals felt that this was not the case in society. Racism within the GLBT community was then discussed. It was stated that we have an LGB psychology that has no race consciousness. Gender issues were then brought into the discussion with the statement that many think if you focus on race and ethnicity then you can’t be a feminist also. Disability was then discussed as well, regarding whether or not when you are an ethnic minority and have a disability both can be salient at one time. This started an overall discussion of how one can pay attention to all oppression within an individual at once and whether or not each person’s oppressions have different aspects of saliency depending on the situation or if all can be salient at once.

This discussion led into a discussion regarding teaching and multiculturalism. How does one teach multiculturalism so that multiple identities within an individual will be salient to students. Beth Cohen suggested using a book and stated that she would send those book references across the listserv at a later date. Multiculturalcenter.org was also suggested.

Another discussion seemed to follow from this regarding the tension regarding trying to discuss issues regarding oppression even in a safe space such as More Pie meetings. Does social justice have different meanings to different people? The statement was made that being aware of our own personal privilege and how privilege can be used as power to decrease oppression and open up avenues of power to use for social justice. If everyone paid attention to their privileges, would the tension lessen?

It was then discussed that holding the oppression and privileges together at once was very difficult within an individual.

We seemed to go back to the safe space and discussing multiculturalism and the tension around that at that time. It was discussed that sometimes we use political correctness and this makes us glance over the real issues to be “nice.” Social desirability is so needed or wanted that it decreases the important dialoguing that we might otherwise have regarding the multiple identities and all multiculturalism.

We then began to discuss More Pie as we wrapped up the meeting. It was discussed how it is a safe space where we are not fighting over the pie but stretching it in dialogue. We seem to be, as a group, moving away from task orientation and just creating the space and making connections.

Barbara stated at the end that she would make the notes for the meeting and send them out as well as do the write-up for the newsletter.