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The “Coloring Psychoanalysts” online periodical wants your contributions—but only if you are a member of the “BIPOC” community (black, indigenous, or person of color).
Coloring Psychoanalysts describes itself as an online community periodical that “seek[s] to dismantle the ways in which psychoanalytic theory has both ignored and pathologized BIPOC people, justified and reinforced systemic oppression, and affects our practice and our communities today.”
The organization’s “About” page contains a defense of limiting “white” participants, asserting the BIPOC-only periodical is a way to “divest BIPOC time, emotional labor, and intellectual contribution from spaces that too often diminish and devalue us.” In arriving at this conclusion, Coloring Psychologists cites a 2018 article entitled “Why People of Color Need Spaces Without White People”. Indeed, the organization makes it clear they are interested in seeing “psychoanalysis shift away from a White, colonial center.”
Coloring Psychologists wants submissions, not just from writers, but from “poets, artists, dancers, musicians, and other creators” too. But if you are white, don’t bother clicking on the application form, which requires you to affirm that “I self-identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and understand that the intention of this space is to foster psychoanalytically-oriented dialogue by and for BIPOC.”
Notably, the organization relies on self-identification of race to uphold its discriminatory practices. How Coloring Psychologists deals with inappropriate cases of self-identification is unclear, but is a built-in flaw to virtually all of these types of racial screenings.
And if you are white, the organization’s response is very clear: go elsewhere. Or, as they so lovingly put it, “seek alternative spaces” for submissions. Even supposed “allies” to the BIPOC community are not welcome.
As Do No Harm has previously reported, not only are the consequences of these practices discriminatory, but they are entirely ineffective. The implied notion that psychologists should align with their patients on the basis of race rather than merit has been a consistently disproved practice. There is absolutely no evidence that having a black psychologist for a black patient—or a white psychologist for a white patient—leads to improved medical outcomes. Yet, that does not stop woke organizations from continuing to push for racial concordance in order to undermine our existing medical system.
However, in perhaps an encouraging sign of the organization’s potentially waning influence, they still have their submission page open for a project whose deadline expired more than four months ago. Perhaps limiting submissions to only self-identified BIPOC individuals has not panned out the way the organization had hoped.
Coloring Psychoanalysts was founded by clinical psychologist Meiyang Liu Kadaba, who claims to live “on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatyush Ohlone Peoples…who were the original inhabitants of the area that includes San Francisco, CA.” That’s a very long—and very woke—way of saying she lives in San Francisco.
Frighteningly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, Kadaba has been an adjunct faculty member at the Wright Institute, a graduate school of psychology located in Berkeley, CA. She also worked in Wright’s DEI office. In other words, she is passing her politicized worldview of medicine onto the next generation of psychologists, indoctrinating them with the same toxic worldview.
However, Coloring Psychoanalysts is hardly the only entity in the medical arena to be engaging in these types of practices. From internships at medical non-profits, to admissions at major medical programs, to scholarships sponsored by private entities, Do No Harm has documented countless cases of discriminatory operations. It appears the use of blatantly racist criteria to screen-out unwanted racial groups is quickly becoming the norm. This bears a frightening resemblance to the pre-Civil Rights era’s “separate, but equal” practices used to justify the same types of discriminatory actions against black Americans.
In practical terms, locking out non-BIPOC members limits the dialogue in a critical medical field, stifles the free exchange of ideas, and places race on a pedestal above all-else. However, it is very likely that these outcomes reflect the goals of Coloring Psychoanalysts and similar organizations, rather than unintended consequences.
Whether it is Coloring Psychoanalysts or another entity, these types of racial screenings have no place in any field of modern medicine. They are relics of a discriminatory system that belong to the ash heap of history. Instead, they are unfortunately gaining traction among non-profits, colleges and universities, and private sector organizations. The sooner these inherently racist practices are repudiated and abandoned, the better.
Psychoanalysis, at its core, aims to understand the origin points for suffering. Dr. Lucas A. Klein wants you to know that if radical DEI initiatives collapse the field of psychoanalysis, the Holmes Commission was the origin point.
Dr. Klein is a clinical psychologist, adult psychoanalyst, former forensic psychologist, the host of Real Clear Podcast, and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm. He knows a thing or two about the human condition, and he believes the principles underlying DEI are not only illogical—they’re dangerous.
“Psychoanalysis is among the last in the field of mental health to enter this battle, and it deserves some congratulations for having held out this long. Other professions fell long, long ago,” he says.
“But DEI activists are coming for my profession, and it’s making a mockery of it. I’m not going to give up the seriousness of my field without a fight.”
In 2020, the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) created the Holmes Commission to find evidence of racism within the association. Three years later, it released a stunning 421-page report calling for the restructuring of the entire field of psychoanalysis.
It instructed therapists to “apply an analytic lens to the matters of race, racism, and white supremacy.” It also tasked entities associated with the field to hire a DEI ombudsman and “monitor resistance to change.”
Amazingly, the authors of the report themselves admitted they don’t have any data to prove or disprove systemic racism in the field, and that the report’s findings were enhanced with the “personal experiences of commission members.”
For Dr. Klein, enough was enough. He published a pointed takedown of the report’s findings on his professional APsA listserv. It set the field ablaze for a few weeks.
“I received a torrent of private support from psychoanalysts throughout the country and throughout the world, and I’m still getting positive responses from analysts,” he says. “It’s not surprising, but it is sad they felt they had to do so privately.”
Dr. Klein expanded on the hazards of critical social justice for an op-ed in the City Journal, in which he warned against making race central to the patient experience:
“Such racial fixation contributes to the unmaking of psychoanalysis. The point of our craft is to help people delve deep into the true and specific cause of their problems, not tell them that they’re victims or evildoers whose problems are unsolvable. We’re supposed to empower people with a truer sense of who they are, not immobilize them by shoving them into a predetermined spot in a power structure.”
“That approach cultivates helplessness, anger, and obsession—not empathy, understanding, and resolution. Mental problems worsen when the unconscious goes unconfronted.”
Sadly, Dr. Klein is watching his warnings come to life at work. He often meets new patients who walk in the door feeling anxious about the possible politicization of their experiences.
“I’ve had patients come to me worried I’m going to view their experiences through the lens of race. I’ve had parents of teenagers worried I’m going to trans their kids,” he says. “Each went to other therapists first who brought up concepts about race and gender when they were not applicable.”
Dr. Klein is not sure that APsA will ever get back on track, but he steadfastly believes the intellectual foundation of psychoanalysis is worth saving.
“We may need to start a new organization that reaffirms classical psychoanalytic values and theories to the exclusion of modern woke ideas. Those cannot be entertained. You really can’t middle around on this,” he warns.
We couldn’t agree more.
Three years ago Cat Poland’s son nearly died.
The Kansas mother of three told lawmakers Thursday that her now 14-year-old child attempted suicide after coming out as transgender.
She also told them that gender affirming medication, testosterone, left him “happier and healthier” than she’s seen him in years. Starting hormone therapy, Poland told The Star, wasn’t a decision her family made lightly but instead one that came after extensive therapy and detailed conversations with doctors.
Read more on The Kansas City Star.
Many organizations—including in the medical field—make assurances not to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, age, and a variety of other factors. These types of statements are fairly commonplace in both the private and public sector.
However, what is less common is an explicit codification of discrimination included in the very same paragraph as an anti-discrimination statement. Yet, this is precisely the situation with the American Heart Association (AHA).
In one of its funding opportunities for grantees, the AHA is offering a four-year award of up to $4.4 million for organizations addressing the role of inflammation in cardiac and neurovascular diseases. In their applications, potential grantees are supposed to include requests for funding of postdoctoral fellows related to the program. Upon first glance, the idea sounds innocent enough.
In fact, the AHA assures applicants that its aim is to end the treatment of “people inequitably based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, veteran status or other factors.” But the very next sentence codifies this type of mistreatment by mandating that “at least 50% of the fellows named must be from a racial or ethnic group that is under-represented in science (Black/African American; Hispanic/Latino; Native American or Alaska Native; and/or Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander); or an LGBTQ+ person, or a woman.”
But it does not end there. The AHA goes onto require that “at least 25% of key personnel of the research team must be from groups who are under-represented in science and medicine.”
The AHA’s message could not be any more contradictory: they are against discrimination, except when they are in favor of it.
This type of reverse discrimination and racial balancing has no place in medicine, or in any related field. However, given the AHA’s long history of endorsing DEI and woke concepts, its discriminatory requirements should come as no huge surprise.
A search for “equity” on the AHA’s website brings up nearly 9,000 results, from news articles to health equity guidelines and more. Included in these results is the AHA’s “Office of Health Equity” which is supposedly dedicated to “leveraging diversity, equity and inclusion to drive the AHA’s mission to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives.”
As part of the AHA’s Office of Health Equity, the organization has issued several position statements on “health equity, social justice and structural racism.” They are also supplemented by several policy positions held by the organization, guided by “principles for addressing structural racism through public policy advocacy”.
For example, the AHA published a more than 14,000-word report outlining a variety of positions held by the organization designed to “advance antiracist strategies”. These include several policies entirely unrelated to health or medical outcomes, such as “advance[ing] policies that support the preservation of trust in and the integrity of our electoral process” and “work[ing] to mitigate implicit and explicit bias among school staff and to examine disciplinary policies and the role of law enforcement in schools”, among others.
Also included in the report is an endorsement of “provid[ing] complementary, culturally concordant prevention services for patients and historically excluded populations.” This is an implicit and buried endorsement of racial concordance in medicine, the disproven idea that patients should see providers of the same race.
Put simply, the AHA’s embrace of politicized concepts runs wide and deep, even encroaching upon areas that are completely unrelated to health and medicine. The codification of discriminatory practices in a recent grant opportunity is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem brewing within the organization.
The AHA is certainly not alone in advancing a woke ideology or incorporating discrimination in its funding opportunities. However, the extent to which these concepts have infiltrated the organization’s mission and operations is a serious cause for concern—and one that deserves careful monitoring going forward.
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Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. In this episode, he discusses how his long-standing elective, Healing by Killing: Medicine during the Third Reich, was canceled in the face of antisemitic backlash. Then, just two months after the October Hamas terrorist attacks, Dr. Rubenfield’s scheduled lecture on antisemitism in medicine was canceled by school officials. Now, Dr. Rubenfeld is bravely confronting what most of his colleagues refuse to admit: That diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies breed antisemitism in medicine.
Listen in via YouTube, Spotify, or Amazon Music.
Last year, Do No Harm reported how Castle Connolly—a New York City-based company that publishes top doctor rankings—jumped on the woke bandwagon by launching their DEI initiative that pushed for racial concordance.
Racial concordance is the false belief that patients have better health outcomes after seeing doctors of their own race. It is a thinly-veiled effort to push racial segregation in medicine under the guise of advancing equity. Yet companies like Castle Connolly are back at it again, pushing racial concordance despite all the evidence to the contrary. Recently the company published their “2024 Top Black Doctors” to allegedly “honor top clinicians and enable patients to find Castle Connolly Top Doctors who have shared backgrounds and experiences.”
Unfortunately, Castle Connolly is not the only entity pushing for racial concordance. For example, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)—which represents all accredited medical schools in the United States—has wholeheartedly endorsed the concept. Other medical organizations, such as the American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, have echoed this view.
But there’s more to come: in their press release, Castle Connolly also teased their plans to launch several other so-called “distinctions”, including “Exceptional Women in Medicine”, “Top Asian American and Pacific Islander Doctors”, “Top LGBTQ+ Doctors”, and “Top Hispanic and Latino Doctors”. Apparently, advocating de-facto racial segregation among one race is not enough for Castle Connolly—they are intent on pushing racial concordance in all racial groups equally. It bears a jarring resemblance to the “separate but equal” doctrine that has long been abandoned by American society.
However, just because an idea is increasingly popular among the medical establishment does not mean it is true.
In late 2023, Do No Harm published an exclusive report—entitled “Racial Concordance in Medicine: The Return of Segregation”—which evaluates several systematic reviews of racial concordance studies. Unsurprisingly, in nearly all of these reviews, racial concordance was not associated with any improvement in medical outcomes. And in the few instances in which a small number of academic articles suggested otherwise, these analyses typically suffered from fatally-flawed study designs.
Indeed, as Do No Harm researchers Ian Kingsbury and Jay Greene noted in their report, “the fashionable idea that doctors see patients as members of a racial group rather than as individuals fails to withstand scrutiny—and it promises a return of racial segregation.”
Make no mistake: Castle Connolly and the woke medical elite would rather side with the cherry-picked, flawed data of fringe activists pushing segregation in medicine than follow the actual evidence.
In addition, the Castle Connolly list of the Top Black Doctors is also, ironically, lacking geographical diversity. Their Top Black Doctors only hail from 30 different states, meaning doctors representing 40 percent of the nation’s states are entirely missing from the list. And among those states, there is a remarkable geographic concentration in just a few cities. For example, 20 percent of the list’s 240 doctors are from Atlanta, Georgia and Columbus, Ohio alone.
In other words, patients in need of finding a top doctor outside of a few population centers in less than two-thirds of states are completely out of luck. However, this could be interpreted as an encouraging sign that there are still many doctors that are resistant to the idea of nominating their peers to be on a racial concordance-based list.
Even more ironic, however, is that Castle Connolly’s primary search page for doctors offers no opportunity for users to filter potential medical providers on the basis of race. Distance, specialty, insurance, language, and other key factors are all optional search filters—but not race. It is almost as if race is not a relevant consideration for patients when finding a doctor!
Ultimately, patients deserve the right to choose the best doctor for them. Unfortunately, Castle Connolly and other organizations are perpetuating the myth that racial concordance should be a determining factor in finding the right doctor. Ultimately, the best doctors should be determined on the basis of their merits—not the color of their skin. The sooner that the misguided beliefs of racial concordance—which are rooted in medical segregation—are repudiated, the better.