Asian psychology students reveal ‘whitewashing’ concerns

Asian psychology students in New Zealand who participated in a study on racism have admitted to "whitewashing" themselves to secure training opportunities in the industry.

The study, titled "Pushing an Irritational Button: Asian Psychologists Making Sense of Racialisation in Psychology Training in Aotearoa/New Zealand", was published in the Asian American Journal of Psychology earlier this month.

Kyle Tan, a co-author of the study, said the findings revealed a pervasive influence of racism on Asian psychologists, highlighting an urgent need for systemic change.

"I think what fascinates me about my research is the component of racism," said Tan, a Malaysian Chinese researcher at the University of Waikato with a background in community psychology.

"I think it has been discussed a lot among Asian communities, but the understanding of it has always been restricted to racial discrimination or discrimination based on skin colour," he said.

"There hasn't been a lot of nuances around trying to unpack what racism really looks like."

In the study, Tan and his colleague spoke to four Asian psychologists with varying migration histories.

The interviewees identified a need to "whitewash" themselves to get into professional training programmes.

For example, one interviewee spoke of how they tried to become a different person after being rejected from a training programme, continually changing the way they presented themselves until their application was finally accepted.

They also noted how they deliberately avoided discussing racial topics that made their Pākehā counterparts feel uncomfortable and discussed the lack of cultural support for Asian students.

What's more, the interviewees pointed to an "irritational button" that could be triggered when some Pākehā were confronted by Asian students of different skin colour, culture and mannerisms.

Tan said his study examined so-called "white psychology".

"What does that mean?" he asked. "There's an expectation for you to be white. What does being Asian mean within this process of assimilation to be white? "What do we experience as Asian? How are we being forgotten? How are we subject to the microaggressions or was there any cultural labour?"

The term "cultural labour" referred to when Asian students were called on to demonstrate Asian expertise on Asian subjects, Tan said.

"The irony is that there hasn't been any training for [Asian students] to learn about Asian competency," he said. "But because you're Asian ... you're expected to know everything about Asians, and you're supposed to educate your other classmates about it."

The study called on Asian psychologists to stand up to institutional racism instead of "passively awaiting transformative changes".

"It is imperative that Asian psychologists proactively equip ourselves with antiracist frameworks to effectively challenge the white racial frame and create an environment conducive to the flourishing of Asian psychologies," the study said.

Tan recently founded a network of psychologists and students called Asian Psychology Collective Aotearoa to counter racism.

Charlene D'Silva, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Auckland who migrated from India at a young age, has joined the collective.

D'Silva said there was a lack of Asian content in academia, calling on institutions to revise their curriculums.

"A lot of students ... learn this kind of Eurocentric psychology, and it's mostly towards the end where they learn about Asian psychology or the possibility of it," D'Silva said.

"They say they have to unlearn what they've learned and now learn what psychology means for them in their culture ... on their own," she said.

She said Asian psychologies should not be included as part of curriculums in a "tokenistic" manner but should be consistently reinforced throughout a student's academic journey.

Kahn Tasker, an intern clinical psychologist born in Taiwan who is also involved in the collective, believed it was important to understand the history and cultural roots of psychology models.

"What I find very surprising is a lot of the therapeutic models that we use and that are considered scientific evidence-based practice from a Western model are taken and inspired from Asian perspectives, Asian philosophies, Asian ways of knowing and being, and they have been repackaged or repurposed," he said.

Tasker said the context and history surrounding certain models were often missing in classes.

"In terms of teaching specific things ... to do with Asian psychology, there needs to be more awareness [in] their teaching. That's the starting point," Tasker said.

"We can begin to reclaim some of that knowledge and figure out what it means and how can we use that effectively for everyone."