When Equity Gets Complicated

What I Learned from Blindly Trusting a Black-Owned Counseling Practice

I believe deeply in supporting Black-owned businesses.

As a white mother raising Black children, I know representation matters — not just in books and movies, but in the people who surround and serve my kids. Especially in the realm of mental health, I’ve seen how powerful it can be for my children to be in spaces where they don’t have to explain their very existence. So when I found a Black-owned counseling service, I felt hopeful. Maybe this would be the kind of place where my daughter could be truly seen.

But what happened next turned out to be a lesson in how complicated navigating race, bias, trauma, and standards can be — for all of us.

The therapist assigned to my daughter wasn’t fully licensed yet. She’d just graduated with her master’s degree and was working under supervision — which is common and legal — but this particular clinic had only one licensed clinical social worker overseeing everyone else. In hindsight, I don’t believe the therapist was equipped to take on my daughter’s case. It was simply too complex.

My daughter lives with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) — a condition that too often goes misdiagnosed, misunderstood, or missed entirely. It’s not even listed in the DSM-5, the standard manual that governs mental health diagnoses in the U.S., which means it’s often left off the radar of even seasoned clinicians. That omission has real consequences. FASD doesn’t look the same from child to child, and it’s rarely recognized for what it is: a full-body, brain-based disability that requires specific support.

My daughter isn’t lazy or unmotivated. Her brain is simply doing its best to process and respond in a world that isn’t built with her wiring in mind. She comes home from school utterly exhausted — not because she isn’t trying hard enough, but because she’s been trying too hard all day long.

When I brought up concerns about the care she was receiving, the clinic director — a Black woman who had never worked with my daughter — accused me of over-institutionalizing Black children. She challenged my whiteness and aligned my efforts with the long and painful history of white systems pathologizing Black behavior.

And she wasn’t wrong — about the history.

It’s true that Black children are disproportionately overdiagnosed, overmedicated, and overdisciplined. It’s true that white systems have too often viewed Black children as problems to be fixed rather than humans to be supported.

But that doesn’t mean I was wrong to seek help.

What it did mean was that the situation called for more nuance — from both of us.

I started wondering if I was overreacting. Was I asking for too much? Was I projecting my own fear of being “the problematic white parent”? To get some clarity, I brought the situation to my therapist, an African-American woman whose insight and presence I deeply trust.

And I was still confused — still trying to untangle whether my expectations were too high or whether I had unconsciously dropped them, just because the therapist “looked right” on paper.

The therapist working with my daughter was an African refugee. Because I had lived in Tanzania and speak a bit of Swahili, I had offered her a few words in the language as a gesture of connection. She didn’t respond. Her silence stayed with me.

Eventually, I asked her — bravely, I thought — whether she had feelings about white people adopting African American children.

She answered, “Why should that matter?”

At the time, I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t have the words — or the courage — to say what I see now:

It does matter. I am a white European immigrant. She is an black African immigrant who survived genocide — genocide born of colonialism. In Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda — colonial powers created caste-like systems that elevated lighter-skinned Africans with narrower features. The Tutsis were privileged by European standards of beauty and proximity to whiteness. The resulting resentment fueled a brutal backlash, where neighbors slaughtered neighbors. Her trauma, her lived experience, is not just personal. It’s political. It’s historical. And I wonder now — did she hear my Swahili not as connection, but as intrusion?

Even language isn’t neutral. In Tanzania, where I lived, Swahili is a language of unity. In Uganda, it’s associated with military regimes. Who knows what her associations are? I was trying to bridge something — but it may have landed as another attempt by a white woman to assume familiarity where none had been earned.

[A brief sidenote: I’m co-writing this blog post with ChatGPT — and even here, bias surfaced. When I first mentioned “the clinic director,” ChatGPT assumed the director was male. It’s a subtle thing — but not that subtle, really. It’s a sign of how deeply we all, even our tools, have absorbed cultural defaults. This is how whiteness operates: invisibly, persistently, and often without question. The work of dismantling it happens everywhere — in relationships, in institutions, and yes, in AI-generated text.]

I had to sit with all of it: her history, my history, the colonial legacy that touches both of us, the intentions behind my choices, and the impacts I didn’t fully see.

And I also had to face another hard truth: I had lowered my standards, at least a little, because I wanted the clinic to work out. I wanted to support a Black-owned practice. I wanted my daughter to have someone who looked like her and understood racial trauma from the inside out.

And yet, solidarity doesn't mean settling — especially when my child’s well-being is at stake.

Here’s the paradox: part of dismantling white supremacy culture is letting go of perfectionism, right? Learning to recognize different ways excellence can show up. But there’s a fine line between releasing perfectionism and accepting something that’s not actually serving your child. That line can be hard to see when your own identity is wrapped up in the interaction.

So what did I take from all this?

• We are never done checking our biases — including our impulse to “do good” without listening deeply.

• Racial trauma is real. So is the trauma of living with a brain that’s constantly misunderstood.

• Representation matters. So does rigorous training — especially around conditions like FASD, which remain under-recognized.

• Supporting Black-owned businesses matters. So does protecting my child’s needs.

• Language can unite or divide, depending on who’s listening and what they’ve lived.

• And finally: parenting at the intersection of race, trauma, adoption, and neurodivergence means living in contradiction every single day.

I’m still committed to seeking out professionals who reflect my children’s identity. But I also know now that I have to ask the harder questions. I have to listen to my gut. And I have to be honest about what’s working — and what’s not.

Because loving my children means loving all of who they are — including their brains — and doing whatever it takes to help them thrive. Even when it’s messy. Especially when it’s messy.

Postscript to fellow white parents:
Have you ever confused cultural representation with clinical readiness? When have you lowered your standards out of guilt or overcorrected out of fear? What did you learn?

I’d love to talk. This kind of reflection is messy — and it’s also where real growth happens.

👉 Click here to schedule a conversation with me.

Marion Van Namen

Founder, White Awake Parenting