Bernadette and Junior talk about the crazy storms that Norman, Oklahoma and Northern Texas got last night! How wild! We have a great show today with Dewone Bennett, who is here to talk about race. He is here for the full hour so we can really dig deep today. It’s going to be an amazing, deep show, so let’s get started!

Dewone Bennett

Licensed Professional Counselor

Dewone Bennett is a Licensed Professional Counselor with two masters degrees and over 12 years of counseling experience. He currently has his own practice, Dewone Bennett Counseling in Dallas, TX. He believes that the key to mental and behavioral success is the ability to master self-awareness and emotional control.

Revisiting the State of Race Relations in America

When Dewone heard the verdict of the office who murdered George Floyd, he felt many things. He felt indifferent. He was happy to hear that the officer was charged, but is weary to hear the sentencing. The sentencing and the verdict can be so different. Eyewitness testimony vs other kinds of testimony is a hard topic to cover. We grow up in a melting pot, and when Dewone moved to the South, he saw the racism very systematically. Dewone points out that SES or socioeconomic status plays the biggest part in crime, criminology, and resources readily available for people, regardless of color. Eyewitness testimony is never reliable. When your brain has to hear a story over and over again, we end up believing what we hear. If we are told that the sky is green enough times, we will believe that the sky is green. 

Black Americans are systematically undertreated for pain relative to white Americans. Extant research has shown that, relative to white patients, black patients are less likely to be given pain medications and, if given pain medications, they receive lower quantities. Bernadette’s close person of color, Doctor friend says that “when we cut people open, we all are the same color.” These disparities in pain treatment could reflect an overprescription of medications for white patients, underprescription of medications for African American patients, or, more likely, both. Indeed, there is evidence that overprescription is an issue, but there is also clear evidence that the underprescription of pain medications for African American patients is a real, documented phenomenon.  

We must not forget the Tuskegee Syphilis Study of African American Men all the way through 1972. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male was an ethically abusive study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC, history, and finally the unlawful shootings of African Americans make you really question our government and who we can trust, who we should be able to trust.  

Finally, it has been nearly a year since George Floyd’s death. Race in the counselor and therapy world is not necessarily based on race, but based on culture; where they were raised, SES, etc.  Dewone says he and his counterparts are conscious of the diagnosis that the put on paper are held differently depending on what the race is defined as on the paper. We need to accept people for their flaws, and it needs to be as simple as that. 

A Big Thank You!

Thank you to todays guest, Dewone Bennett!

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