{"id":2605383,"date":"2026-05-21T08:41:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/social-justice-therapy-is-teaching-clinicians-that-a-childs-race-matters-more-than-her-abusers-crimes\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T08:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:45:12","slug":"social-justice-therapy-is-teaching-clinicians-that-a-childs-race-matters-more-than-her-abusers-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/social-justice-therapy-is-teaching-clinicians-that-a-childs-race-matters-more-than-her-abusers-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Justice Therapy Is Teaching Clinicians That A Child&#8217;s Race Matters More Than Her Abuser&#8217;s Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsocial-justice-therapy-is-teaching-clinicians-that-a-childs-race-matters-more-than-her-abusers-crimes%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2605383&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The passage argues that social-justice therapy, grounded in Marxist\/critical theory ideas and taught in graduate programs, harms child and adolescent clients-especially in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/kamala-harris-tough-on-crime-schtick-is-a-sham\/\" title=\"Kamala Harris&#039; &#039;Tough On Crime&#039; Schtick Is A Sham\">cases involving sexual abuse<\/a>. It describes a hypothetical case of a non-white teen, \u201cDellah,\u201d who is sexually abused and possibly trafficked in foster care, and claims that under social-justice-therapy rules the therapist treats the situation primarily as an ideological issue tied to race and identity rather than as trauma caused by the perpetrator. The author contends this \u201cidentity-first\u201d approach reorders priorities: the client\u2019s lived experience becomes secondary to analyzing perceived oppression, privilege, and intersectional power.  <\/p>\n<p>The text claims that professional training standards and organizational competencies endorse methods like helping clients \u201cunlearn privilege\u201d and build \u201ccritical consciousness\u201d regardless of the presenting problem, and that dissent is discouraged. It then argues that this shift is especially damaging in trauma work, were-according to the author-healing depends on validating the survivor\u2019s reality, restoring safety and agency, and bearing witness to what happened. The passage asserts that reinterpretations driven by political frameworks can undermine empathy, distort the meaning of the client\u2019s story before it\u2019s fully heard, and ultimately worsen outcomes for vulnerable youth.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>You aren\u2019t angry enough about what\u2019s happening in therapy rooms across the country. It\u2019s not hyperbole to say that at the clinical level, Marxist activism and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/one-year-later-how-the-death-of-george-floyd-changed-5-american-institutions\/\" title=\"One Year Later: How The Death Of George Floyd Changed 5 American Institutions\u00a0\">social justice ideology<\/a> are harming children or adolescent clients in the therapy setting. <\/p>\n<p>Imagine this scenario: a non-white adolescent female, we\u2019ll call her \u201cDellah,\u201d is seen for counseling following a period of sexual abuse and possible trafficking while in foster care. The perpetrator, another foster teen living in the same home, is a non-white sexual minority. Dellah arrives at counseling with what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dianelangberg.com\/resources\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">trauma experts recognize<\/a> as a complex constellation of psychological and physical injuries: terror, shame, confusion, profound violations of bodily autonomy, and a shattered relationship with her own sense of safety and worth.<\/p>\n<p>Dellah is sent to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/seniors-suffer-growing-malaise-as-covid-19-slogs-on\/\" title=\"Seniors Suffer Growing Malaise as COVID-19 Slogs On\">community mental health center<\/a> for therapy. The therapist is a kind, eager, knowledgeable, and recently graduated clinician. She is excited to use her training to help the deeply wounded Dellah to heal and become the most empowered version of herself possible. Using the rule set of social justice therapy (SJT), a framework now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cacrep.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/2024-CACREP-Standards.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">codified in graduate training programs<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/op-eds\/social-justice-shrinks-how-identity-politics-infected-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">professional competency<\/a> guidelines across the country, Dellah\u2019s sexual abuse and trafficking are not a clinical problem, they\u2019re an ideological one.<\/p>\n<p>As UK psychotherapist <a href=\"https:\/\/criticaltherapyantidote.org\/the-cta-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Val Thomas<\/a> has documented in her book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cynical-Therapies-Perspectives-Antitherapeutic-Critical\/dp\/1922956481\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Cynical Therapies<\/em><\/a>, SJT trains practitioners to view clients not as individuals but as \u201crepresentatives of particular identity groups located within a matrix of power.\u201d Viewed through this lens, Dellah\u2019s race and the identity of her abuser become the central organizing facts of her care. Because Dellah is non-white and her abuser belongs to multiple intersections of marginalization, the framework is structurally predisposed to resist acknowledging his actions as the primary cause of her harm. <\/p>\n<p>The implicit and explicit clinical message is that what is most consequential about Dellah\u2019s suffering is not what was done to her personhood, but what her intersectional identity represents within an ideological taxonomy. Her racial and intersectional status is first, and her victimization of sexual abuse and trafficking is second.<\/p>\n<p>The above scenario is not an exaggeration. It is the logical outcome of a value system that prioritizes group identity over objective truth. It doesn\u2019t matter that Dellah is non-white like her abuser; what matters is that she is less disadvantaged. Put differently, her abuser has more intersections, making Dellah more privileged.  <a href=\"https:\/\/thespectator.com\/topic\/identity-politics-therapy-social-justice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Satel has documented<\/a> that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/op-eds\/social-justice-shrinks-how-identity-politics-infected-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">American Counseling Association\u2019s endorsed competencies<\/a> instruct clinicians to help clients \u201cunlearn their privilege\u201d and develop \u201ccritical consciousness\u201d regarding their position in an oppressive society, irrespective of what the client has presented as her reason for seeking care. The presenting problem becomes secondary. The ideological diagnosis is primary. The process is backward.<\/p>\n<p>This is where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/articles\/uncontested-ideas-and-real-world-consequences-using-a-meta-critical-post-progressive-method-to-deconstruct-the-claims-of-activist-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sally Satel and Val Thomas<\/a> come in with their March 2026 article in Theory and Society, offering what they call a meta-critical post-progressive analysis of activist therapy, an examination of both ideological content and the institutional conditions that have allowed it to propagate and popularize with almost no critical analysis.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/how-therapists-became-social-justice-warriors?hide_intro_popup=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Professionals and clients<\/a> alike have reported some variation of accept the dogma as truth or be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/op-eds\/social-justice-shrinks-how-identity-politics-infected-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">punished<\/a>. As a result, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/minnesotas-new-social-studies-curriculum-would-racialize-first-graders-teach-high-schoolers-about-the-evils-of-whiteness-capitalism-and-christianity\/\" title=\"Minnesota\u2019s New Social Studies Curriculum Would Racialize First-Graders, Teach High Schoolers About The Evils Of \u2018Whiteness, Capitalism, And Christianity\u2019\">social justice activism<\/a>, rooted not in clinical research but critical theory, has been allowed to flourish within institutions of governance and academia, largely uncontested by mental health professionals. The traditional healing telos of therapy, oriented around the relief of suffering through the restoration of the client\u2019s mental wellness using the therapeutic relationship as the forcing function, has been replaced by an ideological agenda with apparent harmful implications for those seeking therapy.<\/p>\n<p>What Satel and Thomas expose at the theoretical level has an insidious and pernicious effect in clinical practice, with implications that fall heavily on the most vulnerable: all adolescents and children.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018Race Should Be the Dominant Lens\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>There are two reasons we are in this position. The first is the abject failure of the behavioral health leadership charged with ensuring interventions are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0272735820301094\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">evidence-based, trial outcomes can be replicated<\/a>, and the results are stable over time, to prevent ideological bias from corrupting therapy. The second is the intentional rejection by those same leaders to have anything close to a reasonable conversation about the implications of using Marxist theory to treat clients.<\/p>\n<p>The first point is merely offensive, but the second is how we know the actual objective isn\u2019t to help people heal, it\u2019s to use psychological tools to re-educate clients identified as part of a privileged group. The problem with social justice activism isn\u2019t just that it harms children and adolescents of one particular race, it\u2019s that it harms every child regardless of race. To treat a child suffering from abuse according to a predetermined identity construct is to completely ignore the most salient features of what allows true healing in therapy. If <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >graduate training programs simply treated social justice activism<\/a> and decolonization theory as one of the many lenses through which a therapist can develop a plan of care, the outcry would be minimal. But it\u2019s not <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cacrep.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2024-CACREP-Standards-PDF.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">optional<\/a> in many cases.<\/p>\n<p>For example, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/articles\/uncontested-ideas-and-real-world-consequences-using-a-meta-critical-post-progressive-method-to-deconstruct-the-claims-of-activist-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Satel and Thomas cite<\/a> a student from Antioch University who reported, \u201cWe were taught that race should be the dominant lens through which clients were to be understood and therapy conducted.\u201d Many programs treat Marxist ideology and decolonial practices as evidence of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cacrep.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2024-CACREP-Standards-PDF.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">clinical competency<\/a>, completely disregarding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brainyquote.com\/authors\/irvin-d-yalom-quotes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Irvin Yalom\u2019s counsel<\/a> that \u201ca different therapy must be constructed for each client\u201d because each person has a unique story.<\/p>\n<p>The extent of the professional damage is profound. Professional organizations and training institutions are influenced from the top down. For instance, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/op-eds\/social-justice-shrinks-how-identity-politics-infected-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">American Psychological Association (APA)<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/op-eds\/social-justice-shrinks-how-identity-politics-infected-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">academic accrediting entities<\/a> have a tremendous amount of influence over what organizations like\u00a0the <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC8830980\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/op-eds\/social-justice-shrinks-how-identity-politics-infected-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">American Counseling Association<\/a> require for membership, supervision, and licensing.<\/p>\n<h2>The Clinical Cost of Social Justice<\/h2>\n<p>To understand why this inversion is so clinically catastrophic, it is necessary to understand something about the nature of trauma and what survivors require to heal. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dianelangberg.com\/resources\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Diane Langberg<\/a>, one of the foremost clinical voices on the long-term effects of sexual trauma, has written with powerful clarity about what abuse does to the self. It does not merely wound from the outside; it disfigures from within. Sexual violence severs a survivor\u2019s relationship with her own sense of purpose, meaning, and worth, disrupting identity formation at the most formative junctures of development. Survivors commonly internalize a shame so pervasive that it ceases to feel like an emotion and becomes, instead, an identity. This is documented throughout Langberg\u2019s clinical work, including in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dianelangberg.com\/shop-books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse<\/a> <\/em>and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dianelangberg.com\/shop-books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores<\/em><\/a>, as well as her widely viewed lecture, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v3oB7D3Nl-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shame, Sexual Abuse, and Healing<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Langberg\u2019s work underscores a foundational truth of <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC7529648\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">trauma-informed care<\/a>: the survivor must be met and cared for within the reality of what happened to her or him. The therapeutic relationship, at its most elemental, is a space where the client\u2019s experience is safely disclosed, validated, named, and protected, where the therapist often becomes the first witness to a heartbreaking truth that predation violently silenced. For a young survivor of abuse or even trafficking, bearing witness to that suffering is the substance of restoration itself. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/criticaltherapyantidote.org\/2020\/08\/28\/how-critical-social-justice-theory-cuts-the-heart-out-of-therapy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Social justice therapy<\/a> devalues the bond of relationship by reframing the brutality of child abuse as less important than social identity. The priority isn\u2019t her story, it\u2019s the systematic deconstruction of her entire worldview so the soothing salve of Marxist ideology can reinterpret her pain as a political process of liberation from oppressive social structures. This isn\u2019t therapy. Genuine empathy, which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK589708\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Carl Rogers<\/a> described as requiring the suspension of one\u2019s own values to enter the other\u2019s world without prejudice, cannot coexist with an a priori determination about what the client\u2019s experience means before she has even spoken a word of it.<\/p>\n<p>For Dellah, this ideological reinterpretation of her story carries devastating weight. She enters the therapeutic space already having been subjected to profound abuse, her humanity reduced, her autonomy extinguished, her body treated as a resource to be exploited. What she requires from therapy is its categorical opposite: to be seen as an individual, wonderfully made, to have her agency respected and restored, to have her suffering met with compassion, patience, and grace. <\/p>\n<p>A framework that re-objectifies her, that evaluates the suffering of a child according to degrees of privilege or marginalization, is a moral failure in the extreme. And a profession that has made its peace with that, that has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.persuasion.community\/p\/therapists-are-still-behaving-like\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">exchanged the sacred obligation to bear one another\u2019s burdens<\/a>, to witness suffering, for ideological power, must be held to account. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.persuasion.community\/p\/therapists-are-still-behaving-like\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Satel writes<\/a>, it is \u201cwholly inappropriate for therapists to promote their own commitment to \u2018dismantling systems of oppression.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Therapists must put patients\u2019 needs, not dogmatic activism, at the center of their practice. Dellah and countless others deserve no less, trusting that the person across from them won\u2019t be one more person who hurts them.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<hr>\n<p>      Mrs. Efferson has an M.S. in speech language pathology, and an M.S. in counseling psychology. She writes on mental health issues, and is a therapist in east Tennessee.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You aren\u2019t angry enough: Marxist social-justice therapy harms children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4293,"featured_media":2605384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screen-Shot-2026-05-20-at-1.53.54-PM-1024x678.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[72672,80053,80052,80054],"class_list":["post-2605383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-child-rights-2","tag-racial-disparities-2","tag-social-justice-therapy","tag-trauma-informed-care"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screen-Shot-2026-05-20-at-1.53.54-PM-1024x678.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4293"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2605383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2605387,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605383\/revisions\/2605387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2605384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2605383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2605383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2605383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}