Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Hatred as a Conflict Between Dependency and the Pseudo-Autonomous Self

Abstract

How do we come to know and make sense of the unexpressed and expressed hatred we experience in our daily lives? Using vignettes and my reflections, this article will describe how hatred, masked by anxiety, is related to unmet dependency needs that may not be in our awareness at the time. In the examples, you will meet people who became the objects of my hatred and in other instances, I became the object of an other’s hatred. In each event, I or an other, became unfortunate containers of anxiety, embarrassment of lacking knowledge, shame for an inherited history or transgenerational hauntings, and repressed rage that belonged elsewhere and to others. I suggest that we get in trouble and transmit hatred because we have unrealistic expectations of others to meet earlier dependency needs that our caregivers or parents failed to fulfill. The felt experience of failing to get what we wished to receive relationally, may aid in the development of a pseudo-autonomous or self-sufficient self to ward against the feelings associated with the deficits of significant others who, because of their own psychology, generational and environmental traumas, and socio-cultural contexts, were unable to provide the support, coaching, knowledge, or love we so strongly desired.

Keywords:

• racial hatred
• dependency
• hatred
• Jamaican
• transgenerational haunting

The invitation to write this paper stirred up unexpected conflicts, heightened anxiety, and ambivalence. As I reflected, I realized the questions it raised mirror my struggles with dependency, plus having a negative concept of race imposed on me: In order to live an ordinary life, I need to suppress the emotions and pain activated in me by two main sources. The first is a support system that taught me to adapt to unmet needs by being incredibly self-sufficient. I often act as if I require neither dependence nor interdependence to meet my basic needs. The other is a society that insists on reducing and confining me, and Black people, to the “Black” racial category that historically represents all who are bad, dangerous, ignorant, poor, and worthy of being reviled and murdered… It is with this learning that I respond to an invitation by my colleague, Anna Vitale (this issue), to respond to Kathy Pogue-White’s call to readers of her 2002 paper—“Surviving hating and being hated: Some personal thoughts about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective”—to share their personal experiences of racism. Although Pogue-White made this request more than twenty years ago, there had not been a written response in this or any other journal. In her request, Dr. Pogue-White invited White analysts to share their experiences of being hated, hating themselves, and hating others. She believed it could create some theory or approach to help build our psychoanalytic approaches to racial hatred and racism aimed at Black people. I was curious about this silence within the analytic community and I began wondering what were my experiences of hate and how I could write about them.

I am moved to respond because I believe we can further understand hate and racism aimed at Blacks through an intra-racial perspective from people like me who emigrated freely from their countries of birth. I am from the group of people identified as Black in the United States (US), who are neither African Americans, nor were residents, or ancestors of residents, who lived in the US during the historical period of slavery, antebellum, reconstruction, and Jim Crow laws, as Dr. Pogue-White is. There is utility in adding texture to what we know about the many faces that hate and racial hatred may take, and the nature of hate—and love—by hearing from other Black people like me who are subsumed under the racial/ethnic category of African American and imbued with the negative stereotypes that African Americans are often asked to hold and carry on behalf of their non-African-American counterparts.

The Invitation

In Pogue-White’s (2002) paper, racial hatred–defined as hate derived from racism–functions as a moniker for the presence of intense prejudice, loathing, and denigration of a group, a type, or people who share a group membership, i.e., “YOU people” … the “black is bad and threatening” group (White, 2002, p. 404). Analytically, Pogue-White describes the projective aspects of hatred that derive from racism and wonders about the “internal toxic pressures that mobilized the [White] architects of the first condition of racism in [the US] to revile us and to murder us [Black people]” (p. 416). She sounds curious and empathic about the role of trauma and its generational transmission as she invites the descendants of these White architects—as well as other White people—including analysts—to explore and share their account of the re-externalization of hostile, violent, and destructive hatred they project into Black people.

Pogue-White suggests this exploration of racial hatred, and how it works in them, is a necessary activity for White people in the U.S. to take on. Such activity might broaden the conversation and generate theory that could lead to insight, healing, and repair. I imagine Pogue-White was inviting her White analyst colleagues to a racial reckoning where they engage in deep and perhaps painful reflection, and write publicly, about feelings that might lie underneath the hatred they are unconsciously projecting into her and other African American people.

I also believe Pogue-White may have been caught in the traditional U.S. Black/White racial dichotomy: She may have missed the ways in which experiences of racial hatred of non-African Americans, who are Black, could also make a meaningful contribution to a theory for understanding the underlying aspects of racial hatred. When this comes to mind, I notice a cramp in my gut. I am a Jamaican with U.S. citizenship, but with a life experience and outlook that is distinct from an African- or White-American born and raised in the US. I also have something to say.

My cramp is also about a concern that I may not have the racial hatred material– at least the way Pogue-White describes it. I ask myself, “Am I simply repressing the hatred, or did I not experience racial hatred and thus never internalized any?” I was nervous. I could feel my worry about whether what I had to write would be good enough and to dissuade my worry, I went to my place of comfort by taking up the role of the academic researcher.

I researched the definitions of hatred and differentiated how hatred is different from racial hatred. Brudholm (2020) differentiates hatred from anger, noting that anger is an interpersonal endeavor directed at an individual who offended you so you can inflict pain, gain revenge, and make the person suffer. Hate, on the other hand, is directed at a type—a kind of person—and the objective is for this type to “cease to exist” (p. 75). Brudholm’s definition could be extended to racial hatred with its objective as destruction or death and emphasis on type, which could reasonably encapsulate a group that share a pheno-type, race, or ethnicity. This definition seems to capture Pogue-White’s description of the White architects who were mobilized to murder Black people. Sullivan (1956), in his lecture on the dynamisms of emotion, notes that in situations of hatred:

…the only thing both parties have any real enthusiasm for is damage to the prestige of the other. … for a hateful person really feels he has gotten somewhere only when he can hurt the other’s feelings, make him feel small and humiliated. Thus, since the trick is to diminish the other person’s security, and since the pursuit of security is at the very root of the evolution of the self-system, the real explanation of this peculiar durable, destructive integration of hate must have a great deal to do with the self. (p. 100)

Sullivan suggests that hatred is an interpersonal tool people wield to devalue, denigrate, diminish, destroy, and discredit the other’s safety or security which is the root of every human’s basic, developmental, and evolutionary need. This definition suggests that we humans engage in hatred when we are threatened and thereby experiencing heightened anxiety or dread. Sullivan describes the hateful person’s determination to uproot the other’s sense of security, yet does not discuss the role of love that may be split off when hatred and destruction are omnipresent.

I will attempt to integrate this split by offering two vignettes from personal experiences and reflections therefrom that explore the anxiety or threat of unmet love or dependency– one aspect of security - that might be present during these moments of hatred and racial hatred as described in my expanded definition of Brudholm’s definition. I will also rely on a group relations framework, which might get underneath the power and systems dynamic of racism and racial hatred.

Intra-Racial Differences Within the Black Race

When I first read Pogue-White’s (2002) paper, I could not relate to her kindergarten experience of racism and racial hatred, where she became a “projective container of things bad” (p. 404) for the White nun’s hate.

My maternal grandaunt, who was perceived as a White Jamaican, was a key authority figure through my preparatory and secondary school years in Jamaica. She was not a nun, but she founded and operated a boarding school, which felt like we lived in a convent: morning prayers at 6 a.m. when the bell rang, and evening prayers at 6 p.m.– again, when the bell rang—and sitting at the children’s table on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, when the nuns, priests, and those we saw as celebrities at the time—the Monsignor—would come to our house. Unlike the nun in Pogue-White’s paper, My grandaunt and the nuns and Jesuit priests who taught me would have expected me to raise my hand enthusiastically and know how to read. I would have seen the pride in their eyes, and I would feel proud, noticed, and spurred on to learn more.

This reflected appraisal still lives strong in me. I did not know a nun who would feel threatened by a kindergarten girl who was excited about reading and wanted everyone to know. I did not have Pogue-White’s experience of being hated and being a threat to a nun wielding authority. So, what had possessed me to take up this invitation from Dr. Pogue-White? I began to worry about how the readers of this journal might label me. Would they label me as a White-identified Black person because of my cultural upbringing and how I make meaning of my experiences? Might they commiserate with my expressions of hatred and understand the contexts that created the opportunities for me to externalize my hatred?

The closest experience I had to the US version of Blackness was during preparatory or elementary school in Jamaica when I learned about our National Heros who include Nanny, Samuel Sharpe, Paul Bogle, and Marcus Garvey. They were victors and highly respected for their bravery. Unlike Pogue-White’s (2002) experience in the US, my experience of Blackness and my Jamaican-ness was not imbued with derogatory attributions and projections of badness, inferiority, and lack of intelligence. My experience may not be generalizable to other Jamaicans who may have had a different experience than I had, based on the complexion of the body they were in, their family background and resources, and their formative experiences with authority.

Hating and Hatred: Finding an Object to Contain Unmet Dependency Needs

I thought hard and recalled moments that could be viewed as racial hatred. Keep in mind, however, that these hatreds were often not direct emotional expressions but rather were masked by comments that created anxiety in me and a sense that I was not the “right” race. For example, when I was applying to a State university in the U, I had an experience that mirrored the “you’re not smart” dynamics that Dr. Pogue-White experienced in kindergarten. I was shocked when I received a letter of rejection from an admissions counselor. He recommended I attend a community college to improve my grades, which, he declared, did not meet university requirements. I had no idea what a community college was, but it didn’t sound good and—moreover—I knew I had excellent grades. I noticed a haughtiness in myself. I hated his audacity in rejecting me over bad grades. Who did he think he was? Didn’t he know who I was? I am intelligent! I immediately called the number on the letter, and the admissions counselor who penned the rejection letter answered my phone call. I told this admissions counselor he was mistaken about my grades and explained the meaning of the numbers on my transcripts. This admissions counselor happened to be meeting with a superior who was the director of an educational opportunity program that existed to support students who were admitted without the “required” academic credentials, so they could successfully graduate. Fortunately, the director of the educational program was familiar with Jamaican transcripts, took a look at my file, and recognized the mistake. This director of the educational program called me back to let me know he made some phone calls and scheduled a meeting for me to interview with the admissions director.

Upon arrival at the university for my interview, I learned that the admissions counselor who sent me the rejection letter—my version of Dr. Pogue-White’s White Catholic nun, who told me I was lacking or not smart enough—was an African American male. The “Black label” or “Blackness” I had dreaded being imposed on me in the United States had happened: Someone with an American accent had attributed dumbness to me. The director of the educational program who recognized I had the intelligence and set out to correct the error, was also African American. The admissions director, a White American man, interviewed me, gave me my acceptance letter, and welcomed me to the State University.

This mix of positive and negative experiences with African Americans and White Americans left me feeling conflicted and I halted again about writing this article. My scenario did not match Dr. Pogue-White’s experience of racial hatred by White Americans wielding authority. The White American and African American men who were in the roles of director noticed my intelligence, and the White director admitted me. The African American admissions counselor, in a non-leadership position, did not attempt to learn more, which nearly led to an injustice, causing me to doubt whether I really was intelligent enough to attend university.

I was learning how important it was to not generalize within or across racial groups, but I found it confusing back then. Upon reflection of this encounter, it is important that I describe the context in which this incident occurred and the aspect that I was disowning because of my own repression and a lack of awareness at the time. I had applied to university, on my own, shortly after I emigrated to the US. I had no knowledge of the university application system and had no support system in the US who could help me by explaining and walking me through the process. Throughout this lonely and fraught application process, I was yearning to be back in Jamaica where my family knew how the education system worked. In my naivete, I had applied to only one university, the one closest to the border of Canada where I had family members who I desperately wanted and needed to be near to because they were consistently attentive and reliable. Thus, when I got the rejection letter, I panicked internally because I had no other options! I had pinned all my hopes on this university being my escape from living in a new country with no one to consistently help me cope adaptively to my unfamiliar surroundings in a neighborhood that was being decimated by violence and the effects of crack-cocaine use, trafficking, and the public’s racist response thereto. I was quick to hate the African American admissions counselor who wrote the rejection letter and I expressed my hatred by attacking his competence, devaluing him verbally, and wishing the university would fire him. In Sullivan’s terms, I wanted to diminish his security.

What I could not allow myself to acknowledge was how baffling it was for me to feel insecure. In this new country, I felt incompetent. I lacked a knowledgeable and dependable support system in the US which had the competence and desire to help me negotiate my future and this university application process. Somewhere inside me, I repressed my insecurity, panic, and rage. Externally, I cloaked myself with haughtiness and disdain for the other, and masked my panic with hatred that I then directed at this admissions counselor. To have done otherwise would require me to integrate my hate with my love, which would have resulted in me directing my hatred to the rightful objects who were failing to help me in that moment—the people in the US who I depended on and loved. This African American admissions counselor who had no knowledge of foreign transcripts, and probably had never seen one, became the unwitting container for my hatred. I hated him for smashing the pseudo-autonomous illusion that I created for myself to cope with the disappointment, anger, and hurt I felt when I could not rely on the people I depended on for help. I had prided myself on believing that I alone could provide my own educational sustenance and emotional security. I had related to this admissions counselor as if he were the one who was responsible for being attentive to my needs and making my knowledge and emotional gaps, including my yearning for Jamaica, disappear.

Modell (1975) describes the primacy of issues of unmet dependency and autonomy that can develop into pathology wherein individuals become relentlessly demanding and exacting as a way to gain reparations for what was needed, but neither created nor available to be found in the past. I was fortunate to have dependable family across the US border, and to meet and develop secure relationships with reliable professors, mentors, analysts, and dear friends.

Being Hated and Hating: Being the Container for an Other’s Hatred

As I write this, I realize that the encounter I included in this article was from when I emigrated to the US. And had this been written a year ago, it would have ended there. But within the last year, I have had more experiences of ‘being hated’ or being the other who has had to contain the hatred of a White person. Unlike my vignette from university, I felt no ambiguity about whether this vignette was an incident of racial hatred. Had I changed? What had changed? Was I now a Black American? Or had my attitude and environment changed and created an opportunity for this experience to occur?

In this vignette, I was in the role of a Board member of an international cultural organization and attending the Board’s annual fundraiser. I serve on the committee that organizes this fundraiser and I was the only nonwhite board member there. I was seated at a table in the back of the room near the kitchen. I did not realize this was a harbinger of things to come. I was the only nonwhite person at the table of ten and the only non-American. (Once again, nothing unusual.) A discussion ensued about where people had attended college, and one White American woman steered the conversation to how the land grant state universities in the Midwest were built on land stolen from Native Americans. She shifted her gaze to me, then said, “You must understand and be able to sympathize with the Native Americans?” I was a bit surprised at her pointed claim to know how I must respond, but remained polite and informed her that I was from Jamaica and not deeply familiar with that particular historical or indigenous experience. I suggested that perhaps the Americans could better sympathize and speak on that issue. I shifted the conversation to respond jovially to someone who wanted to know more about how I came to speak French given my Jamaican nationality. I was jolted from the conversation by a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the same woman and hear her tell me, “My dear, you just do not understand. You have been and are being oppressed and discriminated against.” Everyone at the table fell silent. I felt perplexed and shaken. Here was an example of Pogue-White’s (2002) “you all” moment. This woman had insisted that I was ignorant, and persisted in telling me she knew my type and my experience more than I did. My mind was racing which alerted me to my growing anxiety. How could this woman tell me what my experience must be? Was it because I was not White? Did she perceive Jamaicans, Black people, Native Americans as all the same? She seemed determined to maintain a picture of me, a self-identified Jamaican– and, indeed all “Others”—as oppressed, discriminated against, insecure, ignorant, and somehow not her equal. I was flabbergasted that she could not hold me in my role as the Board member. At the start of the event, I was among the group of Board members who had been introduced as working to ensure her entertainment and food needs at this event, and her educational needs at the cultural organization, were met.

I was startled at the juxtaposition between her dependency on me and my work at the Board, and her lack of awareness of the security I provided her on behalf of the Board. It was as if I were dependent on her to assign me an identity or to erase my identity. Was she being provocative? I felt my eyes sting, tear up, and my voice cracked. I hated that my hurt feelings were being made public through my tears and speech. I felt extremely vulnerable and exposed, so I turned to someone else and switched the conversation so I could keep myself from acting on my desire to throttle her. I noticed I was suddenly filled with anger veering toward rage that was the antithesis of the delightful, secure, and light feelings I felt prior to her comments. I knew I had to keep it together as a Board member and—as the only nonwhite person on the Board—if I could not, I would risk another negative racial or cultural stereotype, that of being the “angry Black/African American woman.” Fortunately, my husband heard and noticed my discomfort and did not remain silent. He stepped in and identified the ways she was being racist by needing to see me in a reductive way—a victim of oppression and discrimination, ignorant, and needing a White woman to define my identity.

The essence and timing of this incident that occurred in the summer of 2023 are quite powerful, and are neither vague nor subject to interpretation. Unlike my university application process, I knew this was hate, prejudice, and racism. My otherness as a Jamaican and my upbringing did not help me find a place to feel secure internally and externally during this encounter. I wonder if the experience of my eyes tearing, voice breaking, and my shocked feelings were because—over the last two years—I had listened to the resounding chorus from many White American progressives and liberals and believed their song to end racism and to embrace diversity, equity, inclusiveness, belonging, and racial transformation. Perhaps lowering my guard allowed the White American woman to strip me of my security, power, and footing like I had never experienced before. I felt defenseless to fight back, partly because I had expected at least one of the Americans present to confront her. Only my husband took that risk. The group’s silence killed what faith I had that I could trust these Americans to stand up for me when I, and, indeed all “Others” are being de-identified, diminished, disparaged, or degraded.

Using Sullivan’s definition of hatred, this woman may not have been aware that lumping me in with Native Americans was making an assumption that I have the same lived and generational experience as Native Americans. In the last two years, there has been a tendency to reduce all nonwhite people as one group -for example POC (i.e., People of Color), and then further reduce POC to BIPOC (i.e., Black, Indigenous, People of Color) to highlight that Native Americans and African Americans are severely impacted by systemic racism. Yet these acronyms promote the behavior I observed with this woman where she could not imagine, see, or hear that individuals are complex people with rich and complicated backgrounds that differ within and across groups.

This woman was probably unaware that she was re-defining my identity which has potential to diminish my security. Indeed, I believe she was parroting what many “woke” good liberal and progressive White people were saying during the last two years as penance for what Pogue-White described as the “internal toxic pressures that mobilized the [White] architects of the first condition of racism in [the US] to revile us and to murder us [Black people]” (p. 416). Was the hatred and rage I felt at the event a projective identification response wherein this woman was needing me to contain the hatred and rage she may have felt at being re-identified as a White Supremacist and a bad White person, and losing her security as a good White person? I imagine I would feel a heightened sense of anxiety or dread if I suddenly became the bad person.

Clinical Applications

In writing this article in 2023, I have reflected on the ways that both historical and social phenomena may be at play in how I experienced racial hatred and hating, and the development of my hatred of dependency and attachment to a pseudo-autonomous self. Gaining greater awareness of how these show up in the transference and countertransference enhances my work with patients and clients. For instance, slavery scripts have shown up in my analysis in reference to my relationship with money and my labor: this includes paying my fee sometimes before the bill arrives so that I don’t have to owe my analyst anything, and in my personal life by having multiple jobs and income streams. Initially, I have made sense of both my dependency and autonomy through Maurice Apprey’s (2023) “transgenerational haunting” (p. 55) that humans inherit from their ancestors’ history. I am now curious about the scripts from transgenerational hauntings that can be uplifting, such as the pride and victory of my Jamaican national hero ancestors who were fierce fighters who, for a while, lived autonomously and engaged in self-rule and community life. Examples are the Nigerian Ibo tribe and Nanny, the only African Jamaican female hero who was a Maroon, who fled to the Jamaican mountains to escape slavery and led other Maroons in the fight against British rule (Shepherd, 2006). My cultural identification of Blackness with victors and mentalization of their refusal to be enslaved and dependent may be underneath my psychological dynamics and feelings related to these historical victories about autonomy. My identification with fighters for autonomy and victors may explain my resistance to take on the projection of the oppressed and discriminated against Black victim.

I am observing that I am talking more about my interdependency and naming my emotions when I am disappointed and hurt, rather than withdrawing and taking my anger and hatred with me internally. I have noticed that when I reflect in a nuanced way about transgenerational hauntings as both victims and victors, I have less need to be the fiercely independent Jamaican woman and feel more comfortable with my hatred of needing and asking for help. I notice myself softening toward my analyst, family, mentors, and colleagues as I engage with this less pseudo-autonomous self and more interdependent me who desires to be less self-reliant. Yet, I can quickly connect with hating: i.e., the disappointment and hurt that comes when I depend on others and they fail me. I am also more quick to engage in self-reflection and explore what is the risk in losing the script that asking for help is not a poison to be avoided.

I have also noticed a similar distrust or hatred of dependency in my patients and coaching clients, particularly Black women in “corporate America.” Through reflections on how they are resorting to extreme self-reliance and a denial of the reality that we as humans need to be interdependent, I can see a loosening in myself and an exploration among my clients about the assumptions they hold about self-sufficiency and the coping resource—their pseudo-autonomous self. I am not getting good grades in this new learning, yet I am feeling more integrated in my thoughts, feelings, and actions. As I recall my experience of being a container of racial hatred in summer 2023, I believe some of my tears came from realizing that I was again expecting help; I was grateful that my husband quickly stepped in and expressed some of the hatred I felt. It was soothing to not have to hold the hatred and the negative racial stereotype of the angry Black woman in me.

Perhaps this incident is more of what Dr. Pogue-White had in mind in her initial invitation for White Americans to talk about their experiences in the face of racism. I welcomed my husband’s help in confronting a racist act and I am grateful I could feel rage during an incident of racism. Perhaps there is hope for an interdependent me and for White Americans stepping up and writinging publicly about their experiences of hating and hatred of the “Others.”

Before writing this, I noticed that I rarely talked about hate even though most people would have hatred if they lived my experiences. When I talk about hatred, it’s often fleeting. Religiously, I learned hate was wrong. We are to love the Lord and love our neighbors as ourselves. To do otherwise is to break the greatest commandment of all. As I wonder whether and how to integrate hating and one aspect of love—acknowledging my interdependence with God and humans - I now see how I, and perhaps we as humans, get in trouble and transmit hatred because we have unrealistic expectations of others to meet earlier dependency needs that our caregivers or parents failed to fulfill. The felt experience of failing to get what we wished to receive relationally, may aid in the development of a pseudo-autonomous or self-sufficient self to ward against the feelings associated with the deficits of significant others who—because of their own psychology, generational and environmental traumas, and socio-cultural contexts—were unable to provide the support, coaching, knowledge, or love we so strongly desired.

Conclusion

In Dr. Pogue-White’s article (2002), she used examples and vignettes that focused on hateful projections, projective identification, externalizations, and re-externalizations that occurred at an interpersonal and intrapersonal level among African Americans and their White American counterparts. If she had written her article in 2023, it is likely that today’s ‘woke’ may have criticized her audience, she may have been criticized for not paying more attention to the structural and systemic factors of racism that are embedded in US laws, institutions, and policies.

I can understand why Dr. Pogue-White’s invitation to her White analyst colleagues yielded no published responses. I often felt paralyzed as I tried to write about my experiences of hatred and racial hatred. It was a challenge for me culturally as a Jamaican, as well as an opportunity to reflect on my own unspeakable thoughts, feelings, and actions. Indeed, my class and developmental background while growing up in Jamaica or prior to 2023 in the US, left me with few occasions to experience myself emotionally as the product of the violence of chattel slavery or Jim Crow segregation. While I may not connect to the physical violence, there may be remnants of the violence associated with the dependency my ancestors were forced to face while fighting for their freedom in Jamaica. My reflections are related to work done in my analysis and analytic training, as well as my group relations conferences that are rife with themes of dependency and authority. All of these individual and group frameworks for understanding unconscious processes have fostered a new willingness to own my disavowed dependency and interdependency needs, and to relinquish the assumption that I am a self-sufficient person who has no reliance on any one, or group of people, to meet my own dependency needs.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Sheri-Ann Cowie

Sheri-Ann Cowie, Ph.D. is the owner of Cowie Counseling Coaching & Consulting. She works as a psychotherapist, executive coach, organization consultant, and Tavistock Group Relations Consultant. She has lived and worked in the Caribbean and Europe, held faculty positions at the University of San Diego and New York University, and did a Fellowship at the Yale University School of Management. She received her doctorate in Counseling Psychology at NYU, and completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Temple University’s Tuttleman Counseling Services. Currently, she is a fourth-year psychoanalytic candidate at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City, and a member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak. Dr. Cowie is the director of the 2024-2026 Group Relations Conference on Authority and Leadership presented by the Center for the Study of Group and Social Systems. She works collaboratively with scholars to write about organizational issues as well as prosocial outcomes such as altruism, religion, and spirituality among African-Americans and immigrants of African ancestry from the Caribbean.