Dr. Manny Casas has been the only Latino on the county of Santa Barbara Mental Health Commission for the last 30 years, and he’s tired of what he calls a lack of effort from administrators and higher-ups to address ethnic and racial disparity within Behavioral Wellness. Casas recently resigned from two committees in charge of doling out recommendations to the department on how to deal with ethnic inequality. Now 75, Casas wants to put a spotlight on the county’s mental health department, and its lack of what he calls “cultural awareness.”
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1941, Casas immigrated to the U.S. when he was 3. He recalls spending one summer as a teenager working at a sugar refinery and brick-making factory. He soon decided he wanted an education. Casas attended Berkeley in 1959, riding a Greyhound bus for an hour to campus daily, and witnessed the racial disparity he’s trying now to erase. “In the four years I was [at Berkeley], I can actually say I never ever met another Mexican in that campus, and in those days we had 24,000 to 26,000 students,” Casas said.
In those days, tuition cost $98 per semester. Casas studied political science and wanted to go into the diplomatic service, but he soon found his lack of citizenship was an obstacle for the jobs he wanted. His plan B was a teaching credential, and after that he stumbled upon counseling, which he quickly fell in love with. Casas holds his PhD in counseling psychology from Stanford and has worked as a counselor at UCLA and as a professor at UCSB.