Social and Cultural Diversity Paper: Outline

Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Counseling of
from Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology
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Counseling racial and ethnic minorities entails the provision of counseling services (including individual and
group therapy, consultation, and research) to members of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. In
response to societal and demographic changes, as well as a growing ethical awareness, the need to address
completely the unique needs of racial and ethnic minorities has been a powerful influence in counseling
psychology. Of particular importance are the relationship of acculturation to counseling, the influence of
unintentional or aversive racism in counseling, racial identity in regard to counseling, and especially the
overarching issue of what constitutes multicultural counseling competence.
GLOSSARY
acculturation
A process of attitudinal and behavior change experienced by individuals who have come in contact with a different
and dominant culture.
competence
The ability to predetermine and then to attain the desired outcomes of one’s profession or vocation by
coordinating and integrating relevant skills and microskills.
counseling
The purposeful development and structuring of a professional relationship of which the intention is to facilitate
meaningful changes in the lives of its recipients. The focus is typically on normal and developmental aspects of
functioning as opposed to psychopathology.
culture The ideals, beliefs, skills, customs, values, and social behavior of a particular group of people.
ethnicity A group of humans identified as distinctive by cultural practices and/or beliefs.
multicultural Relative to two or more groups or cultures.
race A group of humans identified as distinctive by physical characteristics such as skin color.
racial
identity
The view one has about the role of race in dictating social group membership.
racism
Fear, hatred, and oppression solely based on the perceived racial or ethnic characteristics; may be intentional or
unintentional.
INTRODUCTION
Historically, the field of applied psychology has been negligent in its delivery of services to racial and ethnic
minorities. The assumptions that have guided practice throughout the history of psychology have relied on White
(English-speaking, European-descended, heterosexual) males as the standard for normalcy. Persons from other
backgrounds (i.e., race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation) were conceptualized, regarded,
and treated as deviants; systematically denied access to quality services; and often discounted and ignored by
psychology professionals. As the United States entered the Civil Rights era in the 1950s, the injustice of ignoring
race and culture in counseling psychology became apparent. In 1962, Wrenn coined the phrase “cultural
encapsulation” to describe counselors who defined a client’s reality according to their own cultural assumptions
and stereotypes, minimized cultural differences in favor of universal explanations, disregarded their own cultural
biases, conceptualized other cultures in terms of pathology, and used a technique-oriented model of the
counseling process.
Gradually, partially in response to the Civil Rights movement, applied psychology grew more reflective as a
specialty. Practitioners, researchers, and scholars began to recognize the extensive harm caused by the
profession’s racial and ethnic biases and prejudices. Professionals began to observe and identify biases in their
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own approach to minority clients. It was clear that applied psychology was far from being a value-neutral
profession.
In what has commonly been referred to as psychology’s “fourth force,” multiculturalism has assumed a position of
significant impact in the past two decades, prompting psychologists to revisit and repair their damaging beliefs
and practices as well as to make a concerted effort to ensure that counseling services are accessible and
amenable to racial and ethnic minority clients. Concurrent with the new awareness has come a growing
commitment to training members of racial and ethnic minority populations as counselors.
Progress in the field has been hampered by unclear definitions of the constructs of race and ethnicity and vague
descriptions of who constitutes a minority. Race and ethnicity have been criticized as being unscientific and
socially constructed categories that are inadequately defined and operationalized. Often, issues of race and
ethnicity are confounded by other factors, such as socioeconomic status. In addition, the term multicultural has
been criticized as too general and serving to obscure unresolved racial issues.
MOTIVATION FOR COUNSELING RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES
In addition to the historical and societal forces identified previously, two main motivations for the competent
counseling of racial and ethnic minorities have been identified: demographic change and ethical concerns. In
terms of demographics, the United States has seen a steady increase in some minority populations. The U.S.
Census has documented the changing demographic composition of the United States. Census predictions
suggest that by 2050 Whites will no longer represent a majority of the U.S. population; in some states, such as
California, this change is already a demographic reality. The increase of racial and ethnic minorities, however,
does not automatically yield economic success, access to education, or political empowerment. On the contrary,
although in some areas people of color are no longer a statistical minority, true economic, educational, and
political equality for them remains an ideal to which many aspire rather than a reality that is practiced.
Both psychology’s and counseling’s ethical guidelines have reflected the evolution toward a more culturally
sensitive applied profession, reflecting the theme of social justice. The most recent version of each set of
guidelines takes culture—defined broadly to include age, gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual
orientation, disability, language, and socioeconomic status—into account. The guidelines impart the expectations
that counselors and psychologists be adequately prepared to treat clients from diverse backgrounds, that they do
not practice unfair discrimination, and that they consider culture in the practice of applied psychology. However,
professional ethics codes and standards of conduct—believed by many to be an improvement over the earliest
versions, in which consideration of culture was absent—still meet with criticism by many scholars. Critiques tend
to focus on the underpinnings of the codes, which are individualistic, based on principle ethics, and therefore
problematic when viewed through a collectivistic lens; on the vagueness of the standards and practices, which
fail to give practitioners sufficient direction; and on the absolutist assumption, which fails to give culture
satisfactory emphasis. Considerable work must be done before the profession can ensure that racial and ethnic
minority clients receive ethically appropriate treatment from culturally sensitive, competent practitioners.
ACCULTURATION AND COUNSELING
Acculturation can be defined as a process of attitudinal and behavioral change experienced by individuals who
live in multicultural societies or who have come in contact with a different culture due to colonization, invasion,
political change, globalization, and the increased mobility of society due to technological advances. Acculturation
refers to the balance between changing attitudes and behaviors as a result of contact with a dominant group and
retention of existing cultural values, beliefs, and traditions. In the United States, institutions such as the
educational system and the media are a part of the acculturation process. Another component of the
acculturation process may include the acceptance of the need for counseling. The degree of acculturation to a
dominant culture may also play a role in preference for the ethnicity of one’s counselor or the client’s willingness
to discuss racial, ethnic, or cultural issues. For example, a client who has low levels of acculturation may not view
counseling as an option and instead prefer to rely on family or other culturally sanctioned sources of support. On
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the other hand, a highly acculturated individual may be very receptive to counseling and may even prefer to work
with a White counselor.
UNINTENTIONAL RACISM/AVERSIVE RACISM
In a cultural zeitgeist of increased awareness about the damaging effects of racial and ethnic prejudice and
discrimination, overt acts of racism have abated to some extent. It would be erroneous to conclude, however, that
decreased incidents of blatant racism indicate an absence of racial and ethnic prejudice. Instead, as public and
professional awareness about racism increases, more covert examples of racism are evident. These have been
termed aversive and unintentional racism.
Aversive racism occurs when individuals who identify themselves and others as egalitarian and unprejudiced
subtly discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities in their beliefs and feelings. This may occur when such
prejudice can be rationalized or when information the individual has received is ambiguous. In 1995, Ridley
identified eight methods of unintentional but pervasive racist defenses that occur in counseling. Color blindness
is the tendency for counselors to disregard the race of their clients, assuming that all clients are similar. They
may minimize or deny the harm inherent in racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Color consciousness, on the
other hand, occurs when counselors place too much emphasis on race, ignoring pathology or attributing all
presenting problems to culture. Cultural transference can occur when racial and ethnic minority clients project
their feelings about the majority culture onto their counselor, whereas cultural countertransference indicates the
counselor’s projection of emotional reactions toward a minority group onto a particular minority client. Cultural
ambivalence can occur when counselors use the therapy arena to act out their own feelings about race and
ethnicity, either by dominating and controlling or by seeking approval and acceptance from the client. Pseudotransference refers to the tendency for counselors to discount their clients’ perceptions of them as racist and
prejudiced; the clients’ reactions to their counselors may be casually dismissed as transference when actually
rooted in reality. Overidentification occurs when minority counselors relate significantly with their minority clients
and may unwittingly focus on racial issues to the neglect of other important presenting problems. Finally,
identification with the oppressor refers to the tendency for some racial and ethnic minority counselors to deny
their experiences as minorities and overidentify instead with the majority culture. Ridley offered counselors a
variety of ways to combat unintentional racism.
RACIAL IDENTITY
The ways individuals perceive themselves as racial beings form the processes by which people acquire their
racial identity, and thereby influence both the counseling process and the selection of counselors. Researchers
have proposed several different models that outline the distinctive processes that formulate racial identity.
Phinney based her 1993 model of ethnic identity development primarily on her work with adolescents. She
proposed a three-stage model to capture the process by which adolescents formulate their ethnic identity. The
first stage, unexamined ethnic identity, represents a relatively static condition in which individuals are not in the
process of exploring themselves as ethnic individuals. In the second stage, ethnic identity search/moratorium,
individuals are involved in actively exploring themselves ethnically and trying to make meaning of their ethnicity.
In the third stage, achieved ethnic identity, individuals have a clear understanding of themselves in terms of their
ethnic identity.
Updating Cross’s earlier work on Black identity, Cross and Vandiver in 2001 proposed a four-stage model to
elucidate racial identity formulation, referred to as the expanded nigrescence model. In stage 1, preencounter,
individuals have not yet begun to explore themselves as racial beings and may even denigrate their own culture.
Eventually, individuals encounter an experience that prompts them to begin to explore themselves as racial
people; this experience is referred to as an encounter experience. This can include an incident involving racism
that is experienced personally or having a powerful response to a cultural event, historical incident, or other racial
experience. In stage 2, immersion-emersion, individuals experience the most pronounced period of transition. As
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they continue to concretize their racial identity, they may embrace all things affiliated with their racial or ethnic
group and they may eschew those things affiliated with the dominant culture. In stage 3, internalization,
individuals have worked through a significant portion of the transition period and may embrace their racial
identities as one facet of themselves while simultaneously considering multiple salient roles. In stage 4,
internalization-commitment, individuals sustain their interest in their racial identity and may choose to devote
themselves to promoting the needs and interests of their particular ethnic group. Cross and Vandiver note that
there are cluster identities within each stage, and these cluster identities acknowledge that within stages
individuals will experience identity development differently.
Therefore, according to the stage of their racial identity development, racial minority clients may have different
views about the purpose of counseling, the preferred race of their therapist, and what they want to work on in
counseling. For example, a client in the preencounter stage may deny the salience of race and endorse “colorblind” views of the United States. A client in the immersion-emersion stage may need to explore actively the
meaning of race and struggle to make sense of an encounter experience. However, it is not only the client who
undergoes racial identity development; the counselor also has a racial identity and undergoes development. The
interaction of the two identities can be a powerful dynamic in therapy. Cross and Vandiver’s model may also be
generalized beyond Black racial identity and serve as an exemplar of the racial or ethnic identity process.
Janet Helms has utilized her models both on White racial identity and on people of color racial identity to create
an interpersonal process model that may be particularly useful for counselors seeking a greater understanding of
the dynamics that occur in cross-racial dyads. Helms posited that it is the expressed racial identity of the
individuals involved in a particular dialogue that is most critical. In parallel interactions, individuals share similar
attitudes and assumptions and generally try to maintain accord. In regressive interactions, the person afforded
the most power socially functions from a less evolved status than the person with less power. In progressive
interactions, the individual with more social power responds from a relatively more evolved status than the
person with less social power. Finally, in crossed interactions, participants interact from places that are
diametrically opposite in terms of responding to racial matters.
MULTICULTURAL COUNSELING COMPETENCE
During the past two decades, significant attention has been focused on the notion of multicultural counseling
competence. The profession of applied psychology has particularly endorsed the need for practitioners who are
multiculturally competent.
One such approach originally proposed by Sue and colleagues in 1992 consisted of creating guidelines for
multiculturally competent practitioners. This entailed specific directives based on a tripartite model of knowledge,
skills, and attitudes. The focus is on the acquisition and endorsement of those facets of competence endorsed by
the authors and supported by the profession at large. In this view, multicultural counseling competence consists
of professionals who are actively open to examining and adjusting their own assumptions and worldviews, who
work toward nonjudgmentally understanding their clients’ viewpoints, and who practice appropriate and sensitive
strategies with clients from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Many instruments have been created in
response to the tripartite considerations of knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
Another approach by Ridley and Mollen recognizes the importance of the aforementioned competencies model
and endorses a model that embraces an integrative deep structure as well—a structure that involves such facets
of practice as purposeful application, motivation, selection, sequencing, and timing. This approach posits that
multicultural counseling competence consists not only of the building blocks of therapy called microskills and
competencies but also of the purposeful, committed intention of the counselors to create an environment suitable
for meaningful and relevant client change in consideration of racial, ethnic, and cultural variables.
See Also the Following Articles
Acculturation ▪ Conformity across Cultures ▪ Cross-Cultural Psychology, Overview ▪ Health Psychology, CrossCultural
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Further Reading
American Psychological Association. (2003). Guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice
and organizational change for psychologists. American Psychologist, 58, 377-402.
Cross, W. E.; Vandiver, B. J. (2001). Nigrescence theory and measurement: Introducing the Cross Racial
Identity Scale (CRIS). In Ponterotto, J. G., Casas, J. M., Suzuki, L. A.Alexander, C. M. Handbook of multicultural
counseling (2nd ed., pp. 371-393.
Helms, J. E. (1984). Toward a theoretical explanation of the effects of race on counseling: A black and white
model. The Counseling Psychologist, 12, 153-165.
Helms, J. E. (1995). An update of Helm’s white and people of color racial identity models.In Ponterotto, J. G.,
Casas, J. M., Suzuki, L. A.Alexander, C. M. Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 181-191.
Phinney, J. (1993). A three-stage model of ethnic identity development. In Bernal, M.Knight, G. Ethnic identity:
Formation and transmission among Hispanics and other minorities (pp. 61-79.
Ponterotto, J. G., Casas, J. M., Suzuki, L. A.Alexander, C. M. (2001). Handbook of multicultural counseling (2nd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, , CA: Sage.
Ridley, C. R. (1995). Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and therapy: A practitioner’s guide to
intentional intervention (Multicultural aspects of counseling series, Vol. 5). Thousand Oaks, , CA: Sage.
Sue, D. W.; Arredondo, P.; McDavis, R. J. (1992). Multicultural counseling competencies and standards: A call
to the profession. Journal of Counseling and Development, 70, 477-483.
Sue, D. W.; Sue, D. (1999). Counseling the culturally different (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Debra Mollen
Texas Women’s UniversityTexasUSA
Charles R. Ridley
Indiana UniversityBloomington, IndianaUSA
© 2004 Elsevier Inc.
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APA
Mollen, D., & Ridley, C. R. (2004). Racial and ethnic minorities, counseling of. In C. D. Spielberger (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of applied psychology. Elsevier Science & Technology. Credo Reference:
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Chicago
Mollen, Debra, and Charles R. Ridley. “Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Counseling of.” In Encyclopedia of Applied
Psychology, edited by Charles Donald Spielberger. Elsevier Science & Technology, 2004.
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Harvard
Mollen, D. and Ridley, C.R. (2004). Racial and ethnic minorities, counseling of. In C.D. Spielberger (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of applied psychology. [Online]. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology. Available from:
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institutionId=5865 [Accessed 12 October 2022].
MLA
Mollen, Debra, and Charles R. Ridley. “Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Counseling of.” Encyclopedia of Applied
Psychology, edited by Charles Donald Spielberger, Elsevier Science & Technology, 1st edition, 2004.Credo
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