Social Justice, Multicultural Counseling, and Practice

Beyond a Conventional Approach

Heesoon Jun

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781412960571
  9781412960564
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781483342900
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Until now, an important aspect of multicultural counseling has been long overlooked amid the profusion of literature—the practical application of multicultural theory. Social Justice, Multicultural Counseling, and Practice: Beyond a Conventional Approach fills this void and tackles some of the top challenges in multicultural counseling including how to implement multicultural theory and how to practice social justice and equity. This groundbreaking work takes a multilayered and multidimensional approach that will help practitioners "walk the talk" of multicultural competency. It introduces a new model that will give practitioners a clearer understanding of the client?s worldview for culturally appropriate assessment, diagnoses, and treatment.

Key Features

• Provides Concrete Strategies boxes for introduced concepts
• Emphasizes self-reflection and self-awareness for practitioners
• Contains exercises to help practitioners better understand ethnocentrism, types of thinking styles, and automatic thought patterns
• Examines the complexities of the intersection of multiple identities and sociocultural contexts
• Includes a unique organization style that groups topics by various "isms" (ageism, classism, racism, etc.)

Intended Audience
Based on holistic thinking and transformative learning styles, this core text is ideal for graduate courses in counseling, psychology, or social work.

1

Introduction

THE MILLENNIUM AND TWO ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS FOR MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCIES

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The new millennium was entered with the sociocultural context of increasingly diversified populations in the United States (Jons & Smith, 2001; United States Census Bureau, 2003, 2004). Various helping professional organizations responded to this change by updating their ethics codes or existing multicultural competencies to emphasize practitioners’ cultural sensitivity to human diversity (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2005; American Psychological Association [APA], 2002, 2003; National Association of Social Workers [NASW], 1999; Roysircar, Arredondo, Fuertes, Ponterotto, & Toporek, 2003).

The National Association of Social Workers’ mission statement includes the following:

Social workers are sensitive to cultural and ethnic diversity and strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice. (NASW, 1999, Preamble, ¶ 2)

The American Psychological Association’s unfair discrimination section states:

In their work-related activities, psychologists do not engage in unfair discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, or any basis proscribed by law. (APA, 2002, Section 3.01)

The American Counseling Association’s code of ethics includes the following:

Association members recognize diversity and embrace a cross-cultural approach in support of the worth, dignity, potential, and uniqueness of people within their social and cultural contexts. (ACA, 2005, Preamble, ¶ 1)

These conceptual frameworks to serve the multicultural population have been well postulated with good intentions. Numerous scholars and multicultural counseling theorists have also responded to this need by emphasizing how to be culturally sensitive to certain groups or how to understand the complexities involved in multicultural counseling (Atkinson & Hackett, 2004; Axelson, 1999; Constantine & Sue, 2005: Harper &McFadden, 2003; Pedersen, Lonner, Draguns, & Trimble, 2007; Ponterotto, Casas, Suzuki, & Alexander, 2001; Robinson-Wood, 2008; Sue & Sue, 2007). They have contributed substantially to raising consciousness of understanding multicultural counseling, as well as expanded the concept of counseling beyond traditional models. D’Andrea and Heckman (2008), who have been reviewing multicultural counseling outcome research for the past 40 years, state:

The multicultural counseling movement is clearly transforming the thinking and practices of many counselor educators, practitioners, researchers, and students in training. . . . After almost 40 years of scholarly work, multicultural theorists have greatly extended counselors’ thinking about the impact that racial/ethnic/cultural factors have on counseling endeavors aimed at stimulating healthy human development. (p. 356)

D’Andrea and Heckman (2008) conclude that the multicultural counseling movement has expanded the importance of examining the differences among racial/ethnic/cultural groups because human development and appropriate psychological intervention vary according to different cultural perspectives. The movement has also extended the importance of understanding within-group differences for accurate assessment and treatment. The authors’ findings indicate the importance of not stereotyping culturally different groups.

In an attempt to understand racially different groups, most existing multicultural counseling textbooks categorize people according to convention. Conventional categorization of ethnic groups provides basic information about each. However, identifying a counseling approach for each racial group increases the tendency for it to be stereotyped, and such an approach provides no instructions for counseling individuals from the racial group who do not fit the stereotype. This approach also minimizes individuals who do not fit into these categories, including those who claim bicultural (e.g., race) or multicultural (e.g., race, gender, class) identities. Racial categorization is not realistic because it is impossible to accurately describe the characteristics of each ethnic and racial group partly due to the fact that variations within one group are as diverse as variations among separate groups and partly due to the fact that a person’s identity construction is a result of not a single factor but intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, language, class, disability, religion, and so on. Racial categorization not only strengthens stereotypes; it also perpetuates inappropriate dichotomous thinking. The challenge for a multicultural practitioner is how to obtain and accurately apply knowledge about a particular racial group without minimizing or missing idiosyncrasies of an individual within it.

Emphasis on racial issues has been predominant in multicultural counseling textbooks. They focus on race as if racial issues—such as racial identity, racial discrimination and prejudice, systematic and internalized racial oppression, and racism—represent other diversities related to gender, sexual orientation, class, age, language, religion, region, and so on. Hays’s (2008) review of multicultural competence assessment indicates that the current definition of multicultural counseling “fails to directly apply to the needs of other disenfranchised groups” (p. 97). Numerous scholars and researchers have suggested that understanding a client’s relevant social and demographic identities is necessary to understand a client’s worldview (Berry & Sam, 1997; Cross, 1995; Croteau & Constantine, 2005; Douce, 2005; Paniagua, 2005; Ponterotto et al., 2001). The following represents the common theme of need for understanding a client’s multiple identities by most scholars and researchers:

An individual can be fully understood only in a holistic manner that includes understanding the influences and interactions of the individual’s multiple sociodemographic groups, some or all of which may be salient “identities” for the individual. (Croteau & Constantine, 2005, p. 162)

If the complexities of multiple identities, intersections of multiple identities, and sociocultural contexts are simplified into static, dichotomous, and hierarchical categories, the individual is totally missed. Equating a person with a single identity as if it alone represents him or her is creating superficiality and illusion (Collins, 1991; Katz-Gerro, 2006; Markus, 1977). Several researchers have examined the intersections of some multiple identities, and their studies are discussed throughout this book in relevant sections. Despite the need for them, there are few books that address other areas of social and demographic identities in relation to race. Pope-Davis and Coleman (2001) emphasize the intersection of race, class, and gender in constructing the identity of an individual. Croteau, Lark, Lidderdale, and Chung (2005) address heterosexism in counseling. Robinson-Wood (2008) discusses race, gender, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, and physical ability and disability. Bieschke, Croteau, Lark, and Vandiver (2005) explain the difficulty of integrating all of a client’s social identities:

While we strongly believe that the counterdiscourse needs to more fully integrate multiple social identities and cultural contexts, such a shift toward complexity and inclusiveness will be painful, giving rise to unexplored conflicts and necessitating difficult exploration and dialogues. (p. 203)

Bieschke et al.’s (2005) statement is a crucially important point that needs to be addressed by scholars, practitioners, and researchers of multicultural counseling competencies. Such professionals need to consider whether they are truly interested in multicultural counseling competencies or whether they are only interested in promoting their salient identities under the name of multicultural competencies. If they are interested in only their own importance, they need to examine how they differ from members of the dominant groups who have oppressed and marginalized them. Multicultural counseling competencies require tolerance for ambiguity; assigning equal importance to others’ cultural values, beliefs, and ways of making meaning; and respect for the ways of being and traditions of others. It is important to have counterdiscourse no matter how painful it is. In order to do so, various factors that have prevented practitioners and scholars from addressing unexplored conflicts need to be examined.

It may be valuable to reflect on barriers to implementing conceptual theories of multicultural counseling by exploring whether there are some parallels between the difficulty of having counterdiscourse of integration of multiple identities and contexts and the difficulty of incorporating conceptual theories into practice. Research has indicated several barriers to implementing conceptual theories, including the fact that Western ideology is embedded in the practices of counseling and development (Daniels, 2007; Gladding, 2006; Ivey, D’Andrea, Ivery, & Simek-Morgan, 2007). Western ideology emphasizes the rational over the relational, logic over emotion, competition over cooperation, and independence over interdependence. That practitioners have pathologized people of color and women may be a result of misunderstanding behaviors that stem from a non-Western ideology (Rapley, 2004; Robb, 2006; Stubblefield, 2007). Western ideology is based on individualism, which often leads to self-focused behavior. Research findings with regard to social projection, attribution error, asymmetric perception, introspection, and ingroup favoritism have indicated individuals’ tendency toward high self-appraisal and low appraisal of others. Participants in a number of studies (Epley & Dunning, 2000; Pronin, Gilovich, & Ross, 2004; Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002; Steele, 1988; Taylor & Brown, 1988) believed that they were less biased than their peers and thus that their peers were more biased than they. Implications of high self-appraisal and low appraisal of others are indications of ethnocentric bias.

Another barrier to incorporating conceptual theories of multicultural counseling into practice is the inability to be aware of inconsistencies between walk and talk. Inconsistencies between behavior and knowledge have appeared in studies of implicit learning, aversive racism, and attribution error (Banaji & Bhaskar, 2001; Blair & Banaji, 1996; Chen & Bargh, 1997; Dovidio, Gaertner, Kawakami, & Hodson, 2002). It is possible that some scholars, practitioners, and researchers are not aware of their ethnocentric biases or of inconsistencies between their behavior and their knowledge. Recent cognitive and social psychology research has revitalized the role of the unconscious process in learning. Dovidio and colleagues’ work on aversive racism and Banaji and colleagues’ work on implicit attitudes and learning in particular demonstrate its importance. Banaji and Bhaskar (2001) state:

In contrast to the first hundred years of research, which conveyed a view of memory and beliefs as operating exclusively in a conscious mode, the past two decades have shown increasingly that both memory and belief also operate implicitly in powerful yet unconscious ways, outside the actor’s awareness. (p. 140)

The discovery of the role of the unconscious process in learning explains the challenges involved in dismantling prejudice and stereotypes and integrating multiple identities. It suggests the need to develop strategies for dealing with the unconscious learning process in order to transcend racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, and other “isms.”

Just intending to deconstruct or transcend prejudice and stereotypes is not an effective strategy. Just intending to integrate multiple identities will not lead to their integration without painful and uncomfortable counterdiscourse. Various studies that will be discussed in relevant chapters indicate that children learn and develop strong attachments to their worldviews, values, and beliefs at an early age through socialization. Transcending some of these values and beliefs must include processing the emotional attachment to them. Intellectual understanding alone does not activate automatic transcendence. Cognitive information processing research indicates the resistance of implicit attitudes to change.

There are parallels between the inability to implement theoretical conceptualization of multicultural counseling and the inability to have counterdiscourse for an integration of multiple identities and contexts. Embedment of Western ideology, ethnocentric bias, and unconscious learning may all play a part. It is the author’s hope that the holistic model presented in this book makes a small contribution for counterdiscourse.

The recent social justice movement in multicultural counseling implies that practitioners no longer can hide behind conceptualization of multicultural competencies. They need to know how to implement competencies emotionally as well as intellectually to work toward equal access to justice and equity for marginalized individuals and groups (Constantine, Hage, Kindaichi, & Bryant, 2007). Constantine et al. identified nine specific social justice competencies for practitioners. They are (a) awareness of oppression and social inequities; (b) ongoing self-reflection with regard to race, ethnicity, oppression, power, and privilege; (c) the impact of a practitioner’s power and privilege on clients, communities, and research participants; (d) questioning, challenging, and intervening in inappropriate or exploitative therapeutic or intervention practices to promote the well-being of an affected individual or group; (e) having and, when appropriate, sharing knowledge about indigenous healing practices; (f) awareness of ongoing international social injustice; (g) conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating comprehensive mental health intervention programs for the multicultural population; (h) collaboration with community organizations to provide culturally relevant services; and (i) developing systematic intervention and advocacy skills for social change. Social justice–oriented programs include service-based learning through internships and volunteer work (Kenny & Gallagher, 2000; Mulvey et al., 2000). Social justice and equity is an essential component of multicultural counseling, in which a practitioner assists clients with rising above systematic oppression and works with them to deconstruct, transcend, and transform internalized and systematic oppression.

Collins and Pieterse (2007) examined the affective transformative process of Roysircar et al.’s (2003) multicultural counseling competencies, which were adopted by the American Psychological Association in 2003. This signifies APA’s conceptual commitment to serving individuals who are culturally different. The multicultural counseling competencies are divided into three areas: (a) counselor awareness of her own cultural values and biases, (b) counselor awareness of the client’s worldview, and (c) culturally appropriate intervention strategies. Each area is further divided into three sections: (a) attitudes and beliefs, (b) knowledge, and (c) skills. For example, a culturally skilled counselor’s specific characteristics are described under (a) the attitude and belief section, (b) the knowledge section, and (c) the skill section of all three multicultural counseling competencies. Operationalized for clarity, these descriptions provide specific goals for practitioners to achieve in order to be multiculturally competent. Collins and Pieterse discuss the set of limitations to goal-oriented multicultural counseling competency description, including the possibility that counselors will focus on identifying and describing competency and just “saying the right things at the right time” without delivering what is said in practice. They suggest using the process perspective in conjunction with the “fixed goal” approach:

We focus on competency as a process that involves engaging in an honest exploration of one’s experience of racial and cultural reality. Such a process may not necessarily arrive at an end point; rather, it requires a daily choice to engage issues of race and culture internally and externally. . . . It requires mechanics of competence as a daily lived experience. The process perspective also emphasizes that competence involves ongoing effort and commitment. (p. 15)

Collins and Pieterse’s (2007) suggestion to add a process component to multicultural counseling competencies is an attempt to facilitate affective processing of cognitive understanding of multicultural awareness. This is an important step since most training programs focus on cognitive aspects rather than integrating cognition and emotion (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 1997; Holcomb-McCoy & Myers, 1999; Ponterotto, 1998). Training that uses such unconventional methods as “reaction papers, journal writing, role playing, videotaping, cross-cultural immersion experience, cross-cultural simulation experiences, experiential exercises, fish-bowl exercises, small group processing and focus groups” (Collins & Pieterse, p. 16) seems to have some success in changing trainees’ attitudes toward multicultural competencies (Helms et al., 2003)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• PART I. A PRACTITIONER’S AWARENESS OF HER OWN WORLDVIEW
• PART II. A PRACTITIONER’S AWARENESS OF SYSTEMATIC OPPRESSION/PRIVILEGE AND INTERNALIZED OPPRESSION/PRIVILEGE
• PART III. A PRACTITIONER’S AWARENESS OF THE CLIENT’S WORLDVIEW
• References
• Index
• About the Author