Counseling Multicultural and Diverse Populations

Strategies for Practitioners, Fourth Edition

Nicholas A. Vacc, Susan B. DeVaney, Johnston M. Brendel, Nicholas A. Vacc, Susan B. DeVaney, Johnston M. Brendel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781136918230
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

The purpose of this book is to expose students of the helping professions, counselors, teachers, college professors, mental health workers, and social workers to the unique characteristics of representative American subgroups and to effectively assist these same professionals as they work with clients and/or students from these populations. These are grouped by race, gender, sexuality, age, physical limitations and lifestyle etc. The author of each chapter is both a trained helping professional and a member of the group in question. This unique combination of qualifications lends both an academic and a personal perspective to the understanding of the populations represented.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Nicholas A. Vacc Susan B. DeVaney Johnston M. Brendel

Nicholas A. Vacc was the Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor and past chairperson of the Department of Counseling and Educational Development at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He received his degrees from Western Reserve University, Syracuse University, and State University of New York. In former years he worked as a public school teacher and counselor, school psychologist, Veterans Administration counselor, and director of a university counselor center. During the course of his career he served as president of the Association for Assessment in Counseling; editor of Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development; and president of Chi Sigma Iota, the international counseling honor society. He was instrumental in the development of the NBCC examination and the CACREP standards for professional preparation. Dr. Vacc had over 120 professional publications to his credit and was the recipient of many awards, including the Brooks Distinguished Mentor Award and the Sweeney Professional Leadership Award. He passed away in June, 2002.

Susan B. DeVaney, Ed.D., obtained her doctorate in counselor education from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, in 1990 and worked in the field for twelve years. Before her retirement in 2002 she served as the counselor in residence at the Early Childhood Development Center at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, initiated the Family Place for Counseling and Referral on the university campus, coordinated career and social skills programs for disadvantaged youth and their families, and incorporated service learning projects into her courses. She currently works as a freelance writer in North Carolina.

Johnston M. Brendel, Ed.D., obtained his doctorate in counselor education from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He is an associate professor at Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi, and a former secondary school counselor. He works extensively with at-risk youth designing and evaluating effective programs that target this population. His research interests include adult development, cognitive development, and family involvement in schools.

Scope of the Fourth Edition

This book presents sixteen chapters devoted to thirteen special populations, designated by ethnicity, religion, physical characteristics, circumstance, or lifestyle. The authors of these chapters are counselors and counselor educators, and at least one author of each chapter, with the exception of “Counseling Incarcerated Clients,” is also a member of the group under consideration. Our goal is to provide both a personal and an academic perspective on each population. In addition, we wish to provide information and insight into the diverse nature and commonly encountered strengths, barriers, difficulties, issues, and experiences of each population.

Published originally in 1980 as Let Me Be Me: Special Populations and the Helping Professional, the current edition represents a substantial transformation from its predecessors. The editors thought it important that we include populations with which today’s counselors come in contact as well as groups associated with significant discrimination and misunderstanding. To achieve those ends, we have added chapters dealing with counseling Arab Americans, multiracial persons, incarcerated individuals, men, and women. We considered including other groups as well: religious groups such as conservative Christians, Jews, or Buddhists; persons united by poverty and dependence on government assistance; life stage groups such as adolescents; persons who are different in terms of their body size or shape. We struggled to be as inclusive as possible, but for reasons of space and thematic duplication, reluctantly left many important populations for others to describe. Using a similar rationale, we combined what were once separate chapters on Cuban Americans and Mexican Americans into a single chapter devoted to the American Hispanic population and incorporated material on single parents and women reentering the workplace into several other chapters. Finally, the chapter that once described the homosexual population now also includes bisexual, lesbian, transsexual, and transgendered persons and is entitled “Counseling Sexual Minority Persons.” Although the fourth edition is by no means all-encompassing, we believe that the difficulties, experiences, and characteristics of the groups presented are representative of the multitude of divergent, unique, and ethnic subgroups in American society— these are truly multicultural and diverse populations.

In addition to the revised format, we are proud to introduce fifteen new authors who have worked diligently to present insights from their personal experience, demographics from the recent national census, and syntheses of current research. Each of these authors is a professional with both personal and scholarly experience with his or her selected population. Although we requested that the authors address common topics within their chapters (history, current counseling issues, career development, etc.), readers will find that the authors have distinct styles and viewpoints that sometimes vary substantially from those of their cocon-tributors. We believe that the unique quality of each chapter mirrors the uniqueness of the group it portrays. Readers may find themselves drawn to one or another chapter, much as they might be drawn to one group over another. We urge readers to use these reactions as an avenue to personal awareness of biases and preferences.

Purpose of the Book

The purpose of this book is to expose mental health practitioners such as counselors, psychologists, and social workers to the unique characteristics and social issues of representative American subgroups as a basis for understanding, assisting, and collaborating with members of these populations. We believe that the professional’s struggle to acquire sufficient knowledge, awareness, and skill to work effectively with diverse populations is both ongoing and relative. It is ongoing in that one can never learn all there is to know about people from all ethnic groups, backgrounds, beliefs, and circumstances. It is relative in that helping transactions may be best judged in terms of their degree of effectiveness rather than the absolute correctness of the intervention. The process of becoming an effective helper begins with an openness to lifelong learning, self-examination, and supervised counseling practice. It is our hope that this book will contribute to these conditions. Assimilating information about groups and individuals whose racial, social, religious, and/or cultural backgrounds; sex; physical abilities; or language differ from those of mainstream society is a beginning. Adding to that an examination of one’s own culture, biases, thoughts and beliefs, attitudes, and orientations deepens understanding through comparison. Stretching one’s experience through interaction with diverse populations under the guidance of an experienced counselor supervisor taps the dimension of skill. In the hands of a receptive reader even a single book, such as this one, can produce grand results.

The Editors' Philosophy

Our belief is that helping professionals can be instrumental in reducing the social and emotional barriers that prevent many members of America’s subgroups from becoming secure citizens. To do this, helping professionals must make a concerted effort to approach their clientele with both care and understanding. Communicating with warmth, empathy, and authenticity are the core conditions for effective counseling—conditions relatively simple to describe but difficult to embrace and create when one faces the unknown or unfamiliar. Expanding one’s knowledge base adds to those core conditions because knowing that makes situations more familiar and less uncertain. Hearing from members of a group different from one’s own presents an opportunity to learn how others think, how they are products of their experience. It gives one knowledge of other cultures and creates a basis for awareness of one’s own heritage.

Awareness of oneself and one’s culture is as important as knowing about other cultures. As counselor educators, the editors have known many inexperienced master’s students who, thinking that cultures are the property only of ethnic minority groups, have proclaimed, “I don’t have a culture.” The natural but naive understanding that what I experience is the norm and what others experience is not, forms a barrier to effective cross-cultural understanding. In addition, the phenomenon of assumed similarity, the belief that everyone is like me or should be like me, hinders accurate understanding of those who are different socially and culturally. We might ask ourselves, for example, is it truly possible that the Amish do not want television? That they choose to live without buttons and zippers in their clothing? Helpers with a sound cognitive knowledge of their clients’ cultural background will more easily understand the source and reasons for behaviors that may appear odd or peculiar at times. Understanding one’s heritage, belief system, values, and life assumptions requires honesty, openness, and continual self-examination. It is our hope that readers will use this book to hold their unique personal histories up to the mirror of our multicultural society.

In our view, knowledge and awareness are preconditions for good counseling. Positive counseling outcomes require a helper who embodies the core conditions, values the richness of human diversity, and looks deeply into self and others. Positive outcomes also require a helper with a broad knowledge base. One aspect of that knowledge is the acquisition of skills and a canny sense of when to apply them. Although skill development is ongoing and never ending, all students of counseling must make a beginning somewhere. We suggest that one point of beginning is engagement in the experiential activities at the end of each chapter in this book. Mustering the courage to come into contact with an unfamiliar group of people helps us to remember how it feels to be an outsider, how much we want to feel welcome, how awkward it is to make one’s way in a new land. Engaging in conversation or discussion with people who speak another language, espouse a different system of thought, or seek a different result challenges us to step outside our comfort zones and stretch our interpersonal skills.

When functioning entirely within a congenial and familiar cultural situation, helpers tend to misapprehend and impose their personal values on the client. In many cases they do not recognize that they are doing so. In others, they hold their values so dear that they believe everyone should accept them. Imagine scenarios in which you might encounter the following familiar questions and statements, possibly similar to ones you have uttered yourself:

How can this woman continue to have more children when she can’t support the ones she has?

How can that man expect societal acceptance when the Bible clearly states that homosexuality is a sin?

Of course we should search all dark, Arabic-looking people in airports; our national security is at stake.

If people come to live in this country they should learn to speak English.

As you read the subsequent chapters, you will gain appreciation for the fact that although all people desire acceptance, they also enjoy their uniqueness. In many cases they do not want to be mainstreamed, to develop middle-class values, or to lose their individuality and dignity. They prefer that their difficulties and differences be understood rather than interpreted and evaluated. Savvy counselors are not concerned with the shoulds. They are concerned with helping the individual navigate the storms of life. Part of their charge is to help people understand the price to be paid for being oneself, a major and lifelong challenge for all humanity. Without appreciation of the person, the group, and the culture, counselors are unlikely to recognize the level at which their clientele grapple with the problem of acceptance, to meet them at that level, and to facilitate improved individual functioning within the family, the subgroup, or society at large.

Historical and Political Influences

We are all a product of our time and history. Entering into life in the 1960s, 1980s, or any decade in and of itself affects our perspectives on education, war, success, politics, morality, and human diversity. The social and political mood of the times directly affects national policy and opportunity for special groups. One of the editors, for example, grew up in a totally segregated society. Until she was in college she never attended a class or ate in a restaurant with anyone who was not Caucasian. Her only direct experience with different cultures came during vacation travel. Other, younger counselors may find this degree of segregation difficult to imagine but may have personal experience with court-ordered bussing, affirmative action, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the glass ceiling, or sexual harassment. Immigration and rapid shifts in demographics have fueled national debates on bilingual education, the rights of illegal aliens, and establishing English as the official national language.

Over the last fifteen years the counseling profession has promoted cultural awareness and, to a lesser degree, defined appropriate cross-cultural counseling practice. Counseling itself is a relatively new discipline, tracing its origins to the social reformers of the early twentieth century and solidifying as a profession in the 1960s and ’70s. The study of counseling across cultures, a branch of the profession, is still in its infancy and enjoys a relatively small body of supportive research. Because the field is so new, definitions and principles are in the process of gaining acceptance. Scholars argue about the relative applicability and appropriateness of terms such as cross-cultural, multicultural, transcultural, and diverse populations. Is disadvantaged, handicapped, at-risk, underserved, underorganized, or challenged the best descriptor of a given group or individual? Are people with whom counselors work considered clients, consumers, or customers? Because there is wide disparity in the use of the language, the editors have left decisions regarding terminology to the chapter authors themselves.

Scholars also disagree about the assumptions basic to counseling and supporting groups and individuals in a given population. Again, the chapter authors are highly trained professionals and have their own assumptions, which may differ somewhat from those given below. Keeping this in mind, the editors nevertheless venture to supply some assumptions they have used in their research and publication, teaching, and counseling practice.

1. Individuals are products of their culture and experience and cannot be considered apart from the systems in which they participate.
2. People are individuals first and group members second.
3. Depending on the situation, the individual or the group may be the unit of consideration in counseling.
4. Accurate information is necessary as a foundation for providing services for the individual.
5. Self-awareness, including awareness of one’s place within the subgroups and systems of which she or he is a member, is basic to becoming an effective counselor.
6. Counselor skill development occurs over time through a combination of training, experience, practice, and supervision.
7. Staffing of services by adequately trained professionals through preservice and in-service programs of preparation and skill development is essential to effective counseling practice.

Having supplied a summary of our rationale for creating Counseling Multicultural and Diverse Populations: Strategies for Practitioners, we would be remiss if we did not thank our mentors, teachers, clients, students, and collaborators of all ethnicities, backgrounds, and belief systems. We especially thank those who have presented arguments and placed barriers, challenges, and irritations in our paths. Without them we would not have traveled from the old to the new, from uninformed to better informed, from less to more skillful. We are grateful for the future obstacles that will move us off our current sticking spots and make us wiser and better counselors. Finally, we thank the readers of this book. The journey to human understanding and helpful interaction is a fascinating and difficult one, and we wish you well in your pursuit of effective practice with multicultural and diverse populations.

Chapter 2
Self-Awareness and Cultural Understanding

James Fuller

James O. Fuller is an associate professor of counseling and acting dean of the College of Graduate Studies at Indiana Wesleyan University. He is the director of the community counseling track at IWU. His interests are in the areas of school counseling, family counseling, and multicultural issues in counseling. Before his doctoral training, he was a school counselor in Seoul, Korea, at the Seoul Foreign School, an international school for expatriate children. He earned his B.A. in psychology at Asbury College, his M.Div. with an emphasis in counseling at Asbury Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Dr. Fuller would like to add special thanks to Mindy Pierce, who assisted with editing and revising much of this chapter.

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.

—Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, p. 230

Introduction

When Socrates said, “know thyself,” he was probably talking about a search to discover the world of one’s inner self. This was, of course,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Self-Awareness and Cultural Understanding
• 3. Counseling Native Americans
• 4. African Americans: A Remarkable People
• 5. Counseling Asian Americans
• 6. Counseling Hispanic Americans
• 7. Counseling Arab Americans
• 8. Counseling Multiracial Americans
• 9. Counseling Women from Feminist Perspectives
• 10. Counseling Men
• 11. Counseling People with Physical Disabilities
• 12. Counseling Sexual-Minority Clients
• 13. Counseling Older Persons
• 14. Counseling Incarcerated Clients
• 15. Counseling the Old Order Amish: Culturally Different by Religion
• 16. Preparation for Helping Professionals Working with Diverse Populations
• Index