Three More Ideas About Multicultural Counseling

4.  Developing your Self-Awareness is Central

Both the American Counseling Association and the American Psychological Association place self-awareness of the therapist as a central factor in developing multicultural competency. This is a great, but tricky idea. It’s tricky because of the nature of awareness is such that it’s all too easy for us to remain unaware to very significant multicultural issues. If you’re interested in exploring your multicultural awareness further, you should check out the Implicit Association Test at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.

I have a friend who often claimed: “I’m not insensitive, I’m just oblivious!” Of course this was offered in humor, but obliviousness—especially if you’re aware of it—is no good excuse for being insensitive to diversity issues. I’m also reminded of the insensitive and oblivious response of many White Montana students to multicultural discussions. It’s not unusual for some of them to say things like, “I just haven’t had much contact with people from other cultures because we don’t have many minorities in Montana.” When I hear this I try not to gasp aloud as I, or a Native or First Nations Person points out that, in fact, 6.8% of Montana’s population is Native American and that several people IN THE ROOM are Native American.

The initial splash of multicultural awareness is often accompanied by an emotional response . . . and occasionally a bit or a bundle of defensiveness.

5.  As you Work Towards Multicultural Competence, Remember the Concept of Multicultural Humility

Although it’s standard procedure in the counseling and psychotherapy literature to refer to multicultural competence, one major problem with the term multicultural competence is that it implies that there’s an endpoint in the multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skill acquisition process. For this reason, I prefer the terms multicultural humility or multicultural sensitivity.

Similar to awareness, I think humility is central to good multicultural work. Unfortunately, within the dominant cultural media-based messages humility is typically viewed as being weak and confidence, swagger, and even arrogance is seen as more desirable. Thomas Merton (quoted in part I of this blog series) has a quotation that speaks to the tendency for entire countries to engage in self-superiority. He wrote:

“The greatest sin of the European-Russian-American complex which we call the West (and this sin has spread its own way to China) is not only greed and cruelty, not only moral dishonesty and infidelity to the truth, but above all its unmitigated arrogance toward the rest of the human race.”

It’s crucial for multicultural counselor and psychotherapists to move beyond thinking in terms of competence and tolerance (both of which speak to Merton’s ideas of arrogance). Instead, we need to embrace our fallibilities and humility and approach cultural and individual differences with what Marcia Linehan might call radical acceptance and what Carl Rogers would have referred to as unconditional positive regard.

6.  Keep Making Efforts to Understand a Collectivist Cultural Perspective.

In collectivist cultures, values and norms are shared. The self and the personality are defined in terms of group memberships, and the group needs and values are more central than those of the individual. Some people with collectivist perspectives avoid the whole idea of the concept of self or self-esteem or self-image. Instead, Collectivists tend to evaluate themselves based on attaining group goals.

For lots of us folks who have been deeply involved in American individualism, the idea of collectivism can feel odd and repeatedly difficult to grasp. This is where exposure, discussion, and real listening to others becomes so important. Rather than trample on the idea of collectivist being, we need to persistently take extra steps to maintain awareness of this concept that can be so slippery for individualists to grasp.

To close this blog, in 1975 Robert Hogan wrote,

A central theme in Western European history for about 800 years has been the decline of the medieval synthesis or, alternatively, the emergence of individualism. Two hundred years ago individualism was a moral and religious ideal capable of legitimizing revolutions and inspiriting sober and thoughtful minds. Sometimes in the last century, however, social thinkers began to regard individualism in more ambivalent terms, even in some cases as a possible indicator of social decay. (p. 533)

This is interesting stuff, even if it’s sometimes difficult to completely and consistently understand.