Identify and briefly explain two major challenges of integrating societal multicultural contexts in counseling practice and what counselors can do to overcome these challenges.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The first major challenge is that counseling professionals are part of the society in which values and worldviews that represent that of the dominant groups may be forced upon clients unintentionally. The example in the text serves to illustrate the challenge; a counselor who is White, male, heterosexual, Christian, able bodied may benefit from unearned privilege and power in contrast to his clients who are underprivileged and poor. If this counselor is unaware of her or his salient cultural identities and the corresponding power and privilege, the impact on clients from marginalized groups is likely that the counselor will actually perpetrate social victimization of the client. The second challenge has to do with the dominant cultural values and beliefs that reflect ethnocentric perspectives that distort the reality about minority members of the society. The value of meritocracy, which implies that power and privilege are earned solely on the basis talent, hard work and personal achievement, is a ready example. Meritocracy has led to “no excuses” rhetoric that counselors from majority groups may buy into without awareness that the playing field is not level for everybody. Meritocracy has also led to the belief that those who are unsuccessful are lazy, stupid, and weak in character or immoral. If unchallenged, such values can bias the counselor’s perception of clients from diverse backgrounds, revictimize them, and invalidate their cultural experiences. A number of things can be done by counselors to overcome these challenges. Counselors need to engage in a lifelong process of unlearning the majority-based values that are antithetical to multicultural counseling. Counselors must develop multicultural identities for themselves that will help in validating the social realities of clients from diverse cultures. Counselors must also take deliberate actions to promote social justice and deconstruct western assumptions that result in bias against racial and ethnic minority clients, women, LGBT, and people with disabilities.