Discuss how racial and ethnic differences may impact the counseling relationship.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

?Being racially different from your client often presents a visible, obvious difference that cannot be ignored.
?Being racially similar to your client may provide you with a certain amount of automatic credibility that would otherwise have to be earned.
?Sometimes attitudes based on racial differences can even lead counselors to have mistaken ideas about the capacities of their racially different clients. They may severely underestimate the abilities of those clients.
?Subtle discriminations and treatment differences can be even more profound for more severely disturbed or physically challenged clientele who are racially different.
?Becoming “racially competent” is not just about the development of a critical counseling skill—it is also about becoming a more competent person.
?Specific ways clients think of their racially dissimilar counselors are receiving increasing research attention.
oNative Americans may be distrustful of and suspicious about the motives of non-Native counselors.
oEuropean Americans may be unaware of the ways culture and society influence their lives and may be suspicious of counselors who suggest they are controlled by those larger forces. This may be related to the fact, as some have suggested, that those in power are less aware of those larger forces than are those who are oppressed by power.
oAsian Americans may stay in counseling only briefly and only work toward therapeutic goals highly correlated with family needs. Counselors who do not acknowledge these differences may not do well with these clients.
oAfrican American, Arab American, and other ethnic groups also have definite expectations and potential wariness with counselors who are not of those ethnic groups. This may hold true for Latino clients as well.