challenges our practice and our organizations and institutions and will provide a more profound way to approach individual and community change and effective long-term methods” (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015, p. 177). In short, “cultural humility takes into account the fluidity and subjectivity of culture and challenges individuals and institutions to address inequalities. As a concept, it challenges active engagement in a lifelong process (versus a discrete endpoint) that individuals enter into with clients, organizational structures, and within themselves” (Fisher-Borne, Cain, & Martin, 2015, p. 171). Given the breadth of issues that counseling with cultural humility encompasses, one short course cannot address all the intricacies of counseling with humility in a multicultural context. Even though racial minorities enter the counseling profession,
they still comprise a small percentage of mental health workers compared with their White counterparts. Currently, 55.8% of mental health workers are White, whereas 27.9% are Black/ African American and 11.1% are Latina/o; the remaining mental health workers are Native American or Asian. However, when we look at the diversity among psychologists, there appears to be less diversity. Data shows that in 2015, 86% of psychologists in the U.S. workforce were White, 5% were Asian, 5% were Hispanic, 4% were Black/African American, and 1% were multiracial or from other racial/ethnic groups (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). The numbers seem to improve from 2015 to 2018, when diversity seems to have slightly increased in younger cohorts of psychologists. For instance, psychologists under 50 represent more diversity among African American and Hispanic demographics (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Workforce and Population Demographics
Note : From “Psychology’s Workforce Is Becoming More Diverse.” (2020). These numbers represent a variety of professional training backgrounds, including psychology, social work, psychiatry, counseling, and marriage and family therapy (SAMHSA, 2013). Most counselors are also from middle-class backgrounds, without disabilities, and identify as heterosexual and cis- gendered. Although the perspective of this course is influenced by the author’s unique facets of diversity (e.g., BIPOC, heterosexual, cisgender, middle class, female, and nondisabled), it is expected that clinicians of various backgrounds will benefit and find applicability to their practices. Regardless of your racial/ ethnic background, socioeconomic status, age, gender, sexuality, and disability status, a commitment to cultural humility is the expectation for all mental health practitioners. Additionally, it is essential to note that the term “White,” rather than “Caucasian,” is intentionally used in this course to reflect the view that race is socially constructed and that interactions among people of diverse backgrounds are embedded within structured and inequitable social relations. These inequities in social relations reflect a society structured on White supremacy that serves as a foundation for the continued social and
economic disparities between White people and people of color living in the same community. The status, power, and inclusion of Whiteness within the American culture are often unspoken and affect how individuals of differing backgrounds and identifications interact. Similarly, the term “cisgender female” is used rather than simply “female” to illustrate the invisibility and oppression of transgender individuals. Cultural humility looks at the intersectionality of multiple diversity points, including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, age, gender, and other identifications with which the client may align (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015). Unlike the concepts of cultural competency and multicultural competency, which focus on gaining knowledge about cultural groups differing from the individual’s own with the hopes of better understanding those cultures and thus better meeting the needs of different groups who enter counseling, cultural humility focuses on the cultural context within the U.S. that marginalizes and oppresses some groups of people while privileging and empowering other groups of people (Foronda et al., 2016).
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Book Code: SWUS1524
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