Racism in the Counselling Relationship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Racism in the Counselling Relationship - Essay Example The essay "Racism in the Counselling Relationship" discusses the racism in regarding the intercultural counseling. The race is a 19th-century pseudo-scientific construction that has been discredited since the human species could not be genetically thus compartmentalized. Though racism is not the same as ethnocentrism. Recognition - that monocultural model of counseling and therapy that prevailed until the mid-20th century to deal with problems presented by today’s racial and ethnic diversity in most nation states was inadequate - led to rethinking in favor of a multicultural approach. Hitherto, counselors and therapists had been trained in the psychodynamic, person-centred, and cognitive behavior therapy models, to name but a salient few. Sue and Sue were the first to propose a theory of multicultural counseling and therapy. The hitherto ’invisible other’ became aggressively visible with the Black Civil Rights Movement and compelled counselors to explore the impa ct of cultural identity and diversity in the counseling relationship. The aim of counseling was no longer to encourage and enforce ‘assimilation’ of the ’other’ into the dominant culture but to empathize and explore the assumptive world of the client from whatever background he/she came from. Integration, rather than assimilation, where individuals belonging to a minority culture could preserve their cultural identity began to be valued. It was soon evident that counselors could no longer ignore their own cultural background.