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

Racism in the Counselling Relationship - Essay mannequinThe 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 todays 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 style 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 opposite became aggressively visible with the Black Civil Rights Movement and compell ed counselors to explore the impact 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 place setting 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 give the sack their own cultural background.