Race, Ethnicity, and Racism in Counseling Psychology

Introduction

The diverse nature of the world we live in provides both a source of inspiration and challenge. The challenging aspects of diversity are heightened within a counseling environment where the crossroads of identity and culture meet and intersect. To be successful in any counseling attempt, the psychic power of empathy must be employed in order to reach out and communicate with the one seeking help.

The concept of the self becomes very important in developing new behavioral habits that can be channeled in a constructive manner — one that aligns with greater societal needs and blends, in harmony, the internal ideals of the self. Race and ethnicity are important factors in understanding oneself and hold key information about how one can realize their true self within the presence and context of others.

The purpose of this essay is to explain the synthesis of both race and ethnicity into the self-defining mechanisms of patients and clients who seek healing and assistance in psychological counseling. To accomplish this, the essay first defines key terms that help frame the discussion. It also discusses the subjective nature of psychology and the self, and how understanding the limitations of both objectivity and material society can mislead individuals into false paradigms that do not promote healing or well-being. Ultimately, this essay argues that race and ethnicity — and the conflation of these ideas — are broadly misunderstood, and that placing too much emphasis on these defining terms tends to harm rather than help.

Defining Race and Ethnicity

The terms "race" and "ethnicity" are often conflated and not appropriately distinguished in ways that could better clarify their meaning. Race has been used as a means to stereotype and group individuals in certain ways. It is often employed as an intellectual shortcut and a catch-all explanation for social ills. The tendency in science and academia is to dissect things down to their smallest components while ignoring the bigger picture of how those components fit into a society or group. As a result, race and ethnicity have become conflated due to the subtle tendency to take intellectual shortcuts.

Race is not chosen by the individual; it is assigned at birth. Race is a biological condition. Racial features include skin color, hair color and type, skull shape, muscle formations, and other physical traits. The human race is regarded as the most general category, suggesting that all others are offshoots of this main trunk. Races do not have exact scientific definitions, and different cultures identify different races for different reasons. The problems associated with race are largely related to the challenge of defining it in simple terms — a difficulty in and of itself.

Ethnicity is different from race in that it categorizes people in a cultural manner. Ethnic groups share a common history and common roots that help members identify themselves through the customs and culture of those historic origins. Ethnicity is not biological on its face, but it provides insight into how different racial groups create and utilize culture for their own practical purposes.

The Impact of Religion

Religion is extremely impactful in shaping how individuals view themselves within the context of the greater collective. Religion is based on the idea of connecting to the source of existence — or, in some cases, to the absence of such a source. Religion drives many people and sets the course for cultural and societal norms. This spiritual connection is correlated with the ways in which race and ethnicity become intertwined, as varying forms of religious practice are expressed through the understanding and observance of faith traditions.

For many people, science and rational thought have provided a kind of religious connection in today's technology-based world. The temptation to rely solely on cold reason is nonetheless dangerous, because it ignores the subjective interpretation of the interpreter and the impact of that interpretation on the event being analyzed. Regardless of a counselor's personal religious beliefs, a firm understanding of how these forces shape both culture and the individual helps reveal important attributes relevant to understanding the relationship between race, ethnicity, and psychological well-being.

Literature Review

Christopher et al. (2014) highlighted the uniqueness and specificity of culture as it relates to psychological treatment. The impact of globalization was used to illustrate the dangers of exporting the concepts, practices, and values of U.S.-centered psychology to geographical areas where those values are neither accepted nor understood. The literature aimed to demonstrate how culture — and hence the subjective interpretation of one's own place in the world — directly affects a person's mental health. The authors wrote:

"Science — whether in the form of methodological controls or evidence-based practice guidelines — cannot produce 'pure' forms of knowledge unaffected by the knowers' place in historical time and geographic space. Because global connectedness is projected to increase dramatically in the foreseeable future, U.S. psychologists need to apprise themselves of the moral visions and folk psychologies that are embedded in their own assumptions, methods, and practices. Hermeneutic thought, along with the research methods it has inspired, provides tools for examining the ways that culture shapes human experience, and the ways that culture — in the form of folk psychologies and moral visions — shapes every psychology" (p. 653).

The hermeneutic approach holds value across many psychological objectives, including identifying patterns of racial and ethnic adaptation. This framework also allows for subjective interpretations to be accepted without moral judgment — a quality that can significantly impact the mental health and healing capacity of any individual who is not at ease within their society.

Hardin et al. (2014) introduced a clinical tool to help identify some of these dynamics within psychological practice. The Critical Lens Approach (CLA) is used to demonstrate a scholar's ability to synthesize knowledge about cultural differences. The research's premise is that culture is an important contributor to positive psychology, and that having a means to assess awareness of this contribution can guide practitioners toward integrating culture more fully into their work.

The authors ultimately concluded that "the CLA is so widely relevant because it is not limited to assessing the cultural validity of individual differences measures, but it may be applied more broadly to assess the cultural validity of theoretical propositions about the relationships between constructs and the cultural validity of experimental manipulations and behavioral operationalizations." In other words, an instrument such as the CLA becomes valuable for evaluating the evaluation itself. This self-reflective mechanism can help practitioners become aware of the subjective biases they must incorporate into their understanding of a patient's situation. The article further demonstrated the critical importance of subjective interpretation and the dangers of becoming overly objective — notably, by using an objective measure to evaluate subjectivity, a balanced and reasonable approach to integrating both sides of the equation.

Oser et al. (2014) examined how Black women may be more vulnerable to stressful lifetime events as a result of a disconnection between their sense of self and their race and place in society. Knowing oneself and one's place in society is placed at a premium in this research, which sought to determine whether such a relationship exists. The study used data from 204 Black women in a southeastern U.S. city, exploring the intersecting effects of racism, sexism, and stressful life events in a social context.

The research suggested that "it is important to note that sociocontextual risk may also explain the significant, positive correlation of racism and sexism to every other stressful life event measured in this study across a range of social contexts and life domains. These findings support the existing research and theoretical constructs of intersectionality, suggesting that African-American women's social location may increase their susceptibility to adverse life events and chronic stressors, often resulting in psychological distress" (p. 567).

These conclusions further suggest that culture and the way it is subjectively interpreted provides the necessary stimuli for either progress or regression in mental advancement and adaptation to change. The reduction of stress appears dependent on the ability to make sense of one's place in society, using race, gender, and sociocultural position as lenses through which to interpret that experience.

Stein et al. (2014) examined Asian-American adolescents and how they used their unique ethnic characteristics as a buffering tool in social situations. The research ultimately concluded that "these findings suggest that in an emerging community, ethnic exploration is particularly beneficial in the long run, and may be more important than ethnic belonging in terms of promoting positive youth outcomes. This finding suggests that changes in either depressive symptoms or self-esteem are not due to past experiences of ethnic or racial discrimination or economic stress. This is consistent with other findings in the literature showing that for Asian-American youth, ethnic and racial discrimination predicted current psychological functioning but not longitudinal outcomes" (p. 211).