Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice 7th Edition

I have been hearing great things about this book from my professors for some time now, and it is required reading in my Multicultural Counseling course I'm currently taking. In moving towards multicultural competence, you have to keep an open mind and avoid getting defensive. If you get too emotionally reactive/defensive, you miss things that you need to learn about to be a competent counselor with diverse clients. You must be willing to reexamine your attitudes, biases, and behaviors, and avoid defensiveness, in order to hear and understand the experiences of diverse people. Its a powerful book.

I will be reading this again in the future. Sue and Sue opened my eyes to diversity. I am a white, straight, Christian male. I read this for a class. It made a positive impact on my personal views on racism, sexism, and other types of bias I might have. It also helped me understand some of the perspectives culturally diverse clients may bring to my table, and some ideas about how to handle my own work in light of these lerspectives.

This is a great textbook. Derald Sue and David Sue have made EuroAmerican counseling their punching bag and have put the EuroAmerican counselors in America on notice that they are participating in racism, classism, sexism and who knows what else. I know I felt beat up by it. But I'm a better person for the knowledge. I don't have to be a counselor with a 50% rate of clients not returning after the first session, because I use microaggressions in my counseling.

Personally challenging and important, in my opinion, but you really have to weigh through the racism and microaggressions to learn about racism and microaggressions. Of course, the book already tells you if you think it's racist, then it's just your own racism at work--haha. The greatest benefit was in marginalizing the majority group. You really do come away with a little bit of the feeling marginalized groups must have, because you don't agree with it, but can't fight it. As a 'privileged' member, it locks you into a category and cuts off any avenue to intellectually or emotionally escape the category. You are, in essence, defined by someone else. You're powerless--frustrated with no recourse.As an interesting addition, the book itself and the classroom it promotes become its own culture complete with power and stratification, and it's a culture where whites are powerless and the group belonging to the most marginalized groups has the most power. The currency is free speech and acceptance and legitimacy. White males have the least currency. Presumably, old disabled black lesbian females would have the most currency. It does highlight society's current race for marginalization. Unfortunately, the division this mindset breeds is evident as well.At some point, someone's going to have to start seeing past the division to unification. That's what we lost when MLK was assassinated. His vision was never about division. It was a vision of inclusion and unification. Brilliant dude. Book is worth the experience. I'm left unsure if the authors are brilliant themselves or if their book turned out to be worth more than what they wrote.

This is a great text. If you’re buying for a class be prepared. The authors pull no punches. There’s no blaming any one race for the way things are in many counseling offices. However, they do show there is some overt and covert racism built into many counseling programs and universities that can prevent one from being the best and most effective counselor they can be if such issues are not recognized and worked out.

This is an amazing text. It is quite though provoking and encourages all cultures to explore the unique qualities of the other cultures that surround us. It also adds a healthy dose of humility and honesty to those of us that believe we are pure of thought in every way. It is really to bad this isn't required in high schools.

If this would not have been a REQUIRED reading for a grad course at an extremely leftist college, I would not have touched this book with a ten-foot pole. It literally pushes white privilege and racism, stating that every white person is racist whether they realize it or not. It forces white individuals to "realize" that they are privileged and racist. This could not be any further from the truth. This book made me very angry - I have no microaggression or racism towards any individual regardless of age, race, religion, etc. VERY POOR READ - VERY HARD TO READ. I wish colleges would not require such biased education material that hinders the mindset of individual students. My 4.0 GPA was almost hindered because of my strong feelings towards the writers' biased opinion of the white population. My professor told me on many occasions that my beliefs were "wrong" and that I needed to "open my mind." Leftist agenda and "molding minds" in college should not serve as a basis for learning how to handle biases and prejudices within the counseling world. Mind-molding and belief-changing SHOULD NOT be happening in college... PERIOD. A person should not change who they are or what they believe in order to be successful in life. #nonconformity - Stay strong and stay true to yourself fellow grad students.

This has been by far the best textbook that I have read throughout my whole career as a student. The writing was very clear and I liked how authentic the book is with the examples that they used. I would recommend everyone to have this textbook has a reference and just to add to your collection.