Social and Cultural Diversity
Conceptual frames
Multicultural competence is usually tested through the tripartite model (Sue, Arredondo, McDavis): awareness of one's own assumptions and biases, knowledge of clients' worldviews and histories, and skills - with an action/advocacy dimension added in later frameworks such as the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, skills, action).
Identity development models are the second cluster. Cross's nigrescence model runs Pre-encounter, Encounter, Immersion-Emersion, Internalization, Internalization-Commitment. Helms's White racial identity runs Contact, Disintegration, Reintegration, Pseudo-independence, Immersion-Emersion, Autonomy. Stage names overlap but describe different populations; both move from unawareness toward a more complex identity. Cass's model describes sexual orientation identity (Confusion, Comparison, Tolerance, Acceptance, Pride, Synthesis), and Phinney's model describes ethnic identity in adolescence.
Other must-knows: Berry's acculturation strategies (integration, assimilation, separation, marginalization); microaggressions (Sue) in three forms - microassault, microinsult, microinvalidation; cultural encapsulation (Wrenn); worldview and locus of control/responsibility; spirituality as a clinical variable; and intersectionality (Crenshaw).
Traps: naming a stage without matching its defining behavior; inferring acculturation from ethnicity or language; treating competence as memorized group facts; forgetting that the counselor's own privilege is the first target of the awareness dimension.
Rule of thumb: match the behavior described to the model's stage - and whenever a counselor in a vignette generalizes from group membership alone, the best answer is "explore this client's individual meaning."