Social and Cultural Diversity
What this domain tests
Multicultural counseling competencies, racial/ethnic and sexual identity development, acculturation, and the counselor's own cultural self-awareness applied to case scenarios.
Core frameworks
- Sue, Arredondo & McDavis (1992) tripartite competencies: awareness, knowledge, skills. The MSJCC (Ratts et al., 2016) expands to attitudes/beliefs, knowledge, skills, and action across individual, group, universal, and ecological domains, shifting from competence toward cultural humility and advocacy.
- Cross (1971) Black identity: pre-encounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, internalization, internalization-commitment. Helms' White identity: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudo-independence, immersion-emersion, autonomy. Sue & Sue's R/CID: conformity, dissonance, resistance/immersion, introspection, integrative awareness. Cass (1979) describes six stages of sexual identity formation; Marcia covers adolescent identity statuses.
- Berry's acculturation strategies: assimilation, separation, integration, marginalization. It is bidimensional (heritage and host culture orientations), not a single straight line.
- Microaggressions (Sue et al., 2007): microassault, microinsult, microinvalidation. Also know Wrenn's cultural encapsulation (1962), etic vs emic, individualism/collectivism, and Hall's high/low context.
Worked example
A 34-year-old from a family-centered culture asks that her mother join sessions. Reasoning: do not read this as dependency pathology. Assess the client's own preference, obtain a written release, negotiate the mother's role and boundaries, and treat family involvement as a resource consistent with collectivist values.
Traps that cost marks
- Stereotyping from group membership instead of assessing this client.
- Assuming acculturation is linear and unidirectional.
- Color-blindness framed as fairness.
- Ignoring within-group variation, generational status, and intersectionality.