Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice 7th Edition

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Never have I read a textbook that I had trouble putting down. This is book is for those mental health practitioners that are interested in change, and being better able to reach their marginalized clients of color. I highly recommend this book. It is eye opening.

This book is the pits. My entire graduate-level multicultural class was up in arms about it, and we were a very diverse group of ages, ethnic groups, and a third of our students were from other countries. At one point the authors give a suggestion that to counsel a young black man it could be helpful to try to make the bridge by asking him about rap music. Seriously, the book said this. I'm sure once upon a time Sue & Sue were groundbreaking in multicultural psychology. Now their "sensitive" recommendations are flatly prejudiced stating that many Asians look down when they talk to you. There is little mention of people who originate from the Middle East, and Native Americans have been blended into a chapter, a TINY chapter, with people from the Pacific Islands. The chapter on women is almost nonexistent. Basically every chapter we reviewed in class had us up in arms about how awkward, out of touch, and insufficient all of them were. Our poor professor, around 60 years old himself, kept saying how he knows them. What does that have to do with anything? He suggested we contact Sue & Sue, but in the very opening, the book basically says that if you don't like the book you must be a racist white person or a self-hating non-white person. So that's super encouraging (no). Honestly, the arrogance of the authors is just revolting. I hope hope hope that their new edition addresses these many issues and they can take a breath and come to terms with the reality that things change, and whatever was truth 20-30 years ago, even TEN years ago, is just not relevant enough to modern issues. This text needs to go where it belongs, with the history books.

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.