Critical Issues in Teaching a Multicultural Counseling Course

A Multicultural Counseling course (MCC) brings unique challenges and rewards to both instructors and students. Given its unique challenges, the process of teaching a MCC is as important as, or even more important than, the content. Drawing from extant literature and the authors’ experiences, this paper discusses such topics as what to teach, how to teach, classroom dynamics, instructors’ issues, and students’ issues to provide a concise, practical, and comprehensive framework for teaching such difficult but essential courses.     

Own Group Oppression, Other Group Oppression, and Perspective Taking

This survey research examined the relationship of awareness of own versus awareness of other group oppression across sexism, racism, and homonegativity, by including perspective taking (PT) as a moderator. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that awareness of sexism (own group oppression) predicted awareness of racism (other group oppression) in a sample of 116 European American females (Study 1), whereas awareness of racism (own group oppression) did not predict awareness of homonegativity (other group oppression) in a sample of 113 U.S. racial minorities (Study 2). High PT, compared to low PT, did not predict a stronger relationship between awareness of own and awareness of other group oppression. Post-hoc speculation on the role of PT in intergroup relations and implications for research and counseling are discussed.