Racial Identity And Color-Blindness: A Case Study

Brief Summary/Introduction
1. What is the main hypothesis/question posed by this article?
Professionals working in the counseling field will meet clients from diverse populations. As clinicians serve clients from different backgrounds, it is important they are culturally competent to effectively provide therapeutic services. Providing effective therapeutic services means possessing multicultural counseling competence which includes awareness, knowledge, and skills when working with clients from diverse backgrounds (Johnson & Jackson Williams, 2015). The purpose of their study was to examine the effects racial identity and color-blindness has in multicultural counseling competence among White doctoral students in the psychology field. The main question of the study asks how color-blind racial
Racial colorblindness is described as the act of denying, distorting, and minimizing the existence of race and racism (Johnson, & Jackson Williams, 2015). If clinicians do not spread awareness of diverse populations, this leads to learned biases and stereotypes. The truth about different cultures will never be learned if clinicians do not seek opportunities to increase awareness. As suggested in the study, there are many ways to increase cultural knowledge which includes getting educated on family systems, becoming familiar with multicultural books, and literature reviews on cultural diversity (Johnson, & Jackson Williams, 2015). In order to become skillful providing in working with diverse clients, clinicians must use knowledge and awareness and become increasingly active in interacting with different cultural communities. The more exposure and practice, the more skills will be acquired. Cultural competence will allow clinicians to develop effective interventions and appropriately address and social and cultural