COUC 504 Week 3 Group DB Forum 2 Example

Group Discussion Board Forum 2: Thread and Replies

COUC 504 Multicultural Counseling, Group Discussion Board Forum 2 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the writer's background and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the studies, Scripture and textbooks are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for COUC 504.

Thread

Growing up in a town where nearly everyone was white, I thought of ethnicity as something other people had. My family was "just American." This week's readings, especially the identity development chapters in Hays and Erford (2018), showed me that never having to think about one's ethnicity is itself a feature of belonging to the majority. For many of my future clients, ethnic identity will have been something they had to work out, sometimes under pressure, in schools, workplaces and neighborhoods that treated their background as different from the norm.

That matters clinically. Smith and Silva (2011) combined data from 184 studies of people of color in North America and found that people with a stronger ethnic identity tended to report somewhat better well-being, an overall correlation of about .17. The relationship appeared across races, genders and socioeconomic levels, held more strongly among teenagers and people in their twenties than among adults past 40, and was about twice as strong for self-esteem and positive well-being as for symptoms of distress. The authors noted that the studies were correlational, so the findings show association rather than cause.

If ethnic identity is linked more to thriving than to the absence of symptoms, then a counselor who treats identity only as a source of stress misses half of what it offers. For practice, I take three things from this. First, I should ask clients directly how they describe their cultural and ethnic background and how important it is to them, rather than assuming either way. Second, I should notice when a client speaks of community, language or heritage with pride, since these may be resources for treatment goals. Third, younger clients may be in the middle of exploring identity, so I should expect it to shift and avoid labeling them too early. None of this requires me to be an expert on every culture, only to be curious and to let clients teach me.

In John's vision of worship, a crowd too large to count gathers before the throne, and its members are still identified by their nations, tribes, peoples and languages (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Revelation 7:9). Heaven, in that picture, keeps difference rather than erasing it. I read it as permission to honor a client's heritage as something God values, not something to get past.

Classmates: how would you ask a client about ethnic identity in a first session without making it feel like a checklist question?

Reply to Aaliyah

Aaliyah, you wrote about working with Black teenagers in an after-school program and noticing that the students who talked proudly about their family's history seemed to handle setbacks better. Research supports your observation, at least for many young people. Rivas-Drake et al. (2014) reviewed studies of ethnic and racial identity among minority adolescents and concluded that, with some exceptions, aspects of identity were generally associated with adaptive psychosocial, academic and health outcomes. They found the evidence was especially consistent for African American adolescents across all three areas, while results were somewhat mixed for Latino and American Indian youth and research was thin for Asian American and Pacific Islander adolescents.

That pattern fits what you saw, and it also suggests caution in generalizing from one group to another. Your program could be a natural place for the kind of identity exploration the review describes, perhaps through family history projects or conversations with community elders. I also wonder whether the students who seemed less connected to their heritage were simply at an earlier point in exploring it, rather than lacking it. How do you think a counselor could tell the difference between a teen who has not yet explored identity and one who has deliberately set it aside?

Reply to Brian

Brian, you questioned whether research on ethnic identity can be meaningful when every group's history and culture is so different, since being Korean American and being Mexican American are not the same experience. That is a fair challenge, and it is one researchers have wrestled with. Phinney (1992) designed the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure for exactly this problem. Rather than measuring the unique content of any one group's culture, it measures elements of ethnic identity common across groups, such as a sense of belonging and the degree of exploration and commitment, so that identity and its correlates can be compared. In its first administration to 417 high school students and 136 college students from ethnically diverse schools, it showed good reliability, with alpha coefficients of .81 and .90.

So your point and the measure work together. The specific meaning of identity differs from group to group, which is why McGoldrick et al. (2005) devote separate chapters to different ethnic families, but the process of exploring and committing to an identity may be shared. In counseling, that suggests learning the specific content from the client while watching for the common process. Do you think a measure like this would be useful in counseling, or does it belong only in research?

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Hays, D. G., & Erford, B. T. (2018). Developing multicultural counseling competence: A systems approach (3rd ed.). Pearson.

McGoldrick, M., Giordano, J., & Garcia-Preto, N. (Eds.). (2005). Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Phinney, J. S. (1992). The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7(2), 156-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/074355489272003

Rivas-Drake, D., Seaton, E. K., Markstrom, C., Quintana, S., Syed, M., Lee, R. M., Schwartz, S. J., Umaña-Taylor, A. J., French, S., Yip, T., & Ethnic and Racial Identity in the 21st Century Study Group. (2014). Ethnic and racial identity in adolescence: Implications for psychosocial, academic, and health outcomes. Child Development, 85(1), 40-57. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12200

Smith, T. B., & Silva, L. (2011). Ethnic identity and personal well-being of people of color: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(1), 42-60. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021528