Page 304 - Microaggressions in Everyday Live Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

278 microaggressive impact on mental health practice

counseling/therapy relationship? What are the worldviews brought
to the clinical encounter by therapists that may prove detrimental to
people of color, women, or LGBTs? Without such an awareness and
understanding, therapists may continue in their oppressive ways and con-
tinue to deliver microaggressions. When this happens, therapists may
become guilty of cultural oppression, imposing values on marginalized
clients.
• Acquiring knowledge and understanding of the worldviews of diverse
groups and clients are all important in providing culturally relevant
services. It is important to understand the racial, gender, and sexual-
orientation realities of people of color, women, and LGBTs. As we have
consistently indicated, Whites are generally disadvantaged in under-
standing the personal and systemic experiences of oppressed groups in
our society, the everyday traumas they experience from both overt and
covert discrimination. Without this understanding and awareness, they
are likely to continue invalidating, denigrating, and insulting socially
devalued groups unintentionally. The result is that they become part of
the problem rather than the solution.
• Helping professionals must begin the process of developing culturally
appropriate and effective intervention strategies in working with clients
different from them. As we have emphasized, credibility is established
not only through trustworthiness, but by providing evidence of cultural
profi ciency in practice (expertness). We have not dealt with issues of
culturally appropriate helping, but they often are in direct violation
of therapeutic taboos derived from ethnocentric standards of practice
and codes of ethics. Yet it is important to note that therapeutic actions
considered unhelpful and unethical from a Western perspective may be
considered qualities of helping for different cultural groups.
• As we saw from Chapter 10 , microaggressions and oppression can
come from institutional structures, policies, practices, and regulations.
Increasing the professional ’ s understanding of organizational dynam-
ics and development, how to effectively intervene in the system, and
being able to recognize how system forces affect the life experiences of
marginalized groups will prove helpful in treatment strategies. Helping
professionals must develop skills that involve interventions aimed at
organizational structures, policies, practices, and regulations within
institutions, if they are to become culturally competent.
(Continued)

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