Introduction: Toward a Decolonized Multicultural Counseling and Psychology

Abstract

Multiculturalism was a significant step forward in the fields of counseling and psychology. As a result of the pioneering work of scholars and activists in this area, we find ourselves spending less and less energy trying to convince colleagues of the merits of approaches that acknowledge difference and to challenge the imposition of Euro-, cis-male-, Christian-, or hetero-centric norms onto counseling and psychology. While we appreciate the risks taken by scholars and practitioners who worked tirelessly to move multiculturalism and other diversity-acknowledging frameworks from the margins toward the center of our disciplines, we believe we are now at a critical juncture in regard to social justice. We do not lack frameworks and approaches for deconstructing problematic counseling and psychology paradigms and practices, nor do we lack counselors and psychologists who desire to adopt the paradigms and practices that will help them connect more effectively with the full diversity of humanity and create a more equitable and just world. The danger, however, is that too often “multicultural” counseling and psychology are practiced or theorized in ways that actually replicate the power arrangements they ought to be dismantling. We worry that these paradigms and practices have been nudged closer and closer to the center of counseling and psychology discourses only after they’ve been scrubbed of their transformative natures. Although developed, perhaps, in attempts to enact social justice, many of these practices are softened or reshaped to comply with the very sorts of marginalization they were imagined to counteract.

In this introduction, we provide a framework for our thinking and for the focus of the contributions to this volume. First, we discuss colonizing multicultural counseling and psychology, including the ways in which many well-meaning diversity initiatives essentially bolster the status quo and existing power structures. Next, we discuss a decolonizing multicultural counseling and psychology, drawing on scholarship from several other disciplines to explore the ways in which our practices can address systemic disparities. Finally, we provide an overview of the remaining chapters in the volume.