Developing Multicultural Counseling Competence: A Systems Approach

This book doesn't take sides very much, which is probably my favorite part. It paints a picture of diversity in many facets and how the many identities carried by every human in society give all of us a host of different privileges and setbacks that is different for every person. I was confused when reading many of the negative reviews for this book. Maybe if you only read the first paragraph of every chapter you may think "oh, white privilege is a thing" and you'd be correct to assume as much? Maybe you could argue "hey, I'm white and I'm still poor and marginalized" and you'd still be correct because this book does incorporate socio-economic status and disability into its framework. Overall, this book is an insightful synopsis on the nature of identity in society and how it is complex and interwoven in many beautiful and sometimes difficult ways. It doesn't touch on social justice nor does it push a political agenda, don't let the negative comments dissuade you!

Like new and just what I needed for my class. Saw many reviews about the content of the book and they weren’t good however I just need it for a class. Not taking the information to heart. Fast shipper.

Exactly what I needed for school

Liked this book on my iPad for school. Enabled me to highlight texts and easily navigate back and forth through chapters.

I liked everything!

excellent book

I will start by saying that, even though I agree with some of the biases of this book, I still found it absurdly biased, factually inaccurate, poorly written, and in dire need of more information. I was on the fence about giving this one or two stars, but I decided that this is the worst textbook I have ever read - and I am currently getting a Master's degree, so I've read a lot! I was a bit worried when I saw the reviews for this book, but I did notice that many came from people who disagreed with the politics of these authors, so I took them with a grain of salt. However, I was more concerned that many of the positive reviews seem to be about how well the Kindle app works, rather than the book. Those reviews artificially increase the average score and don't really belong here. Let's talk about the problems: This book has an entire section on gender and sex, which is a great idea, particularly in a mental health book. Men have worse mental health outcomes, so I was looking forward to learning about the sexism women face and the challenges men face. However, this book never mentions male suicide rates or addiction rates. Not even in some context that blames patriarchy or something like that. Men are 3-4 times as likely as women to commit suicide. How do you not mention wildly disproportionate suicide rates in a MENTAL HEALTH book??? Men are significantly more likely to suffer from addiction. It is negligent to leave these facts out, and negligent not to talk about why these discrepancies exist. It feels like there is some bias that motivated them to leave this crucial information out of the book. There are some very dubious statements in this text. In regards to identifying race on forms the author claims that: "some individuals fail to acknowledge their ethnicity because of the salient, privileged status of their racial category (e.g., White)." I don't think I've ever heard that given as a reason. When I've heard white people say they choose not to self-report race, it is generally more to avoid affirmative action. When it comes to white people in general, the book claims that "They lack an accurate awareness as a racial being and experience intellectual deficits because they are unable to develop a full range of knowledge of racial issues and culture in general." This statement is really overly broad, and perpetuates a negative stereotype about most of the country. They get basic 7th grade biology wrong when it comes to what the sex chromosomes are. They actually get them backwards: "People who are intersex are those who have variations of reproductive or sexual anatomy that do not fit into the socially constructed definitions of male (XX chromosomes) and female (XY chromosomes)." In reality XX is female, and XY is male. This is the THIRD addition of this book - how has this not been fixed yet?!? The authors appear to believe that marriage is a way for men to own women. This is obviously not true, and women are often more interested in getting married, and the process of a wedding, than men are: "Because patriarchy has overstayed its initial purpose of assisting in human survival, it has also become a system of ownership, in which women have become property of men in institutions such as marriage" This book also uses terribly outdated stats - claims that 24% of LGB people are non-religious citing a study from 2010. As of 2019 it was 41% according to Pew. This information can be found with a quick Google search. The book is also terribly written - it has lots of run-on sentences, and sentences that are just incredibly hard to read. For example: "The components of the system are individuals who are actively (e.g., lobbying to eliminate affirmative action policies) and passively (e.g., ignoring racist comments by a colleague) complicit in the reinforcement of racial worldview structures (e.g., prejudices, discrimination, racial inequities) through intentional (e.g., voting, gentrification, employment practices) and unintentional (e.g., obliviousness to the absence of workplace diversity) actions." Surely there is a better way to write that! In fact, this book should be improved in almost every aspect. I highly recommend using another text if at all possible.

What I think this book does not understand, nor choose to do so, and wallow in IGNORANCE, is that racism is UNIVERSAL. Sure, there are good people of every race, but go to a foreign country sometime and see the level of PRIVILEGE (as this text points out constantly) is inherent in the culture. It is APPAULING and laughable, cuz they don't even try to hide it as they do in America! So to say that just America has this problem is incredibly ignorant and laughable, particularly when you examine the extent and level of racism in other countries. This by no means excuses racism or hatred at all, but it's like saying, "oh Americans murder and steal, and commit adultery." Yes, this is true, but so doesn't every other culture! Until these idiotic authors understand this, they really have no perspective or context of the problem of multiculturalism, and by no means are looking at the problem objectively. Sure, there is white privilege in America. There is also Chinese privilige in China and Columbian privilege in Columbia. Whatever ruling group that is in place does this, as since the dawn of history, until the next group gets into power, THAN THEY DO THE SAME OR WORSE. This is the real world view, for better or worse. One you understand this, and the power dynamics behind this powerful force that every culture to some extent uses or manipulates, , than you can truly understand the universialism of racism and hatred, and the inherent preference of one's own group, whether they are white, black, asian or hispanic.