Multicultural Competence

Multicultural Competencestudent affiliation
Multicultural competence is fluency in more than one culture which surrounds a person. Cultural competence is essential when dealing with people in society because, a majority of people belong to diverse cultural groups, languages, races, ethnicities, and beliefs. In the therapy field, it is crucial for counselors to be multicultural competent to avoid judging a client based on their cultural beliefs and practices (Gorski & Goodman, 2014).
A competent multicultural counselor should be aware of own assumptions on values, biases, and behaviors. Secondly, competent multicultural counselors should create intervention strategies when dealing with clients from a different cultural background and they should not blame the issue on the client’s culture. Thirdly a multiculturally competent counselor should try to understand a client from their cultural perspective or a different cultural perception. Multicultural competence helps a counselor comprehend that standard counseling techniques may not be helpful to clients with diverse cultural backgrounds. Secondly, the counselor will be able to understand that cultural practices are not accountable for the issues a client goes through (Gorski & Goodman, 2014).
Multicultural training helps in increasing cultural self-awareness while reducing racial prejudice. Through increasing cultural self-awareness, counselors will be able to have a better understanding of a client. A counselor who lacks multicultural competence is termed to biased, less emphatic and has racial stereotypes.

A person’s cultural and ethnic background affect their attitude, behavior, values, and beliefs. It is always easy for a person to be biased when they lack multicultural competence. For instance, when dealing with a client belonging to a cultural group which has a majority of divorce cases, it is easy to judge the client based on their cultural problem. It is also easy to judge a homosexual client based on how homosexuality is viewed in society or based on individual perception. Different cultures have diverse religious beliefs which may not correspond to individual beliefs, and this may create prejudices when developing multicultural competence. For instance, Hinduism is the worship of different gods while Christianity is worshipping a true God and therefore multicultural competence in such a case may affect a person’s religious belief. (Kite & Whitley, 2016).
In conclusion, multicultural competence is important in diverse organizations which deal with people from different cultural groups. Multicultural competence helps in understanding people from different cultural perspectives to avoid judging them wrongly. A counselor who lacks multicultural competence is termed to biased, less emphatic and has racial stereotypes. Clients easily mistrust a counselor who has multicultural incompetence.
References
Gorski, P. C., & Goodman, R. (2014). Decolonizing “multicultural” counseling through social justice.
Kite, M. E., & Whitley, B. E. (2016). Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination. s.l: Taylor and Francis.