Queering Multicultural Competence in Counseling

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to 'queer' the multicultural counseling paradigm within the field of counseling. Queering multicultural counseling is about honestly, fairly, and respectfully examining taken-for-granted assumptions within the paradigm, challenging the status quo of multicultural competence, deconstructing hegemonic practices, and promoting critical consciousness. To do this, I am going to draw heavily from the narrative of an example of a practicing counselor presented in this chapter This is because one of the taken- for-granted assumptions of counselors who consider themselves to be multiculturally competent is that they are too open, too aware, too beneficent, too sensitive, and too knowledgeable to participate in hegemonic practices. Nichole's narrative will serve as a gateway toward understanding how well-intended counselors who have been trained within the multicultural counseling competence (MCC) paradigm perpetuate heterosexual hegemony. My hope is that well-meaning readers who see themselves as multiculturally competent and 'affirmative' of persons who identify as LGB might recognize how they reproduce colonization in ways that are both overt and subversive, within both individual and systemic domains. Moreover, I intend to make the case that the MCC paradigm is inadequate to the task of interrupting heterosexual hegemony as it conforms to the heterosexual hierarchy. What is necessary for decolonizing the fields of counseling and psychology is a social justice (SJ) paradigm of counseling: a model that is nonconforming, that incessantly challenges hierarchy and the status quo. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)