Counseling Leaders and Advocates. Группа авторов
Figure 2.2 The Culturally Responsive Counseling Leader and the Black Lives Matter Movement
BLM advocacy step. Culturally responsive counseling leaders can advocate for and with the BLM movement by taking two steps within this microsystem. First, leaders can actively familiarize themselves with the foundation and ongoing activities of the BLM movement. This can take the form of reading and watching information sources supportive of the movement and taking time to critically think about ways the movement can be constructively criticized for its benefit and success. Second, leaders can invite and engage members of the movement into their microsystem for meaningful relationships. This step has the potential to further humanize and affirm the critical importance of the fight against and resistance to all forms of white supremacy.
Evaluating the effectiveness of this advocacy step. Culturally responsive counseling leaders can evaluate their effectiveness in this advocacy step by simply assessing their microsystem. Leaders can ask themselves, “With whom do I most frequently and intimately engage? How do those forms of engagement support or impede my ideas and sensibilities about the BLM movement?”
Mesosystem
Throughout the mesosystem of the culturally responsive counseling leader, the focus is on connections. According to Bronfenbrenner (1979), the mesosystem focuses on the interactions between individuals’ microsystems. For example, how do counseling leaders’ students (i.e., classroom as one microsystem) interact with other counseling faculty at programs or events (i.e., faculty colleagues as micro-system). Counseling leaders work hard to be present and accessible in a variety of contexts (e.g., department-wide programs, student events, information sessions) that provide opportunities for deeper and more meaningful connections, helping to ensure that their connections are diverse and meaningful.
BLM advocacy step. Culturally responsive counseling leaders can advocate for the BLM movement in the context of their mesosystems by connecting the various members of their microsystems to provide opportunities for shared learning about the movement. For example, leaders can invite speakers or presenters to their campuses for professional development and continuing education activities that support the BLM movement. A variety of counseling and allied mental health educators can provide professional development for preservice counselors, practicing counselors, and counselor educators.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of this advocacy step. Culturally responsive leaders can evaluate the effectiveness of this step by having the courage to evaluate the scope, sequence, frequency, and diversity of how their microsystems interact. Counseling leaders must be brave enough to closely examine who they engage with to provide professional development for their learning community and reflect honestly on their motivations for those choices. This stronger and more structured approach enables leaders to closely examine the choices they make.
Exosystem
Bronfenbrenner (1979) described the exosystem as our indirect environment, or the policies that influence our microsystems and mesosystems. Counseling leaders may have direct or indirect roles in their indirect environment. Examples of counseling leaders’ exosystems are university guidelines that influence how they use instructional technology in the classroom, or actions taken by ACA on certain issues that the membership may or may not have had a direct influence in deciding. For example, members who did not and do not agree with ACA’s statement endorsing BLM are still influenced by ACA’s statement denouncing all forms of racism.
BLM advocacy step. Supporting the BLM movement at the exosystem level requires culturally responsive counseling leaders to willingly step out and openly endorse ACA’s position on the BLM movement, even in the midst of potential discomfort or disagreement. Doing so is an acknowledgment of the courage, reflection, and reflexivity required of culturally responsive counseling leaders to support collective action that humanizes, legitimizes, and supports diverse ways of supporting Black lives.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of this advocacy step. Culturally responsive leaders can evaluate their effectiveness in this advocacy step by assessing their visible, vocal, and written support of ACA’s public statements, as well as statements of other counseling organizations, in support of the BLM movement.
Macrosystem
The macrosystem encompasses the overall influence of the broader social and cultural values of the larger community. In this application, counseling leaders recognize the historical and systemic racism that has been enacted in the United States since its inception and has been acknowledged by the counseling profession and use this knowledge as an impetus to systematically fight against racism through social justice advocacy.
BLM advocacy step. Culturally responsive counseling leaders can advocate for the BLM movement within the macrosystem by taking individual and collective action to actively recruit and support Black counselor educators, help enable their success as faculty, and encourage their pursuit of leadership opportunities within the profession. The faculty in counseling programs and in counseling leadership remains overwhelmingly White, reflecting the historic lack of effective recruitment, retention, and engagement of Black counseling faculty.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of this advocacy step. Culturally responsive counseling leaders can advocate for the BLM movement by actively acknowledging and resisting the ways Black counselor educators have been marginalized in the profession. By examining issues ranging from grossly underrepresented Black counseling faculty to poor recruitment of Black students in counseling programs, counseling leaders can assess their role in resisting and disrupting these problems.
Chronosystem
The chronosystem represents the environmental and sociohistorical influences that prompt changes over time. In the counseling profession, leaders can acknowledge this and recognize that things will change over time, and we hope they will change for the better. In our current sociopolitical climate, some government leaders are endorsing and actively taking action against long-standing issues of racism and discrimination by endorsing the removal of some historic statues from communities and military bases or by supporting reparations for Black citizens.
BLM advocacy step. Culturally responsive counseling leaders can openly acknowledge the BLM movement and model the reflexive behavior associated with cultural responsiveness in the context of their leadership role, which directly supports and aligns with the BLM movement. This action requires an ongoing assessment and consideration of what and how they can learn in this moment and requires the transition from reflection to action by finding ways to acknowledge and support the changing tide in their respective communities and overall counseling profession.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of this advocacy step. Evaluating culturally responsive counseling leaders’ effectiveness in implementing this advocacy step requires leaders to publicly acknowledge the environmental and sociopolitical influences responsible for shifting the paradigm. It also requires leaders to align themselves with others in support of BLM and the ACA divisions supporting those shifts. This evaluation requires a personal and professional assessment of how and why counseling leaders take such action.
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As you further explore and understand your role as a current/future culturally responsive counseling leader, we encourage you to explore the Journal of Counseling & Development July 2020 special issue titled “Integrating the Multicultural and Social Justice Competencies Into Practice, Research, and Advocacy,” wherein multiple authors examine the “transformative opportunities that the MSJCC have to influence counseling”(Singh & Nassar, 2020, p. 235). Singh et al.’s (2020) call to use the MSJCC to decolonize counseling practice has an important bearing on how professional counseling leaders (e.g., national, regional, elected,