Ethnic Minority Psychological Associations and the Society of Counseling Psychology

Abstract

This article provides a summary of the Major Contribution on the Ethnic Minority Psychological Associations (Asian American Psychological Association, The Association of Black Psychologists, National Latina/o Psychological Association, Society of Indian Psychologists, and American Psychological Association Division 45) and their connections to counseling psychology and the Society of Counseling Psychology. An overview and highlights of common themes are provided and seven recommendations for future connections are explored. This article is one of seven articles that are part of a special issue of The Counseling Psychologist focused on the relationship between the five major Ethnic Minority Psychological Associations (EMPAs) and the Society of Counseling Psychology.

Keywords

ethnic minority psychology counseling psychology social justice psychology organizations

As seen in their respective articles, the five major EMPAs—the Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA; Alvarez, Singh, & Wu, 2012), The Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi; Obasi, Speight, Rowe, Clark, & Turner-Essel, 2012), the National Latina/o Psychological Association (NLPA; Chavez-Korell, Delgado-Romero, & Illes, 2012), the Society of Indian Psychologists (SIP; Gray, Carter, LaFromboise, & BigFoot, 2012), and the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues (Division 45; Morales, Lau, & Ballesteros, 2012)—are rich and vibrant organizations. Although each EMPA represents psychology broadly, each EMPA also overlaps with the Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP), the major professional organization of counseling psychologists, with shared members, compatible missions, and mutual influence.

As the first EMPA, the ABPsi was created out of the strife of the Civil Rights era and the recognition that the American Psychological Association (APA) was not adequately addressing the needs of Black people in the United States, including Black psychologists in the APA. The founders of the ABPsi made the decision to separate from the APA and develop an organization that would meet the professional, personal, and societal needs of Black psychologists, graduate students, and the Black community (see Obasi et al., 2012). The other major EMPAs (or their predecessors) also emerged from this era and have developed into organizations focused on ethnic minority psychology in general (Division 45) or on specific ethnic minority populations (AAPA, SIP, NLPA). A common emphasis across the EMPAs is the mentorship and development of ethnic minority psychologists and graduate students. In addition, the EMPAs, each in their own way, also seek to positively influence psychology practice, research, and training.

The authors have highlighted the roles that counseling psychologists have played in the formation and development of the five major EMPAs. A number of authors have noted professional, philosophical, and cultural congruence between the values of counseling psychology and their respective organizations. These shared values (e.g., a strength-based orientation; Alvarez et al., 2012) established the foundation for counseling psychologists to create bridges between counseling psychology and ethnic minority psychology concerns. These shared commitments and visions for psychology also create the foundation and driving force for shaping future collaborations.

The initial emergence of the major EMPAs was largely a response to the lack of support of ethnic minority psychologists and their work within the APA (see Leong, 2009). The formation of the major EMPAs was also reflective of larger social tensions around race and ethnicity (Pickren, 2009). Their formation permitted some ethnic minority psychologists and White allies to address the needs of their community and push for greater recognition and focus on ethnic minority issues within the larger field of psychology. As society changed, the structure and missions of the major EMPAs also developed and changed. More than 30 years later, ethnic minority issues in psychology have developed and deepened (Leong, 2009). During that same time span, SCP further developed its commitment to diversity that included a focus on women, LGBT, ethnic minority, and international issues and populations. In the mid-1990s, SCP established an organizational structure that allowed for the creation of sections, a place where members with common interests could organize and develop, resulting in the Section on Ethnic and Racial Diversity (SERD), a section where many EMPA counseling psychologists have made their home within SCP. We note that authors of articles in this Major Contribution, Edward Delgado-Romero and Ezemenari Obasi, are former and current SERD chairs, respectively.

The EMPAs and the Society of Counseling Psychology have influenced each other in a steady interplay of membership, scholarship, training, professional leadership, and community advocacy—a relationship that has been strengthened by both common values and discrepant views. This interplay, however, has not always been readily acknowledged or free from tension. As referenced in the introduction to this special issue (Delgado-Romero, Forrest, & Lau, 2012), EMPAs are rarely included in accounts of counseling psychology history, even in those accounts focused on racial and ethnic issues. The major EMPAs are also virtually absent from mainstream counseling psychology publications; for example, whereas multiculturalism, race, and ethnicity are discussed in the most recent Handbook of Counseling Psychology (Brown & Lent, 2008), the EMPAs are not. Scholarship that focuses on the EMPAs as organizational change agents (see D’Andrea et al., 2001) is rare. The historical interplay of EMPAs and SCP has been largely informal and at times incidental. As such, the authors of the articles in this Major Contribution call for more formalized and integrated relationships in moving forward.

In contrast to the relationships to the four ethnic-specific EMPAs, collaboration between Divisions 45 (the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Psychology) and 17 has been the most prominent. Active partnerships of the two divisions have been both informal (e.g., joint receptions at the APA) and formal (e.g., the joint writing team that led to the APA Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists; co-sponsorship of the biennial National Multicultural Conference and Summit). Division 45 shares the APA organizational structure in common with SCP (e.g., convention, APA governance), and consequently, it has been easier to create joint projects between the two organizations.

In an increasingly diverse United States, we wonder what the benefits might be if the EMPAs and SCP were to dialogue about ways in which each might play roles in supporting the others’ organizational identities and missions. In the current economic climate, the EMPAs and SCP might work together to maximize benefits for all involved. For example, Obasi and colleagues (2012) point out that the ABPsi offers certification in African Centered Psychology (ACP). Might SCP sponsor such training at an APA conference or a future Counseling Psychology Conference? Likewise, AAPA, NLPA, and SIP offer training, research symposia, and professional development that might be of interest to SCP members.

SCP has much to offer the EMPAs as well. SCP has political experience in negotiating the politics of the APA and other professional organizations. SCP might be able to serve as an ally or help support a joint leadership institute for emerging EMPA leaders. In addition, SCP has access to resources (journal space, convention time, newsletter, electronic mailing list sizeable budget) that might be used to further develop dialogue and joint agendas with the EMPAs. To the extent that common values and goals are evident to professionals and graduate students involved in both the EMPAs and SCP, and to the extent that the organizations provide complementary and stimulating opportunities for professional growth and support for their members, then the traditions of mutual influence among these associations will continue. We believe, however, that to achieve a meaningful dialogue, the history, purpose, and accomplishments of the EMPAs must be readily available to the SCP membership.

Future Directions

Major Contributions in The Counseling Psychologist have as their purpose to stimulate thought on important and relevant topics in counseling psychology. We hope that this contribution has stimulated thought about the roles that the EMPAs have and will play in counseling psychology’s growing commitment to an inclusive multicultural psychology. The authors of the articles have delineated their organization’s connections to counseling psychology and made suggestions for possible future collaborations. We offer the following suggestions to further develop relationships between the major EMPAs and SCP.

We believe that counseling psychology would benefit from the EMPAs becoming greater stakeholders in shaping the specialty. Given a shared value of social justice, SCP has the opportunity to be intentional in partnering with the EMPAs to promote social justice efforts. Shullman, Celeste, and Strickland (2006) specifically recommended supporting the social justice public policy efforts of the EMPAs. There is a range of support that SCP might be able to provide—ranging from financial (e.g., sponsoring and/or promoting EMPA conferences, offering reduced dues to joint members) to structural (e.g., appointing liaisons, creating joint task forces). For example, currently, the Counseling Psychology Synarchy, a joint governing body of organizations that represent counseling psychology as a specialty (Council of Specialties in Professional Psychology, n.d.), does not include any of the major EMPAs. We recommend that the members of the Counseling Psychology Synarchy discuss and consider inviting the EMPAs to join the group. The Synarchy identifies issues that affect counseling psychology as a specialty and develops joint strategic agendas. An example of an issue that the Synarchy could choose to address is mentioned by Gray and her colleagues (2012): The Indians into Psychology Doctoral Education program currently focuses only on recruiting and training Native American students in clinical psychology programs. SCP and the Synarchy can serve as advocates to support the program in also helping to recruit and train Native American students in counseling psychology programs.

As racial ethnic minorities continue to be underrepresented in psychology (APA, Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs, 2008; Maton, Kohout, Wicherski, Leary, & Vinokurov, 2006), SCP could partner with the EMPAs to promote and increase recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of ethnic minority graduate students from counseling psychology programs. Similarly, there should be an intentional focus on the career development of ethnic minority counseling psychologists. SCP could partner with the EMPAs to try to dramatically increase both the number of ethnic minority psychologists and the number of culturally competent psychologists of any ethnicity (Atkinson, Brown, Casas, & Zane, 1996). Counseling and vocational psychology literature point to the importance of such factors as financial support, mentoring, networking, and academic climate (Hill, Castillo, Ngu, & Pepion, 1999; Moradi & Neimeyer, 2005; Schlosser, Talleyrand, Lyons, Kim, & Johnson, 2011) as critical in the recruitment and retention of ethnic minority scholars and faculty. We suggest, for example, that SCP and the EMPAs can co-sponsor mentoring and training programs (see, for example, AAPA’s leadership program; Alvarez et al., 2012) that support scholars and faculty in the work and activities of both organizations. Graduate students themselves can create greater formal (e.g., liaisons) and informal (e.g., social gatherings at APA convention) relationships among the EMPA and SCP student affiliate groups. To increase involvement of non-ethnic minority students, co-hosting of difficult dialogue events at conferences and encouraging research and professional presentations at each other’s student affiliate group meetings can be considered.

SCP could be intentional about promoting EMPA journals as valued and well-regarded outlets for ethnic minority research. Currently, both The Journal of Black Psychology (JBP) and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology are successful journals. Great care has been taken to make sure JBP, as the premier journal in Black Psychology, has a strong impact rating (Obasi et al., 2012). AAPA has launched its own journal and NLPA stands ready to do the same. SCP has the potential to play a critical role in assuring that the EMPAs meet their goals for their journals and that those journals are seen as important outlets for counseling psychology scholarship. Highlighting the scholarly works of EMPA journals in SCP newsletters and websites or the websites of counseling psychology journals are relatively low-cost ways of increasing scholarly interactions.

This Major Contribution serves as a venue to inform counseling psychologists about the existence, history, accomplishments, and potential of the five national EMPAs. We hope that, moving forward, counseling psychologists who write histories about counseling psychology will include EMPA perspectives as part of the history and use the EMPAs and their journals as resources and sources of expertise about ethnic minority populations. Graduate training programs can incorporate exposure of the history and existence of the EMPAs (perhaps using the Major Contribution) into their curriculum as well.

International issues have become more of a focus with counseling psychology in recent years. Examples include the International Forum in The Counseling Psychologist (Kwan & Gerstein, 2008) and the 2008 International Counseling Psychology Conference (ICPC; Forrest, 2010). The five national EMPAs also have longstanding relationships with international psychologists, especially in Africa, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. There exists the potential to formally partner to more effectively reach international populations, share expertise in international work, and learn from these international colleagues and experiences. Natural catastrophes in Haiti, Chile, and Sri Lanka highlight the need for cooperation and sharing of expertise to adequately respond to international emergencies. In addition, given record numbers of international students in the United States, the EMPAs could partner with SCP to provide resources and support for these students (Delgado-Romero & Wu, 2010).

SCP and the five national EMPAs could collaborate on political issues within the APA that are important to both groups. For example, in 2007 and 2008, APA members voted down an APA bylaw change to include voting seats for the four ethnic-specific EMPAs on the APA Council to representatives. Together, the leaders of SCP and the major EMPAs could dialogue about subsequent steps. This dialogue might be difficult given that the EMPAs are not of one mind about the desirability of the seats on the council. The ABPsi has already stated that they do not want a voting seat on the APA Council, but they support their sister EMPAs in doing so (J. Myer, personal communication, January 18, 2011). Other diversity-focused issues as they arise within APA governance process might also benefit from an established collaborative relationship between the EMPAs and SCP that allows leaders of the organizations to act quickly and in concert with each other. For example, continued efforts to update and ensure wider endorsement of the Multicultural Guidelines (APA, 2003) or advocacy to provide culturally relevant perspectives in the revision of the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will benefit from the joint efforts of SCP and the five national EMPAs.

Finally, we urge SCP and the major EMPAs to work toward building structural connections and relationships that might be mutually beneficial. For example, each organization could designate a formal liaison person with the other organization. In addition, executive boards might enter into discussions about how best to build a more cohesive relationship that is beneficial to both organizations. The major EMPAs already have working relationships with each other and the APA, but we think a formalized relationship with SCP is warranted Furthermore, we have listed the web pages for the EMPAs and related organizations in the Appendix to encourage readers to become familiar with and involved in them.

Some Words of Caution

We would be remiss if we did not address the power imbalance at play and the potential for exploitation of the EMPAs. SCP is a powerful member of the APA with access to many resources. The APA is an organization that represents nearly 150,000 psychologists and graduate students, and as of 2008, SCP membership stood at approximately 2,600. By contrast, the major EMPAs are much smaller (ABPsi, 1,400; AAPA, 500; NLPA, 500; SIP, 52; and Division 45, 1,400) and represent all areas of psychology, not just counseling psychology. Although SCP has been receptive to issues of diversity, SCP leaders should be aware that only 12.5% of SCP are ethnic minority members and that although only 9.9% of SCP members are members of Division 45, 21.6% of members of Division 45 are members of SCP (APA Center for Workforce Studies, 2009). We recommend that similar data about the overlap in membership between SCP and the other EMPAs be collected by all EMPAs and SCP for future analysis.

The EMPAs have often faced obstacles in achieving their goals and missions (as affirmed by the histories shared in the five contributions), and this points to the complexities of realizing true partnerships between SCP and the EMPAs. In engaging with the EMPAs, SCP and counseling psychology can make contributions to realize the goals and missions common to both organizations. The recent internationalization and indigenization of counseling psychology (Forrest, 2010; Gone, 2010; Hill, Lau, & Sue, 2010; Yeh, Hunter, Madan-Bahel, Chiang, & Arora, 2004), however, are good examples of mindful attention to power issues in professional and scientific endeavors. The future of collaborative work between SCP and the EMPAs rests on our ability to attend to and navigate through these power differences and diverse perspectives.

At the symposium at ICPC that served as the impetus for this Major Contribution (Forrest et al., 2008), one of the founders of the ABPsi, Joe White, pointed out that although counseling psychology prided itself on having emphasis on positive psychology, multiculturalism, and social justice, these were all components that were part of the ABPsi from its inception. White’s point was to remind counseling psychologists of the greater context and history for modern movements that have come to be identified with SCP.

Conclusion

This Major Contribution has brought the five major EMPAs into the spotlight within a mainstream counseling psychology journal and highlighted the reciprocal and mutually beneficial influence that the major EMPAs and SCP have had and can have on each other. The Society of Counseling Psychology has emerged as a leader in addressing diversity, international, and social justice issues in psychology, yet the major EMPAs have often played unheralded or unacknowledged roles in the development of SCP. It is our hope that this Major Contribution will bring to light new information for counseling psychologists and stimulate thought and discussion on the desired relationships between SCP and the EMPAs.

The demographic reality of the racial/ethnic transformation of the United States makes it clear that counseling psychologists need to intensify their efforts toward cultural competency or otherwise risk committing malpractice and becoming obsolete (Hall, 1997). The imperative to act has been recognized by many within and outside of counseling psychology (Atkinson et al., 1996). For example, a recent report by the APA’s Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training in Psychology Task Force (CEMRRAT; APA, Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs, 2008) stated, “The absence of significant increases in the numbers of ethnic minority doctoral recipients suggests that the viability of the future ethnic minority psychology workforce may be at risk” (p. 34). We note that aside from a compelling demographic rationale, the issues of social justice also provide a rationale for immediate and dramatic action.

In the year 2012, we live in an era where the first biracial individual is president of the United States, and the second counseling psychologist of color (although the first Latina and the first woman of color) was recently the president of the APA. If there is not a sustained pipeline of ethnic minority counseling psychologists, these signs of success, like the pioneering APA presidencies of Richard Suinn and Melba Vasquez, will become the exception rather than signaling a new era of inclusion.

We argue that all of counseling psychology, not just ethnic minority psychology, is richer for the contributions of the major EMPAs, and this richness should be acknowledged and celebrated. The contributions of counseling psychologists within the major EMPAs should be integrated into the history, present, and future of counseling psychology.

Footnotes

Appendix

For full appreciation of the issues addressed, this article is best read in combination with the six other articles in this special issue on the relationship between the five major Ethnic Minority Psychological Associations and the Society of Counseling Psychology (Alvarez, Singh, & Wu, 2012; Chavez-Korell, Delgado-Romero, & Illes, 2012; Delgado-Romero, Forrest, & Lau, 2012; Gray, Carter, LaFromboise, & BigFoot, 2012; Morales, Lau, & Ballesteros, 2012; and Obasi, Speight, Rowe, Clark, & Turner-Essel, 2012).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Bios

Michael Y. Lau is an assistant professor in Counseling Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Linda Forrest is the Associate Director for Faculty Outreach for the Center on Diversity and Community (CoDaC) and a professor in Counseling Psychology and Human Services at the University of Oregon. She is the Past Chair of the APA Ethics Committee and a past president of SCP.

Edward A. Delgado-Romero is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development Services in the College of Education of the University of Georgia. He is the president of the National Latina/o Psychological Association.

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