Racial Microaggressions

Implications for Counseling and Supervision

Existing research and literature today focus on different aspects of microaggressions, particularly the contexts in which they occur. Microaggressions not only occur in daily interracial interactions for people of color, but they also occur in counseling and supervision relationships.

In a therapeutic relationship, where therapists are in positions of power and clients are more likely to view their therapists in positions of authority, clients who experience racial microaggressions from their therapists are more likely to question themselves than their therapist. For example, if a client shares an experience that she or he perceived as racist and wanted to process this experience with her or his therapist, the therapist may respond by saying, “I think that you are being paranoid,” thus completely invalidating the client's experience. Well-intentioned White therapists also may claim that they understand racial oppression completely in an attempt to identify with or make a connection with their clients of color. However, such an intervention could further demean clients' [Page 1291]experiences of racism and invalidate their identification as a person of color who experiences unique racial oppression.

Racial microaggressions also have been found to occur in cross-racial supervisory relationships involving White supervisors and Black supervisees. For example, Black supervisees have reported that White supervisors have blamed clients of color for problems stemming from oppression, made stereotypie assumptions about these supervisees and clients of color, offered culturally insensitive treatment recommendations to these supervisees, and been reluctant to give performance feedback to them for fear of being viewed as racist. These experiences have been found to be detrimental to Black supervisees and, indirectly, to the clients they serve.

...