When I first started as a Child Protective Investigator in Arizona in the early 1990s, cultural competency training was still in its infancy. I went into those sessions eager to learn. I wanted to be responsive, respectful, and effective in my work. But what I encountered was something very different from what I had hoped for.
The training, at least as it was delivered to us, wasn’t about elevating or understanding cultures; it often reduced them to stereotypes. I remember being told, almost as a rule, that Native Americans would always be late for appointments, even something as critical as a supervised visitation with their children. That wasn’t cultural understanding. That was labeling an entire people in a way that excused behavior rather than believing in their capacity to be responsible and punctual. Another “lesson” told us Native Americans might avoid eye contact, so we should look away from them. Years later, I heard a complaint from a client who couldn’t understand why his therapist never looked him in the eye. What was taught as cultural competence had turned into an unnecessary barrier to trust.
The worst example came when we were given a vignette about a boy with a spiral fracture, a SNAT report, or Suspected Non-Accidental Trauma. The scenario told us the boy’s father was from an African community that highly revered male children. When my group presented our analysis, we were told we should not have suspected the father because his cultural background supposedly ruled that out. I pushed back. I argued that culture does not immunize individuals from wrongdoing. In every society, including religious ones that profess to cherish children, individuals still commit abuse. What mattered was the evidence, not the stereotype. My refusal to go along with the script got me dismissed from their training.
These experiences left a deep impression on me. They shaped my belief that cultural competence cannot mean handing counselors a set of generalized “rules” about groups of people. When we do that, we’re not promoting respect; we’re replacing one form of bias with another. We’re excusing or condemning behavior based on labels instead of looking at individuals. Real cultural responsiveness means understanding context, listening carefully, and remaining curious about each person’s lived experience. It also means resisting the temptation to exempt anyone from responsibility because of group membership.
But here’s what troubles me today: our counseling programs, even after decades of refinement, still often slip into the same trap. We are so focused on cultural differences and uniqueness that we risk perpetuating stereotypes in the very courses meant to combat them. In almost every counseling class, cultural “understanding” is built in, and then we set aside an entire course on multicultural counseling to reinforce it. Too often, those courses begin with a warning to avoid stereotyping, and then proceed, chapter after chapter, to reduce whole communities to neat categories with prescribed behaviors, values, and challenges.
Another theme I see is the tendency to dismiss traditional theories because they were largely developed by white men. The narrative then frames those theories primarily through the oppression of women and people of color. While it’s true that power and privilege shaped who had access to academic platforms in the past, it doesn’t negate the truths that emerged from their research. Mathematics, physics, psychology, and many of the foundations came from the hands of men in the West. Acknowledging that reality doesn’t mean denying contributions from others or ignoring injustice. It means we don’t throw out discoveries simply because of the discoverer’s demographic. Truth stands on its own.
In my decades of counseling practice, I’ve come to see less how different we are and more how alike. Our great political divide in this country is not primarily about cultural groups but about ideas and our unwillingness to listen to each other. And the only way through is not by fragmenting further into camps of identity but by rediscovering our shared humanity. Once we see our sameness, we begin to recognize the other side not as adversaries but as brothers and sisters who feel real pain and want what we want: freedom, love of family, community, a chance to live with dignity.
So, while I believe there is value in cultural awareness, in understanding histories, traumas, and traditions, I also question whether the direction of counselor education over the last 20-plus years has brought us together or driven us further apart. When I sit across from a client, the breakthroughs usually don’t come from applying a checklist of cultural markers. They come from focusing on base human values: our common capacity for love, for growth, for change. That’s when the work moves forward.
If cultural competence is to mean anything, it should mean resisting the easy comfort of stereotypes, even “positive” ones, and leaning instead into curiosity, humility, and the recognition that what binds us is far greater than what divides us.
Dr. Wesley