Racism in Counseling and Psychotherapy: How It Continues

Leslie Margolin

doi:10.1177/00221678261480404

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Racism in Counseling and Psychotherapy: How It Continues

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Racism in Counseling and Psychotherapy: How It Continues

Leslie Margolin

The Journal of humanistic psychology

08/30/2026

DOI: 10.1177/00221678261480404

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Abstract

This research asks how clients’ racial/ethnic status affects their counseling. A review of 172 cases from the journal Clinical Case Studies (86 from minority groups and 86 from members of a White comparison group) produced two kinds of answers. The first is that color-blindness dominates: counselors treated clients’ race and ethnicity as relevant in only 38% of the cases involving clients of color, and in only 2% of cases involving White clients. The second answer is that when counselors treated clients’ race/ethnicity as relevant, they routinely imposed their prior understandings of race and ethnicity onto clients of color. White clients’ behavior, by contrast, was never explained as a function of Whiteness. Their behavior was attributed to individual/family dynamics.

racism

counseling

psychotherapy

clients of color

cultural competence

cultural humility

Whiteness

Details

Title: Subtitle: Racism in Counseling and Psychotherapy: How It Continues
Creators: Leslie Margolin - University of Iowa
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: The Journal of humanistic psychology
DOI: 10.1177/00221678261480404
ISSN: 0022-1678
eISSN: 1552-650X
Publisher: Sage
Language: English
Electronic publication date: 08/30/2026
Academic Unit: Counselor Education and Supervision
Record Identifier: 9985222740502771

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