jobs, the right to an education, and the right to a fair criminal justice system. Those who challenged Jim Crow laws faced arrest, fines, violence, and death (e.g., lynching). Sadly, 4,075 Black Americans were lynched in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 (Equal Justice Initiative, 2021). Moreover, the overrepresentation of Black and Brown persons in the prison system has resulted in a new racial caste system (Alexander, 2010).
In addition to mass incarceration, inequality and segregation in schools has led to a long legacy of educational oppression. Black and Brown students continue to be overrepresented in special education (Elder et al., 2019), underrepresented in gifted classes (Ford et al., 2011), tracked to low-level classes (Mickelson, 2001), and criminalized and removed from schools (Morris, 2016). They are also the students who are least likely to attend 4-year colleges and universities (The Education Trust, 2020). According to Horace Mann (1848), education is “the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance-wheel of the social machinery” (Massachusetts Board of Education, 1849, p. 59). But Mann went on to state that education doesn’t change the “moral nature” of people (p. 60). Thus, for Black and Brown students, racism within education systems has created the opposite. Education injustice, stoked by racist views and policies, has perpetuated and sustained unshakeable disparities in education.
Given these hundreds of years of oppressive practices, there is no way that any American escapes the impact of racism. Although some might argue that racism is a Black problem, history refutes that notion. The effects of racism touch white persons as much as they touch those who identify as Black or Brown. In a recent report, McKinsey and Company (2019) estimated that if the wealth gap caused by systemic racism were addressed, the U.S. gross national product could be 4% to 6% higher. A higher gross domestic product ultimately means more jobs and higher salaries for all Americans.
Racism also affects the interpersonal relationships of white people. Many may have lost relationships with friends, family members, and coworkers to disagreements, fights, and tension over racism. Racism also distorts white people’s perceptions of what to fear. Many are taught to fear Black and Brown people without considering other human and environmental factors that influence behavior and life outcomes. For instance, Black and Brown people—not the economic opportunity system—are often scapegoated as the problem. So the costs of racism are devastating to white people, especially those without the resources to buffer the effects. They are not the same costs of day-to-day violence, discrimination, and harassment that plague Black people. Nevertheless, they are high costs that most people are trained to ignore, deny, or rationalize away.
A History of Racism in Counseling
Helping professionals, in particular counselors, have also been touched by racism. Over the past 4 decades, social scientists, including counselors, have moved away from defining race in biological terms and toward defining it as a social and political construct that in turn impacts the counseling process as well as counselors’ and clients’ conceptualization of problems. The foundational theories and frameworks of professional counseling emerged from a predominantly white, middle-class context (Gerig, 2014; Ratts & Pedersen, 2014). Therefore, racism within the profession has not necessarily been a focal point. Over the past 30 years, much has been written about clients who do not originate from the dominant society (Butler & Shillingford-Butler, 2014; Wade, 2006). However, less has been written about racism within the profession. D’Andrea (1992) challenged the profession to take on racism and even warned of silence denoting professionals’ complicity in racism in communities where they worked. In a more recent opinion piece in Counseling Today, Arredondo et al. (2020) suggested that there are still unintentional and covert forms of racism and racial injustice within counselor training, research, and practice.
Several iterations of counseling movements have emerged out of the experiences of Black and Brown counselors and clients (e.g., the Black psychology movement). Each movement has addressed racism but without specific attention to antiracism. The remainder of this chapter provides descriptions of these counseling movements: Black/African-centered psychology (e.g., Jones, 1972), cross-cultural counseling and psychology (e.g., Atkinson et al., 1989), multicultural counseling (e.g., Lee, 1991), and social justice counseling and advocacy (Holcomb-McCoy, 2007). Having a common language makes it easier to communicate a commitment to racial equity and creates a platform for coordinated work toward antiracist outcomes. Also, this chapter includes definitions of antiracism and antiracist counseling and introduces an antiracist framework of school counseling.
Black/African-Centered Psychology
More than 40 years ago, White (1972) argued that the lived experiences of persons of African ancestry in the United States demanded a shift in conceptualizing psychology. With the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. came an intense need to lift up the Black community and an affirmation of Blackness. This era heralded the beginning of the Black psychology movement, which solidified when the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) was established in 1968 at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. ABPsi emerged out of the American Psychological Association’s lack of responsiveness to the needs of Black psychologists and the communities they served. In the press release announcing its establishment, the need for a community-centered organization committed to ethnocentrism and the needs of Black people and Black psychologists was stated as the impetus for the new organization (Williams, 1974, pp. 11–12). See Box 1 for Black/African-centered psychology scholars in the field. ABPsi (2021) defined Black/African-centered psychology as follows:
It is the intention of the Committee to Advance African Psychology (CAAP) to establish a framework for content provided during the African Psychology Institute (API) that adheres to the values and principles expressed therein. In recognition of the diverse historical experiences and cultural expressions within and between peoples of African ancestry, the following is the accepted definition:
“Black/African Centered psychology is a dynamic manifestation of unifying African principles, values and traditions. It is the self-conscious “centering” of psychological analyses and applications in African realities, cultures, and epistemologies. Black/African centered psychology, as a system of thought and action, examines the processes that allow for the illumination and liberation of the Spirit. Relying on the principles of harmony within the universe as a natural order of existence, Black/African centered psychology recognizes: the Spirit that permeates everything that is; the notion that everything in the universe is interconnected; the value that the collective is the most salient element of existence; and the idea that communal self knowledge is the key to mental health. Black/African Centered psychology is ultimately concerned with understanding the systems of meaning of human beingness, the features of human functioning, and the restoration of normal/natural order to human development. As such, it is used to resolve personal and social problems and to promote optimal functioning.” (paras. 1–2)
Overall, the Black psychology movement was a period of academic progression in combining and applying Black studies with traditional psychological frameworks, encapsulating new approaches, terms, and structures for understanding Black people. Akbar (2004) described Black/African-centered psychology as follows:
[It] is not a thing, but a place—a view, a perspective, a way of observing. African Psychology does not claim to be an exclusive body of knowledge, though a body of knowledge will continue to be generated from the place. It is a perspective that is lodged in the historical importance of the human view from the land known as Africa. (p. ix)
In a special issue of the journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Holliday (2009) outlined the history of African Americans and Blacks in psychology in the United States. It is interesting that Holliday noted that in 1934, the Journal of Negro Education (published by Howard University) developed a special issue of 14 papers that challenged the
