Running Head: CULTURAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

Cultural Identity Development

Andrew Stegenga
Wake Forest University
February 9th, 2020
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Abstract

Analyzing one’s own cultural identity is important, especially from a counseling

perspective, like those in or entering the field of counseling will most certainly come face to face

with a diverse group of individuals seeking their services. It is necessary for an effective

counselor to maintain a check on their own biases, which can be done through reflections of

familial values on race, gender, sexual preference, and the like. This couples with continuous

adding to cultural experience and mindfulness of one’s actions towards others can ensure that

clients and counselors achieve a strong and trusting therapeutic alliance.

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Cultural Identity Development

Taking time to understand one’s cultural identity is beneficial as it allows a greater

understanding of how interactions occur across cultures and through diversity. This is especially

important for counselors or counselors-to-be to consider as they will be traversing diverse

cultural boundaries through interactions with their clients. Understanding these counselor-client

interactions are vital for forming a healthy and cooperative therapeutic alliance that guards

against discounting any aspect of the client that the counselor may view as uncomfortable to

discuss. When analyzing one's own cultural identity it is helpful to start by dissecting the levels

of interactions with diverse groups in the current moment, then move to reflect on how your

family’s views and advice may have influenced your perception through your lifetime. Armed

with this information, it’s helpful to find a theoretical framework, such as the Sabnani,

Ponterotto, and Borodovsky Model of Cultural Identity Development (1991) or Helms’ Black

and White Model (1984), which helps to consolidate your analysis and provide areas for

improvement.

The extent in which I interact with others of a diverse group has fluctuated often in my

life, going from periods of very little diversity to segments of full immersion. I come from a

small rural town in the Piedmont-Triad area of North Carolina. Through elementary, middle, and

high school, the population was majority White though there was also a sizable population of

Hispanics in the area. Through high school, I didn’t have much diversity in friends due to the

school area’s demographics, however, the theatre offered the most diverse range of individuals

when compared to all other clubs and this is where I found my home, though I wasn’t drawn to it

specifically for the diversity, that could be described as a latent effect.

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Fast-forwarding a bit to my first year off to college, my high school girlfriend and I were

serious and she made it abundantly clear that she wanted me to become more involved in church,

so in an effort to prove my commitment, I joined the local Campus Crusade for Christ chapter,

Cru for short, at Western Carolina University, in addition to, attending Sunday and Wednesday

Youth activities at a local church on campus. While the primary motivation for joining was in an

effort to bolster my faith, there was also the hope that I would make strong friendships between

the two clubs. I found that I had mixed feelings about my interactions with Cru, as the majority

of people who attended the meetings and conferences were also white and didn’t share much in

the way of culture, that is not to say that Cru was culturally/racially devoid, rather the few that

had experiences to share always provided insight and interesting perspectives/considerations into

the topics or verses being discussed; Cru’s approach to ‘outsiders’ complicated bringing in more

diversity.

 This approach consisted of Cru leadership 1) pairing members together and divvying up

names for us to ‘evangelize’ to or 2) randomly walking up to individuals to strike up a

conversation that leads to an attempt to evangelize. I absolutely hated this aspect of Cru because

of the seemingly dubious nature of the conversation. While we interacted with a diverse pool of

contacts, the conversations were shallow and formulaic: meet up, make a bit of small talk, then

transition to booklet/pamphlet, afterward ask uncomfortable questions. While these interactions

could be seen as spiritual and selected in a non-biased way, I never felt that any of the

conversations were genuine as we rarely strayed from the script void of any cultural interest and

full of defensiveness as many often puffed up when their views were challenged (this happened

on both sides of the conversation.

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I had an entirely different experience with the youth group that I attended at the local

Baptist church, it was small but diverse. We had two African Americans, three Caucasians, and

one Latina. It was actually in this group that I shared the deepest relationships and conversations

with. We were able to be completely transparent and honest with each other and we never

strayed away from talking about topics that involved our cultures and worldviews. These

conversations were rarely easy, but they strengthen each member’s understanding of one another

and helped to cement the relationships. Despite the strong relationships that I had made, my

growing desire for more involved and genuine religious conversation helped to facilitate my

transfer from Western Carolina University, situated in a remote mountain valley, to Wheaton

College, nestled in the Suburbs of Chicago. Wheaton has a reputation for being an institution that

facilitates deep spiritual conversation and growth. Unfortunately, this switch did not fuel my

desire, rather it extinguished it.

While my first year ended with me feeling alienated, my junior year had a surprise in

store. During my second year at Wheaton, I had a mix up in housing and was only assigned a

week before move-in day. I was to share a two-bedroom college apartment with three other guys,

two of which were Korean and one Chinese. This became a period of hyper cultural immersion

for me, as my roommates were socially outgoing and often hosted get together parties with

others. I spent many nights eating authentic Asian cuisine, enjoying Boba tea in Chicago’s

Chinatown, and hunting for ingredients in the local Asian markets.  Upon first meeting them, I'll

admit that I was apprehensive, as all of my other roommates had been white like myself, though

what truly caused apprehension was being asked nicely to leave all my shoes at the door. While I

knew of this tradition, it was difficult for me as my habit of putting shoes on when I wake up and

taking them off when I sleep would have to abruptly come to an end and it did, at least for the
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duration of the school year. It was after this initial meeting that I knew that I needed to be

mindful of my interactions and be attentive to learning about various traditions. I had learned

about mindfulness in years prior and thought it appropriate to apply to this new situation. While I

was unaware of the information at the time, I feel more confident in this decision reading how

Mindfulness relates to empathy and multicultural discovery (Ivers, Johnson, Clarke, Newsome,

& Berry, 2016). With every new person, tradition, or experience that I encountered, I made sure

to monitor how I felt as well as refrain from making any judgements that would shut me down

from the sensations at hand.

My experience of diverse cultures has admittedly plateaued since I graduated from

Wheaton College in May 2018, since I work mainly from home. Aside from brief interactions I

may have on the Wake Forest campus when I visit each week, my main interactions come from

my weekly Dungeons and Dragons sessions that are somewhat diverse with regards to gender

and sexuality, we have cis-males, cis-females, bi-females, and a pan-male, though racially we

consist mainly of Caucasians with one Asian and one Latino. While on a day to day basis I don’t

interact with a diverse group of people, I do travel often for conferences and to visit my

significant other, which often leads to interesting airport, airplane, and/or Uber conversation with

others. One particular conversation happened during an Uber ride while I was in Baltimore,

Maryland. Racheal is an African American woman who spoke with great passion. She worked

two part-time jobs, one at a retirement home and the other as an Uber driver; in her spare time,

she advocated against gun violence. She told me about how gun violence plagued her

neighborhood and even took one of her own children. Her nine-year-old son was playing at a

friend's house when they found the gun of the friend’s father lying on the living room table, their

curious investigation led to the accidental discharge of the firearm into the head of Racheal’s
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child. It was a glimpse into an issue that I hadn’t had much exposure too, even though I had

spent a few years in the Chicago area. I had grown up with guns and while I was familiar with

the notion of gun violence and gun accidents I had never been close to it, that is, until I came

face to face with someone who had suffered a great deal from their experience with it - it was

sobering. 

 I'm sure that everyone comes to grips with discrimination at some point, but I sometimes

think of myself as a late bloomer to understanding the weight behind racial discrimination. I

don’t think I had a particularly potent moment where I personally witnessed injustice that caused

everything to click into place, rather it was through early school history classes where we learned

about the discrimination that occurred during slavery and even afterward. Coates (2014)

mentions many potent examples of this in his articles in The Atlantic entitled The Case for

Reparations. In the he clearly depicts malicious practices of law manipulation that caused so

many African Americans to lose their possessions under the pretense of taxation, as well as, the

overt struggle to buy a home in early modern America, as the banks wouldn't lend to African

American homebuyers and therefore practically forced them into agreeing to predatory lending

contracts where they were not protected from injustice.

 Growing up in the South, I was exposed to much racial and cultural bias, especially on

my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandfather. While they conveyed displeasure with

most minorities, African Americans and Hispanics were most often the targets of their ire. If you

were to spend a day with them, you would walk away thinking they cause all this issue in the

world, from crime, unemployment, and taxes to auto accidents, foul weather, as well as the

inconvenient times where you ran out of toilet paper. Luckily for me, my mother thought

differently and offered an alternative view to each of my grandparent’s complaints. My mother

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wasn’t perfect, as in one breath she sought to teach me to see others, regardless of skin color, as

humans; though I sometimes witnessed her unknowingly perpetuate biases that she may have

grown up seeing modeled. One example of this was during high school when we were sitting in

the parking lot of a mall. We were talking while she was rummaging through her purse and many

people had passed by, mostly white or lighter skin, but when an African American man began

walking past the car, she locked the doors as he approached. While I don’t think that she was

being overtly racist, as the area we were in has a high African American crime rate, I don’t think

this statistic was a leading factor for her door locking response, I think she was operating on

unfounded underlying assumptions. While she aspired to cease the perpetuation of racial

discrimination, she was unable to fully prevent herself from showing some aspects of it, though,

being open to discussing race with me, she was able to help me learn to be more cognizant of its

existence.

Gender and Orientation discrimination was able to overtly seep further down the

generational line as even my relatively open-minded mother found herself bound by the biases of

the society that came before her. In my teenage years, I began growing my hair out and while

this act wasn't received negatively overall, my older brother thought it important to let me know

that if he ever came home and saw me with earrings he would "rip them out." This solidified for

me that earrings are for girls and gays. I found that high school only perpetuated this, as "gay"

and "fag" were common insults levied against men, by other men and women. I bought into this

stereotype heavily for the duration of my freshman year, though this soon reversed as I

discovered my deep interest in theatre, which hosted a bevy of diverse individuals that helped to

combat unfounded biases that I had learned from my family.

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Just before I embarked on my college adventure to what I thought was the great white

north, my mother sat me down to have a talk about how the culture of the north was vastly

different than what she thought I was used to. It will always be ingrained in my mind how she

made a big reveal that there were “gays up there.” This wasn’t news to me, as there were also

“gays’ down here, but since the environment was generally not as receptive to their ideas they

only roamed in certain circles. While this didn’t affect me much outside of giving me a funny

story to tell, I do believe it would have been more impactful if I had not spent time in the theatre

or reconnected with a childhood friend that found themselves questioning the traditional gender

norms regarding romantic and emotional attraction. If I bought into this advice, I would have

begun to generate notions of the population of Chicago and the surrounding area without truly

getting to know the people of the area and as I can confirm, it is quite diverse. These

preconceived notions could have served as flags that I look for in conversation, that would

simultaneously subjectively confirm their identity as well as shut down open discussion

(especially so if I resented the lifestyle). 

  Religious intolerance was common among many of my family members; however, I am

not sure if it is a result of behavior modeled by their family, a side effect of September 11th

attacks, or a degree of both. Other religions were not seen as equal compared to the religion of

my family nor compared to other religions. For instance, while Hinduism received mocking

jokes about the ‘forehead lottery’ or ‘gas station religion,’ Islam was treated with more contempt.

I do find it important to restate that it is reasonable to assume this tremendous contempt spawned

in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as I recall very little about cultural interactions before and around

this time, as it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind as a Kindergartener. 

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David’s story in the Thomas and Schwarzbaum book Culture and Identity (2016) served

as a catalyst for me to recall what advice or views that my family held towards individuals with

physical disabilities. In general, I don’t recall any overt aggression towards their ailment, in fact,

I recall being taught that I should be respectful and courteous towards such individuals without

being overbearing or pitiful, as they are still plenty capable, and David is emblematic of this.

David was able to adjust to his new physical limitations by overcoming them mentally and his

voice became louder than ever before.

When looking over various theories on cultural identity development, I think that

Ponterotto’s model provides a simple framework that is effective in helping me analyze my life

experiences and visualize my flaws and where improvement can be made. Of the stages, I think

that I’m situated within the ‘Exposure’ stage, as I’m still learning about different types of

diversity. While I think I have had a fair share of exposure to certain cultures and ethnicities, I in

no way feel as though I have ascertained enough experience to warrant calling myself ‘culturally

competent,’ therefore, I look forward to the experiences that are to come. As a topical note, when

I read about the Zealot-Defensive stage (Sabnani, Ponterotto, &Borodovsky, 1991) I couldn't

help but think of Julie as she wrestled with her own cultural identity. When confronted with the

awareness of racism she fought back, embracing the minority side that she had long been

suppressing and while simultaneously standing up to her perceived oppressor, even if that meant

seeing them all as aggressors (Thomas & Schwarzbaum, 2016)

I also considered Helms’ Black and White model (1984), though there were a few

concepts put fourth that I disagreed with and thought to be dated; the notion of 'Whites' not

"see[ing] themselves as white" resonated with me, as when I often inquired about the heritage of

other white individuals they often respond with ancestry. I decided against this as although I
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think ancestry is important, such a focus is too narrow to encompass the societal culture they

currently find themselves apart of, as European countries are much different than that of the

United States of America.

It has become clear that my cultural identity has a close relationship with my counseling

practice through the nature of client interactions. Humans have biases, whether it was learned

from family members, bad personal experience, or fear of the unknown, they can hinder the

therapeutic process as they often feed into a single narrative that will certainly damage the

alliance between client and counselor if left unchecked. Keeping a check on identity perceptions

and being mindful of how my actions may be received, I can prevent the communication of

microaggressions or microinsults.

There are numerous ways in which bias can seep into an individual’s perception of

another, which inevitably causes issues, be them obtuse or acute, within interpersonal

relationships. It, therefore, becomes increasingly important to become aware of the development

of one’s own cultural identity. This can be facilitated in a number of ways, but one beneficial

method is to look at possible origins of bias from within the family or close relationships, then

determine if these views affect the level of interaction you have with culturally diverse

individuals. Information such as this can best be analyzed through one of the numerous cultural

identity models that exist, such as Helm’s Black and White Model. Development of cultural

identity is especially important for those whose work requires them to interact with diverse

individuals on a confidential level, like that of a counselor.

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References

Coates, T. (2014). The Case for Reparations. [online] The Atlantic. Available at:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

[Accessed 8 Feb. 2020].

Helms, J. E. (1984). Toward a Theoretical Explanation of the Effects of Race on Counseling A

Black and White Model. The Counseling Psychologist, 12(4), 153–165.

Ivers, N.N., Johnson, D.A., Clarke, P.B., Newsome, D.W. and Berry, R.A. (2016), The

Relationship Between Mindfulness and Multicultural Counseling Competence. Journal

of Counseling & Development, 94: 72-82.

Sabnani, Haresh & Ponterotto, Joseph & Borodovsky, Lisa. (1991). White Racial Identity

Development and Cross-Cultural Counselor Training: A Stage Model. The Counseling

Psychologist. 19. 76-102.

Thomas, A. J., Schwarzbaum, S. E. (2016). Culture and Identity, 3rd Edition [VitalSource

Bookshelf version].