THE CASE OF WENDY Text on screen: A Black client, Wendy, talked to her White therapist, Lisa, about challenges in single parenting and going to school. At one point, Lisa repeated several times, Lisa: "Wendy, it's amazing how well you're doing. I can't believe you were able to get straight A's through all this. You're so incredibly smart." Text on screen: Wendy eventually replied sarcastically, Wendy: "Yeah, some of us are." Text on screen: Later, Wendy talked about not getting a recent job due to racism. Wendy, the client, noted that the therapist began to avoid her eyes and move backward in her chair. Lisa, attempting to reframe the event positively, asked, Lisa: "Is there a possibility that the person with more experience was hired for the job and it wasn't racism?" Text on screen: Wendy replied with an openly hostile expression, Wendy: "Never mind. You don't get it, do you?" Text on screen: Shocked, Lisa did not know how to reply. Eventually, she veered the subject back to single parenting, attempting to get Wendy to focus on her anger that came in her loud voice and waving hands. At one point, Wendy stated with irritation, Wendy: "I don't want to talk about my damn feelings, I want to figure out how to handle graduating in this system that's hostile to me." Text on screen: After the session, Lisa processed her experience with a (White) supervisor, saying, Lisa: "I think Wendy is just so angry. She seemed really threatening to me." Text on screen: The supervisor noted the importance of using a certain assessment to check for the presence of any deeper psychopathology, if she seemed "unstable." Lisa noted silently that the assessment course she took marked this assessment as culturally inappropriate for African Americans. Out loud, she voiced uncertainty as to the presence of psychopathology. That hadn't been a question to her at all. The supervisor stated, Supervisor: "The assessment is a place to start. We have to make sure she's not a threat to her children. Unfortunately, my experience is that Black men often don't stick around to help, so we can't count on the father for much support, I'm sure." Text on screen: Lisa's final words in supervision were, Lisa: "I think Wendy could get better help from someone else. Is there another therapist we could refer her to?" Text on screen: She decided to set Wendy up with an intern who is Asian American (there are no Black interns available). However, it was a moot point, as Wendy did not return for her next session. REFERENCES · Malott, K.M. (2010). The Case of Wendy. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Education and Counseling, Villanova University. CREDITS Subject Matter Expert: Crystal Neal Interactive Design: Kerry Hanson, Tara Schiller, Patrick Lapinski Instructional Designer: Connie Lepro DR. FLORA: RURAL STEREOTYPING/IMPLICIT BIAS EXPLORING BIAS Bias is -- it is a common term that we use in counselor education, but one of the most common forms of bias that most people talk about or are ...

1. THE CASE OF WENDY
Text on screen: A Black client, Wendy, talked to her White
therapist, Lisa, about challenges in single parenting and going
to school. At one point, Lisa repeated several times,
Lisa: "Wendy, it's amazing how well you're doing. I can't
believe you were able to get straight A's through all this. You're
so incredibly smart."
Text on screen: Wendy eventually replied sarcastically,
Wendy: "Yeah, some of us are."
Text on screen: Later, Wendy talked about not getting a recent
job due to racism. Wendy, the client, noted that the therapist
began to avoid her eyes and move backward in her chair. Lisa,
attempting to reframe the event positively, asked,
Lisa: "Is there a possibility that the person with more
experience was hired for the job and it wasn't racism?"
Text on screen: Wendy replied with an openly hostile
expression,
Wendy: "Never mind. You don't get it, do you?"
Text on screen: Shocked, Lisa did not know how to reply.
Eventually, she veered the subject back to single parenting,
attempting to get Wendy to focus on her anger that came in her
loud voice and waving hands. At one point, Wendy stated with
irritation,
Wendy: "I don't want to talk about my damn feelings, I want to
figure out how to handle graduating in this system that's hostile
to me."
Text on screen: After the session, Lisa processed her experience
with a (White) supervisor, saying,
Lisa: "I think Wendy is just so angry. She seemed really
threatening to me."
Text on screen: The supervisor noted the importance of using a
certain assessment to check for the presence of any deeper
psychopathology, if she seemed "unstable." Lisa noted silently
that the assessment course she took marked this assessment as

2. culturally inappropriate for African Americans. Out loud, she
voiced uncertainty as to the presence of psychopathology. That
hadn't been a question to her at all. The supervisor stated,
Supervisor: "The assessment is a place to start. We have to
make sure she's not a threat to her children. Unfortunately, my
experience is that Black men often don't stick around to help, so
we can't count on the father for much support, I'm sure."
Text on screen: Lisa's final words in supervision were,
Lisa: "I think Wendy could get better help from someone else.
Is there another therapist we could refer her to?"
Text on screen: She decided to set Wendy up with an intern who
is Asian American (there are no Black interns available).
However, it was a moot point, as Wendy did not return for her
next session.
REFERENCES
· Malott, K.M. (2010). The Case of Wendy. Unpublished
manuscript, Department of Education and Counseling, Villanova
University.
CREDITS
Subject Matter Expert:
Crystal Neal
Interactive Design:
Kerry Hanson, Tara Schiller, Patrick Lapinski
Instructional Designer:
Connie Lepro
DR. FLORA: RURAL STEREOTYPING/IMPLICIT BIAS
EXPLORING BIAS
Bias is -- it is a common term that we use in counselor
education, but one of the most common forms of bias that most
people talk about or are most familiar with is stereotyping, and
as many times as we are working on self awareness and we feel
like we are very comfortable with the variety of diverse
population, everyone stereotypes, it is a cognitive process, the
power brains were programmed to work and if you think about

3. it, it makes sense. We need to be able to take little bits of
information and process it quickly.
The example that you will see in a lot of literature is if you are
driving down the highway and you see a police car, quickly
your brain knows to slow down, or maybe there is an accident,
or you are speeding, but there is that immediate reaction in just
a short amount of time with a little bit of stimulus. So our brain
wants to stereotype, it is just that in society and we become a
more culturally diverse in global society that same brain
mechanism does not work very well in terms of judging and
categorizing people.
TYPES OF BIAS
Explicit and implicit bias are two other types of bias we
explore. Explicit bias is very related to stereotyping, it is the
known bias, or the ones we know we have. The one that is
trickier the one that is harder to recognize is implicit bias or
unconscious bias and that is basically, literally what I just said
are unconscious bias. And something we may not be aware we
have and this is the really important topic to explore for reasons
such as affirmative action. Affirmative action guards against
things like explicit bias, but there is really nothing to guard
potential oppressed people from implicit bias.
INCREASING OUR AWARENESS
Hopefully on the program with Capella, we certainly strive to
use case studies and that sort of thing to help make learners
aware through the discussions on the course room. Of course,
supervision, conversation with your supervisor, all of these are
important ways to maybe uncover implicit bias or even discuss
explicit biases that you have. The immersion on the discussions
on the different cultures and learning from different people and
going to help anyone become more aware of different things and
others cultures or oppressed individuals that they may not have
thought of before.
One of the interesting things though that I would recommend to
all learners and even though it may not be part of the course
curriculum, I recommend students take what is called the

4. Implicit Bias Test. And what this is, it is a test developed by
some researches at Harvard and the University of Washington,
since moved to the University of Virginia and Harvard.
Basically, it is a test, to test your implicit bias.
A little bit about the test is that before this test, researchers had
to rely on self-report measures. Most people are not going to
say, "oh, I have this stereotype" or "I have this explicit bias."
So, with technology, they feel like they can create a way to
measure unconscious bias by looking at stimulus and response
times.
And I could go in some more detail about the validity of the test
and the reliability and how they create and how they measure it,
but the key thing to remember is right now this is the only way
we can explore any implicit or unconscious bias. Self-report
measures are just not going to show us that we use technology
and measuring a different, and the time it takes someone to
respond.
And not only does the test show us all sorts of different things
about possible unconscious implicit bias as they may have, it
also can uncover things like favoritism that we may we have
toward a certain group, even a group that is not our own. So, it
is a really fascinating test and as you do it, you are helping
them gain data for the project.
I was really immersed in the research years ago, I am sure they
have gone through more and gotten more information, but they
also look at things other than race. They looked at obesity and
other issues in our culture, and so it is a really a fascinating
study and it is going to be important in future years as we use
technology to discover biases, we were not able to measure 10-
15 years ago.
BIAS TOWARD RURAL POPULATIONS
Well, I found out a lot of things much more than I expected,
which I think is the case with most research. I became very
familiar with implicit bias for the dissertation process on rural
stereotyping, but as it turns out, rural stereotyping is an explicit
bias, so the implicit bias did not come in to it.

5. But basically I wanted to work at rural stereotyping based on
personal observations and observations in the media. Basically,
if you think about it whether it is a TV show or commercial,
there seems to be an image of someone from a rural area as a
simpleton, or less sophisticated. You add a southern accent to
the mix, then whoa, then that is a really dumb person so to
speak, they are not portrayed well in the media if you are from a
rural area.
On the other hand the rural area itself is painted differently and
that it is quaint and beautiful and it is a fun place to live and
everyone is friendly. So you have this dichotomous image of
what goes on in rural areas. So there is this stereotype about
rural areas and rural people and it is pretty prevalent, I believe
in the media, and so I wanted to look more into that, because
there was no research in our field on that.
What I found when I started was that, again, there is no research
on it, so I had to start from scratch and I had to go into other
disciplines and borrow from them. I even had to use some of the
media. I used song lyrics, and anything I could to show that
there are people that feel like they are stereotyped and have to
say please do not judge me based on what I could find in the
media. So I had enough borrowing from other disciplines and
borrowing from media. I was able to say, look, this is a bias that
exists we need to explore it in our profession, with that in mind
I explored it, I did a qualitative study and it was true, there is
explicit bias. People do look at, people from small towns as
having less education, being less intelligent, being less
sophisticated, all of those themes that were already existing in
other disciplines and the literature were confirmed through my
study.
The other thing that I found is that a lot of the images were
based on truth and a lot of the stereotypes are true. Rural areas
receive less government funding per person, even when you
account for the population being smaller, they receive less
government funding, and therefore, public services such as
schools have less resources. So it is a very complicated issue

6. and as we become more technological society, there is going to
be more urbanization.
And I think the risk is even going to grow further than it
already is. But the key take away is that people do stereotype
someone based solely on whether they are from a small town or
not, aside of every other image they could have of that person.
The other thing that I found that I was not expecting, it is not
just that people from rural areas are stereotyped and the ones
that are from there are really strongly identified with their small
town identity, that people from any geographic area tend to be
really tied to their identity. My husband is from New York,
outside of New York City; that is being from Long Island, you
meet anybody else from Long Island and it is like this little
club. So it is a very interesting phenomenon that in addition to
the stereotyping, I have begun to see there is a geographic
identity that is mentioned in a lot of multicultural models, but
maybe it is a bigger piece of our identity than many people
realize.
ADDRESSING BIASES
The first thing of course is to just have the awareness of the
individuals that you are working with. But again, to the
community and public policy, we as counselors there is this
push toward advocacy and I agree with that. In my opinion, it is
a simple thing, I sometimes tell young children when they are
arguing, are you part of the solution or part of the problem? It is
a really simple idea and we have all heard it, but are we going
to be a part of people that do not -- are we going to be part of
the problem and think it is okay to send certain areas of the
country less money, are we going to be part of the solution and
advocate for that? And I think that is what counselor advocacy
is about. I really view advocacy from a Bronfenbrenner Model
of what level do you feel the most comfortable with? Do you
feel individual action or all the way up to the highest system?
And I would encourage counselors as they grow to reach out
beyond, to start with individual advocacy and move beyond into
the different systems as you feel more comfortable.

7. INCREASING CULTURAL AWARENESS
I imagine that the course that they are in now is certainly
helping them, but to never stop learning. But the biggest take
away and the most important thing I could stress regarding
anything is jut to remember not to define someone by the one
characteristic of their identity. We all have multiple identities. I
am a mother, I am a woman, I am a wife, I am a professor, I am
a friend, I am a sister, I am a daughter, but there are also my
multicultural identities. And if you judge me by just one, then
you are judging me. And remember that just because you are in
a minority or you have close friends or a partner or a family
member that is in a minority that you are not automatically
multi-culturally sensitive.
Being multi-culturally sensitive means looking at an individual
as having multiple identities and not judging them from just one
of their identities. And the best way, again, is to just keep
learning and talk with the supervisor or a colleague or other
trusted mentor, because the beauty is once you recognize it,
everyone has it, so it is okay to recognize it, it just means you
are human. Once you recognize it, you have already taken a
major step in avoiding treating a client differently. And that is
the ultimate goal.
CREDITS
Presenter:
Amanda G. Flora, PhD, NCC
Interactive Design:
Marc Ashmore
Instructional Design:
Mo Yang
Project Management:
Paula Varns, Julie Greunke