The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 171 These Black counselors were motivated to join the profession based on their inspiration to challenge cultural mandates (i.e., grounding motivator), to disrupt Black underrepresentation (i.e., secondary motivator), and to live out their personal and professional convictions (i.e., secondary motivator). A visual representation of our grounded theory can be found in Figure 1. What follows is a description of our grounded theory. Figure 1 Grounded Theory Diagram Figure 1 Grounded Theory Diagram Challenging Cultural Mandates Black (Under) Representation Personal and Professional Convictions Call to Action as a Counselor Adult/Senior Influence Negative Counseling Experiences Altruistic Disposition Values of Equity and Justice Challenging Cultural Mandates (Grounding Motivator) Contributors’ responses indicated they were all motivated to join the profession, in part, to challenge cultural mandates imposed on them by both Black people and people from other racial and/or ethnic groups. These mandates were articulated by implying specific societal and/or career expectations for Black people and communicated ideas and stereotypes like, “Black people don’t do counseling” or professional counseling is not a financially viable career. There was variance in contributors’ answers about this, potentially influenced by their role and years in the profession (e.g., master’s student, practicing counselor, counselor educator/supervisor). The data suggested that the more years in the profession, the more explicit, unapologetic, and clear their rationale was to challenge these cultural mandates. For example, Sasha, a 41-year-old counseling doctoral student, discussed challenging stereotypes about the benefit of counseling for Black people: “In the Black
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