174 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 2 I think because I’ve been in that situation where . . . I’ve had to deal with microaggressions or . . . just flat out . . . ignorance, I think that those experiences, along with my own personal therapy, have helped me to pause and think about areas that I am privileged. . . . I don’t have to worry about being deported. I don’t have any disabilities. So, like, I don’t have to constantly think about things like, does this place have an elevator? Or, does this place, like, have a ramp or something like that? This presentation of a grounded theory explaining why a sample of Black people chose to become professional counselors illustrates the complex and interacting variables that influenced their career choice. It provides our profession insight into how we might continue to attract, retain, and support more diverse people entering the profession and hopefully experiencing career satisfaction. Discussion Our study sought to answer a critical question: What motivates Black people to become professional counselors? The findings of the study suggest a confluence of experiences, influences, and variables that led this group of Black people to ultimately join the profession. By leveraging concepts from two theories (i.e., CRT and Theory of Nigrescence), we discovered the salient reasons for 28 Black people to become professional counselors. Three explicit factors lent themselves to the development of a grounded theory that will hopefully engender further study. We offer an account of the ways the findings complement and/or challenge past findings on this issue, and present potentially new insights. The challenging cultural mandates and Black (under)representation factors specifically address how our research base has informed counselors about Black people’s experiences with counseling and allied mental health professions. The contributors shared the ways systemic, individual, and/or internalized racism has influenced their experiences in and with counseling. Their responses explicitly align with tenets of CRT (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). The contributors’ various accounts of experiences with racism in several forms (e.g., microaggressions, being tokenized, being excluded) reiterate all the ways in which racism is an intrusive force in the lives of Black and other people of color in the United States (McGee & Stovall, 2015). The counseling profession is at a crossroads with determining training standards and the ways that those training standards will prepare counseling students to meet the needs of diverse clients (CACREP, 2023; Hannon et al., 2023). The sociopolitical climate in the United States continues to be tenuous given anti-Black legislation in states like Florida and North Carolina that is outlawing teaching courses about Black people’s history and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for university faculty and staff. The personal and professional convictions factor offers potentially new insight about how salient the contributors’ values are for deciding to become counselors. The contributors’ decision to become counselors was a result of their altruistic dispositions and their commitment to justice and equity, factors that may assist professional counselors to inspire others to envision counseling as a catalyst for justice for Black people and people from other marginalized groups. These values are congruent with our various codes of ethics (American Counseling Association, 2014; National Board for Certified Counselors, 2023) and the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts et al., 2016). These specific motivations align closely with what has been reported about why some Black people chose to become nurses, citing a calling (Anonymous, 2008). Further, we tentatively assert the connection of this finding with Cross and colleagues’ (1991) Theory of Nigrescence. We believe that there may be a connection between what stage of racial identity development Black people are functioning from (i.e., pre-encounter, encounter, immersion/emersion, internalization) and their willingness to make choices that reflect their
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