Question

Read "Case Study on Jose and Carmen, located at the beginning of Chapter 11. Review the Chicano/Latino Model of Ethnic Identity in Chapter 11. Which of the assumptions from the Chicano/Latino Model of Ethnic Identify do you think are applicable to Jose and Carmen and why?

José is a 13-year-old student referred to his school counselor, Jillian, by his math teacher, Mr. Justice. Mr. Justice reports that José appears disinterested in his class assignments and fails to complete his homework assignments. Mr. Justice recognizes that it is only midway through the semester and that José can raise his grade to passing. However, Mr. Justice notes that José often has a worried expression on his face. Addition-ally, he observes that José does not talk to his classmates. While it is not uncommon for a student to be shy, Mr. Justice had José as a math student last year and remembered him as an outgoing boy who frequently participated in class and earned an A for his final grade. Realizing this change of behavior and attitude, Mr. Justice has attempted to check in on José to see how he is doing and whether he could provide math tutoring for him after school. José denies that anything is wrong with him and says that he does not want to stay after school for tutoring. Jillian reads through José’s file and discovers that he and his younger sister were born in the United States. She notices that there is very little information about José’s parents in the file other than that they both work for a local orchard. She confirms that José has earned As and Bs ever since Kindergarten. When Jillian meets with José for the first time, he is reluctant to open up to her. He acknowledges that his school performance has decreased, but at this point will not share why he has been unable to focus on school and has lost interest in socializing with his peers. Jillian ends the first session feeling confused. She makes a second appointment with him for next week. She decides to consult with a counselor in the community who works with Latino/Latina clients, hoping that this counselor might give Jillian sugges-tions for building rapport with José. This counselor informs Jillian that José may be experiencing anxiety due to rumors that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is cracking down on undocumented workers in the local orchard. José may feel uncertain about his family’s future and may feel that the public school system, funded by the government, is an unsafe place to discuss his family’s situation. This counselor encourages Jillian to continue building rapport with José and to not discount the importance of the sociopolitical context of his experience. The next week Jillian has three individual sessions with José, working to establish the therapeutic alliance so that he may open up to her about his anxiety.

Carmen, a 28-year-old Puerto Rican female graduate student in a southeastern U.S. university, came into the university counseling center because she was experiencing feelings of loneliness and depression. During the initial interview, Carmen asked for help setting boundaries with family and friends because she was experiencing a lot of guilt about her relationships. Her grades had begun to suffer, and she was afraid she might be placed on academic probation. As the interview continued, the counselor learned that Carmen had recently moved to the mainland United States to attend graduate school and she had no family here. Although she had gone on a couple of dates, she was single. She received constant pres-sure from her new friends to date more and enjoy singlehood. On the other hand, whenever she called home, Carmen was bombarded by her mother about meeting someone and settling down, but her mother warned her about becoming “muy gringa” (too Americanized) and independent.In counseling, Carmen and her counselor worked on how she could cope with feelings of isolation and also on assertiveness training. Assertiveness, her counselor recognized, was important to work on while acknowledging the context of values such as respeto and familismo. It was also significant to explore the process and the impact of acculturation in her life and in her family’s life. It was pivotal for Carmen’s coun-selor to be cognizant of how her own enculturation into a mainly individualistic society might impact the therapeutic process. Similarly, it was important for Carmen’s counselor to be aware of unique differences between Puerto Ricans and other groups of Latinos/Latinas in order to best help Carmen negotiate issues of ethno-cultural identity and social well-being. Addressing Carmen’s concerns from a collectivistic perspective and accounting for her unique acculturative experience led to a trusting and respectful relationship between Carmen and her counselor, which helped facilitate Carmen’s successful adjustment into graduate school.

Answer 1

The assumption from Chicano/ Latino ethinic model of identity in Jose's case is that Jose is suffering from a emotional set back due to the negative labels attached to his ethnic identity. He feels insecure and traumatized because of this negative labels that he has recognized and feels humiliated due to it. He is in the Casual stage of ethnic identity model.

In the case of Carmen, she is in distress because she has alienated from her Puerto Rican identity and now she feels guilty about it. She wants to maintain her ethnic identity but seems to be confused, hence, she feels isolated and lonely. Thus, it can be assumed that she is in the Working through stage ethnic identity model..