Cultural Heritage

“It must be so.”

This story has been told and re-told in my family, but I don’t think it has ever been formally written down. Here’s how it goes.

In Ireland before the famine and The Troubles and the great migration to America, there was a town called Kilkee. My great-grandmother used to tell this story and say that Kilkee was the most beautiful and most famous watering hole in all of Ireland. Everyone would smile and nod in agreement, but would never ask what a watering hole was. Was it a good swimming spot? Did it have good ale?

Anyway, there was a farming family named Costello, and one of the boys in that family was named Tom. One day while in the fields, Tom saw the most beautiful woman walking towards town. He pointed and said, “I’m going to marry that woman one day,” and all of his brothers laughed and teased him. She walked to town past his family’s farm almost daily, and they would exchange glances and smiles, but no words. Tom kept pining for this mystery woman. Well, turns out that she was Margaret McNirney, the daughter of a well-to-do family in Kilkee and totally out of his class. Finally one day when she was passing his farm, he gathered enough courage to go up to her and talk. She became interested, but at first his love for her was much more than what she held for him. Eventually she came around and they fell in love. Either family didn’t know about their secret love or their vow one day to get married.

Then one day without telling him, she was gone. Upon asking some of the townspeople, he found out that the entire McNirney family had moved to America. The famine had begun and farming was awful. Before going broke like a lot of their neighbors, the Costellos sold their farm and all their possessions in order to pay the fare to America. Once in the United States some of the Costellos became part of the servant class of New York City and New Jersey.

By this time Tom was old enough to make his own decisions and longed for a place in America where he could farm like he did in Ireland. He was still single and longing to find the woman who he was destined to marry, for she was in America and he would find her. Back then, the railroads linked all of upstate New York and Pennsylvania. While in New York City, his family found out about a small Irish immigrant, mostly catholic enclave in northwestern Pennsylvania. It was an industry town that had a brick factory and a steel mill. The factory and mill were looking for workers who wanted to move out of the larger cities, so jobs were plentiful. He and a number of his family moved to Corry, Pennsylvania in the 1800’s.

Once there, they were amazed at the resemblance to Ireland - green-rolling hills, hard but manageable soil perfect for farming. They saved up money working in the factories to buy land to farm on, and on one fateful day he saw her. There, thousands of miles away and years after he last saw her passing his farm in Ireland and gave up any hope of ever finding her again, was Margaret McNirney.

Think of the chances - of all the places to go and all of the thousands of people to see, without seeking her out he found her in a small town in a foreign land. “It’s fate,” he thought and told himself that he had to ask her to marry him. Upon investigation, he learned that she was soon to marry another. He went to her house on the day of her wedding and said, “You must marry me. I have waited and found you here without even trying. It must be so.”

The story goes that she was so enamoured by his speech and so happy to see him that she rejected the other man and married Tom. That was my great-great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather.

Hmmm, which family?

The family portion of this paper will primarily focus on my mother’s side. There, I have a lot of documented history and lots of resources to pull from.

My mother is the oldest of nine, and a majority of them have three or four children so I have lots of cousins and aunts and uncles. My father’s side on the other hand should be documented for the purpose of posterity and the preservation of our history for future generations. It is a small German protestant family. My brother, one male cousin and I are the last holders of the Rumbaugh name. My grandmother on my father’s side who lives in Florida had two husbands and three boys all of who have died. My grandfather passed away before I was born, my uncle died of a motorcycle accident, my father died in the Army, and a second uncle died of a heart problem at age 16. My grandmother remarried in the 1980’s and that husband died of natural causes a few years later. I have two cousins, one aunt by marriage and my grandmother left on that side.

For the purposes of this paper, I will then focus on the giant family on my mother’s side.

Music and dance are in our blood

Music and dance have been an integral part of the history of my family. Tom Costello and his brothers were said to be traditional Irish sword dancers. No one in my family really knows the history of that or can explain what an Irish sword dance looks like, so it’s always been shrouded in mystery. They would tell you with raised eyebrows and hushed voices, “You know your great-great-grandfather was a sword dancer, don’t you?”

Dancing was a big part of my grandmother’s life as well. She graduated from St. Thomas High School in 1928. She spent two years at Mercyhurst College, then quit and went straight to The Big Apple to become a dancer. She had the beginnings of a professional career until one fateful day. Someone at home in Corry saw a picture of her with a flapper type dress and a short modern haircut. Her parents weren’t having any of that tomfoolery so they took the first train to New York City and promptly dragged her back to Corry much to her dismay. Her career as a professional dancer in the big city was put on hold.

Both grandmother’s and grandfather’s families loved music. Each family saved up to buy a piano and it was the centerpiece of the house. In the evenings people would gather and play and sing. After the piano, other instruments followed. Violins, fiddles, drums, saxophones, trumpets, clarinets, flutes, guitars, accordions and harmonicas were and (still are) played. My grandmother organized The Corry Dixieland Band. She played the piano, a few local musicians joined from the city, and the rest of the band was made up of sons and daughters. Practices were held at grandmother’s house and the evenings were full of music, laughter, conversation, and more music. The pianos that were bought that many decades ago are still being used regularly.

Family, Religion/Work, Religion/Education, Food

The Catholic religion facilitated a large family through its doctrines. Also, since they were farmers and working class people, the more bodies around to help out, the better. My grandfather’s and grandmother’s families were farmers in Ireland and America. Their value was work. They farmed, had big broods of children who worked with and for them and kept the Irish Catholic Church financially on its feet, because there were many families like ours.

The value of education has permeated the last few generations. It was only after they were able to, however, that their values shifted from work and religion to education and religion. My grandfather’s father, Tom Downey was a pharmacist who owned his own shop in Corry. My grandfather was an aeronautical engineer who designed fuel systems for airplanes. I remember when he visited us once and we went to the Air and Space Museum. “I have a part in that plane. I built a fuel filter for that one…” he said pointing up to the famous planes hanging from the ceiling. My grandmother attended college - a rare thing for a woman to do in those days - before she quit to become a dancer in New York City.

My grandparents expected that their sons and daughters have the same value in education. Therefore all of my uncles and aunts graduated high school, most graduated college, and some attained graduate level status. My grandfather’s prayer was usually a simple, “God, grant us the strength to pass all of our tests.” Some people thought that only applied to academics.

Another value was food. Having enough food and a variety was constant work for the women in our family. My grandmother still values making her own bread and topping it with crabapple jam from the tree outside. Nothing could go to waste, and with so many people eating, not much did. We figured out that she fed 11 people three times a day for 20 or so odd years. Since the ages were different some of the food had to be made special. That’s at least 33 plates of food every day, with dishes set up and cleaned by hand in preparation for the next meal.

Catholic religious ceremonies

Catholic religious ceremonies were an important part of the goings on in my ancestry. Wedding receptions, funeral wakes, baptisms, and rosary sayings were all held at their individual houses. After my grandparents bought their house in the 1940’s, all of their celebrations were held there including three full wedding receptions. I remember my grandfather’s funeral wake, and it was like a party! There his body was, laid out in a coffin in the living room and me and the rest of the kids (I was six at the time) were running through the house playing tag and hide-and-go-seek.

As a child I also remember my family saying the rosary at grandmother’s house. There was a statue of Mary outside which could be seen from the big dining room window, and we would all sit in the dark and say the rosary. I didn’t know the words back then, but I would doze off to the droning, repetitive sounds of the Hail Mary; it was like a mantra.

Laced curtain vs. Black Irish

There were two classes of people in my ancestry: my grandfather’s side was laced curtain Irish and my grandmother’s side was Black Irish. Laced curtain Irish were prim and proper, very refined, with everything in its place. They were quiet and studious and came from a higher class in Ireland. These were the landowners in Ireland who had lots of land and lots of people working for them. They didn’t need to sell absolutely everything just for the fare to America, and may have come here with some money left over. They had resources and probably knew people here before coming.

The Black Irish on the other hand were the loud, boisterous, fun loving, dancing, great story tellers of my grandmother’s side. They were lower class and as explained before, had to sell everything just to make it here. They were subsistence farmers. They were called Black Irish because of the color of their hair and eyes. The story goes that their looks come from a Spanish Galleon hundreds of years ago that was stranded on the Irish coast. The Spaniards mixed with the Irish to make a light skinned person with Iberian features - very dark hair and dark brown eyes, instead of the red or blonde haired blue or green eyed majority.

My grandmother is convinced that some of her ancestors were gypsies and that the ship wasn’t really a Spanish Galleon at all. My grandmother’s mother had what is called in my family the Black Irish gift. She was a Catholic and Christian up front, but she would secretly read people’s cards and tea leaves and tell fortunes. This was the same side of the family with the Irish sword dancers, so the same hushed voices and raised eyebrows would be used when talking about my great-grandmother.

Culture and class

It seems like my ancestors wanted to keep Irish and keep Catholic. There was a big backlash when a person would marry outside of the norm. Always big controversy and drama, though no one was ever disowned. The first instance was again Tom and Margaret Costello. Their marriage wasn’t very popular with her family since she married into a lower class. The next was Tom and Margaret’s daughter, my great-grandmother, Katy, who married a German man. She didn’t know much about homemaking and her husband’s German mother chided her about not doing anything right. This made it possible for stereotypes and conflict between Germans and Irish within both families to continue.

Religion and ethnicity were the only types of diversity in Corry, PA. They were all white - how you were looked at just depended on your European ancestry, your religion, and your economic class. Another controversy was my mother and father’s marriage. Not only was he of German decent, he was also a protestant and not Catholic. This was just not done! It sent shock waves through both families, and the entire town was talking. Eventually both sides were civil enough to hold the wedding reception at my grandmother’s house at 230 East Pleasant Street.

230 East Pleasant Street

Both sides of my mother’s family came from Ireland in the 1800’s. Both sides came to Corry, Pennsylvania about the same time shortly after landing in the U.S. Some of my ancestors, again, stayed on in New York City but most have settled in northwestern Pennsylvania. After my grandfather invented and developed some fuel parts for airplanes, he bought the house at 230 East Pleasant Street in the 1940’s for his growing family. The Downeys have lived there ever since.

It is a giant house that is always full of people and food. It is where Thanksgiving, Easter, summer vacations, wedding receptions, funeral wakes, and baptisms happen. A man that owned the local tannery in Corry built it in 1915. In the 1960’s, my grandfather enlisted the help of his children to level off part of the back yard and build the first tennis court in Corry. The ground was natural hard clay - no surface needed. He also dug and poured his own in ground concrete swimming pool, and the town was ecstatic. The residence is so central to our family community that we call it The Big House. Being home to nine kids it used to be that anyone in town would know where and what The Big House was.

Personal cultural experience

It was difficult for me to distinguish the observations in the last section with the questions in this next section. This is because most of the family traditions that have started with my ancestors are still intact. 230 East Pleasant Street is still the focus of our family (all 70+ of us) during hardship or celebration. Also, I don’t have a family of my own yet, so my family of origin is itself. I have decided to interview my mother for this section and focus on what is called the “D.C. Contingent” of the Downey family.

Some of the values I hold are the same. I love family and getting together for any event we have. There is, however, a difference in values attained in living and growing up in a metropolitan area as opposed to my ancestors and current extended family that live in a rural area.

Growing up and going to public school in the Washington area gives a young person a unique view on diversity. Since kindergarten I had the pleasure of knowing and being great friends with people from all over the globe. My elementary school was home to Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, and Central American children, as well as students from many other countries. During middle school, we housed two Korean foreign exchange students. I have always been fascinated by far away places and I would study maps and ask questions of my friends in learning language, customs, and what they ate.

This was a privilege that was not shared by my cousins growing up in northwestern Pennsylvania, where the nearest thing to diversity in culture was an hour drive to the “metropolis” of Erie. My ancestors valued family, music, religion, education, and work. I think my family in the D.C. area has incorporated these values into the culturally diverse area that we live in.

A surplus of giving

“We value the value of family. We sometimes don’t know how exceptional it is having a family so close and loving,” my mother said. “That gives us fortitude and the strength to help others. Just think of your occupation (counseling), or John’s (my brother - the doctor), your dad’s (psychiatrist), or my occupation (she is the Safe and Drug Free director for Montgomery County). We have a surplus of giving, and we devote our resources to help others.” She continued, “None of us are couch potatoes! We have push and drive. We don’t wait around for things to happen to us. We go out and get things done.”

The ceremonial 400 pound ficus

I asked her what types of rituals and ceremonies we hold, and she laughed. Twice a year since moving in, we have had to move this giant ficus tree that stands in our living room. It used to be that we could just drag or lift it, but now it’s so big and there are so many fragile knick-knacks, rugs and tables to be moved between it and the door outside, that it is a logistical nightmare. She listed this as her first recollection of a family ritual.

“We also celebrate every birthday; we attend all sorts of celebrations, graduations; we all go and pick someone up from the airport with banners and signs; and God have I spent time on my share of soccer fields. I don’t regret it, but all the games, practices and parties for all four of you. We have brunch together, although it’s not as often as it used to be. I used to burn bagels every Sunday morning. That was a ritual!”

We also have organized a neighborhood Christmas caroling party for 30 years and counting, and it is still a big event. We started out as a family playing and singing in the street outside our house. Our next door neighbor joined, then others. Then we started to walk up the street. One year it got so big, that it seemed like we didn’t have anyone to carol to since everyone was in the crowd. “What’s important is that we attended every event no matter whose it was, where it was or what. Now we’re doing it for the grandchildren.”

Personalities and communication

When I was about three, my mother and father divorced. My mother later said that one reason was that my father was a totally different person after three tours in Vietnam. He was in the medical branch of the Army and was a psychiatrist there. After their divorce, they kept a civil relationship for our sake. The distinction of our family being the only one on our block to be different in terms of parental structure was quite hard. “Single parent” was not a term in the popular language as it is today. Additionally back then “divorce” was a shameful word that people would say with averted eyes. “Broken home” was another term that I heard for the first time on our quiet suburban street.

I think this has and still does influence my siblings’ personalities and communication styles and myself. I think because I was so young, I’m not as impacted as those who remember the conflict. My brother, the oldest is the hero of the family - always taking charge and taking responsibility. Next oldest is my sister who likes to have comfort - house, pets, everything is like a dollhouse. My other sister is so sensitive, any sort of breeze feels like a gale. I - the youngest, and the peace maker - feel like I have to take care of everything and everybody, but am more of a free spirit.

“Catholicism influenced how conflict was handled”

“Hmmm, how was conflict handled? Ignored, denied, rationalized, or displaced as someone else’s fault, but never talked about,” my mother said. “Is that anything to do with being Catholic?” I asked. “Oh yeah! I was angry a lot as a child, but didn’t know or couldn’t express it. We weren’t allowed to express fear. Emotions were put aside, and there wasn’t a lot of communication - but silence was communication too.

Once I was out of there, I learned how to express and I’m still working on it. One time I came home and started to hug all my sisters and brothers. They didn’t know what to think! Who is this crazy woman hugging and kissing us? Now it’s part of the family culture, but back then they were stiff as boards. You’re not like that, because I was conscious of what to teach. Your kids won’t be like that either. Look at your sister’s kids - they tell you straight out what they’re feeling.”

Class and ethnicity

“There were sharp divisions between those who had money and those who didn’t in Corry,” my mother said. “There were also sharp divisions between the different cultures - the Irish and the Germans. Related to class, most nights during dinner we would hear a knocking at the back door, and mom would tell one of us to take a plate of food out there, and there was usually a homeless guy we would give food to. Never the same one either, just a plate, and he would be on his way. These were hobos - people who would ride the rails all over Pennsylvania and New York. On traveling I guess they would tell each other which houses in which towns to go to for food. Ours was apparently known far and wide. That’s just how we were, we had money but would open our house up. There was a local homeless guy; his name was ‘Bleuch’ - he was big and smelly. Mom would open up the basement and she had a cot for him. He would stay a few days and be gone. Dad wasn’t too fond of him ‘Bleuch has been in here again, hasn’t he?!’”

I asked her to tell the story of when she spent the summer at University of Florida in Gainesville. “Oh, yeah - it was in 1961, and I went down there for a summer and lived with Teetots (my grandmother’s sister) and couldn’t believe the segregation. I’ve never seen anything like it! I said ‘I’m going to drink right out of that water fountain!’ Teetots said ‘no little Rita, Don’t even go near it!’ ‘What’s the difference? What are they going to do to me?’ ‘No, you mustn’t’ I thought about how crazy it was, and how I was in college and didn’t even know about that whole other world down there.” She explained how she wanted her children to keep the same sorts of values as her family growing up, and never get to a point where prejudice prevailed as she had seen in the south.

Privilege

We were and are privileged, and it has eased my family. “Oh, I would say we were privileged. Your great-grandfather owned his own pharmacy, your grandfather was an engineer who was on the team to invent in-flight refueling, your grandmother went to college, I went to Catholic U, your dad went to Thiel and Jefferson. We had everything we needed and more. You know ours was the first tennis court in Corry? A pool too. And all that land in the pasture.” When she said this, I thought about how true it was that we had a ton of “accumulated wealth” - the wealth, money, property, and equity passed down through the generations that makes life that much better for the next.

3919 Rickover

Much like 230 East Pleasant Street, 3919 Rickover has been home to our family for as long as I can remember. After being in Hawaii for two years where my sister and I were born, my family moved to the D.C. area. My mom and dad found this home in the suburbs, where we have stayed ever since - that was 1972.

After my parents’ divorce, my father moved out and we stayed in the house with mom. I remember traveling at an early age to visit him in Fort Bragg, NC on the train or down to Walter Reed Army Medical Center by taking the bus or metro. I think that’s when I got my travel bug. I’ve lived in more places than any of my other siblings, not to say that they are stagnant.

Right now, we Rumbaughs are spread all over the world. My sister lives in Florida, my brother is stationed in Belgium, and my other sister lives here but travels all over the country with her job. All of us think of 3919 Rickover as our home base though.

Differences between the D.C. Contingent and Corry

“How is our family culture similar to or different from our family of origin?” I asked my mother. “I’ve explained our similarities, but there are huge differences. I think we’re more fun, we like open communication, and we have wider interests. We’re spread out geographically and philosophically. We’re more educated, we have the experience of city living, and best of all we are less concerned about what the priest would say,” she said with a smile.

Change

“When we moved here from Hawaii, we were so hungry for Chinese food. We had been accustomed to rice and fish and fresh fruit. There was one Chinese food restaurant here back then. Now there’s one on every corner! I think it has its advantages and its drawbacks. One is that the diversity is so ever present. For community events, I have to translate all my materials into five different languages! John graduated Einstein (High School) with one Hispanic and two black classmates. Your class was a little higher, and now this year Einstein’s student population will be a minority of whites. That’s happened in only 20 years. I think it also makes you think more about traffic, shopping, where you shop because of safety. Wheaton Plaza used to be safe. There’s no way I’d go there at night now,” she said.

I was thinking back to my earlier statement about how growing up in the metropolitan area was an advantage in exposure to diversity. I think of those kids and realize that they went to a mostly white suburban school. Although unique in their culture, and different and interesting to us, they were probably highly assimilated, and didn’t give us a true picture of diversity.

Becoming a culturally competent counselor

How has your decision to become a counselor influenced your views toward cultural diversity?

I was thinking of a way of answering that question for a long time. I came up with the opposite. My views toward cultural diversity have influenced me to become a counselor. Maybe that’s not the best way to say it, but I first thought of becoming a counselor after I had been working for Outward Bound in Florida for more than a year. Before that, I didn’t think it was an option - for a person who has worked in outdoor education all those years. I really liked working with those kids, and now I work with a similar population. They are fun, expressive, and challenging and they are mostly minorities. I don’t want anyone to assume that I’m saying that because I work with this population and they are mostly minorities that as a white person I have made a conscious decision to help them because they are not white and I am. It seems like that’s what I said in the beginning of this heading but it’s not a mission for me. It’s just that I have an affinity for the work, and most of them just happen to be a different race than me.

Helm’s Model

I am a true pseudo-independent white male. Going through the process of this paper, and reading about the different stages of white identity, I can honestly say I’ve found what I am. I am pseudo-independent because I am unaware of my feelings in racial situations, and I do intellectualize. I don’t know how to respond when people discuss the past and how whites persecuted and destroyed so many lives. I have the ability to articulate awareness of differences, but may fail to act on own beliefs and might be seen as inconsistent. I am beginning to become a non-racist person, and I know what thoughts and feelings I need to process in order to develop a healthy white identity. I talk the talk, but need to know how to walk the walk. How specifically can I take action? What can one person do? What do I really need to do, concretely? Maybe I’m looking for an easy answer…

5 Strengths

First, I am creative. From my experience in Outward Bound, I have what is called “a bag of tricks” that I can use to motivate, excite, and build rapport.

Second, I don’t know and therefore don’t use traditional counseling styles - I am ignorant of those styles. I explain in my next section how this can be a weakness, but it is a strength because as I am learning, multicultural counseling is more successful when it doesn’t use the one-on-one, in the office, behind closed door type of counseling. I tend to be more hands-on.

Third, I am very flexible. In my past working environments each day was different; I never knew what I was up against when coming to work. This is true for most counseling workplaces, but with adjudicated teens you never really know. There might be a fight; one of the clients might try to assault a staff, anything. I’ve had to step into many different roles, depending on the situation.

Fourth, I use experiential education and counseling in my style. I like the clients to do something for themselves as they learn by doing, that way they get more out of the experience. This goes back to Outward Bound as well and William Glasser’s theory on Reality Therapy. Basically there are two questions that I keep in mind: What is it that you want? And, is what you are doing now getting you closer to what you want? I don’t ask those questions straight out, but incorporate them into my activities.

Lastly, I have been a minority in the workplace. I now work and have worked with an all black and Hispanic staff. This is an advantage because I am not uncomfortable with diversity in the workplace.

5 Weaknesses

First, I came to counseling through a different route. After I came back from the Peace Corps in the Philippines, I became a wilderness instructor for Outward Bound in Florida. There, I started on the path towards counseling. This is explained as a strength because I don’t identify with traditional counseling roles, but it is a weakness because I will need to work hard to learn all this new material. And what if someone responds well to traditional counseling? I don’t yet know how to help them.

Second, I tend to blur the personal and professional. Things get tough with the kids I work with. They insult, test, and curse, and I need to step back and realize that I provide them with alternatives, these things are part of the process, and the rest is up to them. When I worked in residential drug treatment, I took it personally when one of my clients relapsed. “After all that we worked on…” I would think, wonder why, and partly blame myself.

Third, I need to get my voice out there more. My style is too quiet and calm sometimes for the loud and expressive staff and students I work with.

Next, although I wouldn’t call it a weakness, or a fault, I am privileged. In self- disclosure situations, I have no real experience with hardship. My parents’ divorce and my father’s death were hard, but we (my family) had each other and we had resources. We were never hungry or broke or out on the street or had to move. I’ve never seen a person get shot, or joined a gang, or had any trouble with the police. A majority of my clients have. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish that I had, but again it’s just something that makes me different in certain situations.

Lastly, and the one that has the most potential to become dangerous is what I see at work may have shaped my attitude. Only until this class have I learned about institutional racism. All I see in adolescent drug treatment are blacks and Hispanics with a white minority. Are white teens less likely to become drug addicts? Can they afford better treatment? Better yet, can they afford better lawyers so they don’t get on intensive probation like these others? In the attitude and knowledge sections I will take a closer look at this dilemma I am facing with myself.

Attitude and Knowledge (A&K)

1K) Related to weaknesses, I would like to be able to know the bigger picture of why blacks and Hispanics are a majority in adolescent drug treatment. 1A) Attitudinally, I want to prevent myself from assuming that blacks and Hispanics are the only ones who do drugs primarily, but that’s what I see in the client population. I’m thinking, if I educate myself on why it happens, then that knowledge (K) can prevent me from continuing to build on this attitude (A).

2A) I work with all minorities, so I need to develop a healthy white attitude. I am stuck in the, “I’m only the white education guy, but I think…” In other words sometimes I need not be afraid to show my skill in the workplace. 2K) I want to learn about language patterns. Why do the kids I work with curse so much? They don’t even realize they are doing it, and it seems ingrained in their lives. I don’t know how they will be able to survive in society and the workplace if they have language like that. Again, I seek the bigger picture.

3A) I want to keep challenging myself to expose myself to new multicultural experiences, so I don’t get too comfortable, stagnated, and build on attitudes. 3K) I want to know in what ways do I really perpetuate racism personally and institutionally and break it down.

4A) Related to developing a healthy white attitude, I would like to change my attitude when people discuss the racial struggles of the past. Now I feel guilty and uncomfortable, and I don’t know how to respond appropriately. 4K) I would like to pick up more on non-verbals. Ever since the section on non-verbal communication, I’ve seen myself seeking them out when people talk to each other, talk to me, and how I talk to others, and what differences there are.

5A) I would like to change my attitude about counseling. I’m starting to learn that multicultural counseling is all encompassing and there are many different roles to play and ways to help. Finally, 5K) I would like to continue to the study of other races’ pasts and what they went through, as another way of developing a healthy white identity.

James K. Rumbaugh
March 10, 2005
Multicultural Counseling
Trinity College