For the past 20 years, the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD) has provided leadership for the American counseling profession in major sociocultural and sociopolitical domains. Through our vision of the centrality of culture and multiculturalism to the counseling profession, we have created new directions and paradigms for change. One of our major contributions has been the development of the Multicultural Counseling Competencies (Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992).

The philosophical distinction between reasons and causes has recently been invoked in psychological discussion of attributional processes. This article sets out the philosophical distinction and considers its application to these processes. Buss's interpretation of the distinction and Jones' proposal for a 2 X 2 bifurcation into reasons/causes and internal/external are both rejected. Instead, reasons are to be construed as one form of internal cause. This distinction between, reasons and other causes is then used to clarify three major claims in current attributional research: (a) the actor/observer difference, (b) the fundamental attribution error, and (c) the claim that people are largely unaware of the cognitive processes that influence and explain their behavior. The distinction between reasons and causes is used to interpret some, but not all, of the findings in these areas. It is, therefore, a distinction that future research will have to take into account.

The topic of diversity/multiculturalism is explored in terms of how to teach about racism in counselor education programs. Issues about racism in general, how racism is handled in multicultural counseling courses, and strategies for successful teaching are explored.

A narrow, focused, and thorough view of multicultural counseling that focuses on both individual characteristics and unique cultural group membership characteristics is advocated.