Derald Wing Sue

Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. is a professor of counseling psychology at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice, Overcoming our Racism, and Understanding Abnormal Behavior.

Personal life

Sue was born in Portland, Oregon to a Chinese American family. He lived in a predominantly White neighborhood, with his parents, four brothers, and one sister where he reports being bullied and taunted on a regular basis, due to his race. The bullying and taunting Sue experienced as a child was one of the factors that later influenced his studies in cross cultural counseling. Two other individuals who influenced Sue's path of study were Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

He was married to his wife Paulina in the 1960s and they have two children- Derald Paul and Marissa.

Professional life

Sue obtained his bachelor's degree from Oregon State University, and then a M.S. and Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Oregon. After completing his degree, he became a counselor at the University of California, Berkeley counseling center, and was known as the counselor who supported Asian American students. During Sue’s time at Berkeley, he conducted mental health studies on Asian Americans, which then led him to coauthor two books: A Theory of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy and Understanding Abnormal Behavior. In addition to being a professor of psychology at Teachers College, Sue has also served on Bill Clinton's President's Advisory Board on Race in 1996. He has also served as a past president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, a co-founder and first president of the Asian American Psychological Association, and the president of the Society of Counseling Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

He has written over 150 publications on various topics such as multicultural counseling and psychotherapy, psychology of racism and antiracism, cultural diversity, cultural competence, and multicultural organizational development, but more specifically, multicultural competencies and racial microaggressions. While many people have celebrated the concept as a way to ensure individuals are looking always towards bettering their cultural relations, others consider it a tool with which minorities have use to chastise and insist that white people can "Unknowingly insult through meta-communication". By using this system it then empowers minorities of race, color, sex or percussion that even though the person who is commincatioing with them did not intend to insult or hurt their feelings, it did occur and that this person has the right to "feel" slighted. Conisidering no one can be responsible for how others take any form of communication and that without instant discussion of a perceived microaggression. See as an example :