Download Janet Helms, Black and White Racial Identity Development: Theory

North Seattle Community College
Beginnings 2009
Racial Identity Development:
William E. Cross, Jr. Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity (1991)
believes there are five stages of racial identity development:
 Pre-encounter (earliest phase and when racial development is not an issue)
 Encounter – when a person has experience an event or a series of events that
create an awareness of the personal significance of race.
 Immersion/Emersion – This stage happens when a person is ready to fully
explore what it means to be a person of color. Often a person will separate
him/herself from the dominant group and spend time with a select group of people
who are also at this state of their identity formation.
 Internalization – This phase is marked by a sense of security about one’s ethnicity
or “otherness”. When a person is at this stage, he or she values what makes them
____.
 Internalization Commitment – This final phase occurs when a person of color
has developed the self confidence and the awareness of their ethnicity and is able to
uphold, share, and educate others in these values.
The Development of White Identity:
Janet Helms, Black and White Racial Identity Development: Theory, Research, and
Practice (1990)
Helms believes there are specific stages of healthy white development:
 Contact – like Cross’ first stage, this phase of white identity development is about
being unaware. People at this phase often say, “I don’t have a culture.”
 Disintegration – The second phase is about growing in one’s personal awareness
about institutional and cultural racism, the concepts in the theory of white privilege,
and a growing sense of discomfort about why one didn’t know this before and what it
might mean to become aware.
 Reintegration – If the disintegration phase is not deep enough, many people revert
back to what was comfortable to them; a phase Helms calls “reintegration”. It is in
this phase where an individual might begin to project their feelings of discomfort on
people of color or people who are marginalized. Thoughts like, “They could have
done something to change the way it is: are often thought.
 Pseudo-independent – This phase moves a person towards real intellectual and
personal commitment to unlearn racism and become more knowledgeable and
sensitive to the complexity of the issue.
 Immersion/emersion - This phase is a commitment to explore, usually with
others, what it means to be white apart from unconscious superiority or privilege.
 Autonomy - This phase speaks to when a person is secure in their identity as a
white person and can participate in a multicultural, social, and communication
experience. People at this stage become people committed to social change.
Multiple Identities
Excerpts from Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together
in the Cafeteria?(1997)
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“When we think about our multiple identities, most of us will find that we are both
dominant and targeted at the same time. But it is the targeted identities that hold our
attention and the dominant identities that often go unexamined” (Tatum 22).
“Common across these examples is that in the areas where a person is a member of the
dominant or advantaged social group, the category is usually not mentioned. That
element of their identity is so taken for granted by them that it goes without comment.
It is taken for granted by them because it is taken for granted by the dominant culture.
In Eriksonian terms, their inner experience and outer circumstances are in harmony
with one another, and the image reflected by others is similar to the image within. In
the absence of dissonance, this dimension of identity escapes conscious attention”
(Tatum 21).
“The parts of our identity that do capture our attention are those that other people
notice, and that reflect back to us. The aspect of identity that is the target of others’
attention, and subsequently of our own, often is that which sets up apart as exception
or “other” in their eyes…”(Tatum 21).
Dominance and Subordination:
Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (1976) identifies some areas of
commonality in the experience of being dominant or subordinate:
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Dominant groups set the parameters within which subordinates operate.
The relationship of the dominants to the subordinates is often one in which the
targeted group is labeled as defective or substandard in significant ways.
When a subordinate demonstrates positive qualities believed to be more
characteristic of dominants, the individual is defined by dominants as an anomaly.
The dominant group is seen as the norm for humanity.
Dominant groups generally do not like to be reminded of the existence of inequity.
Dominants rarely known what the experience of the subordinate is.
Not only is there greater opportunity for the subordinates to learn about the
dominants, there is greater need. “It’s a simple principle: People pay attention to
those who control their outcomes. In an effort to predict and possibly influence what
is gong to happen to them, people gather information about those with power.”
In a situation of unequal power, a subordinate group has to focus on survival.
Survival sometimes means not responding to oppressive behavior directly.
Because of risks inherent in unequal relationships, the subordinates often develop
covert ways of resisting or undermining the power of the dominant group.
Cultural Identity Evaluation:
 Is describing your cultural identity easy to do? If so, why? If not, why not?
 Do you place your cultural identity primarily in one group or in several cultural
groups?
 Does your cultural identity result in a strong sense of others in and out of your
cultural group?
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If so, were you taught to evaluate negatively those who are not part of your cultural
group?
 Conversely, do you sometimes feel excluded from and evaluated negatively by people
from a different culture from your own?
The answers to these questions will help you understand the possible consequences,
both negative and positive, of your cultural identity as you communicate interculturally.
Honest Inventory of the Various Ways You Categorize People
 What were you taught through your family/culture about people who were different?
How were they categorized?
 Identify your ethnocentric attitudes about elements from other cultural groups:
appearance, social practices, etc.
 Make a list of the stereotypes you hold about various groups (positive and negative)
Terms You Should Know:
 Ethnocentrism – my way is the preferred way
 Isms – categorizing people who are different and using these differences to oppress
people socially, psychologically, and economically. (For example, sexism, racism,
etc.)
 Stereotyping – Selective process used to organize and simplify perceptions of
others
 Prejudice – Negative attitudes towards other people that are based on faulty and
inflexible stereotypes
 Discrimination – refers to the behavior manifestations of that prejudice
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