Helms, Janet E. (1947-)

Racial Identity Theory

With regard to her theory on racial identity development, Helms contends that a study of race and racism needs to take into account the manner in which people are cognitively, affectively, and conatively affected by the appraisals that people make about them and, recursively, by the appraisals they make about themselves and others. Racial appraisals are but one aspect of this process that becomes internalized and highly integrated with other aspects of identity. In the early statuses of racial identity development and in the absence of deliberate efforts to illuminate and correct distortions about people based on race, many people adopt information processing strategies that accept a status quo perspective about racism. In other words, people may fail to question the negative or negligible treatment of non-Whites, the heralding of White people and White culture, or the seeming inevitability of Blacks and Latinos/as, as examples, to occupy positions of low prominence in education relative to Whites. Crucial to the status quo perspective are mechanisms that exist at all levels in the sociopolitical ecology that upholds a tolerance for not questioning or that encourages the deflection of these aspects of reality. People adopt information processing strategies of obliviousness, selective attention to reality, and denial to cope with these racial stimuli. However, even though these strategies can help release some of the discomfort or pain associated with the stimuli, they may not be effective. With increased exposure to history, accuracy about people from all backgrounds, and so forth, comes the opportunity for growth in racial identity development. Moreover, as people transcend the different statuses of racial identity, they can gradually replace inchoate information processing strategies (obliviousness, denial, selective attention) with strategies that are more consistent with mental health qualities, like complexity in thinking, flexibility, a willingness to approach rather than avoid situations, and so forth.

Built upon the formulations of W. E. Cross, Jr., Helms's research and theoretical writings on racial identity development began in the early 1980s. With T. A. Parham, Helms created a scale to assess Blacks' racial identity attitudes, one aspect of racial identity. This scale was used in subsequent studies to explore the relationship of racial identity attitudes of Blacks to an array of psychological variables, such as Black college students' preference for counselors based on counselor race. The scale also spawned a proliferation [Page 1155]of measures and theories by others, setting a precedent in identity development model and assessment development. Significantly, in addition to reformulating Cross's identity development model for Blacks, Helms developed three other models that completed her overarching theory of racial identity, the White identity model, the people of color model, and the racial interaction model.

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