Racial Identity Development

Racial Identity Development Process

Racial identity theorists argue that one's level of racial identity development shapes an individual's world-view. The racial identity development process has been characterized as a stagewise, sinuous social-psychological process. This lifelong developmental process comprises a number of psychological stages or statuses that coincide with distinct attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors regarding race and racism. The process associated with one's racial identity development is not always cumulative, nor is it static. Racial identity theorists contend that the racial identity development process varies across diverse racial-ethnic groups. Emerging from scholarship on Black identity development, theories and models of racial identity development address a myriad of racial-ethnic groups. The Black Identity Development theory and the White (Racial) Identity Development theory exemplify the range of this scholarship.

Black Identity Development Theory: An Overview

The conceptual framework for a Black Identity Development (BID) theory was influenced by a burgeoning theoretical tradition and the racial politics and unrest of the middle 20th century. The intellectual roots of BID theory are grounded in Erik Erikson's scholarship on the stages of personality development and the early accounts of Black racial identity formation. The racial and cultural politics of the 1960s are at the core of theorizing about BID. William Cross and Bailey Jackson—two leading BID theorists—advanced respective theories and models of BID that outline how the racial identity development of Black people is influenced by the extent to which a Black person feels connected to his or her blackness and how the development of this racial connectivity constantly shifts and changes relative to larger societal and group forces.

Cross published his Nigrescence Model in 1971 and Jackson later published the BID theory in 1976. At its core, BID theory was concerned with understanding the different stages of Black consciousness and the sequencing of BID. The BID theorists assumed that the progression through each of the stages of BID and the subsequent emergence of a racialized worldview was a linear and cumulative life-course process. For Jackson, a healthy BID did not allow one to regress in his or her racial identity development; however, it was likely that an individual could become stagnant in a given stage of his or her BID.

Five stages of development or consciousness are associated with the BID theory. The naïve stage is the initial stage in a Black person's racial identity development. This stage, which is largely associated with early childhood, is marked by the absence of any awareness about the social implications of race. Often, Black individuals at the naïve stage are incapable of either identifying or articulating how their discriminate treatment is linked to both their race and the larger systems of racism. The acceptance stage of BID theory is seen as a point when a Black person privileges whiteness and White culture. This stage of BID often manifests itself through behaviors and attitudes that are accepting of and conforming to the social, cultural, and institutional standards of whiteness, which spawns a negative and irrational perception of blackness and Black people. This form of racial self-hatred gives way to the resistance stage in a Black person's BID. As a Black person begins to question the hegemony and normalcy of whiteness and White supremacy, a newfound awareness and appreciation of blackness emerges for a Black person at this stage. As an outgrowth of this resistance to the dominant ideology and culture, a Black individual at the redefinition stage begins to discover and develop a positive Black identity. The internalization stage is the last stage in a Black individual's BID, whereby he or she progresses beyond merely cultivating a Black-centered identity and worldview to a deliberate attempt at integrating his or her positive Black identity into every aspect of his or her lived experience and social interactions.

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