Internalized Racism

Internalized racism has historically been described in reference to the African American experience. Over time, the term has developed a broader meaning that encompasses the experience of other oppressed persons of color. Current psychological literature describes internalized racism in reference to many groups, including Native Americans, Asian Americans, indigenous peoples of Mexico, and others who incorporate into their thoughts and behaviors the oppressors' views of them, including negative attitudes, prejudiced beliefs, stereotypes, values, perspectives, and notions of racial superiority.

Internalized racism results from insidious institutional and social presumptions that those of Western European origin–who often live in safer neighborhoods, attend better schools, enjoy more lucrative job opportunities, and earn higher incomes–are superior because of their inherited predisposition and personal effort, whereas people of color–who often live in unsafe neighborhoods, attend under achieving schools, have fewer educational opportunities, and work in lower-wage jobs–are inferior because of genetic predisposition and insufficient effort.

Persons of color who internalize these racist beliefs begin to accept negative stereotypes about their ability and worth. Limitations in aspirations, goals, and freedom to define the self are accepted, along with the belief that those benefiting from unearned privilege are, in fact, superior in fundamental biological ways. In the same way that racism permeates every aspect of our society, internalized racism works its way into the fabric of the self and manifests initially as a preference for light skin, straight hair, and Western values of individualism, competition, materialism, and youthfulness. Many people of color who espouse these preferences may be unaware that their preferences are the result of oppression. Denial and unawareness of the characteristics and etiology of internalized racism make exploration of this complicated issue difficult, painful, and sometimes shaming.

Devaluing of the self and others of the same racial group results in passive, inwardly directed symptoms of resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness and may progress to more active and outwardly directed behaviors, such as mocking one's ethnic group, adopting racial slurs to describe one's self and others, rejecting one's cultural heritage (foods, traditions, and values), and demonstrating hostility toward others of one's race (evidenced by high murder rates and other crimes in communities of color). In the process of devaluing one's self and others, internalized racism leads individuals to become isolated from communities of color. Isolation, in turn, thwarts collective action to rectify long-standing inequalities and discrimination that are deeply rooted in societal norms, beliefs, and behaviors.

Internalized racism may be transmitted from generation to generation through parents' belief in their own worthlessness and the worthlessness of their people relative to the dominant society. Even young children whose families attempt to inculcate them against the loss of self-worth are nonetheless able to perceive their unequal status compared with the lightskinned children of families of European origin whom they encounter in life and in the media. Thus, youth of color, despite their parents' efforts to the contrary, may develop a deep sense of worthlessness by virtue of belonging to a marginalized group that is clearly not valued by those in power.

Internalized racism is believed to contribute to a pervasive sense of alienation from the self (personal identity), others (family and group), other race groups, culture and history, and human potential and self-determination. For African Americans, internalized racism may be conceptualized as contributing to four types of conditions: (1) alien-self disorder involves the rejection of one's heritage, denial that racism exists, and attempts to take on the worldview of the dominant society; (2) anti-self disorder is a manifestation of alien-self disorder with additional hostility toward everything related to African culture; (3) self-destructive disorder results from the fruitless and inherently self-harming effects of trying to adjust oneself to living within an oppressive system; (4) organic disorder describes the physiological impact of living with inequality of opportunities, poor nutrition, substandard schooling and housing, and other oppressive conditions. The term cultural misorientation refers to alienation from natural African cultural realities and encompasses all of the symptoms of these four disorders of the self.

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