 LOS ANGELES, CA| March 27, 2017 Copyright Danielle Leach All Rights Reserved
Before entering the California African-American Museum, I felt very enthusiastic about seeing and learning about what the new exhibit had to offer. It had been a while since I'd visited the museum. The last time I went, there wasn't much there - at least not anything that really captured my interest. So for this visit, I expected it to be different. I preferred to take a self-guided tour so I could go at my own pace and experience it all to myself. I didn't want a guide over my shoulder regurgitating information and adding his/her opinion. Overall, I wanted my visit to be unique, personal, and private. So I spontaneously decided after waking up one morning that that would be the day I'd go visit the African-American Museum. Before the day of my visit, I had built up a lot of anticipation and excitement, knowing that I was in for an alarming treat. I didn't eat breakfast because it had slipped my mind. I was so excited about the new exhibit I was about to behold, I figured it could wait. I also looked at this as a time to fast so that I would have a heightened experience. I had made it an adventure. When I first entered the museum, I stopped at the front desk to get some information on the new exhibits. The staff handed me a couple of brochures, one including a description of the new exhibit. I was excited - so excited that I ended up taking a detour and viewed the other exhibits before finally coming around to the most important one, which was the reason why I was there in the first place. In my mind, I was saving the best for last. When I finally came around to the exhibit highlighting Black oppression, my heart dropped. I entered from the right entrance of the exhibit where I was met with an LAPD police car. Seeing the car and the flashing lights evoked in me a feeling of danger - as if something bad was going to happen. In this case, something bad had already happened. I immediately became immersed in a foray of newspaper clippings, police footage, video playback of news coverage, and somber stories that served as a stark reminder of the social climate that was present in the history of Los Angeles and that still exists til the present day. I felt like I had just stepped foot onto a memorial that commemorated the deaths of innocent African-Americans. It reminded me of what I felt when I visited the 911 Memorial and Museum in New York City. It's an experience you will never forget that leaves you with more questions than answers. That's exactly how I felt. I was torn and overwhelmed with emotion. I didn't know if I should be happy and appreciative of the museum for having an exhibit that teaches us about historical life-altering events or feel disgusted that I was witnessing the cruel slaughter, mistreatment, and injustices towards my people. Just when we are at a time in life where we're supposed to be getting better with racism by electing a Black president and creating affirmative action and social programs that benefit people of color, we are yet reminded of the never-ending system of racial oppression fueled by White Supremacy that just doesn't seem to go away. So as I walked through the exhibit and explored the gruesome pictures and stories on the wall, my mind began to wonder. I began to make a connection between what happened in Los Angeles in the 1960s during the Watts Riots, the 1990s with the LA Uprising, and what has been happening across this country and across the world to Black people. After standing in the exhibit for so long, it all started to feel like a song, with the tune being racism against Blacks. When a tune is played over and over again in your mind, you begin to get used to it. Even if it's a tune you don't like, if you listen to it long enough, it will become second nature, like the air you breathe. So at times, I perceive these racial events as a rhythmic tune that I listen to sometimes but for the most part, have learned to tune out and ignore. Although the beating of Rodney King and the video of Latasha Harlins getting shot by the Korean in the back in the convenient store is painful and shocking to watch for the first time, the way in which I see it and its impact on me will change over time. After watching and hearing these kinds of atrocities over and over again, one grows numb and becomes immune to it. It's like the process of desensitization. When you expose a particular stimulus to a person over and over again, the negative feelings - fear, anxiety, anger- will eventually subside and will no longer be the typical response. As I continued to explore the exhibit, learning about Eula Love (whose name they spelled incorrectly as Eulia in the exhibit) and the housing discrimination that led to thousands of African-Americans being cast out of certain neighborhoods, I began to get curious as to what other people's reactions were to what they were seeing. To an extent, it was impossible to avoid because I could hear commentary from others who were in complete awe of what they were witnessing and seeing. I had already spent nearly an hour there already so I was no longer in surprise or disgust. I just felt numb. Leaving the exhibit, the thought that taunted my mind was why? Why the need for racial oppression in a country that states, “We are all created equal?” One could argue that racial oppression serves a functional purpose – to keep one group of people poor and the other one rich. But to me, it seems to be much deeper than acquisition of money and power. It’s about genetic survival and annihilation. It seems that our survival is a threat to their own. So it is their life agenda and purpose to attack and kill a whole group of people so that they can survive. If it was about money and power, the White race has already claimed that and African-Americans aren’t in a hurry to get money or concerned with gaining economic or political power. We’re just trying to survive. We’ve already submitted to their will and given them 400 years of slavery that we still have yet to be repaid from, yet we are still under attack. So to make the argument that social oppression is created for the sole purpose of gaining or maintaining economic and political power, one escapes the responsibility of having to face the true underlining reality. Late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, a psychiatrist and scholar wrote a very thought-provoking book, The Isis Papers that provides a unique and thoughtful explanation of why Whites feel the need to kill off an entire race of Black people. She states: “The facts of our true identity are that we, as Black people, are persons whose dominant genetic and historic roots extend to Africa, ‘the land of the Blacks.’ Africa was the birthplace of Human kind and that for many hundreds of centuries thereafter Africans, meaning Black people, were in the forefront of all human progress. BLACK WOMEN AND BLACK MEN ARE THE PARENTS OF THE ENTIRE FAMILY OF PEOPLE – black, brown, red, yellow and white varieties.” The reality of this statement is what sends non-people of color over the edge. To admit that Blacks are the first race and that all life originated from this race is a conversation that many people don’t want to have. It’s perhaps because every race wants to be different and unique. It’s very difficult for a White person to admit that before there was a Europe, Asia, or America, there was Africa and this is where all human life originated from. This has been a proven fact for many years that has been taught in many US history textbooks across America but somehow, people have chosen to forget. Therefore, new theories were birthed, like the Big Bang Theory, which suggest that people came from one big burst of an atom in the universe. Supposedly, from that atom, human life, with many different colors, languages, and cultures came to be all at once. With so many theories on human life and existence, people will believe what is beneficial to them. The theory of evolution is beneficial for Whites because in theory, if they’re going to accept that all life came from one source – Africa, then it must have originated from a monkey. They would rather admit they came from monkeys than Black people! So looking back, when I reflect on my visit to the museum and racial oppression in America and abroad, it takes me to a deeper state of thinking. It always forces me to investigate the root cause of the problem and understand why. The root cause of the plight of the Black community doesn’t begin with slavery. It begins in the minds of those who are thirsty for control, power, and survival. To make the claim that Whites originated from Blacks is to give back power to the Black community. Exhibits like the LA Uprising and the Watts Riots are great reminders of where we’ve come and the work that we still need to undo. Restoring the Black community is a matter of undoing the psychological effects of systematic racial oppression and White Supremacy. It’s confronting the process by which these systems work and survive. That would mean having to address it on all levels – within the church, the educational system, the healthcare system, and in government. When it comes to confronting systematic racial oppression, it’s like a customer trying to change the rules to a 500 year old institution or organization that has been in place for so many years. The people within the organization have become so accustomed to the rules and the way the organization has been ran to the point where confronting or violating the status quo would pose a threat to change or destroy it. When you have rules in place that benefit a group of people and have been doing for so long, the beneficiaries sole means of survival becomes centered on trying to protect those rules and standards that have been put into place. It doesn’t matter if it comes at a cost to someone else’s life, especially in a world that values and promotes individualism and the ideology of “every man for himself.” As a psychologist in training, getting reminded of the system of racial oppression that was designed to keep myself and people who look like me held back motivates me to work even harder. Although one could argue that I’ve been “given” opportunities to further my education by going to school and getting higher education degrees, I cannot turn a blind eye to the racism and discrimination I’ve experienced from colleagues, professors, and administrators during my journey. Being treated differently than my classmates because I am Black is not an experience I expected going into graduate school, but it’s something I’ve had to endure. It brings me back to the analogy I mentioned earlier. The more you hear the tune, the more you learn to tune it out. So eventually, I learned to just ignore the difference in treatment and accept it for what it is. I’ve taken the assertive approach on several occasions by confronting the perpetrator but to only be given an unfair justification – much like what we saw in the outcome of Natasha Rollins case. There always seems to be a justification for the mistreatment and killing of African-Americans but never a solid explanation as to why. As a professional psychologist, my clinical work is going to be centered on working with African-Americans in helping them to shape positive identities surrounding their race and culture. For so long, we’ve been ostracized, called “niggers,” made fun of, and cast out of society. Even if it’s not done to us directly and we witness it happen to others of our race in the media, it still serves as a warning sign that danger is impending. It also serves to break down our psyche and make us feel inferior. These feelings of inferiority can have a major impact on our daily functioning and interpersonal relationships. As a therapist, I hope to be a positive change agent and work to curve that effect. Being an African-American woman means that I have to work twice as hard in all aspects of life. Not so much to prove anything to myself – but to prove to others around me that I am a good enough citizen in this society. Going to school and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology wasn’t enough, and neither was earning a master’s degree in counseling. If I want to be respected in society and in corporate America, I would need to get a PhD and become a doctor. Then I got accepted into a PhD program and realized that this monster I tried to escape from is still there to haunt me. I’ve come to accept that no matter how much education or success I have, or no matter where I go in this world, I will not be able to escape the uncompromising permanent effects of the system of White Supremacy. Reference Welsing, F. C. (1991) The Isis Papers. Chicago: Third World Press
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 Copyright 2017 Danielle Leach All Rights Reserved
I can recall many times where I witnessed a very interesting interplay between the processes of cognition and affect. I was working as a residential counselor at a lockdown facility where children were sent by the judge to live until a proper foster care placement was found. The group of boys I was working with were between the ages 5-17, mostly around the age of 12-13. The program I worked for used a behavioral point system to measure the children’s progress while in treatment. If they completed certain tasks as expected (i.e. following daily routine and schedule as instructed, completing tasks on time), they could earn points that would put them on a higher level. Each level came with more privileges. Some of the boys would be very good at following the rules and staying on task while others were very defiant and found it very difficult to do what was expected of them. A simple instruction as, “Have a seat at the table for breakfast,” would often trigger negative emotions in the boys, causing them to act out in disruptive and oftentimes, aggressive ways. They would refuse to do what was asked or expected, which sometimes appeared to be purposefully done with a conscious intent to break the rules. My experience in working with those group of kids taught me that all behavior isn’t a matter of choice; some behavior is a matter of chance. If any of us were given the same circumstance, put in the same environment, we would react in the same way as well. Essentially, it boils down to the way in which the human body and brain work. When we are in a situation where our mind perceives danger or fear, it causes the rest of the body to act accordingly. Many of the boys on the unit where I worked were diagnosed with PTSD and had a very low trigger threshold. Almost any stimulus from the environment, whether it was a direct instruction from a staff member or the smell of eggs and bacon cooking in the kitchen, was a trigger for those boys and would set them off. During the time when they were presenting with PTSD symptoms, they would become angry and violent, wanting to assert their power in the situation, and attempt to gain some sense of control. They had difficulty regulating their emotions, so a perceptual cognitive trigger that is first conceived in the mind sends a signal to the rest of the body, putting it in a state of flight or fight. In the staff’s mind, they saw the child as being rude and disobedient; but if we were to take a look at this scenario through a cognitive-affective lens, we could see that it was the children’s inherent perceptions that were influenced by their emotional state, which in turn reinforced their cognitive state. They would perceive staff’s attempt to get them to stay on task and follow directions as a threat to their ability to exert free will and make their own decisions. When you have a history of rape and abandonment where your power is constantly snatched away from you, being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, becomes a trigger and even more of a bigger threat to one’s safety and security. Feeling a lack of control creates a sense of insecurity and danger which feeds into feelings of fear and endangerment, thus causing a repetitive self-sabotaging cycle. Looking back, it appears that offering the children rewards and punishments wasn’t enough to warrant on task behavior. The program was lacking a very important component – well-trained staff in the areas of cognitive and clinical psychology. Many of my coworkers had no formal education or training in psychology, therefore they lacked a basic understanding of the child’s behavior and how their own behavior contributed to the dynamic of the problem. The idea that the children’s behavior could be explained by an inability to regulate their emotions and perceptions never crossed their minds or was a topic of discussion. It was all about punishing the child when they disobeyed because seemingly, they knew what the rules were and would purposely attempt to break them. In reality, the issue was much deeper than that and the staff lacked the necessary and proper experience and training to effectively assess what was happening inside the kid to efficiently intervene to treat them. The end result of the child’s acting out behavior often would result in a physical restraint followed by a shot of Ativan injected into the child’s buttox by the nurse. So the instances of problematic behaviors quadrupled over time because it was a repetitious cycle that fed into itself. My hypothesis is that proper staff training on being able to recognize the signs and symptoms of various disorders and effectively treat them, would drastically reduce the number of physical restraints, which often feed into the problem. Proper training in symptom identification and regulation on a cognitive-affective level is necessary. In past years, many child-serving treatment centers have only focused on the behavioral aspect, not taking into account the cognitive and affective processes that underpin problematic behavior. There’s very little talk about external/internal triggers that ignite these kinds of emotionally exaggerated responses in kids who are diagnosed with conduct and oppositional defiant disorder. For many clinicians, the child’s behavior is rooted in individual choice and should be controlled with strict behavioral consequences if the child lacks the ability to control it himself. Because our emotions are closely tied to our cognitions, attitudes, and perceptions, it’s very difficult to teach someone to regulate his/her emotions without teaching them a certain degree of mindfulness and cognition regulation. Even for many adults, regulating our thoughts and feelings can be a challenge; so imagine the difficulty a child who wasn’t afforded a normal development could be experiencing in having to somehow develop those skills at a later time in life with no proper guidance or emotional support. The way in which they react to situations they perceive as a threat has served an adaptive function in their life as a means to keep them alive and protected from potential sexual predators and life-threatening situations.  Copyright 2017 Danielle Leach All Rights Reserved
To many Americans, America is the land of equal opportunity, freedom, and liberty. They are born into a middle to upper-class household, attend a good public or private school, live in safe and clean neighborhoods, and never have to worry about being denied a job, forced to live in poverty, and risk being targeted and arrested because of the color of their skin. Since 2012, when Trayvon Martin was targeted, harassed, and brutally murdered by a White Hispanic neighbor for being Black and a threat to the community, there have been thousands of cases of racial violence, resulting in murder towards African-Americans by police officers. 258 of those homicides took place last year in 2016 (Craven, 2017). Meanwhile the White perpetrators are let free, often not having to pay the penalty for their crime. It has become apparent that we live under a system of White Supremacy aimed at keeping one group of people on the margins while putting measures in place to ensure the advancement and security of the other group that is in power. Within this social context creates an interesting dynamic within the African-American that has caught the attention of some researchers in the field of psychology on the notion of ethnic identity. What exactly does it mean to be an African-American and how was this identity developed and shaped over time? These are complex questions that this paper attempts to answer by taking a look at several studies done over the years on the African-American population. In 1971, William E. Cross developed the Cross Racial Identity Scale, a measure designed to assess African-Americans identity salience which places them in one of five nigrescence profiles, including: Miseducation-Pro-Black, Conflicted-Self-Hatred, Multiculturalist, Low Race Salience, and Conflicted-Anti-White within African-Americans (Worrell, Vandiver, & Cross, 2004). The term “nigrescence,” refers to the degree to which a person identifies with and appreciates his or her own Blackness. From a health perspective, having an appreciation for one’s own race and cultural traditions serves a positive function in their development as a person and in relation to their role in their family, church, and community. In traditional African culture, to be Black is to be strong, smart, and beautiful. However, over time, the concept of Blackness has changed and the way people view what it means to Black has also drastically changed. Slavery in America was one of the first institutions created for the purpose of demoralizing and dehumanizing Blacks by stripping away their identity, traditions, culture, and way of life. The identity they once knew would slowly vanish and be replaced with a new identity of slave and servant to a cruel White master. Before the slave identity emerged, Africans embodied a sense of pride in who they were. How they ended up in shackles still remains a mystery, and what interests many psychologists is how Black identity has been influenced by slavery and institutionalized racism, a byproduct of the System of White Supremacy. The process of becoming an “African-American” is heavily shaped by what it means to be Black. To be Black in America holds with it many connotations which come as a result of many systems that work to perpetuate an image of what Black is. It’s difficult to discuss the culture of Blackness without talking about the color of black itself. The systematic racial oppression African-Americans experience is tied directly to the color of one’s skin. If the color of one’s skin is Black, their experience while living in America will be drastically different than if they were White, or if the tint of their skin was even red or yellow. In US history, past and present, the color of one’s skin can determine many things – where you live; where you work; where you go to school; what kind of food you eat; the kind of car you drive; the amount of rights you have; how you can assert those rights; and overall, how you’re viewed by society and the law, which governs society. This experience of Blackness, inevitably will dictate the personal choices people of color make and more importantly their attitudes towards themselves, other Black people, and the world as a whole. Knowing the context of how one’s racial and ethnic identity is shaped helps us understand the stages of identity development Blacks go through during their journey in life. According to Cross, Blacks go through five stages of identity development throughout their life, which include: Pre-encounter; Encounter; Immersion/Emersion; Internalization; Internalization-Commitment (Sue & Sue, 2013). These stages are not black and white, and often overlap. So a person can be experiencing more than one stage at a time or even revert back to an earlier stage, depending on external events in their environment and how they process those experiences (Pope-Davis, Liu, Ledesma-Jones, & Nevitt, 2000). This model for understanding ethnic identity in African-Americans is rooted in African-American’s perceptions and attitudes towards mainstream culture. So inherently, the more one becomes more accepting and acculturated to the dominant culture, the more likely they will be able to move from the pre-encounter phase where feelings of insecurity, low self-esteem and self-hatred exist towards the internalization-commitment phase, likened to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and self-actualization. In this phase, one is purported to be more in tune with his own culture while having a greater acceptance towards the dominant culture, being able to put aside any ill feelings of hatred towards one’s self and others. A person in the final phase of the Cross’ Racial Identity Development Model has presumably reached a state of acceptance and appreciation, not only for one’s own culture but also for the dominant culture in which one must learn to adapt to and function in (Sue & Sue, 2013). The advantage of having such a model as the Cross Racial Identity Development Model and scale is that they both help us to understand some of the crises and issues African-Americans could be experiencing under the context of racial oppression. It paints a picture of some of the phases of life Blacks are going through as they try to navigate through life. It also gives us a possible prototype or solution that may work in solving some of the identity crises and racial conflicts many African-Americans may be experiencing as a result of slavery and systematic racial oppression. From past research on ethnic identity, using the CRIS, we have learned that blacks typically fall under one of the five stages and identities (Worrell, Vandiver, & Cross, 2004). It’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions to the rule, but it does give us some insight as to what an African-American client may be experiencing when they’re sitting across from us in our office and are in deep distress. It helps us to consider the social context that has helped shaped their ethnic identity and psychological state of being. If we as clinicians can pinpoint the source of a problem, it gives us some insight on what tools we may need to use to fix it. In treating an African-American client, a therapist may not know where to begin because there could be a swarm of emotions or concerns that arise from various things that the client may or may not attribute to racism or systematic racial oppression. Some African-Americans take pride in being African-American while others despise the skin they are in and would do anything to trade it and become a difference race. Regardless if an African-American client prefers to identify with the African culture or not, it is important when working with African-American clients to assess the client’s attitudes towards their race because it could explain the etiology behind the clinical issues that lead them to your office in the first place. If not for the purpose of effectively treating African-Americans, understanding ethnic identity development in the context of racial oppression is helpful to understanding the psychology of a group of people who are often ignored. Cross Model of Identity Development highlights that African-Americans typically start from a position of shame, low self-esteem, and self-hatred before encountering some tragic racial event that causes them to question the status quo and the dominant culture. Following the encounter, they go to a period of Emersion/Immersion where they battle between trying to fit their own culture into the context of the dominant culture (Worrell, Vandiver, & Cross, 2004). This perhaps can be a very challenging stage to conquer and overcome because of the reality that the African-American is steadily battling between accepting the dominant culture and becoming an American, meanwhile fighting to hold on to their traditional values of their African culture (Sue & Sue, 2013). Being an African-American woman myself, I can attest that this experience can be the most challenging and usually is an ongoing battle that one has to face throughout the entirety of his or her life. The final stages, Internalization and Internalization-Commitment are where the African-American has developed a greater sense of cultural identity and maturity that fits within the context of the American system of White Supremacy, whereby making a commitment to bring about change to social injustices imparted on their race by the dominant culture by joining forces with people from other cultures who are also oppressed and fighting injustices (Sue & Sue, 2013). To reach this stage of identity development, one has worked through their own negative attitudes and feelings towards the system of White Supremacy and is no longer negatively impacted by injustices of the dominant culture, where they feel shame and self-hatred, but however are motivated to come to an acceptance of themselves within the dominant culture to join with other ethnic groups to bring about social change. Some of the criticisms African-Americans face with acculturating to the dominant culture and reaching a level of mature ethnic identity development, stem from how they are consequently perceived by other members of their group who are less acculturated to the dominant culture and are still in the pre-encounter or encounter stages. Typically, as an African-American becomes more acculturated to the dominant culture, inadvertedly, he or she becomes less immersed into their own culture. Often times, to advance within the American system and in corporate America, African-Americans are met with the challenge of sacrificing their own cultural values and traditions to meet the expectations and demands of the dominant culture. This experience is shared by many other minorities from other ethnic groups across America, especially among immigrants who move to America in search of a better life. They more than often find themselves having to give up their traditional values of family and collectivism to advance through the ranks in an individualistic, every man for himself, capitalist society. So forming an ethnic identity that works in the best interest of the African-American, his group members, and a racially biased White Supremist society can be very tough. Developing a healthy identity for an African-American is a matter of accepting one’s own culture and values despite the negative connotations associated with the term “Black.” Perhaps this is why African-Americans have experienced so many different types of identities and have worn so many different names. First we were Africans; then we became niggers; then we were Negroes; Coloreds; Afro-Americans, African-Americans and now we’re back to being called “Black.” It’s interesting to see the disparity in preference by African-Americans in what they prefer to be called. Through personal observation, I’ve witnessed there are some Blacks who will give you the evil eye for calling them African-Americans because they refuse to be associated with Africa, being that they were born in America and not the land of their ancestors. To other African-Americans, dropping the “African” is a sign of self-hatred and a form of disowning one’s heritage and ethnic identity. There is no general consensus on what we should call ourselves, as some still prefer to “keep it real” and call each other “niggas.” The term that was once used to shame and ostracize a group of people has been redefined and repurposed into a term that is a sign of endearment and love. So you will hear many African-Americans refer to their brothers and sisters and friends and family members as “my nigga”. There are some adaptive and maladaptive aspects of accepting one’s ethnic identity that are worth mentioning. If an African-American comes to an acceptance of their identity to the point of having self-pride, it can be seen as anti-White (Worrell, Vandiver, & Cross, 2004) or an act of nationalism, which in today’s society is being perceived as a terrorist act by some political groups. But embracing one’s identity and coming to an acceptance of self is vital to one’s mental, emotional, and physical health. So identity formation and acceptance for the African-American can be a very fine line to walk, literally and figuratively. Considering Cross’ model for Racial Identity Development, it’s apparent that the stages of identity development for African-Americans are inconstant and vary over time. Consistent with the Baltes’ concept of normative history and age-graded life events and tasks (Baltes, 1987), it’s also evident that Cross wanted to make the claim that there are some life experiences that African-Americans are expected to go through. According to Cross, these experiences or stages are likely to occur across the span of a Black person’s life, beginning as early as infancy and childhood where the child is being shaped and directly influenced by their family and parent’s emulation of culture and response to the system of racial oppression (Yip, Seaton, & Sellers, 2006). We know that much of what a child knows is learned behavior, that is nurtured through their environment and interaction with their parents, families, teachers, and immediate surroundings. So ethnic identity is shaped early on before a child ever comes to an understanding of what color and racism even are. According to Cross and Fhagen-Smith, the racial identity development in African-Americans is characterized by repeated exposure to encounters that challenge their racial and ethnic identities (Yip, Seaton, & Sellers, 2006). These special encounters experienced by most African-Americans are what set this race apart from other races because it forces them to question their own identity as a person, based merely on the color of their skin. A painstaking look back into history shows us a time when Blacks were considered 3/5 of a human being. Even after the abolishment of slavery, Blacks were treated less than human with the implementation of Black Codes that restricted their access to many resources that were afforded to Whites. Fast forward over 150 years, and we find ourselves with an African-American president of the United States of America. Having a positive representation of Blacks in the media with the election of President Barack Obama has served to empower many African-Americans, giving us a greater appreciation for our race and ethnic identity. Meanwhile, during his presidency, there was an influx of racially motivated killings of innocent Black men, women, and children by White police officers that sent the Black community back to a stage of fear, shame, and self-hatred. Ultimately, the Cross Racial Identity Development Model is helpful for understanding African-American identity on an individual level, and even greater, on a social level. Just as we can observe an individual pass through these stages of identity development throughout his/her life, we can observe the Black community as a whole and watch their progression through the stages of the Cross Racial Identity Development Model. Collectively, many of us have already encountered instances of racism, that have moved us to do something about the injustices we are faced with. We eventually reach a state of self-acceptance and pride where we feel a sense of control, power, and freedom to exert our Blackness and express our identities without fear of repercussion, then something tragic happens that makes mainstream news that sets us back to a stage of anger, bitterness, self-hatred and insecurity. Conclusively, it’s important to remember the unique way in which some groups of people form identities over time and develop. Not everyone fits the neat cookie-cutter model for development as described in most lifespan development models, such as Levinson’s Stages of Life or Erickson’s Stages of Life Development. It’s interesting to see how external and internal factors can play a significant role in shaping one’s identity and as clinicians, we must keep this in mind when working with clients from various ethnic minority groups. References Baltes, P. B. (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23(5), 611-626. doi:10.1037//0012-1649.23.5.611 Craven, J. (2017, January 01). More Than 250 Black People Were Killed by Police In 2016 [Updated]. Retrieved June 21, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black- people-killed-by-police-america_us_577da633e4b0c590f7e7fb17 Pope-Davis, D. B., Liu, W. M., Ledesma-Jones, S., & Nevitt, J. (2000). African American Acculturation and Black Racial Identity: A Preliminary Investigation. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 28(2), 98-112. doi:10.1002/j.2161- 1912.2000.tb00610.x Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (2013). Counseling the culturally diverse: theory and practice. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Worrell, F. C., Vandiver, B. J., & Cross, W. E. (2004). The cross racial identity scale: technical manual. Berkeley, CA: F.C. Worrell. Yip, T., Seaton, E. K., & Sellers, R. M. (2006). African American Racial Identity Across the Lifespan: Identity Status, Identity Content, and Depressive Symptoms. Child Development, 77(5), 1504-1517. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00950.x Photo retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/13/one-drop-rule-black-identity-photos-yaba-blay_n_4775100.html |
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