Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5 - Mapping the Journey of White Identity Development &
Chapter 6 - Ways of Being White: A Practitioner's Approach to Multicultural Growth


When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I gave up childish ways.
 - 1 Corinthians 13:11

Howard begins with this verse from Corinthians. As children and young adults, we pick up ideas, perceptions, and beliefs that may not correctly fit into the scheme of real life. Our ideas about certain things may become distorted and cause unfortunate ripples to travel around the world. What we do affects not only ourselves; what we do affects everyone.

Howard explores the stages of racial identity for both Blacks and Whites, and it is interesting to see the differences and similarities that both groups go through to achieve racial identity.

There are five stages of Black racial identity development:

1. Preencounter - African Americans tend to distance themselves from their own racial identity. During this stage, African Americans have the mindset that White is right while Black is wrong. They feel that the things that happen in their lives happen solely because of their black skin.
2. Encounter - The transition to this stage takes place when African Americans are stimulated by events or experiences that "lift the mask of Whiteness and point out the significance of racial categories" (90). 
3. Immersion/Emersion - African Americans experience feelings of hatred toward Whites or anything that seems White. During this stage, "Everything of value in life must be Black or related to Blackness. This stage is also characterized by a tendency to denigrate White people" (91). 
4. Internalization - This stage begins when the Pro-Black attitude becomes more open and less defensive. Internalization is characterized by a want/need to interact with people of other cultures, especially Whites. 
5. Internalization-commitment - This last stage "is evidenced by the individual's willingness to proactively engage in work that supports and strengthens the Black community" (91). Individuals in this stage are securely rooted in their own Black identity.

In White racial identity development, Whites focus more on overcoming their racism that finding a love of their culture. There are six stages divided into two separate phases:

Phase I: Abandonment of a Racist Identity
1) Contact - Through an encounter with "the other," this process begins for White people. This stage of contact sparks when Whites first encounter people of different cultures. There really is no color to separate Whites from "the other," and Whites will begin questioning whether or not they are abandoning their Whiteness.
2) Disintegration -  "We enter the stage of disintegration when we acknowledge our Whiteness and begin to question what we have been socialized to believe about race" (93). To make up for our seemingly wrong thoughts about other cultures, Whites may begin thinking better about races they are not too familiar with and question the authenticity of their own.
3) Reintegration - During this stage, Whites may fully embrace the notion of White superiority. Whites will think and act in ways that are beneficial to themselves and may be harmful to people of other cultures.

Phase II: Establishment of a Nonracist White Identity

4) Pseudo-Independence - This stage begins when "we acknowledge White responsibility for racism and confront the fact the White people have intentionally or unintentionally benefited from it" (96). We attempt to overcome this by trying to help people of other cultures. 

5) Immersion-Emersion - This stage begins when Whites  move away from helping other cultures, much in the same way that parents would help their children, and move more toward an internalized desire to change oneself and one's fellow Whites in a positive way. 

6) Autonomy - "When a new and positive definition of Whiteness has been emotionally and intellectually internalized, we begin to enter the stage of autonomous racial identity" (97).

I can attest that this process is very real because I can place myself in some of the steps. I have also defined which stage I fall into at this point in my life, and honestly, I think I am in the Pseudo-Independence stage. I intend to reach Stage 6, but I suppose it will come with time. I am learning that I do not need to make up for the wrong that my culture has done to other cultures. I am White, but I am a White individual who acts and thinks for myself. Rather than trying to make my race better, I am learning how to better work with different cultures to better both my life and the good of the world. I think about this every day when I enter a room full of multicultural students. I ask myself: How can we work together? How can we bring our cultures together? What can we share with and learn from one another? 

Until we truly figure out our racial identities, 

at the end of the day, we need to ask the question,

Who am I?