Racial Identity Theory

Applications to Individual, Group, and Organizational Interventions

Chalmer E. Thompson, Robert T. Carter, Chalmer E. Thompson, Robert T. Carter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780805820805
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135807993
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Racial identity theories have been in the psychological literature for nearly thirty years. Unlike most references to racial identity, however, Thompson and Carter demonstrate the value of integrating RACE and IDENTITY as systematic components of human functioning. The editors and their contributors show how the infusion of racial identity theory with other psychological models can successfully yield more holistic considerations of client functioning and well-being. Fully respecting the mutual influence of personal and environmental factors to explanations of individual and group functioning, they apply complex theoretical notions to real-life cases in psychological practice.

These authors contend that race is a pervasive and formidable force in society that affects the development and functioning of individuals and groups. In a recursive fashion, individuals and groups influence and, indeed, nurture the notion of race and societal racism. Arguing that mental health practitioners are in key, influential positions to pierce this cycle, the authors provide evidence of how meaningful change can occur when racial identity theory is integrated into interventions that attempt to diminish the distress people experience in their lives. The interventions illustrated in this volume are applied in various contexts, including psychotherapy and counseling, supervision, family therapy, support groups, and organizational and institutional environments.

This book can serve the needs and interests of advanced-level students and professionals in all mental health fields, as well as researchers and scholars in such disciplines as organizational management and forensic psychology. It can also be of value to anyone interested in the systematic implementation of strategies to overcome problems of race.

CHAPTER 1

Race, Socialization, and Contemporary Racism Manifestations

CHALMER E. THOMPSON

Indiana University

ROBERT T. CARTER

Teachers College

The aim of this book is to demonstrate how constructive change can be achieved when people, groups, and organizations experience problems. Our interest is to showcase interventions that involve holistic considerations of the needs of clients; however, our focus is on race. Specifically, we present descriptive information on ways in which mental health practitioners can integrate a conceptual, psychological understanding of race into their interventions in order to make more informed decisions about their clients’ distress and the strategies necessary for ending it. The audience with which we are most concerned in writing this book is the American public. These are the people who, at some point in their lives, may need the services of mental health professionals and who deserve interventions that will neither deny, minimize, nor exaggerate their race-related afflictions. Our targeted audience, however, is composed of practitioners or would-be practitioners in applied mental health professions who, we believe, can profit from this book by acquiring knowledge about the role of race in formulating case conceptualizations and interventions.

Helms’ (1990, 1995) racial identity theory forms the basis for the cases presented in this book. Racial identity refers to “a sense of group or collective identity based on one’s perception that he or she shares a common heritage with a particular racial group” (Helms, 1990, p. 3). Racial identity development entails changes or shifts in world views, the byproduct of a series of experiences, self-reflections, and moral decision making. Helms posited that development in racial identity parallels the emergence of a less fragmented racial self. Hence, moral deliberations on race and its effects on humankind influence appraisals of self: The closer one comes to resolving the moral dilemmas associated with race, the nearer one comes to achieving a fuller, integrated identity. Although the advanced statuses of racial identity are never actually reached, close approximations yield qualities similar to that of Maslow’s (1968) actualized self. According to Maslow (1968), the process of self-actualization is “the ongoing actualization of potentials [and] … an unceasing trend toward unity, integration, or synergy with the person” (p. 25). Racial identity development, like the process of self-actualization, is lifelong. Yet, the rewards of pursuing racial self-actualization include greater accessibility to complex and flexible strategies for dealing with race-related and other oppressive-force stimuli and, therefore, greater likelihood of resolving of the moral dilemmas that rend the individual’s sense of connection with humankind (Helms, 1990, 1995).

We take an interactional perspective on the development of self in general, and on the development of racial identity in particular. Drawing from the work of Magnusson (1988), we assume that:

(a) The individual functions and develops as a total integrated organism. Development does not take place in single factors or variables per se, in isolation from the totality.

(b) The individual functions and develops in an ongoing, dynamic, and reciprocal process of interaction with his/her environment.

(c) The character of the person-environment interaction process depends on the character of the ongoing, dynamic, and reciprocal process of interaction among the individual’s psychological and biological systems. (p. 7)

These assumptions serve as a foundation in this book for describing the nature of individual functioning and change. However, we magnify the aspect of race in order to glean an understanding of its role in contributing to the functioning and change processes of individuals, groups, and organizations.

In this first chapter, we present discussions on three topics that are foundational to an understanding of racial identity theory: race, racial socialization, and contemporary manifestations of race and racism. Of course, thousands of volumes have been written on these topics; our attempt here is not to be ambitious in this overview but to select some key ideas related to these topics to acquaint or re-familiarize readers with the roots of Helms’ racial identity theory.

RACE

In her analysis of the origins of race in American society, Smedley (1993) reminded us that the idea of race began as a means to classify humankind. Racial theorists were also not merely interested in attempting to demystify observable, phenotypical differences among humans but also to formulate hierarchies based on the relative appeal of different groups in appearance and in dispositional and moral qualities. Consequently, subjective efforts toward the classification of humans were used to derive, for some, an understanding of human differences for scientific and medical reasons as well as to impose the theorists’ perceptions on the differential qualities of humans in character, primitiveness, morality, and temperament (also see Frederickson, 1988; Jones, 1991; Montagu, 1964; Van den Berghe, 1967).

More pointedly, scholars have noted that race was and continues to be a social construction wielded by White Europeans and Americans to establish social demarcations, elevate the White race, and justify the oppression and exploitation of certain ethnic groups who were presumed to be inferior in intelligence, physicality, morality, and culture. The institutionalized enslavement of Africans, the legal sanctioning of Jim Crowism, and terroristic acts committed against Blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans represented strategies carried out by Whites to justify the inherent and cultural inferiority of certain “racial” groups relative to Whites. The subjugation and forced removal of Native Americans were also enacted on the presumption of racial inferiority. Aggression toward Asian immigrants were especially pronounced when White farmers perceived these groups as threats to their economic welfare. Hate-filled denouncements of Asian immigration were fueled by Whites’ fear that Asian men would marry White women and, therefore, dilute the White race (Jones, 1991). The scourge of racism and its untoward and too frequently fatal effects on multiple ethnic group populations in history has been written about extensively (e.g., Deloria, 1983; Kitano, 1985, 1993; Powledge, 1991; see Takaki, 1990, 1993 for comprehensive reviews).

Several authors have also written about the unscientific, hopelessly arbitrary, and primarily social basis of the notion of race and its dogged persistence across the generations (Jones, 1991; Landrine & Klonoff, 1996; Omi & Winant, 1986). The definition of who comprises a racial group has shifted over time and the definition of race as a scientific construct has been widely questioned, yet few people seem to question its legitimacy. Smedley (1993) concluded in her exigesis that “race should not be seen as something tangible that exists in the outside world which has to be discovered, described, and defined…. [It is] a cultural creation, a product of human invention” (p. 6).

This human invention is often confused for culture and ethnicity. To be sure, there are important overlaps between these constructs. Culture is thought of and defined as a learned pattern or system of meaning passed from generation to generation. “A culture can be defined as a highly specific pool of information, categories, rules for categorization, intersubjective meanings, collective representations, and ways of knowing, understanding, and interpreting stimuli, as a result of a common history” (Landrine & Klonoff, 1996, p. 37). Culture has also come to be referred to more loosely, and in American society, there are a variety of cultures to which people can belong, including the larger American culture (Axelson, 1993). Like race, culture operates largely at the unconscious level, “like an unwritten dictionary that tells its members what things are and what they mean—how to process, evaluate, and interpret the world” (Landrine, as cited in Landrine & Klonoff, 1996, p. 37). Because the determination of race by theorists was based in some part on cultural characteristics, there is some overlap between race and culture.

But, unlike the constructs of culture or ethnicity, race was and is defined primarily on the basis of visible markers related to biological factors. Skin color and physical features are the primary visible markers for race. But even this can be questioned, because people may appear racially White, for instance, but identify themselves as Black because both of their parents identify themselves as Black. This example is notable because the determination of race based on physical appearance and biological factors suggests purity; the biological basis of grouping by race seems to presume that racial categorizations are principally distinct and nonoverlapping. Still, race is conventionally associated with visible features that in turn are linked with certain moral, intellectual, and cognitive dispositions. Racial classifications are imposed, and, in American society, ideas associated with racial group membership have endured for more than 4 centuries. Whereas ethnic identification is often lost after 3 generations in order for the person to blend into the American mainstream, race lasts across generations (Helms, 1995).

Based on a convergence of references on race, Jones (1991) defined this construct as

a group of people who share biological factors that come to signify group membership and the social meaning such membership has in the society at large. Race becomes the basis for expectation regarding social roles, performance levels, values, and norms and mores for group and non-group members and in-group members alike. Since there is a compelling tendency to categorize individuals in groups, and since the phenotypical racial factors are easily detected, race is one of the most salient grounds for social categorization. (p. 9)

In North American society, race has a powerful and distinct social and political meaning. We use race to structure our society and to distribute social and economic rewards and punishments. Helms (1994) proposed that the term sociorace replace race to emphasize the social meaning tied to the construct.

In describing the origins of race it appears necessary to also discuss the forces that keep the idea and practice of racial stratification alive—racism. In recent years, many people have though of racism exclusively as individual acts of prejudice and discriminatory behavior (Hacker, 1992). This emphasis exists, we believe, for two reasons: (a) Americans are culturally predisposed to see the world through the experience of individuals; accordingly, socializing forces (e.g., mass media, education, institutions) encourage us to think of prejudice and discrimination principally as aberrant behaviors committed by a few isolated people and (b) this perspective perpetuates the idea that racism is a relic of past history. When racism is perceived from this standpoint, the systemic elements and group-based aspects of racism are ignored, denied, or distorted (Gaines & Reed, 1995).

Frederickson (1988), in comparing the United States, Brazil, and other Latin American countries, concluded that, unlike these other countries, “the United States has been a genuinely racist society” and that “on the whole it has treated Blacks as if they were inherently inferior, and for at least a century of its history this pattern of rigid racial stratification has been buttressed and strengthened by a widely accepted racist ideology” (p. 190). Moreover, Frederickson noted that from a historical standpoint, the origins of contemporary racism appear to have some rudimentary beginnings in Western and Christian mythology with the association of the color black with evil and white with purity and saintliness. He further commented that “On the unconscious level, twentieth-century psychoanalysts have suggested blackness or darkness can be associated with suppressed libidinous impulses. Carl Gustav Jung has even argued that the Negro became for European whites a symbol of the unconscious itself—of what he calls ‘the shadow’—the whole suppressed or rejected side of the human psyche” (p. 190).

According to Jones (1991), racism

is developed and maintained by more complex human systems than just individuals. We refer to organizational and institutional racism when the structures and processes that establish and perpetuate racism develops a life of their own that exists apart from whatever individuals may fulfill roles and responsibilities in the higher-order systems. When the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision in 1886 approved of “separate but equal” facilities for Blacks and Whites, an entire institutional fabric for racism was created. (pp. 132–133)

Institutional and cultural racism appear to have begun taking shape centuries before the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. According to social historians, institutional and cultural racism began when Europeans created social systems of subordination and when they began to exploit people who were culturally different from them. In North America, ideas of the racial supremacy of Whites began when Europeans had their first contact with Native Americans in the 15th century. In most cases, this involved the physical and violent taking of land, attempts to destroy Native American culture, and the displacement of an indigenous people.

RACIAL SOCIALIZATION

Racial socialization refers to the process individuals experience in constructing appraisals of themselves and others as racial beings. Racial socialization informs identity, which Erikson (1968) defined as “a subjective sense of an invigorating sameness and continuity” (p. 19). It intersects with other socializing factors, such as social class, culture, and gender, as well as with biological and maturational factors.

There are many starting points to discussing racial socialization. One might begin with how a person first grappled with race in his or her past, where one grew up, or how race influences one’s choice of intimate partners and associates. All of these factors, and many others, work to influence how people are socialized racially. We prefer to begin by describing how race is used to structure our society and how these structural factors influence personal and interpersonal factors. For instance, because of the degree of physical separation between racial groups and obvious disparities in material resources, it becomes possible to perceive the circumstances of some racial groups as better than others. The process of distancing and systematic exclusion creates different perceptions of racial group value (see Myers, 1988). The racial composition of a person’s community can offer clues about his or her social class and, by implication, the quality of his or her educational experience. Conversely, knowledge of a person’s social class often conveys images of the racial composition of his or her community. Race and social class factors are inextricably linked (Boston, 1988).

The quality of one’s education can have an effect on one’s occupational opportunity, employment and economic resources, and in turn, can influence the condition of one’s living standards. The combination of educational, economic, and occupational experiences has implications for societal and political participation. In North American society, political and economic wherewithal largely dictates the strength of one’s social and political power. It is apparent to most, even on a cursory level, that racial demarcations in education, politics, the legal system, economics, and health care are clear-cut and pervasive throughout societ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Race, Socialization, and Contemporary Racism Manifestations
• Chapter 2: An Overview and Elaboration of Helms’ Racial Identity Development Theory
• Chapter 3: Facilitating Racial Identity Development in the Professional Context
• Part One: Applying Racial Identity Theory to Individual Psychotherapy and Dyadic Supervision
• Part Two: Applying Racial Identity Theory to Group and Family Interventions
• Part Three: Applying Racial Identity Theory to Organizational and Institutional Interventions
• Epilogue: Race, Socialization, and Contemporary Racism Manifestations Revisited
• Author Index
• Subject Index