Introduction
The concept of race and racial differences is one of the main problems of modern society as it influences social and personal relations between people. Race and, by implication, race theory in general refers to a Black or White person’s identifying or not identifying with the racial group with which he or she is generally assumed to share racial heritage: In other words, race partially refers to the person of black African ancestry’s acknowledgment of shared racial-group membership with others of similar race as previously defined or the person of white European ancestry’s acknowledgment of shared racial-group membership with others of similar race. Thesis Race exists as a marker of biological and cultural differences between people.
Discussion
One’s racial awareness may be subliminal and not readily admitted into consciousness or it may be conscious and not easily repressed. Race pertains to the quality of the awareness or the various forms in which awareness can occur, that is, race resolutions. Awareness of race may be accompanied by positive, negative, or neutral racial-group evaluations. The major race theories propose that, within racial groups, various kinds of racial identity resolutions can exist, and consequently, racial consciousness per se usually is not considered to be dichotomous, present, or absent (Aronson 2007). “A “Negroid” may be defined as anyone whose ancestors 40 to 4400 generations removed were born in sub-Saharan Africa. “Mongoloid” and “Caucasoid” are defined similarly, with Asia and Europe in place of Africa” (Levin 1997, p. 20). Where Blacks are concerned, two additional versions of the ascribed race approach appeared. In the first, quality of identification with Blackness was inferred from one’s preferred racial self-designation. In the second ascribed identity approach, quality of Black identification was inferred from one’s choice from among four mutually exclusive categories: commitment to Black culture (Wachtel 1999). White culture, neither, or both. However, they analyzed their data in such a way as to obscure the potentially differing responses of those groups most analogous to the Encounter (i.e., strong commitment to Anglo-American culture, weak commitment to Afro-American culture) and strong commitment to Afro-American culture, weak commitment to Anglo-American culture) stages of identity (Aronson 2007). For that reason, their failure to find evidence that quality of Black identification contributed to differences in preferences for counselors’ “ethnicity” is equivocal. Interestingly, neither of the three ascribed identity approaches has consistently been shown to be differentially related to personal identity or reference-group orientation variables, though the self-labeling approach showed some promise early on. Race is a complex construct that, perhaps, cannot be adequately assessed via single-item measures (Wachtel 1999).
The extent to which one type of attitudes predominates over the others at a particular time theoretically has some implications for other variables. Thus, a person who might be diagnosed as being in the Internalization stage, defined according to behavior, attitudes, emotions, and so forth, presumably has a predominance of Internalization attitudes, but she or he conceivably has some attitudes that correspond to some of the earlier stages as well. However, in this case the attitudes associated with the earlier stages should not be as strong as the Internalization attitudes. Nevertheless, to the extent that the person possesses some of the precursor attitudes, then these attitudes also might be expected to influence the Internalization person’s behavior in some way (Wachtel 1999). Therefore, it is important to use assessment procedures that allow one to measure each type of race attitudes so that their moderating effects on one another can be ascertained. Implicit in the stage theories of identity is the premise that identity varies along a two-dimensional continuum, one emphasizing attitudes incorporated from Euro-American culture and the other emphasizing attitudes incorporated from Afro-American culture. Insofar as one can tell, this aspect of the stage models has not been tested empirically. (Aronson 2007).
The assumption that race relatively stable means that a person’s race attitudes are enduring personality characteristics that consistently influence the person’s interactions within various environments, rather than transitory states likely to shift and to be triggered by the vicissitudes of changing environments. To address the theoretical issue of whether race does proceed according to a relatively stable linear process, longitudinal studies of race development, in which people’s levels of identity are measured at more than one point in time, are needed. Since such studies do not exist currently, resolution of this theoretical issue must probably await the birth of such studies (Wachtel 1999). As might be apparent, each of the White race stages is hypothesized to have its own unique effect on attitudes, behaviors, and emotions. Nevertheless, it is probably not the case that each of these develops at the same rate. In fact, studies of symbolic racism suggest that attitudes (at least racist attitudes as opposed to race attitudes) may change faster than behaviors. It seems reasonable to speculate that the greatest discomfort occurs for those individuals whose attitudes, emotions, and behaviors are not in harmony (Aronson 2007).
in the United States, classical African and European world views do not exist in unadulterated form, but he further argues that remnants of these world views do differentially influence personality. Moreover, his perspective moves us somewhat closer to understanding how ancestral cultures and modern socialization experiences can lead to different manners of interacting with one’s environment(s). For instance, in the case of Blacks, he contends that European domination and imposition of the European world view on non-European people has led Blacks to reject, deny, or devalue their own African perspectives (Wachtel 1999). In response to this domination and self-devaluation, many Blacks are said to have developed personalities (e.g., the Negro personality) in which they actively attempt to discard any remnants of their African roots and/or world views. Parenthetically, one might argue that Whites also have developed personalities (e.g., the “color-blind” person) as a result of their participation in the domination of other groups and denial of such involvement.
In this diagnostic model, “world views” can be defined as not necessarily conscious patterns or templates for processing or organizing social about one’s world. Racial information can include the attitudes, cognitions, feelings, and behaviors concerning race that are communicated to the person via her or his social environments. The quality of the information received by the individual is determined primarily by influential socio-cultural communicators in her or his environment, who, in turn, influence the nature of the person’s world view (Wachtel 1999). Diverse world views cause persons to selectively attend to information and to perceive similar information differently, though the same kinds of information are potentially available to each person regardless of race. Thus, both the White and Black race models propose that the earlier stages (or the mono-racial types) are associated with poorer adjustment than later stages (or pluralistic racial types) because in the earlier stages, the person has to expend considerable energy in screening out or denying potentially identity-shattering information. “While race is conventionally equated with skin color, its familiar observable criteria, which also include lip eversion, hair texture, facial bone structure, and timbre of voice, do not define “race.” (Levin 1997, p. 20).
Significant socio-cultural influences in the person’s environments potentially include parents, family, peers (especially cohorts), schools, churches, media, and other institutions. In discussing race development in general, theorists such as Erikson (1968) and Marcia (1980) suggest that different socio-cultural influences matter at different times in a person’s life (Crenshaw 55). Thus, during infancy and early childhood, parents are most important; during late childhood and adolescence, peers or institutions (e.g., school, media) become increasingly more important. Therefore, if racial identity follows the same course of development as other aspects of race, one would suspect that parents and adult authority figures are most influential early on, followed by peers or cohorts and social institutions in later years (Aronson 2007).
On the other hand, to the extent that the person is raised in an environment in which he or she is taught to idealize or denigrate the value of her or his racial group or others’ racial group, it is likely that the person will develop a less-healthy racial identity. Because they usually are raised in an environment that is automatically structured so as to be friendly to Whites, it is easier for White persons to develop a positive (albeit inflated) view of their own racial group and themselves because they belong to the “favored” group (i.e., ascribed and reference-group identities). However, local or immediate socio-cultural influences might communicate messages about race to the individuals that are in contrast to the prevailing norm. In fact, Wachtel (1999) theorizes that those Blacks who successfully develop a positive Black identity do so because Black parents, family, and community have actively modeled and provided sources of positive identification who are Black and delegitimized the racist messages of White society. Also, individuals may have views of the personal identity aspects of themselves that differ from the prevailing racial norms (Aronson, 2007).
For information on group process or climate issues, one must depend primarily on the infrequent descriptions of racial issues in group therapy. However, these group process expositions typically have addressed conflict in interracial groups, treated the Black or other “minority” person as the source of the conflict, and have not used racial identity theory to analyze group dynamics (Roberts and Klibanoff 2006). Consequently, the racial information available for analyzing group process cannot be assumed to be objective. Given these considerations, although the literature in these three topic areas (i.e., contact, minority status influence, and group therapy) save the succeeding discourse from being entirely speculative, as is true of the dyadic model of racial identity interaction, the group model is intended to be a tentative framework by which practitioners and researchers can begin to systematically attend to racial issues as they occur in the groups (Gossett 1997). “An easier target is “biological” determinism, the thesis that social phenomena are functions of biological variables only, so that, in particular, race differences depend on biology alone, to the exclusion of environment” (Levin 1997, p. 144).
Nevertheless, when groups with racial undercurrents survive, then they too seem to have the capacity to progress along a developmental continuum analogous to those of the respective racial identity models. That is, Black groups do seem to move through the Black identity stages and White groups seem to move through the White identity stages. When groups are racially mixed, the climate conceivably reflects some combination of the stages (Roberts and Klibanoff 2006). It also appears that the same sorts of adaptive and defensive strategies as occur with individuals (e.g., denial, minimization, withdrawal) can occur on a group level as well. Consequently, whether a group moves toward the higher levels of identity development often depends on the group leader’s skillfulness in encouraging it to so move (Gossett, 1997).
Conclusion
Thus, the numbers of individuals within each stage of racial perception may determine the direction of the group (Roberts and Klibanoff 2006). Logically, one would expect that the larger the number of people within a particular stage, the stronger that stage’s influence on the quality of the group. According to this expectation, for instance, if most people are in the Preencounter stage, then the issues typical of individuals in this stage should also dominate the group. On the other hand, particular stages that are only minimally represented might exert greater influence than other stages that are more abundantly represented if the members of the smaller group are more forceful. For instance, those stages in which racism is actively confronted (i.e., Black and White Immersion/Emersion) often seem to contribute to greater group tension than their proportion within the group would warrant (Gossett, 1997).
A race interpretation of psychological “minorityness” requires the assumptions that (a) given that Whites have greater choice as to how or whether their racial identity will develop, they most often choose to remain at stages that involve the least immediate psychological discomfort for themselves; (b) since Blacks are more often forced to grapple with issues of racial identity, larger proportions are likely to have evolved to successively higher stages of Black identity development; and (c) one’s stage of racial identity influences how one stereotypes one’s own as well as other racial groups. Not one of the stages of any of the models portrays consistently negative stereotypes of Whites (Gossett, 1997). Nor do empirical data usually confirm that Blacks’ attitudes toward Whites are as negative as Whites’ attitudes toward Blacks (Roberts and Klibanoff 2006). One suspects that Whites at early stages of identity expend considerable energy defending themselves against their own stereotypes of Blacks (i.e., paratactic distortions) rather than the actuality of Blacks, and in interracial groups they may seek to fortify their defenses with like-minded individuals (Roberts and Klibanoff 2006Nevertheless, according to the “minority” explanation of power and depending somewhat upon their stages of identity, one might expect Whites at lower stages of identity to experience racial identity induced conflict when the percentage of Blacks relative to Whites surpasses 30%, and Blacks at higher stages to experience their conflict when the percentage of Whites relative to Blacks exceeds 50%. According to the “identity” explanation, conflict should occur when the group members’ stages of identity are incompatible (Gossett, 1997).
In sum, the concept of race exists and determines social, biological and cultural differences of a person. The number of Blacks relative to Whites and vice versa may influence the character of the group. As discussed, existing evidence indicates that Whites are likely to prefer groups in which they are numerically dominant, whereas Blacks are likely to prefer groups in which there are equal numbers of Blacks and Whites. However, aside from systemic studies (e.g., housing and school desegregation), empirical studies of the influence of differing Black/White proportions on the process or outcome of small groups are extremely rare.
Works Cited
- Aronson, M. Race: A History Beyond Black and White. Ginee Seo Books, 2007.
- Crenshaw, K. et al. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. New Press, 1996.
- Gossett, T.F. Race: The History of an Idea in America. Oxford University Press, 1997.
- Levin, M. Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean. Praeger Publishers, 1997.
- Roberts, G., Klibanoff, H. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Knopf, 2006.
- Wachtel, P.L. Race in the Mind of America: Breaking the Vicious Circle between Blacks and Whites. Routledge, 1999.