Racial Identity And Development : A Construction Of Social Aspects

The next stage in the R/CID model is Introspection. The individual begins to discover that this deep seeded hatred of the dominate group is psychologically draining. Moreover, the energy used to hate the dominate group is not conducive to their understanding neither themselves nor their own racial-cultural group. The resistance and immersion stage tends to be a reaction against the dominant culture and is not proactive in allowing the individual to use all energies to discover who or what he or she is. The minority shows concerns for the basis of the self-appreciation. Self-definition in the previous stage tends to be reactive (against White racism), and a need for positive self-definition in a proactive sense emerges.

Race can be categorized quite differently and can vary from country to country. When defining race, it can be complex in that every country, even an individual within a country, has different criteria and viewpoints when identifying a person’s race. For some countries and for some people, race is the color of your skin, or the background that you come from, or even biological and physical traits. Therefore, it’s crucial to thoroughly explain the topic of race and how it plays into context in today’s society.

To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.

Humans define race by how they conceive and categorize different social realities. Thus, race is often referred to as a social construct. The differences in skin color and facial characteristics have led most of society to classify humans into groups instead of individuals. These constructs affect us all, and they often result in situations where majority racial groups cause undue suffering to those that are part of the minority. The understanding of race as a social construct is best illustrated by the examination of racial issues within our own culture, specifically those that have plagued the history of the United States.

Racial formation theory is an analytical tool in sociology, developed by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, which is used to look at race as a socially constructed identity, where the content and importance of racial categories are determined by social, economic and political forces. Race has political, religious, and scientific components. Race can determine the treatment of certain individuals solely based on skin color, and can also determine the characteristics of a person associated with that skin color. Race is not synonymous with ethnicity or racism. Science and racism emerged during the 18th and 19th centuries as an attempt to justify the mistreatment of people of color, highlighting they are physiologically inferior to Europeans.

Race and Ethnicity – Race is a concept used to differ population groups on the basis of physical characteristics. Races used by the government for statistical purposes are Alaskan Native, American Indian, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, White, and Unknown. Ethnicity is a concept used to differ population on the basis of cultural characteristics or geographical origins. Ethnic designations used by the government for statistical purposes are of a Hispanic origin o nor of Hispanic origin, and Unknown.

I am a Hispanic woman who if I am honest have a lot of self hate for myself and my culture. “Internal racism has been the term used to describe the process by which persons of color absorb the racist messages that are omnipresent in our society and internalized them” (Sue, 2016). I grew up in a small border town where stereotypes are made. I never experienced much racism because we were the majority. However, looking at it now I have a lot of self hate, and I always identified as white growing up, because I am light skinned I still believe I can pass for white at least until I moved to Georgia. Living here has taught me that I miss my culture I miss the cooking, the camaraderie, the unity that Hispanics have. The other day I was asked at

In the conformity phase, people are more appreciative of the dominant culture’s characteristics over their own culture’s values. In the United States, this dominant culture is the White American culture and serves as the reference group for those individuals in the conformity phase. Individuals can be in this phase without having a disdain for their own culture. Because the White culture is the dominant culture, individuals may conform to this culture in order to avoid feeling inferior. Within each of the five phases of the R/CID model, attitudes and beliefs are further broken down. For individuals in the conformity phase, the attitude and belief towards the self are characterized by negative views. Cultural and physical characteristics of the individual’s own culture are unwanted and should be denied or changed. Attitudes towards members of the same group are also highly negative. Individuals in the

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s arguments from “Racial Formations” are about how race is socially constructed and is shown in Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Michael Omi and Howard Winant believe that race is socially constructed in society; therefore, the meaning of race varies within different cultures and societies. According to Omi and Winant, influences such as, media, school, politics, history, family and economy create society’s structure of race. In Caucasia, media, family and school are forces that create race by stating how one should conform to social norms for different racial groups.

Having knowledge of the Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model will help counselors to become more culturally competent. Although we know these phases, one must be aware of the cultures that counselors will be working with and how one’s beliefs can hinder the process. The five stages of the Asian-American Identity Development Model, developed by Sue and Sue, are: The ethnic awareness stage, White identification stage, the awakening to the social political consciousness stage, redirection stage, and the incorporation stage. Asian-Americans prefer crisis-oriented, brief, and solution oriented approaches, and they are influenced by their families and culture. The fear of losing face to their peers by seeking therapy will lead them to early termination of therapy. Asian cultures are typically high context cultures in which gesture, body language, eye contact, pitch, intonation, word stress, and the use of silence are as important as the actual words being spoken in conversation. Asians are typically polite in social encounters whereas Americans, being very low context communicators, are comfortable with very direct questions and answers and often seem abrupt to people from high context cultures. The five stages of the Black Identity Development Model, originally developed by Cross, are: The pre-encounter stage, encounter stage, immersion-emersion, internalization, and internalization-commitment. African-Americans will diminish counseling,

Two approaches are used by the model; the mainstream method that focuses on the universal dimension of race and the identities of the ethnic

The main purpose of the paper was to reflect the changes in the racial identity development during the course of history. The assignment was aimed to achieve several tasks: to analyze the impressions and responses to the interview; to trace back the causes of the negative reactions on some questions; to reflect the story of the Racial Identity Development, as well as elaborate the ways of racism confrontation within and outside oneself.

Identifying the type of racial identity that one person is can be difficult for some people. I became aware of my racial identity when I was still in elementary school. When I was younger my hometown in a racial aspect was generally people of white descendants, but we had neighboring towns that had

Race is a social construct that was created by the Europeans in order to minoritize different racial groups. In the reading by Bonilla-Silva, he defines race to be manmade, “This means that notions of racial difference are human creations rather than eternal, essential categories… racial categories have a history and are subject to change.” For example in a lecture by Dr. Aguilar-Hernandez, he stated that the Irish, Italians and Jews were called black before but are now considered white, Mexican-Americans were also considered white up until the 1980s. These ideas lead to the racialization of racial groups.

One of these boundaries includes the race category. We think in terms of stereotypes, rather than finding a common ground with someone who don’t come from the same background as he or she. This results in, that most of us have very little understanding of how people form social segments on how we think, feel and organize our experiences. The term race refers to groups of people who have differences and similarities in biological traits deemed by society to be socially significant. Meaning that people treat people differently because of their ethnicity.