1. Black Identity
Development
Diverse Realities Seminar
Cashain David

2. Why is this important ?
 Gives a framework for understanding of
responses and presentations
 Acknowledges the impact of racism and
discrimination
 Help referrers to make more
appropriate referrals to services
 Assists commissioners to understand
and value a wide spectrum of services

3. William Cross
 A clinical psychologist practicing in the
USA
 Aim – to explain the need for
psychological liberation under
conditions of oppression
 Central issues is IDENTITY and
TRANSITION

4. Published..
 Negro-to-Black conversion. 1971
 Models of Nigrescence. 1980
(Nigrescence – from the French ‘the process of becoming
Black’)
 Shades of Black. 1991
 His work has been modified and adapted to
the British context by Dr June Farrell

5. Development of identity
 AUTOMATIC  DISCOVERY
 ‘socialisation’  ‘encounter’
 Early childhood  ‘the process of
 Adolescence becoming black’
 adulthood  ‘nigrescence’

6. Stages in Black identity
development
 Pre-encounter
 Encounter
 Immersion – Emersion
 Internalisation

7. Pre-encounter
‘.. When I was three years old, I didn’t know I
was Black …’ Cashain David
 Neutral – black as a fact
 Social stigma – something to be negotiated
 Anti Black – black is bad, victim blaming
 Spotlight or Race Image Anxiety
 Assimilationist - Integration

8. Encounter
 Events which catch a person off guard
 Shattering of world view
1. Experiencing the encounter – observer
2. Personalising the encounter – being
changed by it

9. Immersion
 Immersion – enveloped in a sea of blackness
 ‘Blacker-than-thou ‘ syndrome
 Classifies others into neat categories
 Anger @ white people and culture
 Pride in one’s black people/culture
 Guilt @ being tricked by whites
 DANGER of getting STUCK !!

10. Emersion
 Emersion – a levelling off of more
extreme feelings of all white is bad
 a need to escape from a rigid format of
‘blackness’
 Some black is good
 Some White is good

11. Internalisation
 Characterised by being more level-
headed, calmer,
 Reduced anxiety about being the right
sort of Black person
 Black pride develops into Black self-
acceptance

12. The cycle of nigrescence
 Nigrescence thought of as a ‘one time’ event
 Thomas Parnham suggested that there may
be ‘recycling’ through some of the stages in
various parts of the life cycle.
 This assists in meeting the challenges that
are presented as part of adolescence, adult
hood, middle age, late adulthood