When thinking about your identity most people would not identify with their race. This is because your race is not who you are it is a way of classifying people based on their genetics. Some people identify with their generalized groupings. However, understanding who you are as a person helps you to know your identity. For some people this can take a life time and for others life, people, events and circumstances helps them build themselves and their identity. Therefore, our identity is the way we see ourselves. Our strengths, character and your personality traits are some ways to identify yourself. For that reason, using the Black Identity Development Model to help construct identity, gained insights about individual cultural, racial, or …show more content…
Cross exploring the identity development of Africana people. It show the potential ways in which the society in general can impact the identity African Americans. Also, the Negrescence theory has provided a solid foundation for understanding Black racial identity development and the interpretations of the Nigrescence model have changed to account for the multidimensionality within racial identity stages, but the theoretical model has failed to address the possible differences in racial identity attitudes across social categories (Lott, 2011).
There are many Black identity models, however the Cross model of psychological Nigrescence is the one most widely known because it shows an understanding of how Black Americans come to understand what it means to be Black. Dr. Cross speculated that all Black American had to go through these five stage of process to successfully accomplish what it means to be Black. The five stages of process in which Black in the United States moved from a White frame of reference to a positive Black frame of reference: preencounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, internalization, and internalization-commitment (Sue & Sue,