This book examines the major theories of Black and White racial identity. Moreover, theoretical perspectives that were originally developed to describe social fomentation have been updated and expanded to explain the role of racial identity in counseling dyads, social relationships, and groups. Measures for assessing racial identity are described. Original research addresses the relationship of racial identity to other personality characteristics such as value orientations, decision-making styles and counseling process variables such as satisfaction, counselor strategies, and client reactions. Part 1 presents basic racial identity theory and measurement issues as they pertain to individuals and intergroup functioning. Ideally this material will be useful to persons who are seeking a basic introduction to Black and White racial identity theory. Part 2 introduces empirical attempts to examine the correlates of racial identity. This section is primarily intended for the reader who is interested in generating research questions and/or evaluating some of those that already have been generated. Part 3 includes speculative and empirical chapters that study the influence of racial identity on everyday interactions. This material also describes the influence of racial identity attitudes on various kinds of counseling interactions. The final chapter presents models for promoting identity development. This book should appeal to anyone interested in the social and behavioral sciences, including psychiatry, social work, and cross cultural psychology; nursing and education.

Jas M. Sullivan and Ashraf M. Esmail’s African American Identity: Racial and Cultural Dimensions of the Black Experience is a collection which makes use of multiple perspectives across the social sciences to address complex issues of race and identity. The contributors tackle questions about what African American racial identity means, how we may go about quantifying it, what the factors are in shaping identity development, and what effects racial identity has on psychological, political, educational, and health-related behavior. African American Identity aims to continue the conversation, rather than provide a beginning or an end. It is an in-depth study which uses quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to explore the relationship between racial identity and psychological well-being, effects on parents and children, physical health, and related educational behavior. From these vantage points, Sullivan and Esmail provide a unique opportunity to further our understanding, extend our knowledge, and continue the debate.

DIVA theoretical troubling of the assumptions of uniformity in Blackness, comparing writings by and about African diasporic subjects from the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany./div

Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Martin Delany--these figures stand out in the annals of black protest for their vital antislavery efforts. But what of the rest of their generation, the thousands of other free blacks in the North? Patrick Rael explores the tradition of protest and sense of racial identity forged by both famous and lesser-known black leaders in antebellum America and illuminates the ideas that united these activists across a wide array of divisions. In so doing, he reveals the roots of the arguments that still resound in the struggle for justice today. Mining sources that include newspapers and pamphlets of the black national press, speeches and sermons, slave narratives and personal memoirs, Rael recovers the voices of an extraordinary range of black leaders in the first half of the nineteenth century. He traces how these activists constructed a black American identity through their participation in the discourse of the public sphere and how this identity in turn informed their critiques of a nation predicated on freedom but devoted to white supremacy. His analysis explains how their place in the industrializing, urbanizing antebellum North offered black leaders a unique opportunity to smooth over class and other tensions among themselves and successfully galvanize the race against slavery.

In this controversial and path-breaking book, William E. Cross, Jr., presents the diversity and texture that have always been the hallmark of Black psychology. Shades of Black explodes the myth that self-hatred is the dominant theme in Black identity. With a thorough review of social scientific literature on Negro identity conducted between 1936 and 1967, Cross demonstrates that important themes of mental health and adaptive strength have been frequently overlooked by scholars, both Black and White, obsessed with proving Black pathology. He examines the Black Power Movement and critics who credit this era with a comprehensive change in Black self-esteem. Allowing for a considerable gain in group identity among Black people during this period, Cross shows how, before this, working and middle class, and even many poor Black families were able to offer their progeny a legacy of mental health and personal strength that sustained them in their struggles for political and cultural consensus. Author note: William E. Cross, Jr., is a psychologist and Associate Professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center of Cornell University.

The Concept of Self examines the historical basis for the widely misunderstood ideas of how African Americans think of themselves individually, and how they relate to being part of a group that has been subjected to challenges of their very humanity.

The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about communicating across racial and ethnic divides and pursuing antiracism. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand dynamics of race and racial inequality in America.