Racial Identity Development

        I had struggles with actually sitting down, reading, and blogging this week.  I don’t know if it’s the time of year or if I’ve simply just been bombarded with work lately.  Either way, while I was reading, the one thing that kept me going was all the connections I kept making to my favorite punk bands. Strangely enough, I found connections between the reading and some of their songs.  I’m always drawn to the more intellectual, progressive side of music, and I thought it was cool that some of the ideas I was reading about were echoed in their songs. I included some of those tunes here on this post.  Music has played a major part when I've tried reflecting on my identity.  Perhaps this is where all the connections have come from?

At first, I was a little apprehensive about how this chapter would pertain to my teaching.  I teach at a white, middle class, suburban high school.  There are not many minority students.  Yet, after reading the chapter, I now understand with more nuance about how much minority students must struggle with their identity in this type of environment.

         The chapter didn’t pertain to the student I plan on doing my case study on.  But I did find some recent classroom examples that tied directly to the reading.   

        In my effective writing class, we are working on college applications and college essays.  One student was filling out a common application, and she asked “if my mom is from one country and my dad is from another, which box do I select?  Other?”  The student who asked this question is the only African American student I have in school this year.  Almost all of her classmates are white.  It pained me to tell her to select “other,” since the listing did not have the specific place her ancestors were from.  Can you imagine selecting “other” when your identity is asked for, especially while at such a formative age?  Nakkula writes that “regardless of our own racial identifications or those of the kids we serve, our work with adolescence occurs within a social context laden with racial meaning” (121).  This was obviously true in this situation. 

I wonder what effects this idea plays in this student’s identity, since she has made it clear her race is something she thinks about frequently.  Her college essay is about how her great-grandfather was her hero because of his leadership roles in the civil rights movement.  He was even friends with Malcolm X.  Her essay was both candid and sincere.  She was especially proud of her great-grandfather because of the way he had to helped change how society looked at African Americans.  She wrote she wishes she could speak to him now about how to change the problems with race in this country, which are still there, yet less apparent.  I thought this was especially insightful, this idea that “racism still alive, they just be concealing it.”  Kanye West has written about this in some of his music:

(from "Never Let Me Down" by Kanye West)

I get down for my grandfather who took my momma

Made her sit that seat where white folks ain't wanna us to eat

At the tender age of 6 she was arrested for the sit in

With that in my blood I was born to be different

Now n***** can't make it to ballots to choose leadership

But we can make it to Jacob and to the dealership

That's why I hear new music

And I just don't be feeling it

Racism still alive they just be concealing it

But I know they don't want me in the damn club

They even made me show I.D to get inside of Sam's club

             Nakkula writes that “race is a concept created in the modern era as a way of drawing distinctions between peoples such that some might benefit at the expense of others” (123).  While I was taking notes on this section, I wrote down race is a “social destruction” rather than “social construction.”

This seems to be a common societal problem.  We may have some differences, yet at the end of the day, I think people forget that everyone wants the same basic comforts: food, a place to live, a family.  People in power use our differences to divide us.  This sounds like a lesson plan in the making and reminded me of this song by Double Dagger, a punk band from Baltimore

:

(from "The Lie/The Truth" by Double Dagger)

In your perfect world of black and white

Where talk about grey is treason,

The compromiser is crucified

And no quarter is ever given.

You make it easy to divide us

When you exaggerate the reasons and meanings

Until everyone is defined

As the righteous and the demons.

But there's a Lie and there's a Truth,

There's something in between: that's me and you.

There's a Lie and there's a Truth,

There's something in between: that's what we do.

            I think of this song frequently when teaching.  We're constantly asked to skirt between lies and the truth as teachers.  It might be time to explain to students that the world isn't black and white, that there are ambiguities and false narratives.  This applies to race and identity.  We're not all the same and we can't pretend otherwise, but we're all looking for the same things out of life.

I was drawn to the idea of the looking-glass self, “in which one imagines how others react to one’s behavior and personality, affects the adolescent’s identity development in profound ways” (130).  It had never occurred to me that this was something we develop over time, this idea of self-image.  What does this student think of herself?  How can I help?  There's a Minutemen song that goes along with this idea:

(lyrics to "There Ain't Sh** On TV Tonight" by The Minutemen)

How can I make

An outline of myself?

Where's the guidelines

For the profiles?

For my country?

How do others see me?

I'm worried

Worried but I feel guilty

The media robs and betrays us

No more lies

We are responsible

            The last line of that song always kills me: we can't blame others or society.  It's up to us.  We are responsible to try and change these systematic problems.  Pretending they don't exist, that the world is color-blind, isn't going to cut it.  Complaining doesn't help, either.

Nakkula writes that “the trick is to see how adolescents’ language may suggest the ways in which they are orienting themselves racially” (141).  I don’t know this student well-enough yet to figure out where she lands on the Racial Identity Development chart, but I am more aware of her different identity development from her classmates.  I certainly have seen and overheard thoughts about how “this school is full of ignorant people” and I wonder how much else I’ll pick up on now that I’ve read this chapter.  I certainly will be paying closer attention, or at least am more aware of the differences.

I thought the end of the case study was especially constructive.  Nakkula writes that “being conversant with race identity development theory gives tools to interpret labeling and stop students from being misunderstood” (141).  I thought this was an important lesson.  Labeling is lazy, as Ayers wrote.  I thought the conversation that Mr. Campbell and Ms. Peterson have at the end of the chapter are especially constructive.  Ms. P. is asking for advice on how to work with her student, and Mr. C. says that she should “tell him you hear him, validate his feelings, make him feel like he’s being understood, then give your intentions and expectations”.  This was the major lesson I learned from this chapter.  Not only should we do this with minority students, we should do this with all our students.