#CSAM18 Day 17: Racial Identity Development

Understanding how our identities are formed, what is needed to help that development happen, and how our own identities may shape how we view others is important to being ethical and empathetic professionals. I don’t know if I’m the right person to look at these theories. Or if my analysis goes deep enough. Or even if I should be critiquing the work. I don’t know if I have the right words. Or if they’ll land in the right way. But I want to try. I want to learn. I want to attempt to understand.

I started with White Identity Development not because it’s the most important, but because most practitioners (at least here in the Northeast) are white. We need to understand how our development as while folk happened and how it shapes us. We need to truly understand our biases when it comes to racial identity development and to do that we need to look inward. Once we’ve explored where we are, how we got there, and how it influences our work and views, we should be able to better understand how others are developing their own identities.

Professionally I wonder about people of multiple races, and how we best apply racial identity development theories or frameworks. I don’t have the best or only answer to that, but it’s something we should also be mindful of.

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