Implied in this discussion is the assumption that connecting with one’s Black peers in the process of identity development is important and should be encouraged. For young Black people living in predominantly Black communities, such connections occur spontaneously with neighbors and classmates and usually do not require special encouragement. However, for young people in predominantly White communities, they may only occur with active parental intervention. One might wonder if this social connection is really necessary. If a young person has found a niche within a circle of White friends, is it really necessary to establish a Black peer group as a reference point? Maybe not, but it certainly helps.
As one’s awareness of the daily challenges of living in a racist society increases, it is immensely beneficial to be able to share one’s experiences with others who have lived them. Even when White friends are willing and able to listen and bear witness to one’s struggles, they cannot really share the experience. One young woman came to this realization in her senior year of high school:
[The isolation] never really bothered me until about senior year when I was the only one in the class.… That little burden, that constant burden of you always having to strive to do your best and show that you can do just as much as everybody else. Your White friends can’t understand that, and it’s really hard to communicate to them. Only someone else of the same racial, same ethnic background would understand something like that.
When one is faced with what Chester Pierce calls the “mundane extreme environmental stress” of racism, in adolescence or in adulthood, the ability to see oneself as part of a larger group from which one can draw support is an important coping strategy.48 Individuals who do not have such a strategy available to them because they do not experience a shared identity with at least some subset of their racial group are at risk for considerable social isolation and depression.49
Of course, who we perceive as sharing our identity may be influenced by other dimensions of identity, such as gender, sexual orientation, social class, geographical location, skin color, or ethnicity. For example, research indicates that first-generation Black immigrants from the Caribbean tend to emphasize their national origins and ethnic identities, distancing themselves from US Blacks, due in part to their belief that West Indians are viewed more positively by Whites than those American Blacks whose family roots include the experience of US slavery. To relinquish one’s ethnic identity as West Indian and take on an African American identity may be understood as downward social mobility.50
Also, immigrants from the Caribbean, as well as those from African countries, are from social contexts in which they were in the numerical majority and Blacks occupied positions of power, a legacy of European colonialism notwithstanding. Thus the racial socialization for African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants may be significantly different from that of American-born Blacks.51 Second-generation Black immigrants, however, without an identifiable accent to mark them as foreigners, may lose the relative ethnic privilege their parents experienced. In that context, they may be more likely to seek racial solidarity with Black American peers in the face of encounters with racism.52 Whether it is the experience of being followed in stores because they are suspected of shoplifting, seeing people respond to them with fear on the street, or feeling overlooked in school, Black youth can benefit from seeking support from those who have had similar experiences.
An Alternative to the Cafeteria Table
The developmental need to explore the meaning of one’s identity with others who are engaged in a similar process manifests itself informally in school corridors and cafeterias across the country. Some educational institutions have sought to meet this need programmatically with the creation of school-sponsored affinity groups.
Twenty years ago several colleagues and I evaluated one such effort, initiated at a Massachusetts middle school participating in a voluntary desegregation program known as the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) program.53 The historical context for our evaluation was the fact that the small number of African American students who were being bused from Boston to this suburban school had achieved disappointing levels of academic success. In an effort to improve academic achievement, the school introduced a program, known as Student Efficacy Training (SET), that allowed Boston students to meet each day as a group with two staff members. Instead of being in physical education or home economics or study hall, they were meeting, talking about homework difficulties, social issues, and encounters with racism. The meeting was mandatory, and at first the students were resentful of missing some of their classes. But the impact was dramatic. Said one young woman,
In the beginning of the year, I didn’t want to do SET at all. It took away my study and it was only METCO students doing it. In the beginning all we did was argue over certain problems, or it was more like a rap session, and I didn’t think it was helping anyone. But then when we looked at records… I know that last year out of all the students, sixth through eighth grade, there was, like, six who were actually good students. Everyone else, it was just pathetic, I mean, like, they were getting like Ds and Fs.… The eighth grade is doing much better this year. I mean, they went from Ds and Fs to Bs and Cs and occasional As.… And those seventh graders are doing really good, they have a lot of honor roll students in seventh grade, both guys and girls. Yeah, it’s been good. It’s really good.
Her report was borne out by an examination of school records. The opportunity to come together in the company of supportive adults allowed these young Black students to talk about the issues that hindered their performance—racial encounters, feelings of isolation, test anxiety, homework dilemmas—in the psychological safety of their own group. In the process, the peer culture changed to one that supported academic performance rather than undermined it, as revealed in these two students’ comments:
Well, a lot of the Boston students, the boys and the girls, used to fight all the time. And now, they stopped yelling at each other so much and calling each other stupid.
It’s like we’ve all become like one big family, we share things more with each other. We tease each other like brother and sister. We look out for each other with homework and stuff. We always stay on top of each other ’cause we know it’s hard with African American students to go to a predominantly White school and try to succeed with everybody else.
The faculty, too, were very enthusiastic about the outcomes of the intervention, as seen in the comments of these two classroom teachers:
This program has probably produced the most dramatic result of any single change that I’ve seen at this school. It has produced immediate results that affected behavior and academics and participation in school life.
My students are more engaged. They aren’t battling out a lot of the issues of their anger about being in a White community, coming in from Boston, where do I fit, I don’t belong here. I feel that those issues that often came out in class aren’t coming out in class anymore. I think they are being discussed in the SET room, the kids feel more confidence. The kids’ grades are higher, the homework response is greater, they’re not afraid to participate in class, and I don’t see them isolating themselves within class. They are willing to sit with other students happily.… I think it’s made a very positive impact on their place in the school and on their individual self-esteem. I see them enjoying themselves and able to enjoy all of us as individuals. I can’t say enough, it’s been the best thing that’s happened to the METCO program as far as I’m concerned.54
Although this intervention is not a miracle cure for every school, it does highlight what can happen when we think about the developmental needs of Black adolescents who are coming to terms with their own sense of identity. It might seem counterintuitive that a school involved in a voluntary desegregation program could improve both academic performance and social relationships among students by separating the Black students for one period every day. But if we understand the unique challenges facing adolescents of color and the l
egitimate need they have to feel supported in their identity development, it makes perfect sense.
Though they may not use the language of racial identity development theory to describe it, most Black parents want their children to achieve an internalized sense of personal security, to be able to acknowledge the reality of racism and to respond effectively to it. Our educational institutions should do what they can to encourage this development rather than impede it. When I talk to educators about the need to provide adolescents with identity-affirming experiences and information about their own cultural groups, they sometimes flounder because this information has not been part of their own education. Their understanding of adolescent development has been limited to the White middle-class norms included in most textbooks; their knowledge of Black history limited to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. They sometimes say with frustration that parents should provide this kind of education for their children. Unfortunately Black parents often attended the same schools the teachers did and have the same informational gaps. We need to acknowledge that an important part of interrupting the cycle of oppression is constant reeducation, and then sharing what we learn with the next generation.
Group Identity and Stereotype Threat
As we have seen, developing a strong and positive sense of group identity can be a source of psychological protection for members of stigmatized groups, particularly when the exploration of that identity has moved beyond the negative stereotypes to a more accurate and complete understanding of the strengths and assets of one’s group. However, there is one context in which a strong identification with one’s group can be a source of vulnerability, and that is in relationship to a condition known as stereotype threat. As defined by social psychologist Claude Steele, stereotype threat is “the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype, or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype.”55 In essence, stereotype threat is a kind of performance anxiety that can impact academic performance because “[stigmatized students] must contend with the threatening possibility that should their performance falter, it could substantiate the racial stereotype’s allegation of limited ability.”56
Anyone can experience stereotype threat under the right circumstances. For example, researchers have shown that talented female math students perform less well on a “math ability” measure when they are told that their scores will be compared to those of men than they do when that information is not provided. White male golfers perform less well on a golf course when they are told their performance is part of a measure of “natural athletic ability” than they do when no such information is provided.57 Two decades of research has demonstrated that when an individual identifies with a group (e.g., race or gender) as part of their social identity and that group is stereotyped in negative ways, the person is at risk for lower performance relative to the stereotyped dimension of that identity.58
In the case of Black students, the more they identify with their group and the more invested they are in doing well academically, the more vulnerable they can become to stereotype threat.59 They know that “intellectually inferior” is a stereotype about their group, and they want to disprove it. That added pressure can inhibit performance, especially in high-stakes testing situations.
How does stereotype threat impede test-taking performance for Black students? In some of the research Steele and his colleagues conducted, computers were used to administer standardized tests, which allowed the researchers to study the test-taking behavior of the students in some detail. They found that:
Black students taking the test under stereotype threat seemed to be trying too hard rather than not hard enough. They reread the questions, reread the multiple choices, rechecked their answers, more than when they were not under stereotype threat. The threat made them inefficient on a test that, like most standardized tests, is set up so that thinking long often means thinking wrong, especially on difficult items like the ones we used.60
This result was particularly noted when students were asked to check a box indicating their racial group membership before taking the test. The act of checking the box brought racial-group membership (and resulting performance anxiety) to mind. When they were administered the same test without being asked to designate their race at the beginning, stereotype threat was not triggered and their performance on the test was significantly better—in fact, it equaled the performance of White peers taking the same exam.61
Any situation in which the stigmatized identity is made more salient for the individual is likely to induce stereotype threat—not just in test-taking situations but in daily life, like being the only Black student in an advanced math or science class, for example. The student in such a circumstance is likely to have a heightened awareness of being “the only one.”62 However, there are strategies that caring adults (family members as well as educators) can use to reduce the impact of stereotype threat to the benefit of young people. Providing role models from the stigmatized group whose achievement defies the stereotypes is one important strategy. Indeed, researchers found that having a strong racial identity was most helpful to young Black girls and their academic success only when that identification included a belief that being African American is associated with achievement.63 In my former role as the president of Spelman College, the oldest historically Black college for women, I witnessed daily the inspirational power of an environment where Black women were surrounded by examples of African American academic achievement, past and present, leading to exceptionally high rates of success in STEM fields, where Black women have historically been most underrepresented.64
What is hopeful about our growing understanding of stereotype threat and related theories is that they can guide us to change how we teach and what we say. As Steele puts it: “Although stereotypes held by the larger society may be hard to change, it is possible to create educational niches in which negative stereotypes are not felt to apply—and which permit a sense of trust that would otherwise be difficult to sustain.”65 Receiving honest feedback you can trust as unbiased is critical to reducing stereotype threat and improving academic performance. How you establish that trust with the possibility of stereotype swirling around is the question. The key to doing this seems to be found in clearly communicating both high standards and assurance of belief in the student’s capacity to reach those standards.
Again, Claude Steele, this time joined by Geoffrey Cohen, offers important insights. To investigate how a teacher might gain the trust of a student when giving feedback across racial lines, they created a scenario in which Black and White Stanford University students were asked to write essays about a favorite teacher. The students were told that the essays would be considered for publication in a journal about teaching and that they would receive feedback from a reviewer who they were led to believe was White. A Polaroid snapshot was taken of each student and attached to the essay as it was turned in, signaling to the students that the reviewer would be able to identify the race of the essay writer. Several days later the students returned to receive the reviewer’s comments, with the opportunity to “revise and resubmit” the essay. What was varied in the experiment was how the feedback was delivered.
When the feedback was given in a constructive but critical manner, Black students were more suspicious than white students that the feedback was racially biased, and consequently, the Black students were less likely than the White students to rewrite the essay for further consideration. The same was true when the critical feedback was buffered by an opening statement praising the essay, such as “There were many good things about your essay.” However, when the feedback was introduced by a statement that conveyed a high standard (reminding the writer that the essay had to be of publishable quality) and high expectations (assuring the student of the reviewer’s belief that with effort and attention to the feedback, the standard could be met), the Black students not only responded positively by revising the essays and resubmitting them, but they did so
at a higher rate than the White students in the study.66
The particular combination of the explicit communication of high standards and the demonstrated assurance of the teacher’s belief in the student’s ability to succeed (as evidenced by the effort to provide detailed, constructive feedback) was a powerful intervention for Black students. Describing this two-pronged approach as “wise criticism,” Cohen and Steele demonstrated that it was an exceedingly effective way to generate the trust needed to motivate Black students to make their best effort. Even though the criticism indicated that a major revision of the essay would be required to achieve the publication standard, Black students who received “wise criticism” felt ready to take on the challenge, and did. Indeed, “they were more motivated than any other group of students in the study—as if this combination of high standards and assurance was like water on parched land, a much needed but seldom received balm.”67
Another factor in how stereotype threat is experienced has to do with how students think about their own abilities. Many students, like many teachers, believe intelligence (or lack of it) is a fixed, unchanging characteristic. Years of family members, friends, and teachers remarking, “What a smart boy/girl you are!” certainly reinforces this personal “entity theory” of intelligence. The alternative view of intelligence as changeable—as something that can be developed over time—is less commonly fostered, but it can be. Educator Verna Ford has summed up this alternative theory for use with young children quite succinctly: “Think you can—work hard—get smart.”68
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 18
