Educational psychologist Carol Dweck’s research suggests that young people who hold the “entity” belief in fixed intelligence see academic setbacks as an indicator of limited ability. They are highly invested in appearing smart and consequently avoid tasks on which their performance might suggest otherwise. Rather than exerting more effort to improve their performance, they are likely to conclude “I’m not good at that subject” and move on to something else. Students who view intelligence as malleable—an “incremental theory”—are more likely to see academic setbacks as a sign that more effort is needed and then exert that effort. They are more likely to face challenges head-on rather than avoid them in an effort to preserve a fixed definition of oneself as “smart.”69 The incremental theory of intelligence as malleable—something that expands as the result of effective effort—fosters an academic resilience that serves its believers well.
Researchers Aronson, Fried, and Good wondered if a personal theory of intelligence as malleable might foster a beneficial academic resilience for students of color vulnerable to stereotype threat. Specifically, they speculated that if Black students believed that their intellectual capacity was not fixed but expandable through their own effort, the negative stereotypes that others hold about their intellectual ability might be less damaging to their academic performance. To introduce this alternative view of intelligence, they designed a study in which Black and White college students were recruited to serve as pen-pal mentors to disadvantaged elementary school students. The task of the college students was to write letters of encouragement to their young mentees, urging them to do their best in school. However, one group of college students was instructed to tell their mentees to think of intelligence as something that was expandable through effort, and in preparation for writing the letters, they were given compelling information, drawn from contemporary research in psychology and neuroscience, about how the brain itself can be modified and expanded by new learning. The real subjects of the study, however, were the college students, not their pen pals. Although the letter writing was done in a single session, the college students exposed to the malleable theory of intelligence seemed to benefit from exposure to the new paradigm. Both Black and White students who learned about the malleability of intelligence improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this information. The benefit was even more striking for Black students, who reported enjoying academics more, saw academics as more important, and had significantly higher grades at the end of the academic quarter than those Black students who had not been exposed to this brief but powerful intervention.70
What worked with college students also worked with seventh graders. Lisa Sorich Blackwell, Kali Trzesniewski, and Carol Dweck created an opportunity for some seventh-grade students in New York City to read and discuss a scientific article about how intelligence develops and its malleability. A comparable group of seventh-grade students did not learn this information but read about memory and mnemonic strategies instead. Those students who learned about the malleability of intelligence subsequently demonstrated higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and higher grades in mathematics than those who learned about memory. Interestingly, girls, who have been shown to be vulnerable to gender stereotypes about math performance, did as well as or better than boys in math following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while girls in the other group performed well below the boys in math. As was the case with the Aronson, Fried, and Good study, the intervention with the seventh graders was quite brief—in this case only three hours—yet the impact was significant.71
The outcomes of numerous studies lead to this conclusion: “By encouraging students to adopt a malleable view of intelligence—either through directly teaching students about this perspective or by creating learning environments that embrace the incremental view rather than entity view of intelligence—we can help students overcome stereotype threat.”72 We can shift a student’s focus from the anxiety of proving ability in the face of negative stereotypes to the confidence of improving with effort despite the negative stereotypes. Embracing a theory of intelligence as something that can develop—that can be expanded through effective effort—is something all of us can do to reduce the impact of stereotype threat and increase the achievement of all of our students.
* The name of the boarding school was fictionalized by the author.
FIVE
Racial Identity in Adulthood
“Still a work in progress…”
WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, I DID NOT SIT AT THE BLACK TABLE IN the cafeteria because there were not enough Black kids in my high school to fill one. Though I was naive about many things, I knew enough about social isolation to know that I needed to get out of town. As the child of college-educated parents and an honor student myself, it was expected that I would go on to college. My mother suggested Howard University, my parents’ alma mater, but although it was a good suggestion, I had my own ideas. I picked Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. It was two hours from home, an excellent school, and of particular interest to me was that it had a critical mass of Black and Latinx students, most of whom were male. Wesleyan had just gone coed, and the ratio of Black male students to Black female students was seven to one. I thought it would improve my social life, and it did.
I thrived socially and academically. Since I had decided in high school to be a psychologist, I was a psychology major, but I took a lot of African American studies courses—history, literature, religion, even Black child development. I studied Swahili in hopes of traveling to Tanzania, although I never went. I stopped straightening my hair and had a large Afro à la Angela Davis circa 1970. I happily sat at the Black table in the dining hall every day. I look back on my days at Wesleyan with great pleasure. I maintain many of the friendships I formed there, and I can’t remember the name of one White classmate. I don’t say that with pride or malice. It is just a fact.1
I was having what William Cross might call an “immersion experience.” I had my racial encounters in high school, so when I got to college I was ready to explore my Black identity, and I did so wholeheartedly. Typically this process of active exploration of REC identity is characterized by a strong desire to surround oneself with symbols of one’s racial-ethnic identity and actively seek out opportunities to learn about one’s own history and culture with the support of same-REC peers. While anger toward Whites is often characteristic of the adolescent phase, particularly in response to encounters with racism, during the immersion phase of active exploration, the developing Black person is likely to see White people as simply irrelevant. This is not to say that anger is totally absent, but the focus of attention is on self-discovery rather than on White people. If I had spent a lot of time being angry with the White men and women I encountered at Wesleyan, I would remember them. The truth is, I wasn’t paying much attention to them. My focus was almost exclusively on exploring my own cultural connections.
The Black person in this identity phase of active exploration is energized by the new information he or she is learning—angry perhaps that it wasn’t available sooner, but excited to find out that there is more to Africa than Tarzan movies and that there is more to Black history than victimization. In many ways, the person is unlearning the internalized stereotypes about his or her own group and is redefining a positive sense of self based on an affirmation of one’s racial group identity. Feeling good about one’s group (sometimes referred to as positive “private regard” or “group esteem”) is an important outcome of the REC-identity development process. “The positive affect that individuals feel toward their ethnic-racial group is a critical component of ethnic-racial identity (ERI) and has been demonstrated to be associated with positive adjustment across different developmental periods.”2
Ideally, one emerges from this process of active exploration with an achieved sense of security about and commitment to one’s REC identity. As positive group esteem rises, the individual finds ways to translate a personal
sense of REC identity into ongoing action, the tangible result of understanding that sense of shared destiny or common fate with one’s REC group.3 The rallying of Black students behind the “Black Lives Matter” slogan on campuses across the country is a contemporary example of that sense of commitment in action. Though during the period of active exploration the young adult’s focus may have been turned inward, away from members of the dominant group, the result of the process often includes a willingness to establish meaningful relationships across group boundaries with others, including Whites, who are respectful of this new self-definition.
In my own life, I see this growth process clearly. I left Wesleyan anchored in my empowered sense of Blackness. I went off to graduate school at the University of Michigan and quickly became part of an extensive network of Black graduate students, but I did have a few White friends, too. I even remember their names. But there were also White people that I chose not to associate with, people who weren’t ready to deal with me in terms of my self-definition. Throughout my adult life I have had a racially mixed group of friends, and I am glad to model that inclusivity for my children. My choice of research topics throughout my career reflects my concerns about my racial group. I like to think that I both perceive and transcend race, but I am still a work in progress. I know that from time to time I have revisited this process of development in response to new racial incidents in my life or in the lives of my children.
Sometimes I find it helpful to compare this growth process to learning another language. The best way to learn a second language is to travel to a place where it is spoken and experience complete immersion. Once you have achieved the level of proficiency you need, you can leave. If you worked hard to become conversant, you will of course take pride in your accomplishment and will not want to spend time with people who disparage your commitment to this endeavor. You may choose not to speak this new language all the time, but if you want to maintain your skill, you will need to speak it often with others who understand it.
Though the cultural symbols for the current generation of young adults may not be the same as for mine, the process of REC-identity exploration is quite similar. Black students practice their “language” in Black student unions and cultural centers and at college dining halls on predominantly White campuses all over the United States. And they should not be discouraged from doing so. Like the Black middle school students from Boston, they need safe spaces to retreat to and regroup in the process of dealing with the daily stress of campus racism.
That life is stressful for Black students and other students of color on predominantly White campuses should not come as a surprise, but it often does. White students and faculty frequently underestimate the power and presence of the overt and covert manifestations of racism on campus, and students of color often come to predominantly White campuses expecting more civility than they find. Whether it is the loneliness of being routinely overlooked as a lab partner in science courses, the irritation of being continually asked by curious classmates about Black hairstyles, the discomfort of being singled out by a professor to give the “Black perspective” in class discussion, the pain of racist graffiti scrawled on dormitory room doors, the insult of racist jokes circulated through campus e-mail, or the injury inflicted by racial epithets (and sometimes beer bottles) hurled from a passing car, Black students on predominantly White college campuses must cope with ongoing affronts to their racial identity. The desire to retreat to safe space is understandable. Sometimes that means leaving the campus altogether.
For example, one young woman I interviewed at Howard University explained why she had transferred from a predominantly White college to a historically Black one. Assigned to share a dormitory room with two White girls, both of whom were from rural White communities, she was insulted by the assumptions her White roommates made about her. Conflict erupted between them when she was visited by her boyfriend, a young Black man. “They put padlocks on their doors and their dressers. And they accused me of drinking all their beers. And I was like, ‘We don’t drink. This doesn’t make any sense.’ So what really brought me to move out of that room was when he left, I came back, they were scrubbing things down with Pine Sol. I was like, ‘I couldn’t live here with you. You think we have germs or something?’”
She moved into a room with another Black woman, the first Black roommate pair in the dormitory. The administration had discouraged Black pairings because they didn’t want Black students to separate themselves. She and her new roommate got along well, but they became targets of racial harassment.
All of a sudden we started getting racial slurs like “South Africa will strike. Africans go home.” And all this other stuff. I knew the girls who were doing it. They lived all the way down the hall. And I don’t understand why they were doing it. We didn’t do anything to them. But when we confronted them they acted like they didn’t know anything. And my friends, their rooms were getting trashed.… One day I was asleep and somebody was trying to jiggle the lock trying to get in. And I opened the door and chased this girl down the hallway.
Though she said the college administration handled the situation and the harassers were eventually asked to leave, the stress of these events had taken its toll. At the end of her first year, she transferred to Howard.
While stressful experiences can happen at any college, and social conflicts can and do erupt among Black students at Black colleges as well, there is considerable evidence that Black students at historically Black colleges and universities achieve higher academic performance, enjoy greater social involvement, and aspire to higher occupational goals than their peers do at predominantly White institutions.4 For example, according to data from the National Science Foundation, Spelman College, a historically Black college for women, sends more Black women on to earn PhDs in the sciences than any other undergraduate institution.5
In 1992, drawing on his analysis of data from the National Study on Black College Students, Walter Allen offered this explanation of the difference in student outcomes.
On predominantly White campuses, Black students emphasize feelings of alienation, sensed hostility, racial discrimination, and lack of integration. On historically Black campuses, Black students emphasize feelings of engagement, connection, acceptance, and extensive support and encouragement. Consistent with accumulated evidence on human development, these students, like most human beings, develop best in environments where they feel valued, protected, accepted, and socially connected. The supportive environments of historically Black colleges communicate to Black students that it is safe to take the risks associated with intellectual growth and development. Such environments also have more people who provide Black students with positive feedback, support, and understanding, and who communicate that they care about the students’ welfare.6
Nearly twenty-five years later, a national study of fifty thousand Black college alumni reported very similar findings. Black graduates of historically Black colleges were much more likely to have felt supported by a faculty member or mentor while in college and were more likely to be thriving financially and in terms of overall well-being than their Black peers who graduated from predominantly White institutions, according to a Gallup / Purdue University study. The researchers wrote, “The profoundly different experiences that black graduates of HBCUs and black graduates of non-HBCUs are having in college leave the HBCU graduates feeling better prepared for life after graduation, potentially leading them to live vastly different lives outside of college.”7
While these and Allen’s earlier findings make a compelling case for Black student enrollment at historically Black colleges, the proportion of Black students entering predominantly White institutions (PWI) continues to increase.8 It is certainly possible to have a great learning experience at a PWI, as I did. Yet as negative campus interactions increase, as they did dramatically after the 2016 presidential election, predominantly White colleges concerned about attracting and retaining Black students must take seriously the p
sychological toll extracted from students of color in inhospitable environments and the critical role that cultural space can play. Having a place to be rejuvenated and to feel anchored in one’s cultural community increases the possibility that one will have the energy to achieve academically as well as participate in the cross-group dialogue and interaction many colleges want to encourage. If White students or faculty do not understand why Black or Latinx or Asian cultural centers are necessary, then they can be helped to understand.9
Not for College Students Only
Once when I described the process of racial identity development at a workshop session, a young Black man stood up and said, “You make it sound like if you don’t go to college you have to stay stuck [in your development].” It was a good observation. Though the college years are likely to provide consciousness-raising experiences in classrooms or through cocurricular interactions with a new set of peers,10 identity development does not have to happen in college. The Autobiography of Malcolm X provides a classic example of consciousness-raising that occurred while he was in prison. As he began to read books about Black history and was encouraged by older Black inmates, Malcolm X began to redefine for himself what it meant to be a Black man. As he said in his autobiography,
The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened”—when white men had written history books, the black man had simply been left out. Mr. Muhammad couldn’t have said anything that would have struck me much harder. I had never forgotten how when my class, me and all of those whites, had studied seventh-grade United States history back in Mason, the history of the Negro had been covered in one paragraph.…
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 19
