The following is based on Dr Beverly Tatum’s excellent book, “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” (1997):
According to Dr Beverly Tatum growing up black in America goes something like this for most:
- ages 1 to 5: you know you look different from whites, but you do not think of yourself as “black”. All the racist messages about blacks that American society provides come pouring into your defenceless little brain, completely unquestioned. This lays the groundwork for internalized racism: racism against yourself! You will be fighting against this stuff the rest of your life – either that or give into it.
- pre-encounter: you know you are black, at least from about age five if not earlier, but it does not matter that much. It is kind of like being Irish or a NASCAR fan. This is what many white people think being black is like. And what it would be like in a truly post-racial America.
- encounter: you experience racism in an unmistakable way. Repeatedly. Anger and confusion follow. Now being black becomes one of the most important things about you.
- immersion/emersion: you put yourself into a black world as much as possible. You see your black friends in a new light. You learn everything you can about being black. You read, you take courses maybe. You learn about the history of blacks in America, in Africa, unlearning the lies.
- internalization: what you learned in the last stage becomes a part of your identity, your sense of who you are. It helps to undo the internalized racism you unknowingly learned. It makes you feel more secure in yourself. You become less angry, more hopeful.
- internalization-commitment: Now you can move beyond yourself, make good friends from other races and want to help other blacks in some way.
After stage 6 you might fall into a period of racelessness where race is not all that important – you are back at stage 2 again! But sooner or later there will be another bad encounter with racism – maybe at work or through your children – and you will move through the stages all over again, but this time at a higher level of understanding. It is like a spiral staircase, going round and round, up and up.
It is common for the first encounter stage to take place in middle school or high school and the first immersion stage at university (go to one with a good African American studies programme!). And then both again in mid-life.
You can get stuck at any stage. Some do not even make it through all six stages the first time.
You should hang onto the friends you made and the books you bought in one pass through the stages because you will need them again for the next pass!
There are tons of great books about growing up black – which will interest you when you are in the immersion stage. A few are listed below. The best of them is probably “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, a book everyone in America should read.
Tomorrow: Growing up white!
See also:
- Reading Beverly Tatum
- internalized racism
- biracial
- Books about growing up black:
- Caille Millner:The Golden Road
- Ntozake Shange: Betsey Brown
- Lorene Cary: Black Ice
- James McBride: The Color of Water
- Danzy Senna: Caucasia – about growing up biracial, which is kind of the same and kind of not
- The girlhood of Angela Davis – from her autobiography
- Barack Obama: The Dreams from My Father
- Obama in Indonesia – pre-encounter
- Obama in Hawaii – encounter, early immersion
- Obama at Occidental College – immersion stage
- Obama at Columbia
- Obama at Altgeld Gardens – internalization-commitment
Abagond 
interesting….
i never put fully myself in the black world.
in fact, me coming to this blog has become the closest ive come to figuring out things. i am trying to unlearn everything i have been told or told not to pay attention to.
i am interested in knowing more about black history…i wanted to know about what blacks did besides civil rights and slavery in the past.
i realized a while back that there was no specific way to being black. i didnt want to give up my personality and who i am but i also wanted to know more about my black side. i didnt have my father or his side of the family in my life, and my mom pretty much raised me in the white world, so im finding that i have to figure this out for myself all by myself.
i am kinda conflicted…im trying to figure out more about my black side, while also trying to figure out more about just being biracial.
i am probably at the encounter or immersion stage on your list of stages….im only 20…i dont know if thats a bad thing or not, that its taken til now.
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It is not. There is no late or early in this, just an order of stages. How quickly you go through the stages depends in part how much racism you face.
Growing up biracial, though, can go a bit differently if both blacks and whites do not fully accept you:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/biracial/
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my life in a blog post… I woulda never imagined. great read. that book; ao malcolm x completely changed my life. for me the immersion stage was in college. I was very aware of my encounter stage. it ran literally from 11 to 20 years of age. I first went to college at 16, but felt too many encounters and dropped out. I went back years later. I won’t right my book here today, but lets just say you’re going on my googly reader right now.
it’s wonderful work/exploration/blogging you]re doing here.
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By the time I was six I was already learning about people like Malcolm X, Dr. King, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks. I was very aware of who I was as an individual.
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Some parents pump up their children with famous blacks or somehow make sure they have positive images of being black when they are in grade school, the pre-encounter stage. Probably a good idea given what is about to follow. But some parents are back in the pre-encounter stage themselves by that point and fail to do that.
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KissMyBlackAds said:
it’s wonderful work/exploration/blogging you]re doing here.
Thanks you for the encouragement! The same is true of your blog.
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KissMyBlackAds said:
my life in a blog post… I woulda never imagined.
Reading Tatum is a strange experience. It is like when a doctor says, “You have earache too, right?” and you are like, “How did you know?”
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I read about this (but by another author, I think) about a year ago. It’s great to be reminded of it. At the time I had just started entering the immersion stage (I’m in my early 30s – so yeah, age doesn’t matter), and now I’m trying real hard to get to the next stage because the immersion stage can be real tiring sometimes. It’s good to be reminded that it’s just a phase.
(I’m technically Asian btw, and when I got to university at 18, I realized for the first time that I could write great essays on the European Renaissance, but knew next to zilch about Asia, and in fact used to looked down on Asia.)
@alwaysright101 – I think it would be good to get it straight in your own mind that it’s okay to be mixed. I repeat: It’s OKAY to be mixed. Others may not understand this. But there’s nothing wrong with it. You may have to play the chameleon sometimes so you don’t trigger people off, but there is nothing wrong with being mixed. Try reading this from middle of page 2 to the top of page 6, might help: http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/mai/asaa/danautanu.pdf
It talks about kids who grow up overseas, but many with a ‘minority’ background or those who are bicultural/biracial feel they can relate to the experience of being ‘in between’.
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this is so on the money…this captures every feeling that I might of had through the years. the stages are well thought out and developed. i recall having my uncle explain what black and white was using paper (as white) and a marker (as black) probably a poor explaination but i believed back then…lol
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A very similar structure could be applied to gays, but you would have to add a few steps involving the process of realizing that one is gay, trying to deny it to one’s self, finally admitting it to one’s self while trying to conceal it from the world, and, for some, finally coming out to the world.
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Thank you for breaking this down, I have to pass it along to friends!
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blan2 no disrespect but i really hate when the comparision to the plight of blacks in the us is compared to that of gays …its not like for like…
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How could you not?
Gays are just as discriminated against as blacks for something that is very natural and biological.
As a matter of fact, I seem to remember that even Abagond here does not feel that gay people act in a “right” way.
No?
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Mike:
“Hate” is a strong word for something as abstract as this, but for each his own. My personal pet peeve is entertainment reviews that describe a new joynt as a hybrid of two extant outfits, as in: “It’s like a cross between Erykah Badu and Bjork.” I wouldn’t use “hate” to describe my dislike of this, though.
But I digress. One can of course find similarities and differences in the comparison of any two individuals, groups, etc. This would be true even if comparing two black men. Compare the “plight” of, say, Will Smith to that of Marion Berry.
That reality doesn’t make all comparisons inapt. Here, my observation from my many gay acquaintances has been that their lives undergo a set of stages that is very similar to that described in Agabond’s post.
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lol growing up white:
1-5 You are made aware from a young age that you are normal and all other races are different in the negative sense
Age 11 You never experience racism so you think that black people are always making mountains out of molehills
Age 16 You commit your first racial act in high school calling a fellow indian student a rag-head and that he should go back home
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I agree with Mike. I hate it too, but that is a whole other subject.
For this thread it is important to point out that blacks cannot hide being black. Gays can and do.
Asian Americans would probably be a closer comparison, though I do not know if that is in fact the case.
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jhem, that is an amazing statement(s).
Wow, is that what it’s like. I know it’s not an exact depiction or a blanket truth, but I can’t imagine that point of view. I have never considered what that would be like.
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I hate it when blacks try to distinguish their “plight” under the “gays can and do hide it” theory. Certainly, some gays can and do hide their gayness, even from themselves sometimes (i.e. — Eddie Murphy?). Some blacks can, too, and do. Some gays cannot and/or do not. It’s a meaningless distinction.
If we’re talking distinctions, let’s talk about the fact that, in current day America, more gays are beaten and otherwise brutalized (or, in the case of lesbians, raped) for the fact of being gay than blacks are for the fact of being black.
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Blanc2:
Please explain how blacks can hide their blackness whenever they want, just like gays can.
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I said “some” blacks can. History (and this blog) is replete with examples of black people “passing” as white.
The sexual urge is probably the most fundamental and powerful of drives of the human soul. For gays, hiding this urge is akin to hiding the fact of one’s very existence. Many gays cannot hide this identity even if they do want to.
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i agree abagond.
the two plights are not the same. i do think the right to marry issue is comparable, but that is as far as comparisons get.
one is about race and the other is about sexual orientation.
in my opinion, saying the two are the same, is marginalizing one fight.
each plight in america, the Irish’s fight, woman’s rights, etc, are their own specific plight and they shouldnt be treated as if they are all the same thing.
sometimes i think that is what causes some people not to support other plights because someone marginalize other peoples plights in the process.
im not saying the gay people dont have a plight, they do.
but its just not the same plight as black peoples and in the end it cant nor shouldnt be compared to other plights (other than referencing them as tools to better help your own plight, like the “non-violence approach for example).
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Abagond, I am fairly new to your blog but it has quickly become my favourite. I’ve been spending the past few days going through your new and older posts as much as I can, especially the ones related to blacks.
This post is exactly what I needed, first of all due to a conversation I had with my friend who believes her nose to be big when in fact it is medium. Our conversation and her self-perception are exactly tied to step 1 of the list, notably the sentence: “All the racist messages about blacks that American society provides come pouring into your defenceless little brain, completely unquestioned.”
I used to have the same problem, believing my nose to be “too big”, my lips “too big” all because of non-blacks telling me thus when I was a child. Dr. Tatum is absolutely right about “laying the groundwork for internalized racism”. Because I never questioned these people, I actually thought of myself as physically inferior and at one point in my life even considered plastic surgery. Recently, thanks to conversations with my friends, I’ve realized how ridiculous America’s racist message is. What I call the “nose concept” illustrates it perfectly. Despite having a medium sized nose that is not the white media’s ideal (small), I am told I have a big nose as were told my other friends. One of my friends actually pointed out that she feels that in general, as a black person, you will be automatically told your lips are “big” or your nose is “big” even if it is not the case. I feel exactly the same way.
Sadly, this just shows how powerful and white the media is. The media forces anyone who looks different into categories. For example, you’re not a size 0, so you’re automatically fat. Racism wise, the white media gets worse. For example, you’re not incredibly white looking as a black person, so you’re told you look too “black” and are wrong in a million little ways. Finally, it becomes a whole complicated mess of colorism, inferiority complexes, etc.
Going into university, I find myself however at step 4. I’d say I was stuck at step 3 for about 2 years (when my main group of friends was white) and honestly, I felt rootless all the time. The color blind racism I’d repeatedly encounter drove me nuts to the point of abandoning my old group and seeking a new group of friends. Going into step 4, I desperately need to undo all that internalized racism and really figure out who I am as a black teen. Thank you so much for you blog as it’s been a great head start for my journey.
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immersion/emersion: you put yourself into a black world as much as possible. You see your black friends in a new light. You learn everything you can about being black. You read, you take courses maybe. You learn about the history of blacks in America, in Africa, unlearning the lies.
That’s where I am….
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blanc2
i see the 2 can be compared but let us not think that gays are abused more so than blacks. the countless beatings that are happening to this day due to shear racism might surprise you. we live in a country where crimes against people seem foreign or distant but its in our very own back yard. i wish i could search for statistics. so for this point i will say this discussion is lost. as far as hiding im a little lost on that one…it is the first thing i notice in every meeting or company function i attend
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I am glad this post has been a help to some. It has been a help to me, I know, making sense of what I thought were chance events in my life.
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I’m 20 years old, I live in the deep south and I’m at Stage 4. I feel much better about who I am and have a stronger sense of self after I started learning more about my real history and not the lies and propaganda.
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this is so true, i am in college and i’m at stage four, i am so into my black culture it aint even funny. I am in african american studies course right now, i prefer to associate with other black females, but i still have white friends. this is exactly how it happened with me. the 1st time i realized i was black was when i was little and the little white girls were saying how my hair was “different,” than theirs and thats when i realized there was a stigma attached to being black, then when in HS my english teacher asked me to speak ebonics to demonstrate to the class i really became aware.
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i used to hate my natural hair and even would say “good hair,” alot, but now i’m 100% natural and i’m in love with my natural texture and i adore natural hair far more than i ever did or could relaxed hair…yep this describes me to a T
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That is the whole point of Afrocentrism=Boost Self-esteem…Glad it worked for you
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^ What a myopic thing to say, when your primary and secondary education is nothing but ego-boosting for White Americans.
I guess I’m still at the immersion stage since I’m still angry, mostly for being told so many lies growing up.
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I’ve been reading your blog for the past two days and I must say, we are very similar in our experiences. Your wisdom is on a magnitude far beyond what most people understand. I went through similar things as well. I lived in Long Beach, California all my life lived in a Black and Hispanic ghetto for my first two years of life. Now I move to a white area in long beach everything is fine till ages 12 and 13. I was first called “nigger” while with my friend at my house who is biracial (black and Filipino.) I was outside two white teenagers called me it I didn’t take it seriously at the time and wanted to fight them because of my pride in front of my friend, they laugh and leave. Now I’m thirteen years old walk my dog did nothing to anybody like the time before. A white person in a car as I was waiting for the light to Change while on a curb said “nigger” I wanted to throw him out his car this time around I was shocked, still no big deal though. I’m fourteen now turning 15 going to the 10th grade didn’t have anything to do all summer so I started getting on YouTube. I was reading comments on crime videos such as robbery and fights, they’re saying “nigger” if these people in the video happen to be black oh well I thought nothing of it. my “pre-encounter” was full blown when I seen a comment about stormfront. If I remember it correctly it said ” see how they act I advise all white people to go to a forum called stormfront”. Looked through stormfront a little and thought to myself oh well it’s disappointing people still think that way but it could be worse. Now I see comments about iq and how black people are stupid before this point I thought racism was just trolling and stuff. so I google black iq you don’t wanna know the racist shit I saw since them I never have been the same. I see all kind of racist sites beyond stormfront (I dare you to google “wtf stormfront”.) like you say now racism would still suprise me online from yahoo to half sigma almost two years later I’m 16 now and still baffled. I am very cynical about change on racism and the psychological weopons it holds.
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I would like to say that all the “black” people who used to pass as white and STILL do in this day and age aren’t completely black. Neither are what many imagine typical African American people to look like, since it’s well known that African American people can be anywhere between 15-20% white usually through accumulation overtime, 0-7% native American, also due to accumulation. Making many African American people 70-75% African and the rest non-African. These blacks weren’t black in the sense they were 70-75% African, but these folks were half, a quarter, or an eighth black, sometimes just a 16th. That’s what you called a mixed person, someone who is multiple races not due to accumulation of genes from distant great to the Nth degree grandparents, but recent mixing. At least that’s my view.
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[…] of your history. One of my favorite places to read up on Black History is Agabond. Read his “growing up black” post on Black Identity Development or about Barack Obama’s life in Indonesia. Also, a fun […]
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So, please enlighten me about this gay based slavery and Jim Crow, and how Italians, the Irish, and other non-straights became straight by harassing gays. And, please, tell me how a gay Black man does not have it worse– on average– than a gay White man. Because of the contradictory pursuit of Christianity by Black, and other diasporic groups, Americans, they can be assuredly homophobic. Black and Latino transgenders are being killed at high rates and Black men think that there is a great homosexual agenda against them. When 3 gay Black women can make a movement for Black lives, you need to realize the importance of “intersectionality”. Gay White people will be “othered” less than straight Black people because race trumps class, gender, and sexuality. When someone sees me, nobody says, oh she must be a lesbian. They assume that I am sassy, have kids, or am a whore. That is the benefit that gay White people have– they are not reduced to stereotypes, especially the ones that hurt gay Asian and Black men.
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@Ebony
So, tell me how. In America, we will never collectively identify as mixed because it does not make any sense. Mixed makes no sense biologically concerning race so even Whites can be mixed. They have DNA from several European groups. MGMs such as James Earl Jones can socially because of his eyes, but why should Gabby Union? Her beautiful features can be found in West Africa. And do you even know what facial features all people in West and Central Africa have? I have seen people who would, sadly, be viewed as Caucasians because they are not the stereotypical looking “African” from both of those regions. I do not think that the average Black woman looks like Leslie Jones, but to say that the features look mixed seems odd. If anything, it is likely due to a mixture of DNA from different groups in Africa that were taken and forced to breed with one another under the notion of race.
Likewise, these European genes could very well code for how much earwax I make or whether I have ingrown toenails or even how quickly I pump blood to my heart rather than my hair pattern or nose size. This is why both Tyra Banks and Don Cheadle can have roughly 80% African DNA and look nothing alike. It is not a matter of how much European DNA you have. It is a matter of what “European” genes are passed down (Still, Tyra has First Nation DNA and Cheadle has European DNA). And, of course, people who have more European DNA are more likely to get a higher expression of phenotypically based genes. That is simply probability.
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If we replace the word ‘black’ with ‘an ordinary Russian citizen’, the ‘white’ with ‘a Russian official’ and ‘race’ with ‘social strata’, then it would be quite a picture of the modern Russian society.
Post-slavery scars would be alike in any country, be its slavery system based on a race or otherwise.
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Whoever you are — purely brilliant. I will be reading your posts for days to come. Thank you for your insight; it’s been much needed.
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This is an interesting post will have to purchase this book.
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X was a good book that I remember reading years ago. It was a digestible read and i was surprised how it didn’t take long to read. Just like I reread If Beal Street Could Talk by James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. I might have to reread The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
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@Mary Burrell: I just finished reading it over the summer. Malcolm was the leader that average Black Americans needed. Martin Luther King was able to change things on a large, ultimately superficial, scale, but the tactics of Malcolm X and the NOI are what is necessary to bring about real, meaningful, positive change to the black community.
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