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Abstract The main purpose of the paper was to reflect the changes in the racial identity development during the course of history. The assignment was aimed to achieve several tasks: to analyze the impressions and responses to the interview; to trace back the causes of the negative reactions on some questions; to reflect the story of the Racial Identity Development, as well as elaborate the ways of racism confrontation within and outside oneself. The analysis was based on the processing of different print, and internet sources, the core part of which was made by the books of Adams Blumenfeld “Readings for Diversity and Social Justice” and Michelle Alexander “The New Jim Crow”. During the research, we faced with the main challenge as it was necessary to abstract yourself from all the stereotypes and prejudice, in order to find the causes of the personal concerns and adequately assess oneself on the scale of the Racial Identity Development. Key words: oppression, racism, Racial Identity Development, identity distortion, stereotype, prejudice.
The Introspection of Racial Identity Development
According to Adams Blumenfeld (2010), individual identity is the product of many factors, such as individual psychology, physical state, gender, age, sexual orientation, social class, ethnicity and religion. Each of the mentioned factors can declare itself in different forms of oppression: ableism, ageism, classism, sexism, religious oppression, racism. In the modern society that we call civilized, racism appears to be one of the most urgent topics. Nowadays, the conception that racial discrimination brought the oppressed people down to a lower position in many spheres of social life is widespread. Even though, the positive changes have been done, this situation remains the same: the discriminated suffer from social isolation, poverty and are
References: Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow. Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Blumenfeld, A. (2010). Readings for diversity and social justice: An anthology on racism, antisemitism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and classism. (2nd ed.) in M. Adams (ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Burgess, Heidi., Burgess, G., & Burgesss, H. (Eds.). (2003). Stereotypes / characterization frames. Beyond intractability. Retrieved from http://www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/stereotypes. Rabow, J. (n.d.). Models of racial identity. Retrieved from http://www.diversitycelebration.com/models-of-racial-identity/.