Racial Identity

4/19/06

Racial Identy

I chose the article How Racial Identity Affects School Performance because I feel that it is important because adolescence is a time when young people struggle with the question who am I, issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation which can be very complicating, and can affect their schoolwork and their relationships with teachers, family and peers.

Today, students of color make up more than 70% of total school enrollments in twenty of the country's largest school districts. Racial Identity development affects the way in which cultural knowledge and style are defined and valued. I feel that educators with poorly developed levels of racial identity can marginalize children's cultural differences in subtle, unconsicious ways. Racial and ethnic group students with low levels of racial identity could hurt their academic success by denying their own racial heritage, and by adopting behaviors that put them in conflict with schools and schools success. I believe that educators can help students with racial identity development but, they need to understand their own levels of racial identity development in order to change their perceptions and expectations of children of color. Racial identity models should be incorporated into teacher education programs so that educators can strengthen interracial interactions with students and begin to work equitably with diverse school populations by understanding how racial identity resolutions apply to them. Racial identity development needs to become a conceptual framework under girding the creation and implementation of curricula.

...