Multidimensional Model of Black Identity

Multidimensional Model of Black Identity Name Institution of Affiliation Date Multidimensional Model of Black Identity The model entails crucial meaning that people ascribe to being an African American and the perception of themselves. It is a representation of analysis of information from various approaches to identification of the race of an individual. The method regards the self-concept of an individual in relationship with the membership they have within the race. It was utilized to help the African-American community understand why they were the most mistreated racial group in America. Through the model, Black American individuals are able to understand their race better as well as what it means being black. Two approaches are used by the model; the mainstream method that focuses on the universal dimension of race and the identities of the ethnic group. The underground approaches focus on analysis of the qualitative implication of an individual basing on the historical and cultural experiences they have (Scottham, Sellers, & Nguyên, 2008). The identity of the race has been an issue for a considerate period of time and various scholars regarded African-American as an aspect of stigmatization due to the way the rest of the American society portrayed them. The model came as a result of the identity theory which posits that every individual in the society has various elements used to identify them, for example, basing on the race and gender of a person. Initially, studies showed that racism was so evident in America which involved mistreatment of the African-American. This prompted the researchers to develop models to explore why this was happening, thus coming up with the Multidimensional Model of Black Identity (Scottham, Sellers, & Nguyên, 2008). The model was designed to gauge three main aspects of identification of the race; the ideology, regard, and centrality. Later on, the fourth dimension of identity ca...