Identity Construction in the Midst of Stereotypes
The Black Box: Splitting Goodness from Black
Human development involves the intricate process of identity construction. It is impossible to fully disentangle what makes someone uniquely themself and the culmination of experiences and relationships that brought them to their present personality. These experiences occur, of course, within many contexts, be they family situations, prejudices, or location. One is constantly being guided or led astray by these nurturing or subversive forces, which have a particularly powerful impact in childhood (Perry, 2017).
For Black Boys emerging in American culture, attention must be given to a particularly constraining and marginalizing box. Niobe Way (2018) identifies it as the “Black Box”. Briefly, the “Black Box” is an imposed cultural constraint on the development and humanity of Black boys, which employs destructive stereotypes to “split Blackness from goodness [and] embed homophobia into the Black male identity” (Way, 2018, p. 130). The Black Box distances and disconnects Black boys from their internal thoughts and feelings as well as from people outside of their communities (Way, 2018). It creates a group identity founded on alienation from oneself. A Black boy cannot be more than an athlete. He cannot and should not express emotions, unless he wants to sacrifice his masculinity. Of course, they can become rappers and gangsters but scholars and scientists are out of the question. Evidently, the Black box is constraining and forces Black boys into a confrontation with how they come to create their identities on the line. The way Black boys negotiate life and American culture, which perpetuates the “Black Box”, reveals the conversations that occur between Black people and society (Way, 2018, p. 129). Specifically, how Black boys accommodate or assimilate prejudices and stereotypes when creating their identities can proceed down three pathways: “accommodators, exceptions, or resisters”; it is worth noting that the number of pathways (three) is not necessarily rigid (Way, 2018, p. 130). In order to proceed down one of these pathways, a Black boy must “converse” with himself and the world around him. Accommodators result in the incorporation of Black Box ideas into existing schemas of self-identity (Way, 2018, p. 130). Exceptions modify schemas of the self to reject applications of Black Box characterizations to the self, but not for other Black boys (Way, 2018, p. 130). The schemas of resistors remain resilient and conscious of the fallacious nature of the Black Box, rejecting any validity of its application to Black populations (Way, 2018, p. 130).
References
Cope, S. (2019). Deep human connection: Why we need it more than anything else. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2017). The boy who was raised as a dog: And other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: What traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing. New York: Basic Books.
Way, N., Gilligan, C., & Noguera, P. (Eds.). (2018). The Crisis of Connection: Roots, Consequences, and Solutions. New York University Press.