As a non “white” or non “black” Christian looking in as the church attempts to makes sense of whiteness, I have many concerns. When Christian’s resort to using terms like whiteness or blackness to explain the myriad of sinfulness expressions of partiality and with the current conversation more focused on the social construct of whiteness, very little attention is given to the social construct of blackness.
Psychological theories on Black racial identity began about 48 years ago with the premise that Americans with darker skin needed to find their own cultural identity. William E. Cross’s 1971 Nigrescence Black Racial Identity theory proposed to define black identity by explaining the stages that a person of color goes through as they seek to “become more authentic in their identity”. Cross initially entitled his theory the Negro to Black Conversion Experience: Toward a Psychology of Black Liberation. In essence, Cross sought to offer a “process of becoming “Black“, with a capital B.
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