Racial Identity Development Models for Supervision

Model	Stage	In session	Supervision prompt
Cross, nigrescence	Pre-Encounter, Assimilation	The client mentioned being the only Black person at work. The formulation Andre wrote has no race word in it.	Where did race leave the formulation, and who decided it could leave?
Cross, nigrescence	Pre-Encounter, Anti-Black	Andre explains a missed session with a stereotype about “that community” and cannot quote the client.	Which sentence did the client say, and which sentence did you add?
Cross, nigrescence	Encounter	Something this week made last month’s story about race unusable. Andre wants a new label before the client has words.	What happened, and what belief did it put in question? Do not assign a new name in this hour.
Cross, nigrescence	Immersion-Emersion, Intense Black Involvement	The hour became a culture lesson. The panic goal the client named at intake is gone from the note.	What did the client ask for, and what did you substitute?
Cross, nigrescence	Immersion-Emersion, Anti-White	The client is angry at a White clinician at the school. Andre either joins the anger or tells the client to calm down.	Is the anger about this institution this week, or a stance you need the client to hold?
Cross, nigrescence	Internalization, Black Nationalist	Andre drafts a letter to the school before the client has asked for a letter.	Who asked for the action, the client or you?
Cross, nigrescence	Internalization, Multiculturalist	Andre recruits the client into a coalition frame the client did not request.	Did the client ask to join a coalition, or did you need them to?
Helms, White identity	Contact status	A group member said she does not see color after another member asked why the rules were only in English. Andre moved to the agenda.	What did you not ask because you had already decided race was irrelevant?
Helms, White identity	Disintegration status	Andre is anxious and wants you to say he is not racist before you look at the session.	What reassurance are you asking for, and what will you do if you do not get it?
Helms, White identity	Reintegration status	The formulation puts the problem on the client of color and treats the White group’s reaction as the reasonable one.	Which part of that sentence describes the client, and which part blames a group?
Helms, White identity	Pseudoindependence status	Andre brings three articles and no changed question for next session.	What will be different in the next session, not in the next article you read?
Helms, White identity	Immersion/emersion status	Andre wants the whole hour for his own guilt. The client’s goal never comes up.	Ten minutes on what you noticed in yourself. Then the client’s goal. What is the goal?
Helms, White identity	Autonomy status	Andre can hear the correction and still name what the client asked for.	What did you change after the correction, and where will you write it?
Atkinson, Morten, and Sue	Conformity	The client says they prefer a clinician from the dominant group. Andre treats the preference as a compliment.	What did you do with that preference, besides enjoy it?
Atkinson, Morten, and Sue	Dissonance and appreciating	The client contradicts last week’s story about their own group. Andre rushes to close the contradiction.	What conflict is the client holding, and why did you try to end it today?
Atkinson, Morten, and Sue	Resistance and immersion	The client rejects a suggestion because it came from a clinic rule. Andre defends the rule.	Whose rule are you defending, and did the client ask you to?
Atkinson, Morten, and Sue	Introspection	The client is uneasy with their own group’s hard line. Andre hears the unease as backsliding.	What is the client questioning, and what did you hear as a failure?
Atkinson, Morten, and Sue	Integrative awareness	The client can name what they want from the clinic and what they will not take. Andre still wants a cleaner ending.	What did the client already select, and what ending are you adding?

You use racial identity development models when the hour is stuck on which name fits the language you heard. The stage names in that table come from the authors named in the first column. The session picture and the supervision prompt are a practice aid you edit. They are not extra lines in Cross, Helms, or Atkinson, Morten, and Sue. If the miss is a competency domain rather than a stage name, use the multicultural and social justice counseling competencies. The binder around the note, including where the file lives, is clinical supervision documentation.

These names describe identity language an author proposed. They are not a diagnosis, a risk score, or a line for the progress note. The supervision record is where the prompt and the next step go.

Pick one row before the hour ends

It’s Thursday, 4:12. Andre is still talking about Tuesday’s group, and your supervision hour started three minutes ago. You do not need all 18 rows. You need the row the hour actually stressed.

Start with who the language belongs to. If the sentence you cannot stop hearing is Andre’s, stay with his row. If the sentence is the client’s, you can still use a row as a question. You do not hand either person a stage name to carry out of the room.

Then ask the prompt in that cell. Write one line before Andre leaves. If your practice already uses a clinical supervision notes template, put the line there. Treatment decisions, safety steps, and the goal the client named stay in the client chart.

You are not scoring a person. You are leaving a trail the next supervisor can follow: which name you worked, what you asked, and what happens next.

Nigrescence clusters from Cross

The racial identity development model most supervisors mean when the client is Black, and the question is nigrescence, is the one William E. Cross, Jr. revised and that Vandiver, Fhagen-Smith, Cokley, Cross, and Worrell describe in the July 2001 paper in the Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, volume 29.

The paper says six of the seven identity clusters described by Cross (1991) were used for item development: two Pre-Encounter clusters, Assimilation and Anti-Black; two Immersion-Emersion clusters, Intense Black Involvement and Anti-White; and two Internalization clusters, Black Nationalist and Multiculturalist. Stage 2, Encounter, and the emersion phase of the Immersion-Emersion stage were not measured, because neither an encounter nor emersion from the emotional upheaval of immersion is assumed to represent specific identity clusters. The Encounter stage, in that paper’s account of Cross (1991), describes unique individualistic racial experiences or events that may precipitate a possible reevaluation of the person’s Black identity.

Pre-Encounter, in the same paper, has varying degrees of race salience. Assimilation is a preference for an American worldview. One item example in the paper is “I prefer to socialize with European Americans.” Anti-Black, in the paper, incorporates two themes of rejecting a Black identity: miseducation and self-hatred. You do not read those item examples to the client. You notice when Andre’s formulation uses a stereotype the client did not say.

Intense Black Involvement, in the paper, describes the immersion into Black culture and the romanticizing of everything Black. Anti-White is its own Immersion-Emersion cluster in that paper, not a required twin of the first. If Andre spends the hour on a culture lesson and drops the panic goal, the prompt is about the substitution, not about whether he has arrived at a cluster.

Internalization, in the original model the paper describes, had two stages: Internalization and Internalization-Commitment. The paper says that because few attitudinal differences exist between the psychology of Blacks in the Internalization and Internalization-Commitment stages, these two stages are combined. For the Black Nationalist, the paper describes social activism in terms of uplifting the Black community. For the Multiculturalist, activism is depicted in terms of creating coalitions among diverse cultural groups. The same paper says acceptance of Blackness does not guarantee a positive change in a Black person’s level of psychological functioning, and does not insulate Blacks from depression. Do not treat a cluster name as a mental-health outcome.

White racial identity development model

The white racial identity development model you can actually check, line by line, is Janet Helms’s. The White racial identity development chapter says Helms (1984, 1990, 1994, 1995) created the model, and that a healthy White identity in her account requires two phases: abandonment of racism, and defining a nonracist White identity. Six ego statuses sit in those phases: contact, disintegration, reintegration, pseudoindependence, immersion/emersion, and autonomy. The chapter says Helms (1990) first used the word stages for those six, then abandoned it. Call them statuses when you are talking about her model. The cell includes the word status so you do not quietly rename her.

The same chapter describes contact status as oblivious to racism, with little understanding of prejudice, and as a place where a person may profess to be color-blind. It gives “People are people,” “I don’t notice a person’s race at all,” and “You don’t act Black” as examples of what a person in this status might say. Andre’s group member said she does not see color. That sentence is close to the chapter’s examples. It is not a score. It is the sentence you ask him to stay with.

Disintegration, in the chapter, is the breakdown of that obliviousness: conflict over racial moral dilemmas, and feelings that can include guilt, depression, helplessness, or anxiety. The chapter says attempts at resolution, according to Helms (1994), may involve avoiding contact with persons of color, not thinking about race, or seeking reassurance that racism is not the fault of Whites. If Andre wants the reassurance before he will look at the session, that is the row. You do not give him the reassurance in place of the look.

Reintegration, in the chapter, is a regression toward beliefs of White superiority and minority inferiority, idealizing the White group, and blaming racial and ethnic minorities for their own problems. If the formulation does that, separate the client’s words from the blame before you let the note stand.

Pseudoindependence is the start of the second phase in the chapter: an intellectual commitment that can still perpetuate racism by helping minorities adjust to White standards. Three articles and no changed question is that row. Immersion/emersion, in the chapter’s account of Helms (1994), shifts the focus from trying to change people of color to changing the self and other Whites, and includes a search for the personal meaning of racism and the ways one benefits from White privilege. If that search eats the hour, cap it. Autonomy, in the chapter, includes reduced guilt, acceptance of one’s role in perpetuating racism, and the capacity to explore racism and responsibility without defensiveness. That is not a graduation. It is a row you can still ask about next month.

The chapter’s table of those six statuses is sourced to Helms, 1995, page 185. Use the status names from that table. Do not import a different author’s five-step White sequence and call it Helms.

Minority identity development model

The minority identity development model in the table is the five-stage list Atkinson, Morten, and Sue are credited with on a course handout. The handout titles the same list as a racial/cultural identity development model and as stages of a minority development model. It attributes the list to Atkinson, Morten, and Sue, 1998, as cited in Sue, 2006. The five names on the handout are conformity, dissonance and appreciating, resistance and immersion, introspection, and integrative awareness.

The handout’s attitude table, not a session manual, is what you can check. Conformity, on that table, includes a self that is depreciating or neutral because race salience is low, and a group-appreciating stance toward the dominant group. Dissonance and appreciating is conflict between depreciating and appreciating stances. Resistance and immersion, on the table, is self-appreciating, with a group-depreciating stance toward the dominant group. Introspection is concern with the basis of that appreciation, including an ethnocentric basis for judging others. Integrative awareness, on the table, is self-appreciating, group-appreciating toward one’s own group and toward other minority groups, and selective appreciation toward the dominant group.

That is as far as the handout goes. The prompts in the table are yours. If a later edition of Sue renames a stage, follow the edition you can open, and change the cell. Do not supervise from a mnemonic you cannot match to a page.

Where you write the line

One row. One prompt. One line in the supervision record. If the next question is whether Andre may contact the school, that question is about consent and your setting’s practice, not about which cluster sounds closest. You look that up in the place your practice already keeps it. You do not invent a national rule in the supervision note.

The line names the model, the stage or status, the question you asked, and the next step. It does not name a diagnosis. It does not go in the progress note by default. If a board, a payer, or a training program later asks what you did with race in supervision, the supervision file is the place that answers. The client chart answers what you and the client did about the goal.

When the hour needs a different tool

Some hours are not a stage row. If you and Andre are arguing about a stance, humility on one side and a competence checklist on the other, use the comparison of cultural humility and cultural competence. If the miss is a domain you can map to a question and a note line, stay with the competencies checklist you already opened. A stage name does not replace that line, and that line does not replace the stage question when the argument really is about which model fits the language.

You can hold both. You cannot do both well in the last six minutes. Pick the one the hour stressed. Write it down. Leave the other for next week if it is still alive.

Download the supervision notes template

Put the line on a form the next supervisor can open. The clinical supervision notes template is the meeting record: anonymized case anchor, the question you asked, the guidance, and the follow-up. Download it, then file it with the rest of the supervision binder rather than in the client chart.

If you want that meeting record structured for your review instead of typed from a blank page, the note features show where a draft sits until you sign it. Emosapien can draft it from the supervision context you already captured. You still own the question and the next step. The software does not assign a stage, and it does not decide which model fits the language you heard.

References

• Atkinson, D. R., Morten, G., & Sue, D. W. (1998). Counseling American minorities. McGraw-Hill.
• Course handout. (n.d.). Racial/cultural identity development model. Contemporary Social Work Issues & Practice, Session 1.
• Helms, J. E. (1994). How multiculturalism obscures racial factors in the therapy process. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 41(2), 162-165.
• Helms, J. E. (1995). An update of Helms’s White and people of color racial identity models. In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 181-191). Sage.
• Sue, D. W. (2006). Multicultural social work practice. Wiley.
• Sue, D. W., Rasheed, M. N., & Rasheed, J. M. (2016). White racial identity development. In Multicultural social work practice: A competency-based approach to diversity and social justice (pp. 179-206). Wiley.
• Vandiver, B. J., Fhagen-Smith, P. E., Cokley, K. O., Cross, W. E., Jr., & Worrell, F. C. (2001). Cross’s nigrescence model: From theory to scale to theory. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 29(3), 174-200.