William E. Cross Jr.

Bill Cross, born in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Bill and Margaret Cross, attended McCosh Elementary School in Chicago. He graduated from Evanston Township High School (ETHS) in Evanston in 1959. Cross received a BA in psychology from University of Denver in 1963. This politically heated timeframe set the stage for, and encouraged, Black professionals to realize their roles within a traditionally White-oriented professional environment, and to begin to openly question the White-dominance in many fields. Cross's encounter, in accordance with the nigrescence model, was the death of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. The American Psychological Association holds an annual convention, and Cross plans on attending the upcoming 2014 convention, which will take place in Washington D.C. At the convention, it is Cross's goal to emphasize two key topics: (1) the mass incarceration of people of color, and (2) the lived experience of LGBT people of color. One of the major focuses of the Division 45 is highlighting the roles of women, gay and lesbians, and people with disabilities within the American Psychological Association. In a recent review, Cross commented, “I feel very fortunate to have lived the life I’ve led. I’ve been married for over 40 years, with a daughter who lives in Denver; so moving to Denver has reunited our family.” In fact, Cross and his daughter have co-authored two different works, one on self-concept and the other employing a lifespan perspective to look at racial identity development. It has been rumored that Cross and his daughter may write a new article about the role of spirituality and personality development. Cross died on December 5, 2024 in Denver, Colorado. == Writings ==

The Negro-to-Black Conversion Experience (1971) Cross relates the transition of the Black identity through a five-stage theory of acquisition of Black identification. He called this theory Nigrescence, which is translated as: “the process of becoming Black." The five stages progress as follows: • Pre-encounter • Encounter • Immersion/Emersion • Internalization • Internalization-Commitment The pre-encounter stage describes the identity before the encounter, and thus refers to the initial being or frame of reference that will alter upon facing the encounter. In this stage, one is unaware of his/her race and the social implications that come with it. According to Cross, people of color are socialized to perceive an unracialized reference frame and are thus resistant to any information that threatens this unracial perspective. In the encounter stage, individuals undergo an experience that suddenly and sharply calls race into perspective and is generally an awakening to racial consciousness. This encounter makes the individual vulnerable to a new racialized worldview. Oftentimes, this occurrence is easily recalled as the first time a child was treated differently because of the color of his/her skin. The third stage, immersion-emersion, the individual acts as though he/she has “just discovered Blackness.” This individual often becomes adamant in “proving that one is black,” while taking an apparent pride in their blackness and simultaneously disparaging White culture. One becomes more consciously involved with members of his/her own ethnic group to the exclusion of those from other groups. This stage is often marked by a full-fledged immersion into Black culture and a Black reference frame, and a subsequent emersion from the oversimplified, and often racist immersion experience that floods the early part of this stage. Eventually, the individual's highly emotional response to the encounter begins to plateau and this “psychological defensiveness” is replaced by “affective and cognitive openness,” which allows for a more critical analysis and worldview formation. The internalization stage is marked by an individual's comfort with rejoining society with a strong enough sense of his own racial/ethnic identity to be able to forge relationships with members from other racial/ethnic groups. In this stage, the individual is able to begin resolving conflicts between their worldview prior to the encounter and after the encounter. Prior to this stage, the individual is insecure about his self-identity; for instance, a Black person may have concerns with whether he/she is “Black enough,” according to his internal representation of what it is to be a good Black person. This racial/ethnic anxiety often leads to the rejection of other racial groups, accompanied by an over simplistic and stern code of Blackness, rather than a positive affirmation of pro-Black ideas and actions. The final stage of the identity transition, internalization-commitment involves reaching a balance of comfort in one's own racial/ethnic identity as well as the racial/ethnic identities of others. This stage makes the distinction between individuals who have internalized their new identity but discontinue their involvement in the movement for social change, and those that have internalized their identity and continue to be agents of social change. For a “successful” transition into this stage, the individual must become their new identity, while engaging in meaningful activities to promote social equality and political justice for their group members. Throughout one's life one may revisit different stages and repeat steps of this process and reformulate their racial identity and opinions. Repeating stages is not a regression but often a part of greater process of integrating new information and reevaluating ideas from a more mature standpoint. Shades of Black (1991) In Shades of Black, which was published in 1991 by Temple University Press, Cross debunks two major myths: (1) that self-hatred was the dominant premise in Black identity, and (2) that it is possible to describe the Black identity as if it is a singular and predictable descriptor. He included an exhaustive review and analysis of the literature that had been previously published on Negro identity between 1936 and 1967. In this review, Cross detailed two errors committed almost invariably by the authors during this time frame – they generalized conclusions about adult identity from the results of research conducted with preschool-aged children, and they employed measures that assessed social attitudes while interpreting their results as if they had assessed factors of personality like self-esteem or self-hatred. Shades of Black highlighted crucial themes involving mental health and adaptive fortitude systematically disregarded by researchers who were all too often caught up in substantiating Black pathology. As such, this book was instrumental in shifting the focus of psychology away from Black pathology models towards a more “normative and positive” black psychology through logical, rational, and empirically substantiated arguments. This book also explores the Black Power Movement and the identity transformations that accompanied this social movement. Cross demonstrated how working and middle-class Black families had historically exhibited strong mental health and adaptive personal qualities that allowed them to prevail and maintain positive self-images even in the midst of their political and social struggles. He further exhibited a wide variability of perspectives, ideologies, and self-concepts allowing for an infinite number of pathways to happiness, evidencing the impracticability of forging a singular definition of what it means to be Black or to “live the good Black life.” He even suggested that for some Black individuals, their racial/cultural identity is unimportant to their daily existence, despite the significant role it plays in many lives. The latter part of Shades of Black revises Cross's original Negro-to-Black Conversion Model described in his 1971 publication, as he came across multiple weaknesses of the model in forging the perspective detailed in this book. "Relying too much on theory or research can result in an incomplete picture of a phenomenon if theory and research are not used reciprocally to peel away layers." ==Validating the Cross Racial Identity Scale (2002)==

Cross, Vandiver, Worrell, and Fhagen-Smith confirmed the validity of the Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS, which was first detailed in a 2000 publication), via two studies using African American college students. In the first study, the researchers performed a preliminary analysis of the structural validity of the CRIS using exploratory factor analysis. The second study examined the 6 CRIS subscales and the Nigrescence model. Results of these studies demonstrated high reliability of the CRIS in addition to high structural validity. There was a high correlation between the IMCI and PA (subscale intercorrelations), which may indicate that it in such a racially charged environment like the United States, isolating a Black RGO from African Americans may be impractical. The CRIS subscale scores appear to be correlated with self-esteem, rather than social desirability or personality traits. ==Nigrescence and ego identity development: Accounting for differential Black identity patterns (1996) ==

This study expanded Cross's Black identity development model to a lifespan perspective. In essence, the study examined the Nigrescence model in cohort with Erik Erikson's (1968) adolescent development model and determined that a distinction was necessary between the two because there was some overlap in the populations that the models described. Cross and Fhagen-Smith determined that the importance factor in this distinction was the centrality of the individual; individuals who made their race/ethnicity central to their identity or sense of self may be better described by the Nigrescence model, whereas those with “nonethnic” frameworks may be better described by Erikson's adolescent development model. The work established in this paper emphasized the relationship between Nigrescence and self-concept or identity development and related that Nigrescence may begin for an individual as early as adolescence, or after the development of one's foundational adult identity. ==Awards and recognition==

William E. Cross Jr. received the 2009 Annual Social Justice Action Award, awarded by the Teachers College, Columbia University. Georgia Southern University established the Dr. William Cross Jr. Distinguished Lecture Series as part of GSU-linked annual conference on Cross-Cultural Issues in Counseling and Education. He was the 2014 President of American Psychological Association's Division 45 (Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues). He is also a CUNY Professor Emeritus, and a Morgridge College of Education Change Agent. ==Bibliography==