Racial and cultural identity development models: Cross, Helms, Sue and Sue
Last reviewed September 2026 by Dr. Andrew Wichterman · Aligned to the current NCE blueprint. Valid for exams through June 30, 2027.
AI-narrated overview made with Google NotebookLM. The written lesson below is by Dr. Andrew Wichterman.
Identity development models describe how people come to understand their racial or cultural group membership over time. The exam asks you to name the model, order the stages, and match a client description to a stage.
Try to answer each from memory first, even if you have to guess. Guessing before reading makes the answer stick; reveal only after you have tried.
Cross: Nigrescence
William Cross's model of Black racial identity, first published in 1971 and revised since, has five stages. Pre-encounter: race is not salient, or the dominant culture is idealized. Encounter: an event, often a racist one, makes race impossible to ignore. Immersion-emersion: intense involvement in Black culture and often anger toward White culture, followed by emergence from the intensity. Internalization: a secure Black identity with less defensiveness. Internalization-commitment: sustained action on behalf of the group.
Helms: White racial identity
Janet Helms described six statuses in the development of a nonracist White identity. Contact: obliviousness to race and to one's own racial identity. Disintegration: awareness of racism produces conflict and guilt. Reintegration: resolving the discomfort by idealizing Whiteness and blaming others. Pseudo-independence: intellectual acceptance of other groups without emotional depth. Immersion-emersion: active search for what it means to be White without racism. Autonomy: internalized, flexible nonracist identity.
Helms called them statuses rather than stages to emphasize that people can hold more than one and can move backward.
Sue and Sue: R/CID
The Racial/Cultural Identity Development model, adapted from the Atkinson, Morten and Sue Minority Identity Development model, applies to any person of color. Conformity: preference for the dominant culture and depreciation of one's own. Dissonance: conflict between conformity and new information. Resistance and immersion: rejection of the dominant culture and endorsement of one's own. Introspection: questioning the rigidity of the previous stage. Integrative awareness: security in one's identity and appreciation of others.
Note the parallel structure across Cross and R/CID: an oblivious or conforming start, a triggering event, an immersion phase, then integration.
Other models the exam names
Phinney's ethnic identity model has three stages usable across groups: unexamined ethnic identity, ethnic identity search, achieved ethnic identity. Poston's biracial identity model runs personal identity, choice of group categorization, enmeshment and denial, appreciation, integration. Cass's sexual identity formation model: confusion, comparison, tolerance, acceptance, pride, synthesis. Downing and Roush's feminist identity model: passive acceptance, revelation, embeddedness-emanation, synthesis, active commitment.
Using the models in counseling
Identity stage predicts how a client relates to a counselor of the same or a different race. A client in resistance and immersion may prefer a same-race counselor and distrust a White one; a client in conformity may prefer a White counselor and devalue a same-race one. The exam tests this: the counselor's task is to recognize the stage, not to argue the client out of it, and to consider whether a referral or a frank conversation about race serves the client.
Without scrolling up, write everything you remember from this lesson. Then check yourself against the key terms. Recalling the whole lesson once, right after reading it, does more than reading it twice.
Ten questions from this domain, with an explanation after each answer.
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