Early Stages

• Stage one is called pre-encounter and involves seeking acceptance among Whites. This stage also includes a person turning his back on his own race. A person in this stage will often imitate the White culture's way of speaking and dressing, as well as take on the White culture's belief system, values and priorities. The person may also believe that race and racism has nothing to do with a person's ability to achieve his goals and should be irrelevant.
  
  Stage two is called encounter and usually occurs after an individual has been the victim of racism. Being the subject of prejudice causes a person to acknowledge her identity as a member of a persecuted group and leads to an awakening of ties to her own race. This stage can also lead to disillusionment as the person's previously held beliefs about society and her place in it have to be reexamined.
  
  

Turning Point

• Stage three is called immersion and is a direct response to stage two. This stage causes a person to go in the opposite direction and embrace his own culture completely, turning his back on White culture and avoiding anything perceived to be "White." This stage often involves a person expressing an intense interest in the history and culture of his own race.
  
  Stager four is called internalization and occurs once the person is secure in his own identity within his race. At this point, the person will stop feeling the need to identify only with her own race and will begin to form relationships with specific Whites who she gets along with on a personal level. The final stage is called internalization/commitment and occurs when the person is ready to experience the world beyond his own race, but remains committed to bettering circumstances for his race.
  
  

Early Stages of White Racial Identity

• According to Janet E. Helms, Ph.D., a professor at Boston College's Lynch School of Education, Whites go through six stages of racial identity. In the first stage, contact, the white person believes that race is not an issue in life and everyone is treated the same. The second stage, disintegration, occurs when the white person realizes that racism does exist and adversely impacts the lives of people of color. This realization leads to guilt and shame and if the person does not find a positive outlet to deal with these feelings, she will move to the third stage, reintegration, which is marked by a sense of racial superiority used to alleviate feelings of guilt.
  
  

Final Stages of White Racial Identity

• If a person moves through the reintegration stage in a positive manner, he moves into the next stage, pseudo-independence, which involves accepting his White racial identity and acknowledging racism exists, yet leaving social activism to non-Whites. The final two stages occur when the White person becomes aware of and concerned with racist members of his own race, known as immersion/emersion and achieves the final stage, autonomy and decides to work for equality and social justice and taking a more active anti-racism stance.