Self-Esteem, Self-Concept and the Development of Black Identity: A Theoretical Overview

Abstract

In this chapter we outline some of the important theories of how children come to acquire a sense of their identity, and ideas of themselves as individuals having attributes and qualities of various kinds. We will try and link various theories of development in this field, including theories of Mead, Maslow, Erikson, Lewin and others. We try and relate the difficult ideas of self-esteem, self-concept and identity to one another, in the context of the development of black identity and self-concept. We conclude that the idea of self-esteem should be subsumed under and incorporated within the notion of global self-concept, which is equivalent to Erikson’s idea of identity. Adequate self-esteem is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of adequate identity. What is important is the way in which global identity integrates both past and present experiences, particularly in adolescence, in ways which enable the individual to maximise his potential. Obviously social structure is an important potentiator of identity, and in a racist society such as Britain (Bagley and Verma, 1979) black identity takes particular forms as young people cope, by various means, with the society in which they live.