Ethnic Adaptation and Minority Status

Abstract

Ethnic identity involves past cultural traditions, present sociological factors including economic conditions and social and political realities, and a psychocultural dimension related to family and peer-group socialization patterns and their interaction. Considerations are given to how social degradation is related to family cohesion and peer-group functions and how these are in turn dependent on past cultural traditions. Referring briefly to research findings in Japan as evidence, it is indicated how a study of cognitive style patterns and learning or nonlearning within the classroom must include psychocultural determinants related to social or ethnic identity and the awareness of a disparaged minority status. Identity formation for the given individual depends on how and what basic mental mechanisms are involved in the development of personality. Mechanisms of denial and repression are involved in the selective permeability to social experience that maintains an ethnic identity. The formation of an ethnic identity takes place not only in a family but in mutual socialization among peers. The peer group may be involved in compensatory socialization in some ethnic minorities that have been most vulnerable to social degradation.

Immigrant students’ shifting identifications in South African schools

“…Phenotypic racial features have considerable implications for the ease of assimilation. In this era of globalisation immigrants ability to 'pass' or be fully assimilated unnoticed is no longer possible for most new arrivals and this can lead to undue stress (Berry, 1997;De Vos, 1980;Suarez-Orozco, 2000).…”

“…Within the context of social worlds, identities of immigrant students manifest themselves in numerous and multiple forms namely, Achieved or an Ascribed [imposed] identities (SuarezOrozco, 2004;Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco, 2001;SuarezOrozco, 2000;Helms, 1990;De Vos, 1980); Performing Identities (Maestes, 2000;Waters, 1990); Global Identity (Arnett, 2002); Dominating identities (Murrell, 1999); Ethnic Identities (Phinney & Ong, 2007) and Hyphenating and perforating identities (Sirin and Fine, 2008).…”

A Review of Minority Stress Related to Employees’ Demographics and the Development of an Intersectional Framework for Their Coping Strategies in the Workplace

“…As an attempt to correct a stigma indirectly, cultural elements estimated to be crucial for the ethnic (or also racial) majority can be adopted. To a certain extent one can adapt clothing, hair style, personal taste, habitus, languages, and argot in order to not be perceived, or at any rate less perceived, as a member of a stigmatized minority ethnic group (DeVos 1980;Nagel 1994). These processes are often similar to acculturation processes, which can also be utilized to adapt the cultural elements of a certain nationality (Ward, Fox, Wilson, Stuart, & Kus 2010).…”

Equity policy, educational practice, and limited english proficient (LEP) students in two high schools in Miami

“…While sociologists, with some exceptions (Oakes 1986), are mostly concerned with issues related to social class (Bowles and Gintis 1976), anthropologists have focused more on the effects of cultural issues on the academic orientation and achievement of ethnic and racial minorities (DeVos 1980;Gibson 1997;Ogbu 1974). Both strive to explain why differential achievement by class and ethnicity has persisted in public education.…”