Ethnic Identity and College Students

Introduction

Ego identity formation is an ongoing method that accomplishes exceptional and centred significance throughout the time span of adolescence (Erikson, 1968). The method of assembling an entire and cohesive sense of self is a convoluted method, distinguished by the progressive advancement in the direction of an evolved and incorporated psyche. Identity, in this case, assists as a assemble, which purposes to coordinate and harmonize the dynamic facets of the self-system. Ego identity investigators have accepted the significant function of character dispositions associated to political, devout, and occupational orientations. Moreover, they have shown how these variables impinge upon and combine with identity development (Kroger, 1996). It has been contended that these individual orientations change character structure (Marcia, 1980).

While many investigators have revised the function of changing constituents of self in identity formation, it is astonishing that there is a paucity of study speaking to socio-cultural variables, for example ethnicity and its leverage on identity formation. In Identity: Youth and Crisis, Erikson (1968) proposed that an individual's identity development was established "in the course of [her] or his communal culture" (p. 22). However, he dedicated only one section to rush and ethnicity in his book. The works of Erikson and his phases of psychosocial development have been advised universal, yet the most of his work falls short to address significant socio-cultural leverages (Carter, 1995). This detail is especially hitting when we address North America's quickly altering demographic countryside, which has produced from tendencies in immigration and high birth rates amidst racial and ethnic minorities (Atkinson, Morton, & Sue, 1993; Comas-Diaz, 1992). The Basic Behavioural Science Task Force (1996) has projected that racial and ethnic minorities "will account for 47% [of the U.S. population] by the year 2050" (p. 725).

 

Definitions: Ethnic Identity and Ego Identity

Ethnic identity considers the way in which few persons deal with their own assembly as a distinct sub-group of most humanity (Phinney, 1990). Ethnic identity development is a convoluted task of incorporating the leverages of (ethnic) in-group heritage with societal insights of one's ethnic assembly (e.g., the group's communal status). Tajfel (1981) recounted ethnic identity as "that part of an individual's self-concept which draws from his information of his members of a communal assembly (or groups) simultaneously with the worth and emotional implication adhered to that membership" (p. 255). Conceptually, ethnic identity assists as a entails to realise if and to what stage a individual has discovered the significance of her or his ethnicity (e.g., heritage values) and evolved a sense of firm promise to her or his ethnic heritage.

Ethnic identity finds its origins in Marcia's (1966) developmental identity structure founded on a set of assumptions considering the composition of ego identity. Under this structure, ego identity is drawn from two very broad cognitive categories: ideological perspectives and interpersonal views. Ideological ego identity is assessed by contemplating perspectives considering belief, government, philosophical life-style and occupation, while interpersonal outlooks are founded on companionship, going out with, sex functions and recreation (Marcia, 1966).

Marcia (1966) ...