Multicultural Identity

Today, a growing number of people do not have clear racial, ethnic, or national identities. These are people who live “on the borders” between various cultural groups. While they may feel torn between different cultural traditions, they also may develop a multicultural identity – an identity that transcends one particular culture – and feel equally at home in several cultures. Sometimes, this multicultural identity develops as a result of being born or raised in a multiracial home. The United States, for example, has an estimated 2 million multiracial people – that is, people whose ancestry includes two or more races – and this number is increasing. The development of racial identity for multiracial children seems to be different from either majority or minority development. These children learn early on that they are different from other people and that they don’t fit into a neat racial category – an awareness-of-differentness stage. The second stage involves a struggle for acceptance, in which these children experiment with and explore both cultures. They may feel as if they live on the cultural fringe, struggling with two sets of cultural realities and sometimes being asked to choose one racial identity over the other. In the final stage, self-acceptance and assertion, these children find a more secure sense of self. This exposure to more than one culture’s norms and values often leads to a flexible and adaptable sense of identity – a multicultural identity.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the degree to which individuals judge other cultures as inferior to their own culture. The concept of ethnocentrism comes from two Greek words (ethos, people or nation, and ketron, center) which mean being centered on one’s cultural group (and thus judging other cultures by one’s cultural values). No one is born with ethnocentrism. It has to be taught. Everyone learns to be ethnocentric, at least to a certain degree. The concept of ethnocentrism may be divided into two parts: the belief in the superiority of one’s own group and the consequent belief that other groups are inferior. It is quite natural to feel that one’s own group is the best, whether a country or a culture. The problems arise not from feeling pride in one’s own culture but from drawing the unnecessary conclusion that other cultures are inferior. Ethnocentrism is a block to effective intercultural communication because it prevents understanding unalike others.

Ethnocentrism is not just an intellectual matter of making comparisons with another culture; emotions are involved. The symbols of one’s ethnicity, religion, or national ingroup become objects of pride, while the symbols of an outgroup (a flag, for example) become objects of contempt and hatred. Outgroup members are perceived as inferior and perhaps immoral. For example, European colonialists often perceived the native people that they conquered in Latin America, Africa, and Asia as subhuman. Extreme ethnocentrism may lead to conflict and even to warfare with an outgroup.

Many languages inherently convey a certain degree of ethnocentrism. For instance, the word for the language of the Navajo people, Dine, means “the people”. So all non-Dine are, by implication, non-people. An ethnocentric parallel exists in many other languages. For example, La Raza (Spanish for “The Race”) implies exclusivity for Latinos in the United States. The word for foreigner in most languages is negative, implying something that is undesirable. An example is the expression “a foreign object in my eye”. In Hindi, the word for foreigner is ferengi. This word is not a compliment in India. The Chinese refer to their own country as “the Middle Kingdom”, implying that it is the center of the world. Similarly, people living in the United States refer to themselves as “Americans”, forgetting that everyone who lives in North America, South America, and Central America are also Americans.

Ethnocentrism tends to be the strongest concerning outgroups that are most socially distant and most unlike the ingroup. At least some degree of ethnocentrism is almost always involved in intercultural communication and is a barrier to communication effectiveness. An individual who despises a particular outgroup because he/she perceives that outgroup ethnocentrically will not be able to exchange meaningful information with that outgroup.