Ethnic Adaptation and Minority Status

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.