Minority Status, Ethnic Culture, and Distress: A Comparison of Blacks, Whites, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans

We examine the psychological well-being of blacks, whites, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans. There are two perspectives on the differences in distress among these groups: the minority-status perspective and the ethnic-culture perspective. Within the context of the minority status perspective, two hypotheses are tested: (1) Minority status per se is distressing. (2) Minority status is distressing only because it is associated with low social class. Within the ethnic-culture perspective, a number of additional hypotheses are tested: (3) Mexican heritage is associated with lower distress (4) because the impact of social stressors is not as great among persons of Mexican heritage as among others. However, (5) Mexicans living in the United States but not raised here suffer distress due to cultural alienation. Within the minority-status perspective, hypothesis 1 is rejected. Hypothesis 2 is supported with the qualification that, although both the black and Mexican minorities are distressed by low income, only blacks are distressed by low education. This finding indicates the usefulness of the ethnic-culture perspective. Since Mexicans have lower distress than others, hypothesis 3 is supported. Hypothesis 4 is accepted because Mexicans are not distressed by low education or by divorce and separation. Hypothesis 5 is rejected. The results suggest that future research should concentrate on the effects of specific cultural arrangements rather than on general minority-status effects.