Racial and ethnic identities change over time and individuals are not stuck with the change. Depending not only on the situation they are in, but also who they are associating with, they can temporarily change their ethnic identity in order to fit in. An example of this phenomena is what is called code-switching. Code-switching is a temporary change on our ethnic identity as a way for us to adapt and relate to the dominant culture (Waring). However, even though we can code-switch, our ethnic identity usually tends to change over a period of time and can be influenced by events or experiences we have had that can trigger this change. Race and ethnicity are both a physical and behavioral construct that have a psychological and social self-concept and that is why an individual can code switch.
In Ocampo et al. (1993) “Gender, Race, and Ethnicity: The Sequencing of Social Constancies” they argue that “ethnic membership is determined by cultural as well as genetic transmission”, and that is one of the reasons why it can be very confusing for many individuals, especially children, to identify to which ethnic group they belong. It is also the reason why the line can be muddled when trying to figure out whether or not ethnicity is more of a cultural construct as opposed to only being a racial concept. In various cultures, ethnicity can be straight forward, and easy to identify, however, in communities where there are many mixed-race individuals, it becomes much more complicated as not everyone looks the same, so physically identifying members of your ethnic group becomes more difficult.
As an example, let us discuss the case of a 15-year-old immigrant that moved to the United States from Colombia in 1996. By the age of 15, her ethnic identity had been established. She fully identified as a Latina or Hispanic and took great pride in being Colombian. However, now that she has lived in the U.S. longer than she has lived in Colombia, she now considers herself as having a mixed ethnic background. Due to the exposure not only to white Americans’ culture (the dominant culture) but also to African Americans (she has been married to an African American for 20 years), she now considers herself an Afro-Colombian. A lot of the reasons why she identifies this way have to do with the exposure she had to the African American culture and the somewhat unbiased education she has received in the United States as opposed to the whitewashed history and culture being thought in the Latin American country she grew up in. Additionally, she has found that because she is an Afro Colombian married to an African American, she has, in many occasions, found herself code-switching. She mentions that when she is around her husband’s African American family and friends, she tends to pick up and adopt more of the customs, language and slang associated with the African American culture. However, when she is around her Hispanic family and Latinx friends, she reverts to speaking Spanish and tries to fit in with their way of speaking and customs.
Since ethnicity is both a physical and behavioral construct, it is also a psychological and social concept. For that reason, even in multiracial families, developing a positive racial or ethnic identity is very important because multiracial families face many challenges when it comes to making sure that their children are aware of their racial and ethnic backgrounds. It is important to note that the age of the child can greatly influence his or her sense of ethnic identity. Another factor that influences ethnic identity in a multiracial family is the involvement of the parents in making sure the child has contact with individuals from their racial and ethnic backgrounds, especially if there are no individuals of their same ethnicity within the family nucleus. The more a child is shielded away from its physiological ethnic background, the longer it will take the child to develop an understanding of its ethnic identity. These are some of the factors that can greatly influence code-switching.
However, one must keep in mind that there are multiple factors that will also influence whether or not a child is even interested in developing an ethnic identity that matches closely with their family’s. In the case previously mentioned, during some of what can be considered as her formative years, a 15 year old was taken from the culture in which she grew up (in Colombia) to one where she needed to adapt in order to fit in (the U.S). For some time after moving to the United States, she did not want to embrace her Hispanic heritage as much as she wanted to embrace being an American. She closed herself off to Spanish speaking people in order to immerse herself in every day American culture (so that she could pick up the language much faster and in order to fit in). She not only had to grapple with the dissonance between what she grew up knowing, but with what she needed to become in order to fit in. Additionally, having gotten married very young (at 18 years old) allowed for her husband’s culture to shape a lot of the beliefs she has now. At 38 years old, she is very comfortable saying that she is at the final stage of her identity formation and she has reconciled it and established her ethnic identity as Afro-Colombian.
Identity formation is different for ethnic minorities than for white individuals. In “Understanding Ethnic Diversity: The Role of Ethnic Identity Directions” Phinney describes the “dissonance that is experienced in realizing the differences between the White and minority experience”. This statement tries to incorporate and explain the difference between what has been taught to White individuals as children (which in some cases varies tremendously from being taught to “not see color” to being taught that minorities are composed of mainly “bad or inferior people”) and what they themselves experience once they live out in the real world.
Additionally, Phinney evaluates a model for ethnic identity development, where she claims that the “development of ethnic identity is clearly influenced by many experiences, at the family, community and social level”. She points out that minority group members go through three distinct stages when figuring out with which ethnic group they identify. Phinney’s claims significantly help understand race and racial relations because it helps individuals studying ethnic identity understand how securing an ethnic identity is a process that does not happen suddenly, but rather, is a process that happens overtime and at various stages of an individual’s life span and it has ramifications that can lead to code-switching.
Phinney’s argument is that on the first stage of ethnic identity development (“diffusion or foreclosure; preencounter”), individuals (mainly children) are inducted into their respective ethnic groups by their families, community and environment. At this early stage, they do not find ethnic identity a subject of importance, but their identification within their ethnic group will be either positive or negative, depending on the environment they were raised in. At the second stage (“immersion/emersion; resistance”), typically during adolescence and early adulthood, individuals start becoming interested in the concept of ethnicity and are more aware of how their background affects the way the world perceives them and groups them. In the third stage (“internalization”), young adults start to solidify their ethnic identity and are either open or completely closed off to the idea of integrating with other ethnic groups. Their willingness to either integrate or segregate from other ethnic groups will depend on the experiences (either positive or negative) that they have had with them.
On the other side of the spectrum, one of the important concepts that Phinney covered when discussing White identity development is dissonance. By definition dissonance means conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. It is the tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements. It means that the difference between what has been taught to white individuals as children as opposed to what they experienced for themselves as adolescents or adults, can make them uncomfortable enough to lead them to “blame minorities as the source of their discomfort”. As an example, stereotypically speaking, some White children are told that black males are dangerous thugs, however, when these same adolescents/adults meet intelligent, well-educated black males, this can cause their ingrained belief system to crash and thus cause them discomfort which is why many minorities use code-switching in order to help white individuals ease back into their comfort zone.
Another concept introduced by Phinney is that “the stages of White identity development are framed within the context of Black-White relations” and serve as a guide to their interaction with other minorities because they have not been fully explored. If we take into consideration anecdotal circumstances, it is possible to have noticed that for the most part White individuals will have very defined roles for others based on their ethnicity and race. For example, Asians are seen in a more positive light than African Americans and can even be considered more intelligent than other minority groups. Phinney states that “the dissonance that is experienced in realizing the differences between the White and minority experience leads to discomfort, guilt, and denial. Whites at this point may feel fear and anger toward people of color, who are blamed as the source of their discomfort, and may distance themselves from minorities” (Phinney).
Considering how race relations are currently going in the U.S. and the racial tension that has been building up in the past few years that have now become more palpable, it is important to understand how to get past this discomfort stage. White individuals need to empathize and perhaps become an ally to minorities that are fighting for equality and fair treatment. It is no secret that the personal experiences, the community they live in, and the associations they are part of have a great influence on their ethnic identity, and if white individuals continue to willingly segregate themselves from minorities, it will get harder and harder for them to understand and see the struggle of those minorities as their own.
Phinney wanted to provide us with a roadmap that would help us understand how individuals develop their ethnic identity, and how, we should be patient, as ethnic identity is not something that is developed overnight, but rather, over a long period of time and can be influenced by many psychological and environmental factors. Systemic and institutional racism is one of the results of identity formation and identification within the context of American culture. However, in instances where minority’s individuals feel like they are outsiders, especially in schools where there is a homogenous look to a neighborhood or town, these minority individuals are more prone to code-switching.
For example, in many places where African Americans are a very small minority, it is very easy for their children to feel like they are outsiders because they can only see the skin deep differences of their race when compared to the dominant group of that area. In some places, African American students can be part of a small group of 10 or 20 in a school of 600 or 800 students and even if they feel that they are part of their peers’ group, they can still subconsciously feel that they are different from them. In their younger years when ethnic identity is not really formed, it is easier for them to fit in, but as they get older and more aware of their physical differences, they start to become more aware of their status as nonwhite.
For white individuals, it can be uncomfortable when they are uncertain who they are dealing with, and they can fall into the trap of stereotyping in order to make a connection that is familiar to them. The individual making the observation is able to associate that unfamiliar person with concepts and ideas about that particular race that they have become familiar with (be it from the media’s portrayal of that particular race, second hand accounts from family and friends about that race, and even from their own interactions with a select sample group of that race). The familiarity provides them with comfort and comfort is a tolerable state of being. When an individual is not associated with a race that the observer thought that individual should identify with, it becomes unfamiliar and it is hard to reconcile so they start looking for associations that make sense, and when none can be found, it puts them in an uneasy, uncomfortable state, which usually results in their rejection of this new order. Many individuals that get to this state sometimes prefer to shut down any kind of meaningful contact and interactions with that particular race than work through their discomfort.
Diversity challenges inclusiveness by bringing race to the forefront as it provides the minority group with an opportunity to become part of the “mainstream”. One thing that should be kept in mind is that minorities can be outsiders in so many situations, that it is important for them to hold their ground and fight for equality and acceptance into the spaces they are seeking so that they can assert that they are meant to be in that space no matter how much it might seem like they are not supposed to be. Code-switching is a tool that can be used to gain initial needed acceptance to claim their space. Omi and Winant argue that people use race to determine who a person is before we get to know them, and that is why even if we make the dominant group uncomfortable and uncertain, the process of getting them to accept people that do not look like them will advance minorities’ plight by encouraging the dominant group to see people beyond stereotypes and preconceived ideas of what people of a certain race should be like.
In “Race: The Power of an Illusion” conflicting notions of what we think race is are explored. Its information challenges what we thought of as being biological and it makes us reconsider the many preconceived notions that we have about race that we have lived with our entire life. In this documentary and in Omi and Winant’s article, we see that race is not based only on biology, but instead, it is a socio-political construct that the dominant society or majority have ascribed to in order to control and impose themselves on minority groups. If we ascribed race to mere biology, a genetic test would give us a quick glance at how insignificant our genetic differences are and how genetically, race changes nothing about who we are or what we can become etc. However, it is hard to shift from a mentality that race is a biological concept to one where we see race as a socio-political construct a dominant group creates to separate themselves from other groups. The concept of race is associated with ethnicity and developing an ethnic identity is a process that can incorporate code-switching as a means for a minority group to gain acceptance by the dominant group.
Ironically, becoming part of the mainstream culture and society as a student or a professional adult and due to the bias and racism in school and the workplace that minorities sometimes face, minorities feel the need to code-switch in order to fit in. They understand that even with their new status, they are sometimes still powerless and voiceless. If we take into consideration Sue & Sue’s model for “Understanding the Dynamics of Whiteness”, even when minority members penetrate into the dominant group’s circle, it is tough for them to relate to White males in their work just as it can be hard for White males to be able to “live a racial reality that is different from that of people of color” because “being a white person in this society means chronic exposure to ethnocentric monoculturalism as manifested in White Supremacy” (Sue & Sue) .
References
Adelman, Larry. (Executive Producer). (2003). Race: The Power of an Illusion [TV Series]. California Newsreel; Independent Television Service.
Bernal, M.E., Knight, G.P., & Ocampo, K.A. (1993). “Gender, Race, and Ethnicity: The Sequencing of Social Constancies”. Ethnic Identity: Formation and Transmission among Hispanics and Other Minorities. State University of New York Press.
Omi, M. & Winant, H. (1994). Racial Formations in the United States (2nd edition). Pages 3–13
Phinney, Jean S. “Understanding Ethnic Identity.” The American Behavioral Scientist 40.2 (1996): 143–152.
Sue, D.W., & Sue, D. (2008). “Understanding the Dynamics of Whiteness”. Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice (5th edition). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Waring, Chandra D.L. (2017, August 18). Black and biracial Americans wouldn’t need to code-switch if we lived in a post-racial society. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/black-and-biracial-americans-wouldnt-need-to-code-switch-if-we-lived-in-a-post-racial-society-101013#:~:text=Adapting%20to%20the%20dominant%20culture,would%20during%20a%20job%20interview.
