Summary: Ethnic Identity Search

Stage 2 - Ethnic Identity Search (Moratorium) The main process of exploration occurs in the second stage and requires the most effort to advance from. Phinney & Appelbaum (1990) described this stage an “intense process of immersion in one 's own culture through activities such as reading, talking to people, going to ethnic museums, and participating actively in cultural events” (p. 503). A person going through ethnic identity search is expanding himself/herself through interactions with people or things from his/her ethnic background. Majority of the participants in a previously mentioned study revealed that they dedicated more time into learning about their ethnic group while they were in college. Towards the conclusion of the research …show more content…
Maramba and Velasquez (2012) found that the participants in their study, all of which were students of color, felt that “the learning center made a significant contribution to their ethnic identity… it’s influence coming from staff of color who worked at the learning center, the ethnic validation of its courses and services, and its mechanisms for students to access ethnic student organizations and ethnic studies courses” (p. 304). The learning center provides tutoring, counseling and ethnic sensitive programming for the students. Most of the participants also felt that their ethnic identity had a significant and positive impact on their motivation to succeed academically (Maramba & Velasquez, 2012). The ethnic-related set of resources at the university enhanced the ethnic identity development of the students in the …show more content…
This claim excludes the people who are assigned one culture but feel more comfortable and accepted in another. As a consequence, college students who identify with a culture outside of what they grew up in may purposely avoid the exploration of their preferred ethnic group due to fear of rejection. Awareness of racism against ethnic identity may also influence children to reject their ethnic identity and favor the dominant culture. In his analysis of various studies on children’s development of ethnic cognition, Quintana (1998) pointed out that “children seem to absorb the society 's racial bias and prejudice and seem immune to parent 's direct ethnic socialization when it runs counter to the attitudes prevalent within the society” (p. 30). This type of mindset not only inhibits any desire to explore ethnic identity, it may also cause identity confusion for a person who wants full acceptance of both their family and the