Acculturation and Assimilation of Majority Ethnic Minority Biculturals: An Empirical Study of the New Generation of Asian-Americans in Hawaii

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study is to examine the sentiment of feeling part of a new ethnicity 'Japanese-American' and/or 'American'. The question, 'what ethnic group members do or do not feel included in this national category by established White American? Do members of an ethnic minority group who are numerically large feel they are American or Japanese?' are some of the questions that pervades in cross-cultural marketing. Based on previous researches, three constructs were developed to test the feelings of these bicultural’s towards their ethnic identity. A logistic and linear regressions were conducted which sets out to investigate the relationship of these three constructs and the development of the subjects’ felt ethnicity (i.e. how strongly they identify with a particular ethnic group). Despite the strong position of parental and family influences on their children’s formulation of identity, in this study, results showed that parental and family influence did not have a significant impact on these bicultural subject’s acculturation processes. The other constructs such as Ethnic Social Orientation (socialization with friends) did have an impact but had an opposite effect. That is, the ethnicity of the friends and acquaintances that these biculturals have are of different ethnicity from theirs. This shows that they call for a more diverse social life. Friends that these biculturals have when they were adolescents, however, tend to be of the same ethnicity (Self-Acculturated Identity construct). This study hopes to shade light into this emerging area of majority ethnic minority bicultural behavior where researchers often generalized results with other ethnic groups. Future directions and limitations are discussed in the later part of the paper.