Mexican American High School Students’ Ethnic Self-Concepts and Identity

Abstract

Mexican American high school students (N= 24) were administered semistructured interviews about their psychological experience of ethnicity. The interview focused on individual, friendship, peer group, and family domains. Qualitative analyses of the interview transcripts revealed six domains including ethnic identity, socialization, intraethnic support and challenge, interethnic relations and attitudes, ethnic transcendence, and ethnic differences and similarities. These six domains were graphically depicted that differentiated ethnic self-concepts from ethnic identity processes and identified the intraethnic and interethnic influences of the ethnic self-concepts and identity processes. There were three ethnic self-concepts (i.e., cultural self, possible minority self, and self that transcends ethnic group boundaries). These basic three ethnic self-concepts are consistent with other researchers’ identification of analogous ethnic self-concepts and socialization messages across a wide range of contexts. Implications for future empirical and theoretical research are discussed.