Toward formulation of ethnic identity beyond the binary of White oppressor and racial other.

Abstract

My article reviews theories of racial/ethnic identity development in both psychoanalytic and multicultural literature. While the multicultural and psychoanalytic theories have major differences, they both expose racial power disparities, and emphasize the central role of racial hierarchies in shaping minority individuals’ ethnic/racial identity. In these writings, however, no substantive weight has been given to the possibility that minorities’ racial identities may not be a function exclusively of internalized oppression. This has led to a binary conceptualizaton of White oppressor-injured racial other in the literature. Certainly the racial hierarchies and the unconscious processes that seem to maintain them are important, but I argue strongly that the ethnic individual’s experience of ethnic culture should also be taken into account in understanding ethnic identity formation. For some ethnic individuals, their ethnic culture plays a primary role in shaping their ethnic identity. I illustrate my argument with a case example of a Vietnamese woman who had unconsciously incorporated her childhood trauma within the context of her large Vietnamese family into her ethnic identity.