Development of Self Discussion

Societal Influences on Development Social identity theory provides a framework for understanding the contextual layers of identity development. Social identity is the part of an individual’s self-concept that stems from knowledge of group membership along with the emotional significance attached to it (Tafjel, 1974). According to Tajfel, the development of social identity includes understanding social categorization, assessing the potential for the group membership to make some positive contribution to positive social identity, and then integrating, altering, or discarding components of the social category into self-concept. According to Bronfenbrenner (1977), individual developmental processes need to be understood in light of systems that have varying levels of influence as development is multicontextual. Bronfenbrenner holds that while individuals have temperaments, personality characteristics, traits, abilities, and biological predispositions that influence developmental trajectories, individuals develop within a context that shapes and influences them. The most immediate context is the microsystem, which includes family, neighborhood, peers, school, church groups, and health services. In terms of cultural identity, parents are instrumental in providing racial/ethnic socialization for children. Racial socialization is defined as the process by which parents of color raise children to have positive self-concepts in an environment that is oppressive and sometimes hostile, and includes exposure to cultural practices, promotion of racial pride, development of knowledge of culture, and preparation for bias and discrimination (Hughes et al., 2006). These processes are vital for transmitting adult competencies to children, expectations for how a healthy adult participates and contributes to the group. Racial socialization processes have been linked to a variety of important outcomes in children and adolescents, including racial/ethnic identity, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and school achievement (Bannon, McKay, Chacko, Rodriguez, & Cavaleri, 2009; Constantine & Blackmon, 2002; Davis & Stevenson, 2006). Racial socialization processes serve as a protective factor against the negative psychological effects of racism (Neblett et al., 2008; Stevenson & Arrington, 2009) and as a way to bolster self-esteem (Harris-Britt, Valrie, Kurtz-Costes, & Rowley, 2007). In the stories, you will read about how families engaged in cultural socialization practices and how they served sometimes as a buffer from experiences in other microsystems, including schools, neighborhoods, and communities. Next is the mesosystem, which includes all possible combinations of the microsystem. The school–family interaction, for example, can strengthen a child’s academic performance and cognitive functioning. A dangerous or violent community-school climate can also negatively enhance performance by influencing attendance and concentration. The exosystem includes extended family (although for some cultural groups, this is part of the microsystem), friends of family, mass media, social welfare systems, legal system, neighbors. We as social service professionals become an integral part of our students’/clients’ lives, but also part of their developmental processes. The media influences individuals by portraying perspectives of what is normal or appropriate. The macrosystem reflects the cultural ideology and social norms. We live in a post-Cold War, technological age. Developmental changes in cognition, for example, can be seen in children’s and youth’s ability to manage technology. Finally, individuals develop in a particular time or age, the chronosystem.

Oppression One major social influence on individual identity development is oppression. Oppression is a part of the macrosystem and reflects sociopolitical and sociocultural values and expectations in the country. Oppression may also be seen in social categorization, a component of social identity as individuals become aware of images and stereotypes of their cultural groups. People of color, women, immigrants, and the poor have been overlooked, dismissed, ignored, or mistreated in a number of ways. When individuals experience discrimination in a way that makes them feel marginalized or powerless, they have experienced oppression. Oppression may be understood conceptually as a relational term that involves “asymmetric power relationships between individuals, groups, communities and societies” (Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010, p. 25). It often leads to discrimination, exclusions, exploitation, or violence directed at the oppressed by those who dominate. The core of oppression is, then, the inequality in power. To be oppressed is to be unjustly deprived of the opportunity for “resilient autonomy” (Zutlevics, 2002, p. 84) or “self-determination” (Prilleltensky, 1994, p. 204). Several authors have attempted to conceptualize a general theory of oppression. Allport (as cited in Ponterotto et al., 2001) presented a five-phase model of “acting out prejudice” as a continuum from least to most extreme, namely antilocution (prejudicial talk), avoidance (efforts to avoid contact with individuals of certain groups), discrimination (official segregation in education, employment, political life, or social privilege), physical attack (destruction of property, harassment, vandalism), and finally, extermination (systematic destruction of a group of people solely based on their membership in that group as in lynching, pogroms, genocide). Young’s (1990) model of oppression provides a classification of oppressive practices and involves the exploration of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Exploitation describes the work of people who are involved in menial work that is servile, unskilled, low paying, and lacks autonomy. The exploited maintains a position of subordination in a system in which the energies of the exploited are expended to maintain and augment the power, status or wealth of a group that has the resources. Marginalization is defined as affecting people that the system of labor will not use or cannot use. An entire category of people is excluded from useful participation in social life and therefore, severely deprived materially. Powerlessness describes what generally happens to mostly nonprofessional working class men and women as they exercise little creativity or judgment in their work and have no technical expertise or autonomy. They lack the opportunity and the possibility of making decisions that affect their lives or to make progress or advance in their status. Cultural imperialism is defined as the universalization of the values of a dominant group, established as the norm, together with the repression of the values of the nondominant group. It is oppressive to the extent that people who are under it are not able to exert influence on the dominant culture. Finally, violence involves overt cases of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, ridicule, or stigmatization of members of a particular group just because they are members of that group. Violence becomes oppressive when embedded within a system that makes violence both possible and acceptable. Oppression occurs on personal, interpersonal, and institutional levels. Personal oppression includes acts of prejudice, discrimination, or violence that interfere with individuals’ ability to evolve as a complete human being. Individuals who are burdened spiritually or mentally, or suppressed or crushed by an abuse of power can be considered oppressed. Individual or personal oppression can be conscious or unconscious as individuals may or may not be aware that some of the issues in their lives can be attributed to past or current oppressive experiences. Interpersonal oppression can be defined as oppressive attitudes and behaviors that are the result of imbalances in power within intimate or close relationships, including employers and their subordinate employees, service providers, and intimate partners. Cultural oppression can be found in those practices, laws, and customs that produce, or result in, social inequalities, whether they are intentional or unintentional. Racial and ethnic groups, gays and lesbians, and women are often the targets of cultural oppression, but are not the only ones (see Table 1.1 for forms of oppression). Cultural oppression is often expressed in collective stereotypes, cognitive schemas, and political and ideological narratives reflected in the ways nondominant groups are portrayed, considered, and treated (Sonn & Fisher, 2005; Young, 1990), and denies them equal access and equal rights.4

Oppressive experiences are often more subtle and covert; microaggressions are brief, common, daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental disgraces, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color (Sue et al., 2007). Sue and colleagues (2007) identify types of microaggressions: microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidation. Microassaults include explicit racial derogation categorized by verbal or nonverbal attacks meant to hurt the intended victim through name-calling, avoidant behavior, or deliberate discriminatory actions. Examples include calling individuals racial slurs or names. Microinsults includes communications intended to express rudeness, insensitivity, and/or demean a person’s racial heritage or identity. Asking a person if he or she received a job based on affirmative action would be an example. Microinvalidation includes experiences that exclude, deny, or render void the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color. An example would be telling a person of color that he or she is not being followed in the store based on stereotypes despite his or her perceptions.

Sue, Capodilupo, and Holder (2008) described reactions of African Americans to microaggressions, which include healthy paranoia, suspiciousness that occurs before or after an incident; sanity check, the need to consult with family, friends, and others to determine if racism occurred; empowering and validating self through blame in the perpetrator; and rescuing the offenders. Consequences of microaggressions include feeling powerless, leading to fears of being accused of being hypersensitive or angry, feeling invisible to others, especially Whites, forced compliance and loss of the ability to be authentic around Whites, and the pressure to represent one’s group (Sue et al., 2008).

While experiences of oppression or microaggressions can be damaging to members of oppressed groups, oppression can be most damaging to individual identity development when individuals internalize oppression or negative stereotypes and images (Ponterotto et al., 2001; Sue & Sue, 2012). Internalized oppression can exert a powerful influence on people’s behavior and feelings. Religious, racial, or ethnic minorities, as well as sexual orientation minorities, may develop self-hatred and engage in self-deprecating behavior believing the cultural stereotypes assigned to them, identifying with those beliefs and acting accordingly. The fatalistic outlook of many oppressed groups can also be understood as a form of internalized oppression (Kagan & Burton, 2005). With the internalization of social dominance, the oppressed are rendered helpless and “their impotence becomes proof of their worthlessness” (Kagan & Burton, 2005, p. 298). Internalized oppression can be expressed in many ways.

One way of expressing internalized oppression is the denial of a certain category or dimension of identity. For example, because it is common for darker skinned Latino/a or African American children to be less preferred than lighter skinned children within a family by their relatives, it is not surprising that nearly half of all Latinos/as consider themselves White (Gimenez, 2005). Another type of internalized oppression occurs when oppressed individuals begin to believe in the perception the oppressor has of them. Women in abusive relationships may believe that they are inferior, or that they cannot survive without a man; abused or oppressed children may exhibit signs of low self-esteem and low self-worth; the poor, marginalized or disabled begin to believe in the dominant or experts’ definition of what is wrong with them. Internalized oppression can also result in the identification with the oppressor. In this case, the internalization of negative stereotypes can be turned outward, making individuals react against others of similar background, mistreating or oppressing them in surprisingly harsh ways. It is not uncommon for Latinos/as, for example, to question the qualifications of other successful Latinos/as. African Americans or Latinos/as in a dominant or supervisory position sometimes mistreat their subordinate counterparts with an exaggerated virulence not warranted by the behavior of the subordinate. It is not unusual for women in positions of power to adopt overly competitive or aggressive attitudes toward other women. Internalized homophobia can occur when gays, lesbians, or bisexual (GLB) people internalize the negative messages perpetuated by society relative to their sexual orientation (Morrow, 2006). GLB individuals who receive negative messages from society regarding their sexual orientation, internalize those messages, and perpetuate those messages toward themselves and other GLB persons. The authors of the stories in the book often report experiences of oppression with varying outcomes. Some find coping methods to prevent the internalization of oppression, while others seem overwhelmed by negative reactions and internalize oppressive experiences. It will be important for therapists to gain a good understanding of the influence of oppression on identity development and psychological functioning