The Development of Children and Families of Color, Essay Example

The article “The Development of Children and Families of Color: A Supplemental Framework,” by Kenneth Hardy and Tracey Laszloffy, presents an overview of the classic personality development theorists, such as Piaget, Erikson, and Freud, whose work completely overlooked the factors of ethnic and cultural diversity and their impact on an individual’s identity. A strong, detailed case is made for why this “oversight” has been so detrimental in therapists’ ability to understand and assist people; in order to truly understand the actions of people, one must be aware of their “systems of meaning” or any observations made will simply be pointless (Parke, 2006.) This paper will examine the above-named article, and elaborate on the significance of understanding cultural variations in working with people by discussing the work of other theorists who place appropriate emphasis on environmental, cultural, and ethnic factors.

Because in the past, personality theorists based their conclusions about personality development on a population that was white, middle-class, and of European descent, the actual history of racism and xenophobia that has existed for centuries was whitewashed. In the United States, this has had the impact of completely ignoring the legacy of slavery, the extinguishing of the Native American culture, as well as the prejudice against the immigrant populations, including Chinese, Irish and Italian immigrants. In working with people, it is crucial to acknowledge that “with liberty and justice for all” has in fact not been equally accessible to all groups of people in this country. Instead, resources have been allocated in a hierarchical manner,with the white population being seen as the group that is “entitled” to the bulk of those resources, with other cultural and ethnic groups being less deserving, and in fact being regarded as being “the others,” not actually members of the larger society. For quite a long time, the assumption has been that people of color need to assimilate in order to become more like white European-Americans rather than focusing attention on “within-group” cultural variations to understand the differences among children of the same cultural groups (Parke, 2006.)

The article addresses another difficulty in understanding cultural differences because the standard of measurement evaluating family functioning has traditionally been based on white-middle-class populations and what is considered to be typical for those groups. Ultimately, there has been recognition that standardized exams have been biased in favor of the same majority population, resulting in automatic lower scores of culturally different students who had not been exposed to the same environments containing the beliefs and values that typify white, middle-class families.

A theorist has developed a formulation for the development of racial identity, which is extremely relevant in considering personality development in a culturally diverse population. The Helms theory describes the ways in which racial identity develops in response to the environment in which resources are distributed unevenly on the basis of racial or ethnic group identity (Fisher, 2005.) The Helms theory postulates that one group, the white groupis considered to be “entitled” to receive more resources than other groups, who are deserving of only lesser portions of those same resources. In the United States, people of color have invariably been the groups that have been deprived. According to this theory, many people of color act in “conformity” accepting the hierarchical division of resources based on race, and behaving in ways that reflect their acceptance that the depressed status of their own racial group is a deserved one. Because of biological or cultural deficiencies, they are entitled only to this lesser status. As the Hardy and Laszloffy article discusses in the concept of self-hatred of African-Americans, these depressed self-concepts are reinforced by institutional and structural policies such as the use of “appropriate” language, stereotypical media portrayals of culturally diverse citizens, the absence of cultural diversity in the teaching of history in school, and being left out of academic, employment, and housing opportunities.

In addition, Helms discusses the culturally diverse individual’s inability to recognize the negative effects of racial socialization on himself or herself, and the unconscious negative messages about that cultural group that become internalized. When one hears negative messages over and over again, it becomes easy to believe them. The result can be ambivalence towards one’s own racial identity, or the other extreme: psychological or physical withdrawal into one’s own racial group along with denigration of the majority group (Trimble,2008.)

Hardy and Laszloffy address the frequent instances in the United States when people of color have to tolerate constant verbal expressions that devalue them while the person who has verbalized the offensive word or expression insists that it’s “just an expression”or doesn’t really mean anything. They cite this as evidence of how deeply ingrained in the American psyche are negative attitudes about people of color, so much so that people don’t even understand how offensive and racist they are being. In addition, the media contribute to racial bias by covering mostly white people. The concepts of people of color having to keep silent in order to avoid trouble, as well as having to suppress their rage for the same reason, is presented as a tremendous challenge: finding the balance between silence and speaking, and being able to establish this balance in order to help their children develop in healthy ways.

There is no question that the issue of cultural diversity has not been considered by major personality theorists until relatively recently. The importance of environmental factors on the individual’s ego development must be taken into account, and weighted heavily. In recent decades, however, the topic of the impact of cultural diversity and its impact on personality development has been front and center in the literature studied and taught in the fields of psychology, sociology, social work, and the other human service professions. For a historical perspective on the absence of cultural factors on personality development, this article presents an excellent overview; the more recent acknowledgments of the significance of cultural factors is missing from the piece, however. There has been progress in this area, maybe not as much as there needs to be, but mental health professionals and academics have evolved in their comprehension of these very important factors and their impact on human development.

Bibliography

Celia Fisher, R. L. (2005). Encyclopedia of Applied Developmental Science, Volume 1. London: The Sage Group.

Joseph E Trimble, J. E. (2008). Social and Psychological Perspectives on Ethnic and Racial Identity. In Glen Gamst, Readings in Multicultural Practice (p. 155). London: The Sage Group.

Laszloffy, K. H. (2000). The Development of Children and Families of Color: A Supplemental Framework. In William Nichols, Handbook of Family Development and Intervention (pp. 109-129). Hoboken: Wiley & Sons.

Lillard, A. (1998). Ethnopsychology: Cultural Variations in Theories of Mind. Psychological Bulletin, 3-32.

Parke, R. D. (2006). Socialization within the Family: Ethnic and Ecological Perspectives. In N. E. William Damon, Social, Emotional, and Personality Development (p. 466). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.