“I’m Not Going to Become No Rapper”

Abstract

Few studies examine how the macro context shapes ethnic or racial identity development during early adolescence. This analysis draws on interview data from 40 African American, Chinese American, Dominican American, and European American middle school students (6th through 8th grade) to explore how stereotypes inform adolescents’ ethnic and racial identities. Findings revealed that stereotypes about race and ethnicity intersected with those about gender, sexuality, social class, and/or nationality and these intersecting stereotypes shaped adolescents’ ethnic and racial identities. In addition, adolescents used stereotypes about other ethnic and racial groups as contrasts upon which their own ethnic or racial identities were constructed. Finally, adolescents’ narratives were dominated, particularly for the ethnic minority youth during their 8th-grade interviews, by the desire to avoid or resist becoming an ethnic or racial stereotype. Findings underscore the importance of examining stereotypes as a context of identity development, the ways in which stereotypes intersect in the construction of identity, and resistance in the study of identity development.

Keywords

stereotypes ethnic and racial identity early adolescence qualitative methods

Introduction

Underscoring the historical and cultural context of identities, Erik Erikson (1968) locates identity development “in the core of the individual and yet also in the core of his communal culture. . .” (p. 22). Building upon Erikson’s seminal work, identity scholars have emphasized the role of the social context, including the role that stereotypes and discrimination play in the construction of identities (e.g., García Coll et al., 1996; Spencer, 1995; Spencer, Dupree, & Hartmann, 1997; von Hippel, Hawkins, & Schooler, 2001). Spencer and colleagues (1995, 1997), for example, find that ethnic and racial identity development is a response, in part, to contextual stressors such as the racism and discrimination that stem from racial and ethnic stereotypes. Similarly, García Coll and colleagues (1996) reveal how race, ethnicity, gender, and social class, or “social position variables”, mediate ethnic and racial identity development via discrimination and oppression. Despite these rich theoretical and empirical contributions, identity researchers have rarely examined how stereotypes shape identities and identity development. The aim of our analysis was to examine the ways in which stereotypes influence the ethnic or racial identities of African American, European American, Chinese American, and Dominican American middle school students and the way these processes change from 6th to 8th grade.

Ethnic and Racial Identity

Ethnic and racial identity has been defined in a variety of ways (see Phinney & Ong, 2007; Quintana, 2007). The most common perspective focuses on how one views the self relative to his or her own ethnic or racial group, namely his or her sense of ethnic or racial group belonging or attachment (Phinney, 1989; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Using this definition, researchers have found, for example, that ethnic and racial identity increases with age (e.g., Pahl & Way, 2006; Quintana, 2007; Yip, Seaton, & Sellers, 2006) and is significantly linked to psychological, academic, and social adjustment (e.g., Phinney, Cantu, & Kurtz, 1997; Seaton, Scottham, & Sellers, 2006; Umaña-Taylor, Diversi, & Fine, 2002; Yip et al., 2006). Attachment to one’s ethnic or racial identity has also been found to buffer the negative impact of discrimination (Crocker & Major, 1989; Pahl & Way, 2006; Sellers & Shelton, 2003), and promote academic engagement and performance (Altschul, Oyserman, & Bybee, 2006; Chavous et al., 2003; Fuligni, Witkow, & García, 2005).

The few studies focused on the context of identity development have found that family support (Schachter & Ventura, 2008) and parental racial socialization (Hughes et al., 2006; Rivas-Drake, Hughes, & Way, 2009; Umaña-Taylor, Bhanot, & Shin, 2006) are associated with greater levels of ethnic and racial identity exploration as well as a positive evaluation of and a strong sense of belonging to one’s ethnic and racial group. The peer context also appears to function similarly—adolescents who report higher levels of peer support also report stronger ethnic and racial identities (Reis & Youniss, 2004). In addition, the racial diversity of the school or the neighborhood has been significantly linked to ethnic and racial identity (Allen, Bat-Chava, Aber, & Seidman, 2005; Tatum, 1997), with stronger group attachments among youth in more ethnically diverse environments.

This body of research has provided us much insight into the correlates of ethnic and racial identities. Yet it has been limited by its lack of attention to the macro context or societal beliefs systems that shape identities and also by its almost exclusive reliance on survey questions that assess “the extent to which” individuals feel attached to their ethnic or racial group rather than on the processes through which such group identity attachments are constructed (Syed & Azmitia, 2008; Way, Santos, Niwa, & Kim-Gervey, 2008). Erikson’s (1968) seminal psychosocial identity theory emphasizes process arguing that, “identity is never ‘established’ as an ‘achievement’” (p. 24). He underscores the dynamic nature of identity as “a process of simultaneous reflection and observation . . . by which the individual judges himself in the light of what he perceives to be the way in which others judge him in comparison to themselves and to a typology significant to them” (p. 22). Negative identities may emerge, furthermore, as a consequence of such processes in which “evil prototypes” or stereotypes are presented to the individual and he or she begins to take on the characteristics of the negative stereotypes (Erikson, 1968, p. 303). Similarly, Spencer (1995) and colleagues (Spencer et al., 1997) contend that “the self is constructed in response to stereotypes and biases” and that stereotypes are a primary lens through which one views and evaluates the self (p. 819). From these perspectives, individuals construct their identities in response to the “typologies significant to them” or the “stereotypes and biases” that surround them. Building upon this concept, Oyserman, Grant, and Ager (1995) take a social identity approach in a model they term “possible selves,” which argues that adolescents possess both an ideal self that they desire to move toward and a feared self that they want to avoid. These selves derive their meaning from the social context, such that the ideal and feared selves are grounded in social stereotypes (Oyserman et al., 1995). These theorists and researchers underscore the importance of examining the ways that societal belief systems shape identities and the process of identity development and not simply its correlates.

Stereotypes and Identities

Stereotypes are widely held societal beliefs and expectations; generalizations applied to individuals who share common characteristics or a social group, such as ethnicity, race, gender, social class, or nationality (Stagnor & Schaller, 1996). Stereotypes transform individuals who possess unique characteristics into caricatures without nuance or variation, such that all individuals within an ethnic or racial group, for example, are homogenized. For example, common stereotypes about African American youth in the United States are that they have rhythm and are athletic, lazy, dumb, loud, and angry (Fordham, 1993; Hooks, 2004; Lei, 2003; Stevenson, 1997, 2004). Similarly, Latino youth are stereotyped as lazy and dumb, as well as criminals, gang members, and drug lords (e.g., López, 2003). Asian American youth, in contrast, are stereotyped as the “model minorities”—smart, quiet, and obedient (Lee, 1994). At the same time, as members of an immigrant group, Asian immigrant youth are also stereotyped as dirty, poor, weak, girly, and gay (Chua & Fujino, 2008; Lei, 2003; Shek, 2006). Stereotypes are not restricted to ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities. Whiteness, or being European American, is stereotyped as being wealthy, successful, physically weak, and gay (Pascoe, 2007; Perry, 2001; Way, 2011).

These stereotypes are often defined relative to each other. For example, academic achievement has been coded as “White” and students of color who excel in school (except for Asians) are deemed “acting White” (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986). In contrast, “acting Black” means the opposite of “acting White” and refers to speaking in urban slang, dressing in urban style, and listening to hip-hop music (Carter, 2006; Delpit, 1995). Nguyen (personal communication, August 3, 2009) described a phenomenon among Asian youth who call themselves “pencils” referencing their Asian-ness on the outside (i.e., their “yellow” skin tone) and blackness on the inside because they skip school, listen to hip-hop, and get in fights. In contrast, Asians who “act White” are “twinkies” and White youth who “act Black” are “wiggers.” Such ethnic and racial coding reflects societal stereotypes, rather than merely adolescent fads. It is in response to these stereotypes that adolescents construct their ethnic and racial identities (García Coll et al., 1996; Spencer et al., 1997; von Hippel et al., 2001; Way et al., 2008).

While it has been long argued, and empirically proven, that stereotypes affect people’s lives in various ways (e.g., Allport, 1954; Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998; Major & O’Brien, 2005; Stagnor & Schaller, 1996; Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995), researchers have rarely examined the influence of stereotypes in the construction of identities. The few researchers who have investigated such processes have found that stereotypes do, indeed, influence the ways in which adolescents make sense of who they are ethnically and racially. Way and colleagues’ (2008, 2011) find that high school students define their ethnic and racial identities (i.e., who they are, want to be, and do not want to be ethnically and racially) in direct response to stereotypes. The Black adolescents in their study defined being Black as not being lazy or dumb—that is not being a Black stereotype. Chinese and Dominican American youth did not want to be victims of discrimination that stemmed from ethnic stereotypes and wanted to be Puerto Rican because of the social status and popularity that this ethnic group held in their school. Their victim status was based on stereotypes about being Chinese or Dominican American that the students themselves held as well as the other students who picked on them (Way et al., 2008).

Similarly, Lei’s (2003) research documents how ethnic stereotypes are reproduced within the school context and shape students’ identities. The small stature of many Asian males, for example, alongside stereotypes about the femininity of Asian males emasculated Asian boys and thus they became targets for harassment (Lei, 2003). Pyke and Dang (2003) found a similar stereotype tension for Vietnamese and Korean immigrant youth. The stereotyped labels of “FOB” (fresh off the boat) and “Whitewashed” represented the polar opposites of the identity options available to these immigrant adolescents: to be Asian is to be a FOB—dirty, poor, non-English speaking immigrant—and not to be Asian is to be Whitewashed—fully assimilated and Americanized. In each of these studies, ethnic or racial identity is based on stereotypes that function as “social mirrors” (Suárez-Orozco, 2004) that reflect to youth how others view them and how they in turn might (and ought to according to the stereotype) view themselves.

Missing from this small body of research on stereotypes and identities is an investigation of White youth, how stereotypes intersect in the construction of identities, and how these processes work during early adolescence, a time in which identity formation is actively occuring and when adolescents become increasingly attuned to cultural stereotypes (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Way, 2011). It is also a time in which stereotypes become even more entrenched in peer culture and often has negative consequences (Bishop et al., 2004; Graham & Juvonen, 2002).

Current Study

Addressing these gaps in the literature, our analysis examines: (a) how stereotypes shape the ethnic and racial identities of African American, Dominican American, Chinese American, and European American middle school students; (b) how stereotypes intersect in the construction of identities; and (c) whether and how these processes change during the middle school years. To address our questions, we draw from qualitative data that was collected in 6th and 8th grade in urban, public middle schools. Given the small body of research in this area, the aim of our study was to generate hypotheses regarding the processes by which stereotypes shape identity processes rather than test hypotheses. Semistructured interviews with our participants allowed us to examine how middle school students experienced and made meaning of stereotypes and their identities.

Method

Participants

Data for this article were drawn from a sample of 162 pairs of 6th- and 8th-grade interviews from the Early Adolescent Cohort (EAC) study.¹ Participants in the study include 1,032 adolescents who completed at least one wave of survey data collection in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade. Longitudinal interviews were completed with 162 participants in 6th and 8th grade. From this 162 participant set, we selected a subsample of 40 participants with both 6th and 8th-grade interviews (i.e., 80 total interviews) randomly and evenly distributed participants by race/ethnicity (10 in each ethnic group) and gender (5 females and males per ethnic group). We selected a small sample to enhance our ability to focus in depth on how adolescents spoke about stereotypes and their identities. Participants were ages 12 to 14 years (6th grade: M_age = 11.32, SD = .55). Adolescents’ socioeconomic backgrounds varied from low-income to middle-class with European American students overrepresented in the middle-class group.

Procedures

We recruited participants from six middle schools that we selected according to the following criteria. First, we required that the school began enrollment in 6th grade and ended in 8th grade. Limiting the pool of schools in this manner helped to ensure that all students experienced the same type of school transitions (i.e., from elementary school to middle school). Second, we sought to identify schools in which at least three of the target ethnic groups for the larger study (Dominican, Chinese, Black, and White) constituted at least 20% of the student population. Third, we omitted middle schools that had received aggregate scores on a citywide reading and math achievement test that were below the 25th or above the 75th percentile, under the assumption that removing relatively low and high achieving schools from the selection pool would reduce the likelihood that race and aggregate school achievement would be confounded. Finally, we sought several high achieving schools or programs with adequate representation of Latino and African American students. All six schools we initially approached agreed to participate. A racially and ethnically diverse team of trained research assistants visited all 6th-grade classrooms in each school (excluding self-contained and English as a Second Language classroom) in the spring term of two consecutive years—2005 and 2006 to introduce the study and recruit participants. The team distributed packets of materials that contained a study description and a parental consent form in English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Overall, 77% of recruited adolescents returned parental consent forms, and 78% of these had parental consent to participate. We obtained student assent prior to survey administration.

A purposively sampled subgroup of surveyed participants were asked to participate in a 2-hr, semistructured individual interview in the spring of their 6th grade (we sought an equal number of Black, Latino, Asian American, and White students and we wanted the subsample to be evenly divided by gender within each ethnic/racial group). Parents of participants were contacted about the interview and then the adolescent was contacted. Signed parental consent and adolescent assent was required prior to the interview date. Participants who completed an interview in 6th grade were then contacted to complete an interview in 8th grade. Interviews occurred at the participant’s home or school. In both grades, participants were asked a range of questions focusing on: academics and learning (e.g., What are your grades like in school?), peers and friendship (e.g., Tell me about the kids who hang around together a lot in groups.), ethnic/racial identity and socialization (e.g., What would you say your race/ethnicity is?; What do you like about being (their ethnic/racial group?), gender identity and socialization (e.g., What does it mean to be a girl or a boy?), family (e.g., What types of things do you do with your mother?), and future goals and aspirations (e.g., What would you like to do in the future?). The interview asked similar questions of each participant in 6th and 8th grade, while tailoring follow-up questions and probes to each adolescent. Interview pairs were matched in terms of similar race/ethnicity and gender.

Data Analysis

All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Developing the codes for this analysis involved three interrelated and iterative analysis strategies. First, open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) was used to identify emergent themes of the interview data. Open coding allowed us to explore participants’ beliefs and attitudes about their own and others ethnicity and race and the ways that they used stereotypes to shape the identities they claimed and rejected. An ethnically and racially diverse team of seven coders who were undergraduates, graduate students, and a postdoctoral fellow were assigned individual cases to code independently. Coders were trained on how to conduct open coding (see Way, 1998) and specifically read for the use of stereotypes in the responses of adolescents. The coders were then asked to identify recurrent categories, themes, words, metaphors, and contradictions in each participant’s narrative with a particular attention to the use of stereotypes in the narratives. The focus of the analysis was on participants’ attitudes and beliefs regarding their own ethnic or racial group and the stereotypes associated with these beliefs. Each coder then developed a narrative summary of each interview to condense the transcript while maintaining the essence of the stories told (Way, 1998). Each coder presented his or her narrative summary to the coding team for a group discussion and interpretive analysis. Themes evident in the narrative summaries were compared and contrasted. Similar themes were collapsed and reanalyzed as one theme. Themes were compared and contrasted between cases by ethnicity and by age (6th through 8th grade) to explore ethnic and age variations and the use of stereotypes in the representation of identities.

Throughout this analysis, we define ethnic and racial identification as how adolescents speak about their ethnicity or race.² Thus, we examine interview questions that directly ask about ethnicity or race (e.g., How would you describe your ethnicity or race ?; What do you like about being your ethnicity or race?; What are some things that bother you about being your ethnicity or race; If you could choose to be another race or ethnicity, what would that be and why?) as well as adolescents’ responses to more indirect questions about ethnicity or race (e.g., How would you describe yourself to someone you have never met?; Tell me about the groups of kids at your school who hang out together). These latter questions often provided insight into the ways in which adolescents understood their ethnic identities.

Results

Our analyses examined how stereotypes shape the ethnic and racial identities of students in middle school, how these stereotypes intersect, and if these processes changed from the 6th to the 8th grade. Three prominent themes emerged from our analyses: First, we found that middle school students’ expressions of who they are and want to be in terms of their ethnicity or race relied on seamlessly intersecting stereotypes about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social class, and/or nationality. Being Black, for example, was identified as being able to play basketball and being able to wear the color pink without being seen as gay. In other words, being Black was never perceived as purely racial or simply based on ethnicity (i.e., African American); it was also seen as having a gender (male) and a sexuality (heterosexual). Second, adolescents indicated that stereotypes about other ethnic and racial groups formed the contrast upon which they understood their own ethnic and racial identities. The contrast provided by the stereotypes of other groups was the scaffolding for their own identities. Finally, adolescents, particularly youth of color and those in the 8th grade, focused on avoiding, resisting, or not wanting to be a particular set of stereotypes in the construction of their ethnic or racial identities.

Intersecting Stereotypes

Middle school students’ expressions of who they are and wanted to be in terms of their ethnicity and race—their ethnic or racial identities—were infused with intersecting stereotypes about ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, social class, and/or nationality. When asked what he likes about being African American, Roger says:

I don’t know. I just like being a Black person. . . A lot of rappers are Black, a lot of basketball and football players are Black. It’s like Michael Jordan was Black. He was like the best man in the NBA and he was Black also. It’s like he’s good and then he’s Black also. Like somebody sees you and they see you playing basketball or football or listening to rap music, like they’ll respect you for it.

Blackness, for Roger, is tightly linked to being a “rapper” and a professional athlete, both of which reveal the intersections of race and gender in the construction of identity as being a rapper and a professional athlete are the domains of Black men in particular. He defines himself—his racial identity in this case—in terms of racial and gender stereotypes.

Similarly, Josh, a European American boy, intersects social class and racial stereotypes in his description of what he likes about being White:

There are certainly advantages to being White . . .Well if I were to walk into a store, no storekeeper would like be on us, but if a kid walked in with a doo-rag and like that and maybe some storekeeper would be on his alert. . . . Just because people have these images in their heads of what certain groups of people are, which I find is messed up and stuff because—Like when I first came to my building on Washington Street I was like. . . .Oh those [Black] guys are going to beat me up after school. But after being friends with [Black peers] [that] has really changed a lot.

The meaning of Whiteness for Josh is based on perceived advantages and disadvantages that hinge on intersecting stereotypes (“images. . .of what certain groups are”) of race, social class, and gender, referring not simply to Black people but Black males from low-income families who are stereotyped to wear “doo-rags” and are followed by “storekeepers.” At the same time, when Josh is asked to choose which race he would prefer to be if he wasn’t White, he says: “Black [because] you get to wear a lot more things that an average White person couldn’t wear. . . you get to wear pink without looking fruity or anything.” For Josh, being Black offers him an opportunity to maintain his heterosexual identity, while at the same time having more flexibility in his appearance. It is the way that stereotypes about race, gender, and sexuality intersect that make being Black so attractive.

Lori, a Dominican American student, also reveals the intersections of stereotypes in her ethnic identity as she describes why she wants to be “White”:

[I would like to be White because] people don’t criticize them a lot. . .like a lot [of] people they don’t really say like “you’re White” and all that, criticize you like they do to Dominicans. They say good things about White people, like they’re rich and they like have [a] good education.

Lori suggests that it is not being White, per se, that she desires, it is the privilege and wealth that she perceives White people to have—the stereotypes about White people—that makes them desirable and distinct from her own ethnicity.

Contrasting Stereotypes

The middle school students in our study not only relied on intersecting stereotypes to construct who they are and would like to be in terms of ethnicity or race, they also used the stereotypes of other ethnic or racial groups as the contrast from which they understood their own identities. When asked what he would choose to be if he had a chance to be another ethnicity or race, Ben, a Chinese American, boy says:

White, since like, Adam, my friend, he’s White. . . and he gets most of the stuff like easy. . . . Like he lives in like a big home, different from like my apartment building. . . And then yeah, you can see it, he gets like some of the things that he wants. . . .Like, I go to the house it’s like, ya know, I’m going to like some rich guy’s like house. . . Like big screen TVs’ even bigger than like my apartment wall. And I’m like, oh my God.

Implicit in Ben’s description of stereotypic Whiteness is that his ethnic group is not as wealthy as White people. In other words, the lens through which he sees his own ethnic group is shaped by intersecting stereotypes (i.e., race and social class) that he has of another ethnic group (i.e., White people).

This pattern of contrasts is also evident when Lucy, a Chinese American, is asked what it means to be Chinese American. She says: “To speak Chinese and look Chinese. [Chinese] are smarter than African Americans.” She bases her Chinese identity on the stereotypes about African Americans relative to the stereotypes about her own ethnic group. Similarly, when Tyra, an African American girl, is asked what ethnicity or race she would choose to be if she were not African American, she says:

Mm, <pause> I think I would choose probably Chinese

Okay and why is that?

Because I don’t like to get into stereotypes, but they are sort of smart so that’s why.

Like Lucy, Tyra believes the stereotypes about being Chinese and, implicitly, about being African American and these stereotypes shape her own understanding of what it means to be African American. Like her peers, Tyra is immersed in a set of stereotypes about her own and other groups and she uses these stereotypes to construct who she is and who she would like to be in terms of her ethnic identity.

When Tyler, a European American boy, is asked what ethnicity or race he would choose if he had a choice, he selects “Black” because:

Like it’s more of a real hardcore friend relationship. Like always being there, and always being children, in one sense. Being childish, being funny, being cool, hanging out with each other, walking around the neighborhood. . .playing basketball.

Tyler’s desires of who he wants to be is wrapped up in a set of stereotypes about Blackness that intersect with gender (i.e., playing basketball) and that contrasts with how he implicitly perceives his own Whiteness.

While the construction of who one is and wants to be in terms of ethnicity and race (i.e., ethnic or racial identity) were most commonly based on stereotypes of other ethnic or racial groups, occasionally it was based on stereotypes of one’s own group. When asked to describe the students in his school, Andy, a Chinese American boy says:

So, like at our school there’s like two types of like Asian groups. There’s like the kind of like cool Asians, I don’t know what to call them—like they’re different from like the other Asians who are like, kind of weird and just like play cards and be by themselves. Like they wear like jeans that like go up to like their ankles. . . a lot of them have glasses. . . Like trade cards like Pokémon. . . And there’s like a couple Asians that are cool. Like especially me and this girl and we’re kind of unique ‘cause like we’re the only like Asian’s that don’t hang out with the geeky crowd or Asian crowd. So like we’re kind of like the cool Asians.

Andy’s Asian identity is based on a set of stereotypic contrasts between himself and other Asian people. He resists the stereotypic geekiness (i.e., wearing glasses, pants are too short) of his own ethnic group and seeks to be cool which, in his view, is not being Asian (“the geeky crowd or Asian crowd”). Andy redefines his ethnic identity, marking himself as a “cool Asian.”

Michael, a Chinese American boy, also distinguishes himself from his stereotypic Asian peers. When asked to describe his Asian peers, Michael says:

[The Chinese who are not born here] they’re different by how they act. . . .They spit on the ground. Even though, it was [in] the school. We don’t care if you spit like outside in the street, but like in the school and the hallway, ya know, people gonna slip, like step on it. What’s gonna happen?. . .It starts fights and stuff. And then like, they dress differently, like, ya know, they really dress like so bright. We don’t really like dress bright. And like shorts, even guys, like shorts up to like here. . . .And like they have clothes different from us. Like their brands, stuff like that. And then like their hairstyle all spiked up, and I’m like, uh—

What group do you think you’re in?

The Chinese kids that are like born here. . . .Mostly I hang out with them.

Michael’s response reveals the ways in which ethnic and racial identities are based on a set of contrasting and intersecting stereotypes about ethnicity and nationality, establishing his ethnic identity by delineating between his peers who are immigrants (“The Chinese who are not born here”) and those who are American (“The Chinese kids that are born here”).

Resisting Stereotypes

The third theme detected in our interviews was that adolescents, particularly those of color, were consumed with avoiding, resisting, and not wanting to be a stereotype. Though present in the 6th-grade interviews, this theme became particularly evident in the 8th grade interviews. Asked when he is most aware of being African American, Joseph, a 6th grader, says:

When I’m in neighborhoods that are bad, then I’m aware of it because in bad neighborhoods. . .Like I see people—African Americans that are doing bad things and well, I’m doing all I can to avoid doing that.

Why is it important to avoid doing bad things?

Since people are going to be judging my ethnic background, it might be hard for you to get certain jobs or be going into certain schools. I’ll just try to do the best that I can with my life.

Joseph’s experience of being African American is defined by his desire to “avoid” being an African American stereotype (“doing bad things”), which intersects, in his mind, with stereotypes of social class (i.e., “bad neighborhoods”). Strikingly, he does not perceive these stereotypes to be stereotypes—they are, for him, accurate descriptions of African American people in “bad neighborhoods.” By the 8th grade, Joseph’s concern with being an ethnic stereotype has intensified:

Okay in what ways is it important for you to be African American?

Important? Well being a race or ethnic group that has struggled a lot, it’s important to try to make things better for ourselves so that’s why we should try to do our best. So it’s important to be in this group so we can try to make things better for our race because it has not been doing well. . . .Because if we ever really do want to be treated the way we should be treated, we’re going to have to make things better for ourselves. We have to stop being with gangs, with guns and violence and drugs and alcohol; they have to stop in order to save our race and to make it a race that most people want it to be. People say that there is no dignity in this race and they want this race to be as great as other races, but yet there are like crimes and gangs that are made up of African Americans.

Joseph reveals not only that he believes, to a certain extent, the stereotype of his own ethnic and racial group but also that he also feels it is his responsibility as an African American person and the responsibility of other African American people to resist such stereotypic behavior. For Joseph, the need for resistance has become overtly political in the 8th grade (i.e., “they have to stop in order to save our race”).

John’s ethnic identity is also wrapped up in not being a stereotype or engaging in stereotypic behavior. When asked how he would describe his ethnicity or race in the 6th grade, John says:

African American. . . .Well, I don’t like basketball. Where I grew up, basketball, everybody, every Black person wants to be Michael Jordan. Um, um, most of us, like guys who wear their pants like to their thighs or their knees, Doo-rag, purple bandana or whatever, care more about getting Air Jordans than an “A” or get like a “C-” and don’t care about grades or that stuff. African Americans [are] like the lowest percentage at graduation. They are only 48% at graduation. . . .I’m not, I’m not like the average African American; like I’m different. I know that some of them, most of them probably like don’t study or care about school, and I’m not like that. My backpack has a lot of books and you won’t find a lot of African Americans reading Harry Potter.

Like Joseph, John not only believes that the stereotypes of African American males are true (“I know that some of them, most of them probably. . .”), he is invested in proving he is not a stereotypic African American male. Rather than critiquing the accuracy of the stereotype or the underlying root of the stereotype, boys like Joseph and John simply do not want to be the stereotype of an African American boy. In other words, their ethnic and racial identities are closely bound to who they do not want to be.

María, a Dominican American girl in the 8th grade, says that what bothers her about being Dominican is:

That sometimes you know people think oh you’re Dominican you won’t get this question right, you know? . . .They like think since I’m a Dominican that I’m not going to be as smart as they are.

Who thinks that?

[. . .] Like Mollie. I don’t know, I think she’s like Irish or something and um, she says sometimes; she doesn’t say it, but I think she’s thinking in her head that ooh let me do this because I don’t think you’re going to get this one right, you know, just because like Cheryl and Carrissa are Dominican and they get bad grades, doesn’t mean I will because I’m Dominican.

Similarly, when Kiara, an African American girl, is asked in the 8th grade about what she has learned about being African American, she says:

That you should always be proud, and you should make something out your life, because there’s a lot of African American people that just really don’t take life serious. . . I think that it’s true, and it’s important, ‘cause you really should, because I know that there’s not a lot of people. . . African American people that are successful. So, I mean, so I’m trying to make it my choice. So be successful in life.

Like María, Kiara doesn’t challenge the stereotypes about African Americans, she is simply determined not to be the stereotype that is projected onto her by others.

While students often believed in the stereotypes of their own group, other students challenged such stereotypes and explicitly indicated that the representation of their own ethnic or racial group was grounded in a set of stereotypes that they were going to resist. For example, when asked what it means for her to be African American, Monique, an 8th grader, says:

I’m trying to make a point of myself. I don’t want to become—not another gangster, I don’t want to become another thug in the street selling drugs being a hustler and I don’t want to be another rapper, I don’t want to be another hip-hopper. I want to be myself. That’s thinking smart. Thinking dumb means that like all Black people are supposed to become rappers, that’s the stereotype. I’m not going to become no rapper. I’m going to become a singer maybe. I want to become a lawyer, I want to become a doctor, I want to become a veterinarian.

Although Monique repeats the stereotypes of her own racial group and wants to distinguish herself from these stereotypes, she perceives these representation as stereotypes (who “Black people are supposed to be”) that are not reflective of her or other “smart” Black people. In a string of “I don’t want to be” statements, Monique underscores, in her response to the interviewer, how avoiding stereotypes provides the foundation on which she constructs her racial identity.

Similarly, Yueming, a Chinese American girl, says in her 8th-grade interview in response to what it is like to grow up in an Asian family:

People sometimes make fun of me, but I don’t mind because if they’re talking about Asian people then I don’t care what they say ‘cause I know it’s not true.

And who makes fun of Asians?

Like people who are not Asian, like Spanish. . . Like, I saw this Spanish guy picking on a little Asian guy. He didn’t say anything, he was, like, beating him up.

Yueming resists believing in Asian stereotypes even though she has seen Asians act like a stereotype (“he didn’t say anything, he was, like beating him up”). Like her peers in our study, Yueming is determined not to be an Asian stereotype and thus seeks an identity that is counter to the stereotype. When asked what ethnic or racial group would she be if she had a chance to be another one, she says: “Black. [Be]cause I see Black[s] like they are very strong and tough. Like, I see them people and they like always got their friends back and they always like act cool. [Where do you see these things?] In my school, ‘cause like, people doesn’t usually make fun of Black[s].” Yueming does not want to be a weak and socially unskilled Asian stereotype and thus seeks the strong and socially skilled Black stereotype as her antidote.

Imelda, a Dominican American girl, also does not want to be an ethnic stereotype but her strategy is not based on being another ethnicity but to simply accomplishing things that are not considered typical of her ethnic group. When asked what her ethnicity or race is in the 8th grade, she says:

Dominican. It’s important for me to be Dominican because I guess I get to prove to everyone else that Dominicans can do something with their lives. . .First of all I am proving it to myself and second of all I’m proving to like school, teachers, and I guess that’s why I’ve kept up with all these grades. . . I was the very first person in my family to ever do private school [in elementary school], so it’s sort of a good feeling to know that I can say I got into a good school because I earned it.

Imelda’s ethnic identity, like her peers, is focused on not wanting to be a stereotype. However, what sets her story apart is her confidence that she has already effectively proven to others that she is not a negative stereotype.

While most students did not want to be negative stereotypes of their own group, there were some students who did not want to be the positive stereotypes that were associated with their ethnic group. When asked how is being Chinese American important for him, Lee says in the 8th grade:

To be smart. I don’t really try in school and I actually know the stuff…Like strangers like always [think I am] a nerd. . .so, then [someone called me] a nerd and I’m like, “Oh, I’m not a nerd.” And I stood up for myself. . .I started, you know, stepping up to him. And he was [like] chill out. . .Because not every Chinese person has to be a nerd. . . Like I’m not a good kid. . .I’m not a nerd or any of that.

Similarly, Pam, a European American girl, explains in her 8th-grade interview what she doesn’t like about being White:

Something that I feel uncomfortable about is that people expect more of you because you’re White. Like if I was [an] African American young man they would probably not expect me to smart or well educated. That you know because I am White they expect you know “Oh you must know this and you must know that.” But, I don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

Lee and Pam reject or resent the stereotypes projected on to them and, like their peers, do not want to be the stereotypes associated with their ethnic or racial groups, regardless of the type of stereotype. The students in our study particularly by the 8th grade, firmly believed, as one girl directly said, “you shouldn’t judge somebody by the stereotype.”

Discussion

Our findings indicated that middle school students construct their ethnic and racial identities by drawing on a set of tightly woven intersecting stereotypes about ethnicity, race, social class, gender, sexuality, and/or nationality. Stereotypes intersect not just conceptually (see Frable, 1997; Shields, 2008) but also experientially. Being Black, White, Asian, or Latino was never simply for the adolescents in our study, about ethnicity or race; it was also about a set of stereotypes regarding other social categories. Furthermore, our data suggested that it is the contrast provided by intersecting stereotypes of other ethnic and racial groups that provide the foundation on which adolescents’ construct their ethnic and racial identities. While others have noted the impact stereotypes have on identities (Spencer, 1995; von Hippel et al., 2001) our analysis is the first to reveal the ways in which the intersection of stereotypes about one’s own and other ethnic and racial groups forms the contrast upon which ethnic and racial identities are constructed. Ethnic identities during adolescence are not only a reflection of how attached one is to one’s ethnic or racial group—the focus of most of the research on ethnic and racial identity—they reflect the macroculture in which they are embedded (Erikson, 1968) and that macroculture is one in which stereotypes about ethnicity, race, gender, and social class infuse every aspect of life (e.g., Newman, 2005; Omi & Winant, 1994; Shields, 2008). Thus, identities are constructed by drawing on the intersections of different types of stereotypes and by contrasting different sets of stereotypes across ethnic and racial groups.

Our data also indicated that middle school students, particularly youth of color during their 8th-grade interviews, are focused on not becoming or resisting stereotypes associated with their ethnic or racial group and that this process is a significant part of their construction of identities. Other studies have also noted the role of avoidance as well as the importance of “counter stereotypes” in the construction of identities (Oyserman et al., 1995; Spencer, 1995; von Hippel et al., 2001; Way et al., 2008). In the 8th grade, African American adolescents in our study spoke of avoiding becoming a thug, a teenage parent, an academic underachiever, or a gang member; while Chinese American students spoke about avoiding becoming a victim of bullying, a “nerd” or “geek,” or someone who is perceived as “uncool.” Dominican Americans spoke of avoiding becoming unsuccessful, an underachiever, or someone who engages in bad behavior; while European Americans, among the few who revealed such patterns, spoke of avoiding becoming a victim of bullying or a snob (or “know it all”). This pattern may be particularly true for youth of color, in comparison to White youth, because they are more likely than their White peers to be the recipients of negative stereotypes and thus have more reason to resist stereotypes. While Erikson (1968) describes the negative identities that ethnic minorities may acquire, he does not discuss the process of resistance that many young people appear to engage in with respect to negative stereotypes. Future research needs to explore whether these patterns of resistance are evident in other samples such as those that include students who attend ethnically or racially homogeneous schools. Ironically, schools that are racially and ethnically homogeneous may not provoke as much concern about stereotypes and the need to resist them as schools that are more diverse.

Reasons for why resistance to stereotypes was more evident in the 8th-grade interviews than in the 6th-grade interviews likely rest with the increased awareness of stereotypes as children move into adolescence (Bar-Tal, 1996; McKown & Weinstein, 2003; Nasir, Cvencek, O’Connor, Wischnia, & Meltzoff, in press) and the increased pressures that students experience to conform to stereotypes during middle school (Way, 2011; Hill & Lynch, 1983; Tatum, 1997). As these processes occur, students—particularly those who are the victims of the most harmful stereotypes—are likely to become increasingly focused on trying to resist such stereotypes as they understand the negative consequences of succumbing to such stereotypes. Understanding why patterns of resistance increase during the middle school years as well as in what contexts are important next steps in the study of identity development. In addition, research needs to explore whether these patterns change from early to late adolescence. Adolescents’ desire to resist stereotypes may diminish over time as they face the real world consequences of negative stereotypes (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Tatum, 1997). African Americans, for example, may become increasingly hopeless about the possibility of challenging negative stereotypes as they experience discrimination in school and in the workplace, which may in turn make them less resistant to stereotypes over time and thus more likely to have negative ethnic identities than their non-African American peers (Mickelson, 1990; Ogbu, 1978; Willis, 1977)

While our small sample size and our focus exclusively on adolescents from ethnically and racially diverse middle schools in cities in the United States limits the generalizability of our findings, it is clear from this study as well as from others (see Lei, 2003; von Hippel et al., 2001; Waters, 1996; Way et al., 2008) that stereotypes play a significant role in the development of identities and that more attention is needed to the processes of “avoidance” and “negative identity” in the construction of identities that Erikson underscored decades ago. Addressing such questions will allow us to push the field of identity development forward beyond questions of frequency and toward a complexity that more adequately captures human experience.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is supported by an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to Catherine Tamis-Lemonda, Niobe Way, Diane L. Hughes, and Hiro Yoshikawa, (Grant no. 0218159) and a postdoctoral grant awarded from National Science Foundation to María G. Hernández.

Notes

Author Biographies

Niobe Way is a professor of Applied Psychology and codirector of the Center for Research on Child Development and Education (CRCDE) at New York University.

María G. Hernández is a research scientist at the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University.

Leoandra Onnie Rogers is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the University of Washington.

Diane L. Hughes is a professor of Applied Psychology and codirector of the Center for Research on Child Development and Education (CRCDE) at New York University.

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