8 Chapter 8: Self and Identity

Along with self-awareness comes a notion of self-concept in children.  The self-concept of a person is a set of beliefs, abilities, attitudes and values that define them (Fonagy, 2018; Hattie, 2014).  By middle childhood, children have moved from describing themselves purely with observable traits to including broad dispositions such as “I am a good athlete” (Byrne, 1996).  This increasingly leads to social comparisons.  By adolescence, youth begin to describe themselves using sophisticated language; they also distinguish who they are from one situation to the next as well as from one social context to another.  They begin to comprehend that they are not the same person when they are with their friends versus when they are with authority figures.  They may perceive themselves to be extroverted with their friends and perhaps introverted with family.  Thus, by adolescence individuals have a complex self-concept that includes contradictory traits and is situational (Harter, 2015).

Many of the more recent constructions about the self and self-concept take their inspiration from Maslow and his theory of a hierarchy of needs (Robertson, 2016).  According to Maslow (1968), the needs that an individual, while mildly modified by culture, can be arranged in a pyramid beginning with a base that includes gross physical needs and ending in the highest level that includes self-actualization and the need to fulfill oneself through one’s actions.  When the lower level needs are satisfied, there are opportunities for the individual to fulfil higher level needs, as illustrated in the figure below.  The needs at the top of the hierarchy cannot be fulfilled without the needs below being satisfied.  Thus, self-actualization is a need that is never completely satisfied but there are moments when one feels a sense of achievement or satisfaction over an accomplishment; during those occasional moments we approach the state of self-actualization (Maslow, 1971; Sprouts, 2017).

Maslow thus had a comprehensive theory about what motivates people to act and seek specific goals.  However, his critics point out that his needs are not very context specific and are presented as if they were universal, though Maslow himself did not claim they applied in every context. More recent work on self and identity have (especially from non-psychological social sciences) taken to examining how the ‘self’ is socially constructed under capitalism and the socioeconomic contexts we live in today.  Postmodern theory explicates the ways in which our modern lives define ourselves and how commercial popular media constructs the self mainly as a consumer of objects.   While the psychological sciences have attempted to look for the basic elements that constitute the self, postmodern asserts that there is no self without society.

Capitalism is only about 400 years old but the new arrangements between individuals and work has led to enormous changes around how individuals view connections with the larger world (Pieterse, 2004).  Today the average person in the Global North uses the term ‘self’ plentifully and assumes the listener or reader understands exactly what they mean but as with the term adolescence, the origins of the current understanding of self can be traced to the early years of capitalism.  The new industrial factories rearranged the relationship of individuals with the work that they did and with other people in their communities.  It introduced money as a mediator between the value a worker brought to their work and the profit that the owner of a factory was able to extract from the work that the worker performed.  The ‘self’ was dramatically altered as a result of the new arrangement where a few people held all the equipment of production and the mass of people had nothing but their labor to offer.  Some experts would argue that the notion of the individual came about as a result of capitalism and in turn was necessary for capitalism to function and survive.

Freud was one of the first to delineate the three substrates that form the self and an individual’s personality, the id, the ego and the superego.  The id is the uncontrolled desires that humans have many of which are expressly forbidden by society.  The ego is the logical adult part of the person’s personality that sets limits on appropriate ways that needs can be fulfilled, while the superego is the moralist and develops later in childhood as the child absorbs the caregivers value systems.  Since its early conceptualization, the notion of self has taken on multiple related meanings in psychological mainstream research, with the common theme being that the self is bounded, clearly distinguishable from the ‘other,’ with some level of personal control (Freud, 1990; 2018).  For Freud and his early followers like his daughter Anna Freud, the self is filled with desires that are forbidden by society, mostly sexual and aggressive in nature. These desires threaten to undo the stability of the social fabric of a community (Mansfield, 2000).  For them, therefore, our thinking and decision making are not rational, and humans barely understand themselves or their motives (Chodorow, 2014).  According to Freudians, the goal of social planners is to identify these urges and channel them into appropriate activities sanctioned by society.

Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, was a pioneer in the field of marketing and public relations in the USA.  He successfully used Freud’s theory about forbidden desires and anxieties to sell everything from cigarettes to the fear of communism in the first half of the 1900s (Bernays, 1928; 1942; Fiser, 2016).  Bernays reasoned that individuals’ unconscious desires, anxieties and fears could be used to manipulate the population and sell products.  The need to find new markets for products became especially intense with increasing efficiency in the production of goods as the industrial age roared on.  Exploiting the fragile self-concepts of individuals became a way to find new markets for products (Levitt, 1981).

Throughout the decades of the 20th century, the relationship between the self and society became increasingly unattached.  Freud had conceptualized the self as self-contained and teeming with desires and anxieties.  For him, social connections only served to either thwart those desires or help express them.  This notion of the self was therefore only marginally connected to the social and cultural context.  His assertions became central to practice within the mental health and self-help movements.

Wilhelm Reich, a student of Freud, asserted that this suppression of basic needs (like sex and aggression) was only leading to destructive and maladaptive behavior and he advocated for free expression of these desires in a safe space (Freund, 1988).  The end goal for Reich was always the benefit that such expressions of one’s desires had on society; giving space for the emotional expression of one’s needs prevented individuals from sliding into neurotic states and maintained social order (Atwood & Stolorow, 1977).  During the early years of the development of the field of mental health, social welfare was still a principal concern and self and society were perceived as being intimately connected in a democratic society.  However, this tenuous connection between the health of society at large and its connections to the individual self was all but severed in the last decades of the 1900s.

The rise of self-expression movements symbolized by schools like the EST initially established by Werner Erhard (Rosen, 1977) claimed that society was inconsequential to individual happiness.  Erhard denied that people were limited in any way by social factors or their location in society and he proposed that people needed a space for full self-expression where they could be whatever they wanted to be.  He conducted seminars in his institute where his clients role-played and gave vent to their frustrations and desires with the aim of ‘freeing’ themselves from the tyranny of social life.  Thus, within mainstream psychology, especially within the mental health movement, the self was to be totally divorced from its connections to society.  As the self-expression movement grew, advertisers had to find new ways of selling products in a world where the self was placed on a pedestal and its fulfillment became the principal goal to citizens (Vitz, 1994).

Critics claim that today, the self-help and the positive psychology movement relies on a definition of the self that is untethered from race, class, gender and other social location determinants of the quality of one’s life.  Positive psychology reiterates the belief that people are responsible for their own happiness and that self-empowerment would ensure success (Seligman, 2004).  While there is some truth to that statement, many positive psychology proponents fail to acknowledge the role that racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination in society pose significant impediments to achievement for many youths.  Thus, positive psychology experts assure youths that they can cultivate the habits that lead to happiness by focusing on their personal qualities and flaws that may be preventing them from making it in society. Seligman, who pioneered positive psychology also popularized the concept of Learned Helplessness.  He asserted that the main reason children in poverty were not achieving in school and or doing more to better themselves was because they had learned through being in disempowering situations, that nothing they did could make a difference.  According to Seligman, they had what he termed Learned Helplessness.  Thus, many in the self-help movement assert that the barriers to success that people in marginalized communities face is due to their having learned to tolerate failure more than the structural issues that may prevent them from succeeding (McNulty & Fincham, 2012). One example of a neoliberal framework for development is the proposal by Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In, that women would just have to be more assertive to succeed in a male dominated work world (Sandberg, 2015). This constitutes a neoliberal positive psychological model, where actual situational barriers are dismissed, while individualistic traits are emphasized

This message has been particularly powerful in getting generations of young people born in the last decades of the 1900s to see themselves as consumers. Marketing firms have effectively tied their growth to possessing the right consumer items and a positive attitude that these possessions enhance. (McDonald & O’Callaghan, 2008).  At the height of the workers solidarity movements and unionization in the USA, many people saw themselves as members of a particular social class with a class consciousness that allowed workers to organize to demand better living conditions.  The consistent undermining of the self as worker definition over the last forty years has eroded workers’ unions and unempowered large sections of the working population that had only their labor to offer to society (Miller, 2008; Sundararajan, 2005).  The self as consumer contrasts with the notion of the self as a worker with a class position.

There is evidence that being healthy is correlated with a self-positive attitude; however, it is not clear that one causes the other.  Some studies demonstrate that people with low self-esteem or who are pessimists feel worse about themselves when forced to repeat positive statements (Wood, 2009).  Similarly, people who report only moderate levels of happiness are much better at gauging the chances of succeeding under a given set of circumstances and are typically more politically engaged than those reporting very high levels of happiness (Oishi, 2007).  When people are excessively focused on changing their own happiness levels with little consideration for outside determinants of health and happiness, they may not see the larger political factors that affect them, engage politically in changing the unequal structures of society or see their own predicament as that reflected in a large swathe of the population.  They are unlikely therefore to work with others in bringing about social change.

Christopher Lasch published his book ‘The Culture of Narcissism’ in 1979.  Lasch bemoaned the fact that few people felt they were subjects of history in modern society.  With the heightened emphasis on the present moment and the need for gratification, many felt little connection to their past or their future.  Almost four decades later, we have seen that tendency around self-care and self-indulgence take on new forms in a society that values being a good consumer over engaging in civic activities.  While self-focus helps sell products and lifestyles, it leaves people isolated and unable to cogently seek collective solutions to problems that affect everyone.  Clean living and an intense focus on the body and its well-being has its dark side in the form of body dysmorphia and eating disorders.  In one new study it has been found that almost 1 in 5 young men have muscle dysmorphia and engage in unhealthy eating (Lavender, Brown & Murray, 2017).  While it is not in the DSM, youth advocates warn against the development of Orthorexia in young people because of the intense focus on personal empowerment.  It affects white women disproportionately and involves an obsession with eating clean foods and eliminating foods that may contain impure substances like non-organic or GMO ingredients.  People with Orthorexia spend enormous amounts of time thinking about food preparation and the possibility of unhealthy foods being served at social occasions.  They may avoid social events based on their interests in certain foods (Sanchez & Rial, 2005).  While it is important to be mindful of the foods we consume, an excessive preoccupation with our health may hurt one’s development in other areas of life.

Erving Goffman (1959) in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, first introduced the concept of self-presentation as a way an individual constantly manage how people perceive them.  Others in the interaction attempt to get information from the self-presenter.  Goffman likened this back and forth as a kind of stage with the front and a back region; the former is more public where the individual cultivates an acceptable persona and the latter region is where individuals can be less consumed by appearances. One of the major elements of a successful social interaction is a common interpretation of the social scene that everyone can accept.  The participants may in fact help each other save faces to avoid embarrassment.  Goffman’s theory has profoundly influenced studies about individuals interacting in online platforms – technoself studies (Luppicini, 2013).  Technoself studies explore the changing landscape of the self that accompanies the various technologies that shape people’s lives in modern societies.

Online social platforms offer new and ever-present ways to present oneself to one’s peers (Bradbury, 2015).  Thus, digital identity encompasses all the different ways in which individuals represent themselves online and how they in turn affect other people’s identities in mediated environments as in the virtual world.  Researchers in this area assert that individuals can mold their identities much more in an online environment than in the physical world as the former offers a level of anonymity not afforded by the latter.  This anonymous characteristic also offers a level of danger for the young person because of the lack of protection that law enforcement and other advocates can provide.  The potential for surveillance by government and commercial interests lead to the exploitation of individuals and increases the vulnerability of youth at a time when they are attempting to form healthy identities.  Several experimental studies demonstrate that when individuals create an online avatar, the characteristics of the avatar has an influence over their behavior offline as well.  Pena et al. (2009) called this phenomenon The Proteus Effect.  Thus, when an individual was given an avatar with Ku Klux Klan (KKK) affiliated symbols online, they engaged in more aggressive behavior.  Similarly, when women were assigned an avatar that wore swimsuits, they professed to thinking about their bodies more when they were offline than when their avatars were not wearing revealing clothes.  One’s virtual identity is both affected by and in turn affects lived reality.  In terms of research only the surface of this influence has been studied.

The new focus on the self, its needs and their expressions by people have been exploited by digital media producers and marketers.  Over the last twenty years, corporations and governments have been using sophisticated data mining processes from online user activity to make judgments about people’s personalities, their strengths and weaknesses and what they are passionate about.  The estimations about people’s inner selves are made using algorithms that use statistical methods and machine learning techniques to recognize patterns and “deep neural networks” from people’s use of the internet (Bolotaeva & Cata, 2010; Yang et al., 2006).  In recent years, the extent of the surveillance has been revealed through the many scandals involving online social platforms and the commercial benefit that the companies involved reap through selling personal information and records of users.

In Europe in May 2018, a sweeping law was passed limiting the use that for-profit corporations and governments could make of tracking online user activity (Ericson & Haggerty, 2006).  The General Data Protection Regulation as this law was called, affirmed the right of consumers to erase data about themselves and the right to transfer data from one platform to another.  They also had the right to demand an explanation from entities if such data mining affected them adversely (Mantelero, 2013).  The US has no such protections and has imposed few consequences for corporations that violate privacy laws.  Predictions using algorithm has led to relatively accurate understanding of the mental and emotional lives of people online.  Much of these attempts have been commercial or surveillance oriented and not even the algorithm creators have much of an idea as to why certain algorithms are so accurate (Hamilton, 2017).  Even more disturbing, many of these machine learning algorithms have been biased, based on gender, race and sexuality, conforming to the worst stereotypes of society.  One very popular social media portal was allowing racially profiled ads to be placed by companies purely through the use of algorithms and when confronted with the issue, attributed it to technology and not to personal bias (De Laat, 2017).

Conceptions about the self and self-concept have undergone enormous changes over the last few centuries.  In traditional societies, the self was placed squarely in its relationship to one’s family, other people and society.  In interdependent societies, this involved balancing the needs of the self to those that enhance the group and strengthen the connections of the individual to the larger society.  In individualistic societies, the needs of the self are placed above the needs of the group.  Under capitalism, individual needs and aspirations are highlighted often at the expense of social bonds.  While people in individualistic societies have higher self-esteem than those in interdependent societies, the negative impact of failure is also heightened because of the emphasis on the self.  There is a more intense pressure to be successful especially when the context of performance is competitive.  Capitalism requires a definition of the self that is placed on a pedestal above the needs of other people so that materials and ideas can be effectively targeted and new desires can be created.  In the digital era, these tendencies have found new spaces online. There has been heightened surveillance and capacity to exploit the self for commercial profit and for policing the individual by the state.  The popularity and ubiquity of social platforms for sharing has made it easier to use a self-as consumer identity to exploit individuals amenable to marketing messages, especially adolescents who form a very vulnerable group.  In an earlier era, people were targeted for the marketing of products, the marketing messages carefully crafted to appeal to their individual needs; today people have become the product sold by data gathering entities to those who will pay large amounts of money to get information about digital users (Lohr, 2015; Van Dijck, 2014).

Erik Erikson was one of the first psychologists to write about the importance of a firm sense of identity to the subsequent development of individuals.  For Erikson, adolescence is the time in the lifespan when young people begin to ask questions about who they are, and what their values and their life purpose is.  The search for identity encompasses their religious and occupational lives as well as their social connections and deeply cherished values (Simply Psyc, 2014).  Successful completion of this search is reflected in a new sense of self.  The inability to complete the search adequately or giving up the search resulted in youth either losing themselves in their peer group or isolating themselves from others who may be able to help in their search (McAdams & Zapata-Gietl, 2015).  In the pathway to this search, adolescents may experiment with various roles and personalities, changing very quickly from one day to the next and associating with new people and breaking connections with others.  They may challenge authority as they attempt to carve out their own unique identities (Strauss, 2017).  In modern societies, the need to define one’s occupational identity by late adolescence becomes of paramount importance as middle- and upper-class youth try to balance their aptitudes, desires and value systems to define the kinds of jobs they might want to seek training for (Meeus, 1996).  The push and pull of autonomy versus connectedness drive an intense search to define adolescents’ roles as adults.  Erikson stated that identity search is sandwiched between the striving for industry in late childhood and intimacy in young adulthood.

James E. Marcia, a student of Erikson, continued to conduct valuable work and theorize about identity development. For Marcia (1966), identity formation was less a trait that one possessed and more an inference based on observable behavior.  He pointed to Erikson’s third stage of industry versus inferiority as very important to determining the trajectory and the outcomes of identity search in adolescence.  During the stage of industry young people learn the value of setting goals and develop pride in accomplishing mastery in new tasks.  Similarly, for Marcia, identity development was crucial for the stage of intimacy that emerged in early adulthood.  Each stage was built on the outcomes of the stage that preceded them.  When one exhibits a strong sense of identity in adolescence, one can be vulnerable enough to be open to intimacy in adulthood.  Research has substantiated that the stages are interlinked, especially the stage of identity in adolescence and intimacy in early adulthood (Kroger, 2015; Marcia et. al., 2012; Orlofsky, Marcia & Lesser, 1973); identity status is related to the quality of intimacy that youth establish later in life.  For Marcia, adolescence is the period when social expectations and cognitive development coincide to accelerate the search for identity.  As an individual becomes increasingly sophisticated in defining oneself, they are pushed towards a new crisis.  Thus, flexibility in responding to crises is crucial to appropriate identity development since choices and decisions over behavior and values that form one’s core identity is constantly being shaped and transformed.

According to Marcia (1966), there are four basic identity categories that adolescents fall into:

• Identity achieved: individuals in this category have completed their search for the moment and are following their chosen ideological goals.
• Foreclosed: individuals in this category are committed to certain goals that are often predetermined by their parents or others in authority.
• Moratorium: individuals here are intensely searching for their ideological goals. They are likely in an identity crisis.
• Identity Diffusions: individuals in this category have no set ideological direction.

The figure below gives some examples of outcomes of the identity search for people in different categories that Marcia proposed. All these categories often come with a combination of both positive and negative features.  People in the foreclosed category tend to have simple cognitive structures and are not flexible.  They get higher grades than the others but are often not open to new perspectives.  Those in moratorium tend to be more internally driven but also are more likely to use drugs.  Both identity diffused and foreclosed individuals tend to be low on autonomy while those in moratorium exhibit the highest levels of anxiety.  People in moratorium and in the identity-achievement status tend to form relationships that are deep in terms of intimacy while identity-diffused youth are isolated as young adults.  Youth in the foreclosed category tend to have more traditional relationships.

William Damon (2008) reflects the concerns of contemporary identity researchers when he writes that young people today seem to be more distracted and ambivalent rather than actively searching for their identity.  Cote (2006) argues that young people with no college education have fewer opportunities to define their identity in a society that places a high premium on college.  As individuals progress through their twenties and thirties, self-identity continues to be refined and more individuals move into a status of identity achievement.  Archer (1989) labels the cyclical nature of identity search through one life span as MAMA, (moratorium, identity achieved, moratorium, identity achieved) in an alternating fashion as individual life circumstances change, and self-identity must change correspondingly as a response.

Parent-child relationships have an impact on identity status.  Foreclosed parents tend to have the best relationships with their children, though often it is accompanied by some coercive quality especially by the father.  Youth in moratorium have the most difficult relationships with their parents and it is often accompanied by a struggle for autonomy and self-expression.  Identity diffused youth tend to be detached from their caregivers and sometimes feel a sense of abandonment.  Identity achieved individuals have moderately positive connections with their parents though it is accompanied by some ambivalence (Jordan 1970, 71).  The identity statuses of parents themselves have little relationship with their children (Waterman & Waterman, 1975).  One of the lessons that identity status researchers emphasize is that the search for one’s goals, mission, values and meaning is a lifelong process and therefore institutions engaged in people’s welfare will have to take into account how the life stages of individuals affect each other and intersect with the search of those who influence them in their lives (Willis & Cashwell, 2017).

Helm (1984) had one of the most comprehensive models of identity development among white people.  It is possible to live all of one’s life in the USA without having to acknowledge white privilege.  In fact, for white people, unlike people of other races, defining one’s racial identity is optional and does not become a factor in development until one confronts non-white people.  For other ethnic and racial groups, white people’s power becomes evident very early in life even if they do not play an important role in their personal lives.  When there is interracial contact, white people would still have to unlearn years of direct and indirect socialization that demeans and paints a negative picture of people of color.  It is not easy to shed the individual and cultural racism that one has learned from the media, peers, family and social institutions.  Helms classified this learning into two phases with several stages (Helm, 1991).  Phase I begins with contact with people who are ethnically and racially different and ends with reintegration.  In Phase II, individuals begin with pseudo-independence and end with autonomy.  A similar trajectory of development can be claimed for people when they are in the dominant group in other dimensions (heterosexual, able, Christian, middle and upper social class etc.).  There must be contact with people from historically underrepresented groups for real change in identity to happen if one belongs to a dominant group with the power to set the rule of engagement in society.  There are two main stages and 3 sub-stages for each according to Helm. The stages that Helm outlined are classified as follows:

Phase I

Contact

The initial process of self-discovery for a white person begins with the first contact with people of color. Initially there is a lack of recognition of one’s own identity but once the idea or the interaction leads to sustained thinking about difference, a person from a dominant group is forced to confront the concept of one’s own racial heritage.  The white person judges the person of color using frameworks that are important for white people or through stereotypes they have learned about other races and ethnicities.  When the target does not conform to those negative stereotypes, they are looked at as exceptions.  Individuals may subscribe to the idea of fairness and not experience guilt because they do not yet see themselves as having any privilege.  If there is little contact between the white person and the target, there is limited possibility of further growth and the stereotypes remain intact.

Disintegration

If there are further opportunities for interaction, individuals move on to the second stage of identity development where they are forced to acknowledge their whiteness.  This triggers a set of moral dilemmas.  The peer pressure from other white people to treat people of color a certain way, the desire for justice and the stereotypes that inform people, contribute to their dilemma.  Individuals in this stage become aware of the split in their consciousness around racial identity for the first time.  This results in guilt, depression and anxiety.  In order to reduce the discomfort that comes from this new understanding, youth may seek out confirmation of their preexisting beliefs, changing their framework, not seeking any more contact with people of color or confronting other white people about their prejudices.  Unlike people of color, whites have the power to remove themselves from situations where they must interact with people from other backgrounds.  Youth who try to change other people’s attitudes are often met with rejection by their significant others.

Reintegration

The intense feeling of discomfort may lead many individuals to resort to an attitude of white superiority, which is the dominant position in the USA.  Cross racial similarities are minimized and the lower statuses of people of color are attributed to their laziness, intellectual and physical inferiority or other such personal factors.  The predominant feelings of people in this stage are one of fear and anger towards people of color and the slightest provocation might unleash these feelings.  Some experts might call the vulnerability that ensues for white people around this recognition, white fragility.  It is comforting for many people to remain in this stage until they have an insightful experience that leads them to reevaluate their position or their social and economic conditions provide new ways of looking at the world (Robin DiAngelo, 2012).

Phase II

This phase marks a turning point in the ethnic racial identity of white people because racism is acknowledged, and white superiority is discarded in favor of a more egalitarian worldview.

Pseudo-Independence

During the stage of reintegration, individuals for the first time become aware of the role of racism in the social hierarchy.  Much of this acknowledgement takes place at the intellectual level and there is increasing commiseration with people of color.  While there is an abandonment of white superiority, the solution is often looked at through dominant frameworks such as getting people of color to change their attitudes or behaviors, to become successful in a white dominated society.  People of color are still made the locus of change agents in a culture dominated by white superiority.  Thus, white youth in this stage often face ridicule from their relatives and peers while at the same time people of color may view them suspiciously for their excessive interest in them and their endeavors to change them.  Individuals at this stage may feel a great deal of discomfort with their own racial identity.  With active questioning and action however, they begin to eventually develop a sense of positive white identity in matters that are unrelated to racism.

Immersion/Emersion

A positive white identity involves replacing the negative stereotypes about people of color with accurate information about what it means to be white in the USA.  Youth in this stage begin that quest by searching for more information about their place in society.  They address this through engaging with other anti-racist people in unpacking racism.  They become active in consciousness raising interactions and social movements that address the problems of historical racism in society.   At this stage, there is also an increased capacity to fully articulate negative feelings about race and racism and to give expression to them.

Autonomy

At this stage, individuals respond from an enlightened and informed position.  They can completely give up their racist framework and gain a true appreciation of what it means to live in a diverse but unequal society.  The autonomous individual becomes increasingly aware of the intersectionality of oppressions.  Being in autonomy does not mean that one’s racial identity is complete.  The individual is constantly in the process of learning more about people of other races and ethnicities as well systems that prop up racist, sexist, heterosexist, homophobic and other forms of oppressive ideology.

Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been a rise in movements propagating ethno-nationalism in many countries in Europe. Nazi Germany symbolized its most virulent form; ethno-nationalists argue that if they do not defend the rights of white people, they would become a minority and would be subjugated by other races or ethnicity groups such as Jews or the Chinese.  The fear of preserving Europeans and European culture is frequently associated with a hatred of women and people who express non-normative gender and sexuality since their acceptance poses a challenge to tradition.  Since the 1950s, many of the European powers had to give up the colonies that stretched across the world. The loss of these colonies and the privileges that come with being imperial powers led to an increase in the feelings of the endangerment that many Europeans felt.  In the 1980s, the trend towards increased privatization of public resources and loss of manufacturing jobs led to the hollowing out of industrial cities in the US and in Europe leading to many people feeling left out of the economy. In the late 1900s, the Soviet empire unraveled with many countries being absorbed by Europe but often with a loss of status for the former Soviet satellites. All these factors provided rife space for hate to flourish.

Since 2013, experts observe that white nationalists and the Nazi’s moved their operations to online platforms. Digital social media affords them protection against being surveilled by law enforcement. Many of these sites are totally anonymous and participants’ identities are fluid and ever-changing. Thus, users are known by hashtags and subscribers and there are no demands placed on the participants to establish any real-world identity. When members commit hate crimes, they are frequently marked by law enforcement as lone-wolf crimes and the larger loosely organized groups that conducts in business online do not have to take responsibility for their heinous actions.  Unlike traditional hate groups, online communities are not held accountable for member actions.  YouTube is also an important platform where hate thought leaders flourish. Many of them do not think of themselves as hate leaders but are simply trying to keep a permanent group of viewers glued to their channels. This often means that the leaders must strive to make their viewers angry and outraged, repeating lies and fudging data to draw in a faithful audience that will tune in.   Most of the viewers and subscribers to these fringe forums are adolescents and young adults. Hence ethno-nationalism and conceptions of a digital self based on hate ideology have flourished in the early decades of the 21st century.

The pattern of identity development seems to track along a similar path for people who belong to groups that are dominant whether it is race, ability, religion, sexual or gender orientation.  Much of the development one experiences depends on the amount of direct or indirect contact with the lives of people who are marginalized, oppressed or invisible in society. This is one reason why it is important for major institutions in society to allow for spaces of interaction between diverse individuals as equals.  Schools can be especially effective in fostering dialogues between youth who may not share the same worldviews in a safe environment.  For individuals from marginalized communities, identity development takes varied paths which we shall explore next.

Individuals in each ethnic or racial group or color have their unique process of identity development.  One of the identity models that has found some support is Cross’ Black American Racial Identity Model.  The model is outlined below with the caveat that it may not be applicable to all groups and the trajectory of development depends on other factors such as socioeconomic factors, length of stay in the US, geographical location etc. According to Cross, Black Americans go through 5 different stages of development before they reach a stable identity about their own racial identification.  He questions the benefits of framing identity development as an individualistic endeavor.  The stages are outlined below:

Pre-Encounter

Racism and racial prejudice pervade US society.  Thus, Black children and youth grow up internalizing the notion that white is right and Black is evil or untrustworthy.  While young children of color may acknowledge their race before white children, they do not quite recognize how race continues to have a big influence on their lives.  Early in life, young children may think that racial identity can be altered.

Encounter

Repeated encounters with mainstream society move Black youth to comprehend that their racial membership is not volitional or changeable.  Members from communities of color cannot be white even if they wanted to.  This realization brings with it the importance of race in society.

Immersion/Emersion

The understanding of the immutability of race inspires a person at this stage to seek the company of others who share membership in their racial grouping.  They surround themselves with symbols of their heritage and try to explore the history of their group.  An attempt is made to separate themselves from mainstream culture and demonstrate pride in their own heritage.

Internalization

Once a secure racial and ethnic identity is established within oneself, the individual becomes more open and less defensive in their interactions with people from dominant communities, especially those who acknowledge and are respectful of Black culture and contributions to society.

Internalization-Commitment:

In this stage, individuals begin to express a concern for and commitment towards social justice.  They take part in civic action and other constructive approaches to transform existing arrangements that may be unequal.

There are differences among youth from various ethnicities in how much these stages apply to them or if they apply to their own circumstances (Rivas-Drake et al, 2014).  For many youths from groups that are termed involuntary minorities (many African American, Latinx and all Native American communities), the path to adulthood is especially difficult.  Schools work to silence any comprehension of the social structures that keep inequality in place and students who resist the oppression are punished (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002).  Remediation work with youth of color are often looked at as if fixing something broken; thus, a deficit model is the principal framework used to engage young people of color in their own development.  In recent years, there has been criticism against the traditional deficit model and its modern variant, damage centered models, that examines the identity development of young people from communities of color as if they were problems to be set right.   The former model looks at youth of color as if they were needing to be set right and the damage-centered explanations look to historical oppressions in order to explain the problems of youth who are from communities of color, especially Black, Latinx and Native (Seaton, Scottham & Sellers, 20026).

When youth from communities in the margins, especially Native American, can talk back, it is often only from a position of pain and longing.  Dehyle (2009) uses the concept of survivance to describe the optimum ways in which Native youth develop their identities. Survivance is more than simply survival; it refers to the process whereby silenced youth redefine themselves in new and politically conscious ways.  The term refers to a rejection of the framework that the dominant society uses to limit youth and find unique ways to speak back. Tuck (2009) who introduced the term damage-centered to describe Native youth’s experiences in schools, cautions against this damage-oriented framework.  She recommends that adult advocates allow youth to speak from a place of hope and desire rather than from one of oppression.  She calls this a desire-centered approach.  For many Native youth, the world of their white peers is inhospitable, but they also do not feel at home in a world that is populated by stereotyped images of Native culture.  Being a Navajo or a Sioux for instance is a process that unfolds over time in a unique way for each individual and it requires talented advocates of youth to see that.  When Native cultures are framed as being frozen in the past, it does the development of Native youth identity great disservice.  What Native youth want as they develop their identity is an understanding of their lived cultures, ever evolving and changing.  They want to be able to have their literacy heritage and their language taken seriously. They also want encouragement to explore and learn more about their own cultures.

Youth from underrepresented ethnic groups report that their white classmates are often unable to empathize or understand where incidents of racism or ethnocentric prejudice occurs; their white friends may respond with stereotypical frameworks for making sense of a situation. Schoolmates may make fun of ethnic cultural practices belonging to these youth when they find out about their cultural identity.  In some cases, to be thought of as prosocial, youth from the margins must make extra effort to shed their cultural identities and ask few questions of their white peers.  In addition, many of these youth feel that they must bear the responsibility of educating their white friends about their cultural practices.  At the same time, they may feel a need to keep secret some cultural practices and engage in silence around issues of oppression, so their white friends do not feel threatened.  In data gathered from studies, adolescents from underrepresented communities reported that they could not be close to their white friends because of the gulf between them, and all they could do was to deflect negative attention off themselves by joking and laughing casually with friends (Bergin & Cooks, 2002; de Souza Briggs, 1998; Tatum, 2004).  Thus, their developing identities predispose youth of color to seek other members from similar backgrounds as friends and companions at the expense of interethnic or interracial friendships.

When youth from communities that are marginalized are disrespected and their needs ignored by educational institutions, they respond with resistance.   They may sit silently in class, heckle authority figures, refuse to perform on tests or not perform to the best of their abilities in low paying jobs that they feel they are too qualified for.   When they do not see people, who look like them in their curriculum, they go searching for these role models outside of their school curriculum but are also likely to withdraw from the educational experiences that schools offer.  To demarcate their own separation, they are likely to adopt their own language when speaking with friends and wear specific cultural symbols on their clothing.  For youth from underrepresented ethnic and racial groups, defining one’s identity is fraught with anxieties and dangers because of the juxtaposition of various cultural rites and rituals that are used to reinforce the oppression of these youth as well as the strengths of the traditions that the young people use to fight back against these inequities.  Youth of color are constantly having to negotiate their insider-outsider status.   There are several ethnographic and anthropological work in schools have identified the many ways in which schools delegitimize and make invisible the identities of adolescents of underrepresented cultures in the school community (Salisbury, 2020; Stitch, 2016).

More than 15 buses carrying youth from central America arrive at the US border patrol every month, many of them carrying young people from countries like El Salvador and Honduras. They often come alone without their parents or other caregivers.  Crime and gang violence drive them towards crossing international borders illegally. El Salvador has one of the highest murder rates in the world.  Organized criminal groups like MS-13 and the 18th Street gangs use extortion regularly to control whole neighborhoods.  Many of the gang members are youth who had been deported from the US and joined the gangs in their time in the US.  Families are forced to send some of their young adult members to work in the US to send money back home because the situation is often too dangerous to work. It can cost up to $9,000 to be smuggled into the US. In 2019, the US government detained over 69,000 children who fled central America. Some of these migrant children have been deported, others have been reunited with their families in the US. About 4,000 children remain in custody away from their families and other social connections. The government calls these children Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).  The American Academy of Pediatrics asserts that the UACs need urgent therapy and help reuniting with

their families.  Few of these children will ever receive the interventions that they need whether they remain here or are eventually deported back to their countries of origin.

Religion and Identity

Religion is a rather difficult concept to define, especially as it relates to identity development.  Religion refers to a belief in a higher power or the supernatural, and human beings’ dependence on it.  At a societal level it could refer to the adjustment of a community to the uncertainties of life and as a way of life to reduce the fear that is associated with these uncertainties.  Whether religion is a force of good or evil has been endlessly debated by some writers like Karl Marx, comparing religion to opium, a drug that prevents people from acting in their own self-interest.  Others claim that religion is a longing for people’s unity with the universe and therefore a force of good in the world.  In some instances, religion equates with ethnicity where a people’s culture is maintained through their religious heritage as is the case among Jews, Amish and Mormons or among other immigrants when they leave their ancestral homelands.  Fulton (1997) found that across all religions, early religious involvement and commitment is associated with higher levels of foreclosed and identity achieved statuses.  Identity diffused youth have the lowest levels of church attendance.

Religion as a factor in children’s identity development has perhaps been the most underexplored topic within the social sciences despite its enormous influence in the life of any community.  The USA has undergone some dramatic transformations in its demographics, especially as it pertains to religious affiliation.  Less than half of the population is white Christian today as compared to 2007 when it was majority white Christian.  One of the most precipitous drops in numbers have been seen among white evangelical protestants.  Even though non-Christian Americans are still a small minority, they are more likely to be younger than people belonging to Christianity of all denominations.  The largest growing segment of the population however tend to be religiously unaffiliated, secular, atheist or agnostic.  This is true especially among younger people where a majority now claim to be spiritual but not religious.  Thus, childhood in the USA has had a rather complicated and conflicted relationship with religion and religious identity.

A mature sense of ideology and the place of one’s own life in the larger universe is essential for identity development.  Religion has the possibility of providing all of these in the presence of a community of people – but it is only among many influences that offers the space for youth to think about ethical living and one’s values.  Religion provides a transcendent worldview and it allows youth to see it in practice with peers and older members of the tradition who provide spiritual modeling for the developing person.  Within these safe spaces, youth can practice and experiment with their ideals as leaders or followers.  The young person relates oneself both to the divine as well as others in their religious group in complex ways including as a member of a historical tradition.  At the same time, religious organizations and affiliations can hinder development by foreclosing options for young people to explore their own unique identity and beliefs.  Similarly, when religion becomes a blind dogma that perpetuates hatred for those who do not follow the faith, there may be a barrier for the development of prosocial qualities in individuals that connect them to the larger society and the world.  There is more on ethical and faith development in the chapter on civic engagement.

While the population has witnessed transformations in religious affiliation and/or non-affiliation, national rituals, holidays and traditions are based on the Christian faith in the US.  Thus, identity formation around religious issues is problematic for children of non-Christian faiths.  The diversity among the practitioners of these faiths adds to the variations in the experiences that characterize the practice of these faiths.  Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Muslims have faced prejudice both individually from people as well as in the form of collective surveillance and discrimination by the government.  The average American has little knowledge of the diversity within Islam both in terms of practice and in terms of origins leading to personal prejudice and hateful actions against youth practicing the faith.  In recent years there have been an increase in exploring the impact of religion on identity especially among youth coming from Muslim backgrounds.  Many of these constructions do not identify the diversity among Muslims and the impact of other ethnic and cultural factors that may affect identity (i.e., female genital mutilations that is specific to some North African cultures but not to others practicing Islam). Mainstream media perpetuates these stereotypes by referring to people who practice Islam as monoliths, i.e. Muslim world, rather than explaining the varied practices that form Islam.  While early Muslim immigrants identified strongly with their ethnic group, the later discrimination and profiling of Muslims as harmful in modern American national life has forced them to rethink their internal diversity and form a unified position to protect their own identities.  Thus, the diminishing of intra group differences by mainstream media and other knowledge producers has led to Muslim youth in the USA struggling to construct an identity of themselves that is part of mainstream society as well as belonging to a group that has been treated in a hostile fashion by dominant US culture.  In addition, religious strife in other countries spills over into the lives of youth of all religious faiths living in the west.  In 2019, a gunman from Australia shot and killed several dozen Muslims in New Zealand who had been praying in a Mosque.  In a manifesto that he wrote, he used white supremacy symbols adopted from around the world to justify his actions.  This has renewed the sense of insecurity that young Muslim youth feel about their lives and their identities.

The earliest models of identity formation among those with non-normative sexual identities described a five-stage model of development during adolescence and into adulthood. The stages were pre-coming out, coming out, exploration, first relationship and finally identity integration (Coleman, 1982).   The more recent models of identity development among individuals of non-normative sexual orientation have moved away from stages but instead have focused on the fluidity of sexuality and have concluded that one’s final identity is just one of many possible ones for an individual.  The models stop short of categorizing stable identities but have emphasized the changing nature of one’s sexuality across time and context.

Fingerhut, Peplau and Ghawami (2005) wrote about identity development among lesbians and they observed that there were two trajectories of development for most of them – one that related to mainstream heterosexist society and one that related to their lesbian identity.  The authors point out that many women prior to the civil rights era had intense emotional and physical relationships with women but they did not define themselves as lesbians.  Today, sexuality is an important element that makes up one’s identity.  The civil rights movements of the 1960s brought to focus the oppressions that people with non-normative sexual and gender identities faced in society.  This recognition led to an active subculture among gays and lesbians that celebrated them and advocated for their rights in a society where they were marginalized.  Youth who identify as homosexual exhibit a great deal of diversity among themselves.  Thus, the second aspect of their identity involves their relationship with mainstream society.  Peplau et al. divided lesbians into 4 categories emphasizing these relationships.  Lesbians who were assimilated valued the relationships with the rest of society as being more important than their identification as lesbians.  Those who were in the category of separatism valued their lesbian identity above other identities and tried to separate themselves from society.  When they perceived themselves as integrated in their identity, they strove to combine their affiliation with their lesbian identity and their relationships in mainstream society.  Individuals who were in the category of being marginalized separated themselves from both identities, not finding a comfortable space to feel either integrated or being able to find companionship with other lesbians.  Many recent writers note that a strong lesbian identity correlated negatively with internalized homophobia but was positively correlated with experiences of discrimination and prejudice (Hegarty, 2017; Rubino, Case and Anderson, 2018).

Trans individuals have a gender identity that is different from the sex that is assigned to them.   The trajectory of identity development is varied for those who are outwardly different from their peers versus those who may be able to fit into the assigned sex category.  Outwardly gender conforming individuals come out later in life when they feel stronger and more autonomous as compared to the former group of youth.  Most trans youth however report shame, loneliness, fear of abandonment and isolation.  Paradoxically, trans youth who grow up as girls have fewer difficulties with peers because US culture tolerates masculine behavior from girls much more than feminine behavior in boys.  Having peers with similar experiences offers young people a guide to their own coming out process.  Bockting & Coleman (2007) identified the stages of development for Trans individuals as follows:

Coming out:

Coming out to friends and family is often the hardest step for young people in the process of their gender identity development and the initial rejection may lead them to cut off ties with the person or persons they came out to.  Support is needed for trans individuals as they move through this stage and to allow for their loved ones to come to terms with their situation.  After having come out, there is more of an effort made to learn about what is going on with their bodies and expressing themselves as trans individuals.  They reach out to other trans youth and the acceptance and safety they feel allow them to engage more with their exploration.

Experimentation and Exploration:

For some, the experimentation may involve living as their preferred sex selves or going further with hormone therapy and surgery.  Trans youth and adults may develop an aversion to their own bodies and may have low self-esteem about their attractiveness.  Exploration may thus involve relearning about themselves as sexual beings and the boundaries of what is considered appropriate, especially in the area of clothing.  Since our society does not tolerate ambiguity, individuals who may not be sure of their identities may dress in extremely gender stereotyped ways to mark their identity.  Years of internalized transphobia may drive an early identification with their desired gender without taking the time to think about their individuality.  Supportive advocacy and help by adults can ease the stage of exploration to a successful resolution.

Intimacy:

During the stage of intimacy, trans individuals have to reclaim their right to a fulfilling intimate life.  Many trans youth and adults experience themselves as sexual beings before arriving at a conception of themselves as individuals with multiple qualities and needs, all of them contributing towards making them unique and fulfilled.  Their early emphasis on sexuality may lead to exploitation by other people, especially if they are male to female trans individuals.  However, trans youth have an opportunity to move beyond simple gender and sexual dichotomies and nurture their unique identities.

Identity Integration:

In the stage of identity integration, trans youth and adults integrate their private and public selves into a fulfilled and positive identity.  They find social support and have fulfilled intimate lives.  Due to a higher level of self-acceptance at this stage, individuals have a higher tolerance for ambiguity and their trans identity is perceived as only one aspect of their varied selves.  Coming out becomes an everyday experience that the trans individual faces with pride and self-confidence even as their lives go through changes and stability (Bockting & Coleman, 2007).  In addition, many trans youth get involved in social advocacy and work towards a more socially just world.

Early research in immigrant identity development assumed that young people proceed, albeit unevenly, to get to a stage of assimilation with the culture of North Americans from Europe.  This was touted as the best of all possible outcomes for young people living here.  In recent years, there has been a rethinking of both the trajectory of growth and the impact of assimilation on the well-being of immigrant children in the US.   During and after the second world war, the US was seeking unity among its various population sub-groups and there was an emphasis on assimilation as the most desirable goal.  This framework assumed that the host cultures of immigrant groups were inferior, and the shedding of its culture was the only way for immigrants to equip themselves to cope with a more superior setting in the US.  In the 1960s and 70s, with the rise of the civil rights movement and other social justice initiatives, there was a reevaluation of this framework.

More recently, experts have proposed what they term as an immigrant paradox.  They point to the deteriorating health indices of immigrants the longer they stayed in the USA and with each succeeding generation.  Recent immigrants to the US have better infant mortality rates than the native population and as compared to ethnic groups that have been here for longer.  Similarly, when controlled for other factors, second generation youth have poorer emotional, mental and physical health outcomes compared to the youth of their own ethnicity who were foreign born and arrived later.  The former also engage in risky behavior at higher rates during their adolescence than the latter.  Thus, epidemiological research demonstrates that the longer a family has stayed in the USA and the more assimilated they are, the less positive the outcome for their children.  This exposes the faulty logic of assimilation proponents.

Today, there is increasing interest in the process of identity development among youth with the development pathways of biracial identity as many people in the US begin identifying as biracial; today the choices for identifying oneself has broadened in terms of ethnicity.  For youth with more than one heritage, integrating and expressing both identities is a sign of maturity.  This leads to a strengthening of ties with multiple ethnic communities which in turn reinforces the young person’s own sense of self-worth.  The experience of being different from other members of their family is an almost universal experience for biracial youth.  As they grow older, they are often asked by strangers about their identification which adds to their sense of dissonance.  In order to cope with their own difficulties around being different, the parents may underemphasize the child’s difference and unique heritage thereby adding to the child’s confusion.  During the second stage of development, they attempt to gain some level of acceptance by the outside world.  This may involve having to explain their uniqueness to their peers and schoolmates.  Some may not have the language to articulate why they may have a different sounding name or look white while exhibiting cultural practices from other places or ethnicities.  All this extra focus by their social group on their differences leads to the young biracial individual to have an ambiguous relationship with their non-mainstream parents.  At some point in their development, biracial individuals begin experimenting with adopting practices from their unexplored backgrounds.  This leads them to reject their parent’s own frameworks and choose their own paradigms to explore both cultures.  In the stage of acceptance, immigrant youth begin to be less defensive and more self-accepting.  There is an acknowledgment that there are hidden rules to becoming members of various cultures and biracial youth begin trying to understand and employ these cultural rules with people from both ethnic and racial groups. They also seek the company of other people of biracial heritage to find allies in their journey (Kich, 1992).