(Page 3 of 32) - Identity, Perceptions of Discrimination and Political Engagement: The Causes and Consequences of Reactive Identity Among Latinos authored by Schildkraut, Deborah.

or Mayflower descendants, white or non-white, to view themselves as full and proud members of
the national community. It is because of the potential benefits of having a citizenry that possesses
strong attachments to the U.S. and today’s climate of ethnic change and cultural tensions that I
undertake this examination of whether non-white immigrants and their children do indeed come
to see themselves as Americans, whether the treatment they receive from the dominant society
hinders the adoption of an American self-identification, and whether this combination of factors
prohibits immigrants and subsequent generations from developing the efficacious and civic-
minded attitudes and behaviors that national attachments can engender. In other words, my goal
here is to examine reactive ethnicity, which is said to occur when real and/or perceived
discriminatory treatment leads people away from thinking of themselves as Americans and
instead strengthens their ethnic or national origin identifications (e.g, Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).

Contributions and limitations of existing research

Existing research that examines the reactive nature of identity-formation and how self-

identification affects political orientations has yielded useful and important insights. It has been
shown, for example, that second-generation adolescents who say they expect to be discriminated
against in the future or who claim to have already suffered from discrimination are less likely
than other second-generation adolescents to identify as American (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).
Positive relationships have been documented among having an ethnic name (i.e., Pablo),
perceiving that discrimination against Latinos in the U.S. is a problem, and having a sense of
linked fate with Latinos as a group, which is analogous to having a heightened sense of ethnic
identity (Lee & Ramakrishnan, 2002). It is argued that having an ethnic name increases the
chances that one’s ethnicity affects how he or she is treated, which then goes on to affect
perceptions of intergroup relations. Having a strong tie to one’s ethnic or national origin group,
however, has not proven to be an impediment to feeling proud to be an American, contrary to the
claims of immigration critics (Citrin et al., 2002; de la Garza, Falcon, & Garcia, 1996; Sidanius
et al., 1997).

And perceiving that one has personally encountered discrimination has been

shown to increase the likelihood of certain non-electoral political activities among immigrants,
such as signing a petition (DeSipio, 2002).

Yet three main limitations can be identified in existing scholarship that I address in the

present study. First, this research pays essentially no attention to the difference between
perceptions of discrimination against oneself and perceptions of discrimination against one’s
group, even though public opinion research has consistently shown that group interest is often a
more powerful predictor of attitudes than self interest (e.g., Sears & Funk, 1990; Kinder &
Sanders, 1996). In general, however, the relative influence of group interest vs. self-interest on
behavior has not been studied to the same extent as it has on attitudes and vote choice.
Furthermore, surveys consistently show that people are more likely to say that their group is
discriminated against than to say that they personally have been victims of discrimination, a
phenomenon known as the personal-group discrepancy (e.g., Public Agenda, 2003; Sigel, 1996;
Kessler, Mummendey, & Leisse, 2000; Fuegen & Biernat, 2000; Crosby, 1984). Combining
these two insights could prove to be an important step in the larger project of understanding the
dynamics and scope of reactive ethnicity. Yet tests have not yet been conducted to examine if

Sidanius et al. (1997) found that levels of patriotism “decreased as a function of ethnic attachment among African

Americans” (p. 129) but not among Latinos.