Minority Racial Groups and Collective Identity

Abstract

Research has found that collective self-esteem or CSE varies greatly between different racial groups. While higher status racial groups experience both high private and public CSE, meaning they think highly of their group and they believe that others think highly of their group, members of low-status racial groups have been found to experience high private CSE, but low public CSE, meaning they think highly of their own group but believe that others think lowly of their group. This may result from the fact that private CSE is formed largely based off of ingroup contact. This study hypothesized that that minorities who were raised in majority White communities will have had less opportunity for in-group contact and as a result will score lower on measures of collective self-esteem and well-being in comparison to minorities raised in Black and Latino communities. No significant results were found, suggesting that the community in which one is raised is far from the only determinant of collective self-esteem.