Do children construct or discover ethnicity Insights from a west London primary school

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Do children construct or discover ethnicity?
Insights from a west London primary school

• Dr Ruth Woods
• Canterbury Christ Church University
• ruth.woods_at_canterbury.ac.uk

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Outline

• Introduction to ethnic constancy
• Is ethnicity fixed or mutable?
• This study
• Method findings
• A closer look
• Conclusions

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1. Introduction
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Ethnic constancy

• the understanding that ethnic group membership
  is immutable and does not change with age
  (Nesdale, 2004, p.230)
• Based on gender constancy (Kohlberg, 1966)
• Emerges 7-9 years (Ruble et al., 2004)

• Identity Knowledge of own and others
  ethnicities
• Stability Constancy over time
• Consistency Constancy over settings physical
  transformations

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Examples of previous research Aboud (1984)

• Child views photos of Italian Canadian boy
  dressing up in Native Indian Canadian clothing
• What is this childan Italian or an Indian?
• What makes an Italian Canadian be an Italian
  Canadian? What makes a Native Indian be a
  Native Indian?
• Can an Italian change his parents and
  grandparents to make them Indian?

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Examples of previous research Bernal et al.
(1990), Ocampo et al. (1997)

• Mexican American children
• Ethnic stability When you become a grown up
  person, will you be Mexican?
• Ethnic consistency If you changed your hair
  colour to blonde, would you be Mexican?

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Is ethnicity constant?

• EC researchers
• Ethnicity is about origins
• Children on universal pathway towards this
  knowledge
• Children realize that their ethnic
  characteristics are permanent (Bernal et al.,
  1990, p.5)

• Sociology anthropology
• Ethnicity as socially constructed (Jenkins, 1997
  Song, 2003)
• Origins only important if people make them so
• Eriksens (2002) myths of common origin (p.13)

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2. This study
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Research site

• Large multicultural primary school, West London
• Approx 30 Indian, 14 English, 14 Somali, 7
  Pakistani, 35 30 other ethnicities
• 92 (of 270) children interviewed
• 45 Indian, 16 English, 7 Somali, 7 Pakistani,
  27 other
• Years 2 (mean 7 years 4 months), 4 (mean 9 years
  4 months), 6 (mean 11 years 4 months)

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Questions

• Identity
• Can you think of someone in your year who is
  English Indian Somali?
• Are you English, Indian, Somali or something
  else?
• Stability
• When you grow up, will you be Indian or something
  else?
• Could you change into an English person if you
  wanted to?
• Past, future, self and other
• Consistency
• A Somali girl who lives round here is thinking
  of putting on some Indian clothes. If she did
  that, would she still be Somali or would she
  become Indian do you think?
• Clothes, food, skin colour, language, religion,
  marriage
• SomaliIndian, IndianEnglish

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(F2,84 2.468, p.091)
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(F2,70 2.704, p.074)
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Stability of own ethnicity
Stability of other persons ethnicity
(F2,70 3.741, p.029)
Stability of ethnicity in past
Stability of ethnicity in future
(F2,70 4.777, p.011)
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(X28.205, df 2, p .017)
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3. A closer look

• Consistency
• Stability
• Identity

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Consistency scores on different transformations
(F3.468, 315.561 61.419, p lt 0.001)
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Why clothing, language, skin colour food cant
change ethnicity

• Clothes It doesn't really matter if you change
  because some people, I see some people that are
  English and they wear Indian clothes and they
  don't change and it's not natural to change.
  (Indian girl, 9 years 3 months)
• Language She still knows English and um she
  can't just change just because she learned
  something of being Indian, she has to become like
  go to church, believe in one God, things like
  that. (mixed race girl, 7 years 4 months)
• Skin colour I think she would still be Somalian
  but cos she could like say she could still pray
  to her God and it doesn't matter if she's er
  white, brown or black, it doesn't matter, um she
  could be she could still be Somalian. (English
  girl, 11 years 9 months)
• Food Nothing you eat will affect your
  religion. (Arab boy, 11 years 6 months)

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Why religion does matter

• You just told me that somebody wants to change
  religion, so if they want to change their
  religion they'll be a different religion.
  (Indian girl, 7 years 6 months)
• Because yeah, you change your religion, if
  you're English yeah and you change your religion
  obviously you're gonna change into a different
  religion. (Pakistani boy, 9 years 4 months)
• He changed his religion and um Im Christian, if
  I changed my religion to like Muslim now I'll
  have to be like Somalian. (Black African boy, 11
  years 1 month)
• If you change your religion and you was going to
  be like say if I changed from English to Muslim
  then I wouldn't be English anymore because I'll
  be doing Muslim things. (English girl, 11 years
  5 months)

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Religion ethnic constancy

• An English (/ Indian / Somali) boy is thinking
  of changing his religion. If he did that, would
  he still be English or would he become Indian?
• A nonsensical question?
• Indian, English, Somali as religions?
• Ethnographic evidence
• Shared reference does not imply shared meaning

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Religion ethnic constancy

• Children asked to name 4 religions
• 30 error rate
• No relationship between errors in naming
  religions and childrens answers to religion
  consistency questions (r -.04, n 80, p
  .352, 1-tailed)
• So Indian, English, Somali are connected with
  religions (rather than being religions)

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Stability

• Stability scores decrease with age
• Most 6-7 year olds a person cant change in
  future
• Most 10-11 year olds a person can change into at
  least one other ethnicity

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Why a person cannot change

• She was born to be an Indian (Indian girl, 6
  years 10 months)
• You can't change cos like it's, if you're born
  yeah, you don't normally change what you already
  are because her mum and dad, they were Indian,
  they were born and they never changed and that's
  I think, cos everybody doesn't change. (Indian
  girl, 9 years 3 months)
• Cos I think that some parents are strict with
  their children and I think they might not wanna
  talk to them or not really get in contact with
  him if he changed his religion because I don't
  think the whole family would change with him
  (Indian boy, 9 years 7 months)
• Cos, cos she's always been English and like you
  can't change yourself, no yeah you just can't
  change yourself. You can change your religion and
  language and stuff but you'll always be English.
  (English girl, 11 years 9 months)

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Why a person can change

• It's up to her what she wants to be, and we
  can't force her to be something that she doesn't
  want to be. (mixed race girl, 7 years 4 months)
• Its her choice. (Kosovan girl, 9 years 6
  months)
• Because if she didn't want to be English and she
  wants to change her religion she might n-, she
  might just wanna have a change, a new change of
  lifestyle. (English girl, 11 years 9 months )
• I could be British then change into Somalian by
  my religion, and then um change into um Indian by
  like going to India and stay there for like for
  some years and then I'll be Indian, and then
  thats how people can change. (African Caribbean
  boy, 11 years 1 month )

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Stability freedom of choice

• Teachers talked about choice
• Behaviour choices
• Choosing own religion
• Are the children applying this rhetoric to
  ethnicity?
• Ethnic mutability, not constancy

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Identity Leahs story

• 9 years, 9 months
• Ethnicity Other mixed background
• My mum's dad is Indian and my mum's mum is like
  Burmese Chinese and Malays sort of mixed there
  but and my dad is just like sort of English.

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• RW And how about you, are you Indian or Somalian
  or English or something else?
• Leah See this is gonna be a hard question. It's
  like for me cos I'm part Indian and part Chinese
  and Malay, and half English so it's like hard.
• RW Oh wow, ok. So youve got a very, interesting
  one.
• Leah Yeah.
• RW Is any of those parts of you feel stronger
  than other parts do you think? Or would you like,
  do you feel that theyre all kind of equally
  important?
• Leah Um, I'll say because English because I can
  speak full English, I'll say that's stronger
  than, than Malay part of me and the Chinese part
  of me because I'm just learning how to speak
  Malay by this RW Oh are you? um book and er CD
  ROM where you put in the computer so.
• RW Oh great, good for you. And what about you
  said theres an Indian part of you as well.
• Leah Oh yeah the Indian part of me, the English
  is the strongest then I'll say it's the Indian
  then Malay then Chinese because Indian I've, I
  like to like listen to the music and like, I like
  watching Indian films and looking at the
  subtitles so I sort of know what's going on.

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Identity Leahs story

• I don't have any Somalian people in my family
  even if you go back in generations and I don't
  think she would as well unless her like great
  great someone was Somalian as well. Even I'm not
  sure if my great great grandfather is Somalian.

• Defines her ethnicity with reference to origins
• But recognises limitations
• And ranks her ethnicities with reference to
  social context behaviours

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4. Conclusions
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Ethnic constancy

• Children constructing ethnicity as mutable
• Consistency religion questions
• Stability freedom of choice
• Construction of multiple ethnic identity
• Challenge to EC data and theory
• Support for constructionist theories of ethnicity
• Further research of secondary school years needed

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What anthropology sociology can do for
developmental psychology

• Questioning researchers assumptions
• Ethnicity as inevitably fixed
• Difference as error
• SA encourage questioning of own assumptions
• Supplementing researchers analyses
• Quantitative analysis of closed questions
• SA Interviews participant observation

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What developmental psychology can do for
anthropology sociology

• Sociology / anthropology focus on either adult
  or child
• Developmental psychology How children become
  adults
• How do people arrive at the concepts, identities
  ways of relating to others that they take for
  granted as adults (Toren, 1999)?