Ethnicity in College: Advancing Theory and Improving Diversity Practices on Campus (review)

A long misunderstood concept often used interchangeably with racial identity, ethnic identity is thoughtfully outlined, researched, and applied to college students in a clear, thorough, and scholarly way in Ethnicity in College: Advancing Theory and Improving Diversity Practices on Campus. In this carefully crafted book, Ortiz and Santos describe a multicampus, multimethod study they conducted examining college students and their ethnic quest. In contrast to the underlying assumptions of many ethnic and racial identity models, their study assumed that the college student participants grew up in multicultural environments, not predominately monocultural White environments as in much previous identity inquiry.

Ortiz and Santos wanted to know "how students develop ethnic identities in multicultural contexts" (p. ix). In fact, both institutions studied are multicultural campuses where students of color outnumber White students, many who, in a turnabout, felt inferior at these culturally rich institutions. The book is arranged in three key sections: (a) a review of the literature on ethnic and racial identity development (chapter 2), much of which lays the psychological groundwork for creating ethnic identity; (b) an overview and explanation of the ethnic identity of Asian American, African American, Latinos/as, and Whites (chapters 3-6) and each group's most important cultural impact on students; and (c) illustrations of the forces connected to diverse communities of learning for students' ethnic development and their relationships with each other (chapters 7-8).

In a relatively detached voice, the book details a qualitative study conducted at two institutions of higher education in Southern California, both with White student populations under 50%. The broad diversity within each cultural group netted interviews with 120 student participants who were classified as African American (23%), Asian American (23%), Latinos/as (25%) and Whites (29%) with an average age of 21.3 years and enrolled in their junior or senior year. In addition, 64% were women, 77% worked full or part-time, 42% lived with family, 44% were first-generation students, 75% identified their social class status as working, lower middle, or middle class, and 94% were enrolled in college full time. Finally, most student participants from each ethnic group above identified a smaller cultural group to which they belonged (for example, an Asian American might identify as Japanese or Vietnamese instead of as a member of the larger group; while Latinos have many identifiers from Haitian American to Mexican American and Chicano to name a few on a long list).

The review of literature in chapter 2 provides a discussion encompassing several popular racial and ethnic models which influenced the concept of ethnic identity development for the four ethnic groups in the study, although it falls short of the breadth and depth of available literature. Although this study contributes to the literature on ethnic identity, it ignores the contributions of others who have empirically studied undergraduate students' ethnic identity and extended our knowledge of how this manifests itself in a college environment (for example, Torres, 2003; Torres & Baxter Magolda, 2004; Torres & Hernandez, 2004). The absence of this research is disappointing as it is in the forefront of the student development literature (Evans, Forney, Guido, Patton, & Renn, 2010) and informs our understanding of college students' ethnic identity, although it does not state a multicultural context as a given.

The next section of the book discusses the details of the interview data related to the college experiences of Asian American (chapter 3), African American (chapter 4), Latino (chapter 5), and White (chapter 6) college students at these multicultural institutions in Southern California. (The absence of Native American student voices undermines the study's stated objective to be inclusive). Three paramount themes surfaced for the Asian American students, such as: (a) the family's impact on ethnic identity, (b) how language effects ethnic pride, and (c) the transformation of the Asian culture by these students becoming American. African American students indicated miseducation of their cultural history which required its reconstruction while simultaneously suffering...