Acculturation Case Study

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Finding your overall identity in this hectic world is challenging, but even more so when you are still unsure of your racial identity as well. Discovering who you are in respect to your race, while taking on an antiracist worldview, is the ultimate goal. In chapter 28 of the Handbook of Multicultural Counseling, Rivera (2010) explained why there are multiple theories of acculturation in the United States. I can easily understand that acculturation is not a unidimensional process because I have seen and heard of individuals from other cultures coming to America who each react very differently when attempting to accommodate themselves to the traditional customs of the United States (Rivera, 2010). I assume that it can be extremely overwhelming to come into a culture that is so drastically unlike the one you grew up with. Conversely, while many acculturation models state that the integration strategy is the most preferred and successful approach to acculturation because it allows …show more content…

Though there are different models, I like that each model acknowledges the same basic concepts in that dissonance is the central characteristic of change. I understand that if there is no dissonance, change is unlikely (Spanierman and Soble, 2010). Along with the critics of white racial consciousness, it is difficult for me to believe that race is irrelevant for some Caucasians (Spanierman and Soble, 2010). I feel that race is relevant to every individual walking this earth because, depending on your race, you either get special privileges or you get treated like a substandard citizen. While that is prejudiced and should not be accepted so largely, it is reality. My question for this chapter is why have researchers not taken all the models of white racial identity development and formed a new model based off the best aspects of the

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