Emerging issues in multicultural psychology
Multicultural psychology is the systematic science that involves research, investigation and analysis of various aspects in human behavior that one portrays in settings whereby there is interaction of people of different cultural backgrounds. Multiculturalism over the recent past has become a critical field in psychology supplementing psychodynamics, behaviorism and humanistic psychology. This field involves the utilization of theories on specific cultural structure and behaviors in the process of ascertaining ethnic similarities and differences. It takes insight into how critical tenets of cultures contact as people from different and diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds come into social contact and interact with each other .People of different background s and culturally diverse systems often come to work and live together especially in the contemporary world that is characterized by globalization and migration of people from one country to another in search of livelihoods, education, holidays or any other pursuits. It explores such topics as differences in perceptions and opinions, variance in means of communication; stereotyping, biases and prejudices, segregation and racism basically multicultural psychology is a field that is interested in what happens when people of different backgrounds come and interact with one another.
This diversity and clash in cultures has resulted in the emergence of multicultural issues that bedevil societies in that context. In this I would like to dwell on two issues namely racism and and crisis in cultural identity. Culture is the physical manifestation developed and embraced by certain people as such fully determined by racial characteristics. Culture and race have been considered intertwined and dependent upon each other, sometimes even to the extent of integrating nationality or language to the set of definition. Racial qualities to a great extend has been related to nationality and language of a group of people rather than the actual geographic distribution. Racism is the phenomenon that includes the belief in racial differences characterized by discrimination. It denotes race-based violence, hate, dislike, dehumanization of people that one race considers them different race or culture. This situation is elicited by racial discrimination by treating people differently by a process of social division whereby people are categorized into sections based on their race or culture. This situation has been exacerbated by the reality that people from varying cultures are interacting on daily basis and this has prompted social scientist to regard it as an emerging issue in the multicultural psychology field. The impact of this issue on the society and on the individual subjected to this issue is enormous and worrying because it shove one to a position of tremendous hopeless discontent and can culminate to psychological imbalance
Another multicultural issue that emerges is the crisis in the aspects of cultural identity. When two or more group of people from varying cultural background meet it involves an acculturation process whereby there is fusion and the exchange in the cultural features due to the fact that groups of individuals possessing different cultures come into continuous and first hand contact; the original cultural tenets and structures of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct. This scenario might have positive or negative impact on the generation of either or both cultural groups. Cultural fusion might result in a harmonious blending of each culture but at times it might result in total cultural distortion or confusion of one culture.