Ethnic-Racial Socialization as an External Predictor of Tolerance to Diversity: A Study of Chinese-Indonesian Young Adults

Levina Xaveria^a and Sri Redatin Retno Pudjiati^b*

levinaxvr@gmail.com & retno-pj@ui.ac.id

^aMaster Candidate of Science Program, Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

^bDepartment of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

*Address correspondence to Sri Redatin Retno Pudjiati, Jalan Lingkar Kampus Raya, Pondok Cina, Beji, Depok, Jawa Barat, 16424, Indonesia. e-mail: retno-pj@ui.ac.id

Keywords: tolerance to diversity, Chinese-Indonesian, young adults, ethnic-racial socialization, external

Indonesia is a multicultural country with diverse ethnicities as well as religions. With diverse ethnicities and religions in Indonesian people, the probability of conflicts’ rising between ethnic/religious majority and minority are great. Some historical event like “Kerusuhan 1998” (1998’s riots) in Jakarta, as well as the case of blasphemy by Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) in 2016, are some of the example of conflicts between ethnic majority and minority, especially to Chinese-Indonesian people, which based on the history, usually have been targeted.

These conflicts then lead to the decreasing number of tolerance to diversity in Indonesians’ society. Badan Pusat Statistik (The Central Bureau of Statistics) already recorded the decreased of tolerance on Statistics of Social Capital from 2012 to 2014; specifically on the indicators regarding activities of other ethnicities and religions. With this kind of fact, it is important to develop a strong foundation about what factors really influence tolerance, in order to prevent further deprivation on Indonesians’ tolerance to diversity.

Previous research has found some personal factors that influence the development of tolerance, such as empathy and personality factors, especially in young adults, who are having the strongest connection to tolerance. Nevertheless, researchers also suspected that tolerance is something that someone can learn and can be taught, especially if supported by certain circumstances. This study therefore is looking for further possibility of how external factors might influence tolerance to diversity as well.

Ethnic-racial socialization is the transmission of information, values, and perspective about race and ethnicities from parents to children. It specifically has been found as a protective factor that could buffer the negative effects of social pressure that might have been experienced by ethnic minority kids. Therefore, this study hypothesize that ethnic-racial socialization from parents also could influence positively the development of tolerance in Chinese-Indonesian young adults (N = 208, age 19 – 30 years old); as one example of ethnic minority in Indonesia who had a long time history being treated differently.

Participants reported their tolerance using Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale Short Form / M-GUDS-S (Fuertes, Miville, Mohr, Sedlacek, Gretchen, 2000; α = .662). This scale is measuring the Universality-Diversity Orientation (UDO), which describes tolerance better because each factors in UDO is connected to each other, and not stand as separate factors.

Participants also describe their parents’ socialization using Asian-American Parental Racial-Ethnic Socialization Scale (AAPRESS; Juang, Shen, Kim, & Wang, 2016; α = .901) that has been adapted to Chinese-Indonesian context, and translated to Bahasa Indonesia. Participants also reported their empathy using the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (Wang, Davidson, Yakushko, Savoy, Tan, Bleier, 2003; α = .883), as well as their personality using M5-50 (McCord, 2002; α = .698).

Participants’ data were collected online through Google Form, and the link was sent through several social medias. The hypothesis model then analyze using structural equation model (SEM); tolerance as the dependent variable, together with the ethnocultural empathy, personality, and ethnic-racial socialization, as the independent variable.

The hypothesis testing showed a significant relationship between tolerance and ethnic-racial socialization, but in a negative way (β = - 0.3; t (207) = - 3.66; p = 0.00). That means if a Chinese-Indonesian young adults received much ethnic-racial socialization from the parents during childhood, then his/her tolerance of diversity would be low. On the other hand, if the person received only a little socialization from his/her parents during childhood, then the tolerance would be high in the young adults age.

This finding is not as hypothesized, suggests another possibilities of other external factors that might influence the tolerance, rather than the influence of parents only; especially for the population of Chinese-Indonesian young adults. As the results of this study showed the negative relationship between tolerance and ethnic-racial socialization, therefore more studies are needed to seek another external factors, such as how the contact with diverse environment might also influence tolerance of Chinese-Indonesian young adults. Further investigation might help us to see deeper on how this population develop their tolerance to diversity.