Status Projections and Ethnicity: A Comparison of Mexican American, Negro, and Anglo Youth

One of Max Weber's most important legacies to sociology was the development of a multifaceted theory of determinants of social honor, or as it is more commonly called today, social rank (Gerth and Mills, 1958). His conceptual distinction between rank evolving from class (economic) position and status groups (ethnicity) is still viable. In our society two of the major determinants of social rank are economic class and ethnic identity. According to Shibutani and Kwan (1965), "the underprivileged in a system of ethnic stratification are usually referred to as minority groups." In those areas where ethnic stratification is institutionalized, membership in an ethnic minority group tends to severely restrict vertical social mobility. In the stratification systems operative in Texas, there are two large well-institutionalized ethnic minority groups, Negro in the eastern counties and Mexican American in the south and southwestern regions of the state. What is more, there is ample statistical evidence to indicate that there is a very high correlation between membership in these two ethnic minority groups and placement in low levels of socioeconomic status (Upham and Lever, 1966; Upham and Wright, 1966).

It seems reasonable to assert that an awareness of limitations or impediments to vertical mobility would influence minority youth's perception of their future prospects for social attainment, causing him to set lower level goals than their counterparts in the middle-class mainstream of our society. Hyman Rodman (1963), restructuring evidence from early youth-aspiration studies, asserts as much in the development of his thesis on the "lower-class value stretch." Also J. Milton Yinger (1960) in an earlier article, utilizing much the same evidence, indicates that, "Because tensions set in motion by this blockage cannot be resolved by achievement of dominant values, such values are repressed, their importance denied, counter-values affirmed." This condition he labels a "contra-culture" and specifically refers to the Southern Negro as a case in point. Others arguing significant sub-cultural differences have maintained that lower-class youth lack ambition or have low aspirations (Rosen, 1959; Simmons, 1961; Rodman, 1963). On the other hand, Merton (1957) and others (Gordon, 1961; Hughes, 1965; Broom & Glenn, 1965; Dyckman, 1966) have proposed that maintenance of a high valuation on success and high level success goals are widely shared phenomena that cut widely across all segments of our society.



The purpose of this effort is to attempt to clarify some of these apparent theoretical or conceptual contradictions through a tri-ethnic Negro, Mexican American, and Anglo-comparison of adolescents' occupational and educational status projections, utilizing data from a recent study of Texas rural youth.

Some time ago Merton proposed that young people maintain a "frame of aspirational reference" composed of personal goals for status attainment as adults (Merton, 1957). This mental configuration provides them with a cognitive map that serves to guide anticipatory socialization into adult roles. Ralph Turner (1964) has presented firm documentation for this assertion.

Merton conceived of only one frame of status projections, that involving aspirations (desires). However, Stephenson (1957), among others, has demonstrated the utility of thinking in terms of two types of projections: in addition to aspirations, youth maintain a set of expectations (anticipations) which often differs from their desires. A conceptual scheme recently presented by Kuvlesky and Bealer (1966), begins with this analytical distinction between aspiration and expectation and provides additional distinctions. The divergence, if any, between the desired and anticipated status objects within a particular area of potential status attainment (that is, education) is labeled "anticipatory goal deflection" (Kuvlesky and Ohlendorf, 1968). While most past research has focused on projected status attainments, Kuvlesky and Bealer call attention to another analytical dimension of status projections which they call the "orientation element." This idea refers to the strength of orientation that a person maintains toward the status object involved in either aspiration or expectation. In reference to aspiration this would be the strength of desire associated with obtaining the status goal specified and is referred to as "intensity of aspiration" (Merton, 1957). The comparable element involved in expectation is labeled "certainty of expectation." This scheme has been reported in detail in a number of publications and papers, along with empirical evidence supporting the utility of the analytical distinctions involved (Kuvlesky and Ohlendorf, 1968; Ohlendorf and Kuvlesky, 1968; Juarez and Kuvlesky, 1968; Wright and Kuvlesky, 1968). The analysis of ethnic comparisons to be described here was structured in terms of the elements of status projections differentiated in the scheme described above.

An extensive review of the relevant research literature turned up only one investigation including a triethnic comparison involving adolescents' status projections. From a 1958 study, including Negro, White, and Puerto Rican youth residing in a "northern metropolis," Antonovosky (1967) reported data that indicates little difference by ethnicity for occupational and educational status projections of lower class youth. Our finding should serve as basis for testing the general validity of Antonovosky's observations.

Method

Subjects: Data for this analysis were obtained from high school sophomores attending school in two widely separated study areas that were purposively selected to be homogeneous on three criteria: (1) a proportionately high rate of ethnic minority members-either Negro or Mexican American; (2) a proportionately high rate of poverty; and (3) predominantly rural populations located in nonmetropolitan areas. During the Spring of 1966, Negro and Anglo youth enrolled in 23 public high schools located in three East Texas counties were interviewed; during the Spring of 1967, Mexican American youth enrolled in seven high schools located in four Texas counties either bordering on or in close proximity to the Mexican border were interviewed. No attempt was made to contact students who were absent on the day of the interviews. Usable data were available for analysis on 596 Mexican American, 197 Negro, and 287 Anglo boys and girls.

Analysis of information obtained from the respondents clearly indicates that all three ethnic groupings were generally from deprived circumstances. However, some marked ethnic differences were noted as follows:

1. Almost three-fourths of the Negro youth came from homes where the main breadwinner was either unemployed or employed as a low-skilled worker, as compared with about half the Mexican American youth and only a quarter of the Anglos.
    
2. Many more of the Negro and Mexican American youths' parents failed to complete high school, as compared with the Anglo youth.
    
3. Substantially more of the Negro youth were in families lacking a parent and having a "working" mother.

In summary, the Negro youth are the most disadvantaged and, in terms of normal SES indicators, the Anglo youth are considerably better off than either ethnic minority.

Instruments: Only a brief description of the indicators and measurements used in reference to the five dimensions of occupational orientation involved in our analysis will be provided here.

Two similarly worded open-end questions were used to elicit responses that would serve as indicators of occupational goals and expectations: the aspiration stimulus elicited the job the respondent would "desire most" as compared with the job he would "really expect" in the case of expectation. The responses to both of these questions were originally coded into nine categories based on a modification of the usual census scheme. In order to simplify our analysis in terms of status levels, these original measurements were collapsed into three broader level categories as follows:

1. High-"high" and "low professional" and '.'glamour";
    
2. Intermediate-"managerial," "clerical and sales," and "skilled";
    
3. Low-"operatives," "unskilled," and "housewife."

The stimulus used to obtain responses indicating educational aspirations and expectations were similar to those described above in reference to critical word elements distinguishing between the two types of projections-"desired" and "really expect." However, these questions were forced choice in nature-providing six alternatives ranging from "quit school right now" to "complete additional studies after graduating from a college or university." Again, the original measurement categories were collapsed into three more inclusive level categories as follows:

1. High-college graduation or more;
    
2. Intermediate-more than high school graduation but less than college graduation;
    
3. Low-terminate at graduation from high school or less.

Anticipatory deflection was determined by simply comparing the original measures of goal and expected status for each respondent. If these were in-congruent, anticipatory deflection was considered to exist. A further distinction was made on the basis of the nature of deflection: positive deflection was judged to exist if expectation had a higher rank than goal and negative deflection was assumed to exist if aspiration had the high rank order. An example of positive deflection from an occupational goal would be a youth desiring to be a carpenter but anticipating becoming a school teacher. An example of negative deflection from an educational goal would be a youth desiring to graduate from college but expecting to really terminate his formal education with graduation from high school.

The degree of certainty associated with the respondent's expected was ascertained through a question that instructed the respondent to rank order the importance of attainment of seven status goals, including his occupational and educational goal. The relative importance assigned to each goal is considered an indication of the measure of the relative intensity of desire for it. This forced-response type of instrument produced a range in scores from one to seven: the lower the score, the stronger the intensity of desire was judged to be for the occupational goal. For purposes of analysis these scores were grouped into three levels of intensity as follows: Strong (1-2); Intermediate (3-5); and Weak (6-7).

The degree of certainty associated with the respondent's expected attainments was ascertained through a forced-choice stimulus question instructing the respondent to select from five alternatives indicating how certain he felt about attaining his expectations: Very certain, Certain, Not very certain, Uncertain, and Very uncertain.