Identity,community, and prejudice

A new and urgent developmental task of adulthood is to learn to live with those who differ from oneself along dimensions of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, social class, and nationality. In order to promote discussion aimed toward achieving a better understanding of issues of multiculturalism and diversity, a conceptual framework is proposed. The conceptual framework is based on distinctions in how we define ourselves and our relationship to others and on contrasting perspectives on our intentions with respect to others. The conceptual framework is then used as a tool for setting forth a number of issues of multiculturalism and diversity. The article concludes with a discussion of the dynamics within the conceptual framework, including intraindividual and interindividual variation in adulthood.