EurocentricZEthnocentric Bias
Much of the existing research on interracial/ interethnic conflict is limited in that European Americans have been situated as the normative group. That is, the norms and rules of the European American group have been the focus of study while other racial and ethnic groups have been neglected (Ting- Toomey et al., 2000).
As such, the vast majority of research reviewed earlier situates interracial/interethnic conflict around the experiences of the dominant group (e.g., European American/African American conflict, European AmericanZLatino-Latina conflict, etc.). What is largely absent from the literature are studies that focus on intraracial and intraethnic conflict—or any studies that do not involve European Americans—as a legitimate area of study in its own right (Houston, 2002). The earlier mentioned study by Zhang et al. (2005) accomplishes this call for intraracial and intraethnic research by examining conflict between intergenerational Chinese dyads.Existing research is also limited in the ways in which the conflict styles of people of color are situated, both explicitly and implicitly, in comparison with European Americans (see, e.g., Orbe, 1995). Traditionally, European American conflict styles have been situated as the norm (Donahue, 1985); divergent styles were misinterpreted as strange, deviant, incompetent, and unproductive (see, e.g., descriptions from Kochman, 1981). More recently, several scholars have revealed how historical conceptualizations of conflict styles reflect Eurocentric values; the most notable examples involve the conflict strategies of Asian and Native Americans. Specifically, M. -S. Kim and Leung (2000) critiqued widely accepted conflict management styles that define avoidance style as reflecting a low concern for self and other. They argued that a Eurocentric bias failed to conceptualize the strategy, when enacted by Asians, as positively related to one’s desire to preserve relational harmony (high concern for self and other). Similar insights have been offered regarding the use of silence by Native Americans—not as avoidance but as a means to communicate uncertainty, ambiguity, or a respect for the unknown power of others (Braithwaite, 1990).