Traditional Empirical Approaches
One limitation of the existing research on interracial/interethnic conflict is that the vast majority of research is situated within a traditional empirical methodological framework that addresses race as a demographic variable (Orbe & Allen, 2008).
While existing quantitative work has generated an important foundation for culture and communication scholarship, it lacks the ability to provide descriptive insight into how individuals experience interracial/interethnic conflict. It also has failed to adequately capture the intricate ways in which interracial/interethnic conflict episodes are influenced by multiple factors simultaneously (Houston, 2002). Consequently, contemporary scholars have called for more methodological diversity in research exploring the dynamics of race, ethnicity, and communication. Without question, qualitative research, such as that described by Hecht et al. (2003), can collaboratively advance existing conceptual understandings of interracial/interethnic conflict.Earlier we discussed the value of recent research by Ting-Toomey et al. (2000), who sought to explore the saliency of factors beyond racial/ethnic identity. While they found correlations between larger national (U.S.) identity and conflict styles among different cultural groups (an important contribution to the study of interracial/interethnic conflict), the study remains limited because it fails to consider the differences among these cultural groups. In this regard, racial differences (e.g., European American and Asian American) are privileged over ethnic differences (e.g., Italian Americans, German Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans, Asian Indians). As established by Miyahara, Kim, Shin, and Yoon (1998), assumptions that all members of one racial group (e.g., Asian) share common cultural values (e.g., individual- ism/collectivism) are problematic. Additional empirical research suggests that using selfconstruals (Markus & Wurf, 1987) offers a better lens for predicting racial/ethnic conflict styles (Oetzel, 1998). However, we argue that even this line of research is limited because it fails to capture the complex essence of racial/ ethnic conflict styles (see also M. -S. Kim & Leung, 2000).