How Does Racial Context Matter?: Family Preparation-for-Bias Messages and Racial Coping Reported by Black Youth

Child Dev. 2020 Sep;91(5):1471-1490. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13332. Epub 2019 Oct 29.

Abstract

Black families and youth likely consider specific racial discriminatory situations in preparation-for-bias messages and racial coping responses. Our study investigated coping responses embedded in youth-reported Black families' preparation-for-bias messages and youths' proactive coping responses to specific racially discriminatory situations-teachers' negative expectations, store employees' hyper-monitoring and police harassment. Gender and racial discrimination experience differences were considered along with relations between messages and coping. Our investigation was guided by the integrated-developmental, transactional/ecological, intersectionality, and Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory theoretical frameworks. We conducted cluster analyses using data from 117 Black youth aged 13-14 to identify situation-specific family messages and youth coping responses. Families' messages and youths' responses varied in content and frequency based on the specific discriminatory situation, which suggests consideration of context.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adaptation, Psychological / physiology*
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Awareness / physiology
  • Black or African American / psychology*
  • Child
  • Family / ethnology
  • Family / psychology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Parent-Child Relations* / ethnology
  • Parenting* / ethnology
  • Parenting* / psychology
  • Race Relations
  • Racism / psychology*
  • Sex Characteristics
  • Social Environment
  • Social Identification