Ethnic identity and civic attitudes in Latino and Caucasian youth

Abstract

Understanding youth's perceptions of their civic skills is important for enriching the lives of youth as well as society. This study explored the relationship between civic attitudes, leadership skills, and ethnic identity in Northwest Georgia schools using two measures, the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ) and the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM). In sharp contrast with Georgia school demographics, these schools are predominately Latino/a. Within our sample population (N=1000), we expected that Latino/a students would score higher on both measures compared with Caucasian students based on research, which suggests that a strong ethnic identity is related to social justice concerns. On the contrary, Caucasian students scored higher on 4/6 domains of the CASQ. On the MEIM, Latino/a students scored lower than Caucasian students on both subscales. However, Latino/a students scored significantly higher than Caucasian students on items relating to participation in cultural activities. Our results suggest that Caucasian students perceived community-wide action and leadership as their civic strengths, whereas Latino/a students reported civic action limited to their cultural group and expressed less confidence in leadership skills. This has implications for designing programs to promote civic engagement in youth. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to engendering civic learning and action.