Exploring the moderating role of racial socialization messages on buffering the relationship between peer discrimination and mental health outcomes: investigating differences between subgroups of Black adolescents

Abstract

Racial discrimination has been found to negatively affect the mental health of Black adolescents, but racial socialization messages may have the potential to mitigate some of these effects. Although there have been studies that have investigated the positive effects of racial socialization messages, few studies have explored how racial socialization messages moderate the relationship between peer racial discrimination and mental health outcomes among Black youth and no studies to date have explored how these relationships may differ among Black racial subgroups. The present study investigated and compared the racial socialization messages of 105 Black American adolescents and 204 Black second-generation adolescents. This study furthermore determined the roles that both assigned ethnic identity and racial socialization may play in moderating the relationship between peer discrimination and mental health outcomes that Black adolescents experience within the school setting. Findings showed that Black second-generation adolescents reported higher levels of both peer discrimination and racial socialization messages (i.e., cultural pride, racial barriers). Furthermore, racial socialization messages had a moderating effect on the relationship between peer discrimination and mental health outcomes whereas assigned ethnic identity did not.--Author's abstract