(Re)Examining Racial Identity Attitude Differences Across Gender, Community Type, and Socioeconomic Status Among African American College Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between (a) racial identity attitudes and (b) individual and contextual variables. The authors used the Cross Racial Identity Scale, which is based on the expanded nigrescence model, to assess racial identity attitudes in a sample of African American college students attending a predominantly White university in the northeastern region of the United States. One-way multivariate analyses of variance revealed statistically significant differences in racial identity attitudes across gender and community type (i.e., suburban vs. urban), but not across socioeconomic status. Male students had higher internalization Afrocentric scores than did female students, whereas female students had higher internalization multicultural-inclusive scores than did male students. Students from suburban communities had higher pre-encounter assimilation and miseducation scores than did students from urban communities.