Skin Color and Racial Socialization among African American College Students: A Descriptive Analysis

Abstract

Racial socialization of African American youth has been found to be a buffer for some of theracial discrimination they face as youth. It denotes the manner by which parents communicateboth unspoken and explicit messages or ideas about the significance of one’s nationality in abroader social context. Considering the important factor of skin color in the racial socializationof African American youth is needed as the world becomes increasingly multicultural. This studyprovides a descriptive analysis of the attitudes based on parental preferences towards skin colorof a sample of African American college students in a rural university in the Southern UnitedStates. Using Spearman’s Rho and MultiCrit framework, the analysis reveals a strong correlationbetween parental preferences for a certain skin color and participants’ skin preferences.Implications for social work and for the study of racial socialization are discussed.