Black Peers Research Articles

Perception Matters: The Influence of School Ethnic Racial Context on Ethnic Racial Identity Development for Black Adolescents.

In the current study, latent growth curve modeling is used to explore growth in ethnic-racial identity (ERI) commitment from 9th to 12th grade as a function of two aspects of the school ethnic-racial environment-perceived representation among peers and perceived discrimination from peers. The participants included 237 students that self-identified as African American (Mage = 14.7; 50% female). The results showed that perceiving more Black peers at school buffered the negative impact of racial discrimination from peers on ERI commitment. Further, the positive impact of perceived representation remained significant even after controlling for other markers of school ethnic-racial context including objective representation and school ethnic-racial diversity. The findings have implications for the environmental factors that support ERI development as well as how we study and conceptualize the influence of the school ethnic-racial environment.

“Imagine Growing Up Thinking the US is the Best Opportunity”: Immigrant Origin Youth of Color Supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement on Twitter

Immigrant origin youth are among the largest growing population in the United States of America (U.S.), and are important political agents for social change. This study examines how these youth engage in interracial solidarity, particularly in digital spaces. This study used reflexive thematic analysis to analyze the Twitter posts of 36 immigrant origin youth (ages 18–23; 62.5% women) from African/Afro-Latine, Latine, and Asian origins. We examined their posts about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and racial justice for Black Americans in 2020. We found that immigrant origin youths’ identities as racial-ethnic minorities informed their support of BLM. Further, we found racial differences in digital action such that African-origin youth focused on celebrating Blackness and calling in peers of all races, while non-African origin youth strategically amplified the work of U.S.-origin Black Americans and called in allyship in their racial-ethnic communities. Lastly, we found that African-origin youth viewed their positionality within the BLM movement differently compared to their U.S.-born Black peers due to their different relationship to chattel slavery and anti-Blackness. This study suggests that scholars and practitioners can support immigrant origin youths’ sociopolitical development by incorporating an intersectional analysis of inequities to promote collective identification and mass mobilization.

My Debt to Slavery

Abstract This autobiographical essay sets up a white middle-class young woman’s emergence as a rights-bearing, choice-making exemplar of sexual freedom and as a holder of intimate racial capital in the 1970s. At the same time, elites and various professional authorities were re-stamping this young woman’s Black peers with slavery- and Jim Crow–era tropes, as sexual criminals, bad choice-makers, producers of worthless and expensive children, not citizens. The essay considers the roles played by Roe v. Wade, the availability of contraception, “modern” midwifery services, the “sexual revolution,” welfare policy, public rhetoric, and public policies in locking in new iterations of racism and racial difference in the post–civil rights era, and the importance of female sexuality, pregnancy, and maternity in constructing arenas for deploying these developments.

Prejudice in children and extremism in adults: Intriguing mindset convergences

In the literature on children’s interpersonal and intergroup relations, it is inappropriate to say a child is ‘racist’ even in the evidence of the White child refusing to sit near a Black peer in class, or vice versa, or allying with friends to bully that same peer at school. In such cases, this child’s behavior has been referred to as out-group prejudice. Racial prejudice is bound to develop into any of the multiple types of extremism. This article explores the similarities between the adult extremist mindset and children’s prejudice. We present the conceptual constituents of both the extremist mindset and prejudice, and then discuss the convergences between the two; we later present the convergences in the determinants of both extremism and prejudice. The exploration of such convergences allows us to posit that prejudice in childhood may be a marker for extremism in adulthood. The recommendation is therefore to incite researchers to look more into the prejudiced mindset in childhood as a potential marker of the adult extremist mindset, and intervention policy makers to look into factors that buffer the further development of children’s prejudiced mindset into extremist polarized views about the world.

“This is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst”

Challenging traditionally-conceived narratives surrounding the dialectic of Apartheid, many Afrikaners became facilitators of in-state resistance alongside their black peers after becoming disillusioned with the South African regime’s foreign policy initiatives during the 1970s and 1980s. Afrikaner men were conscripted to fight in their country’s dirty wars in Rhodesia and Angola, which destabilized the regime’s legally-enshrined white privilege and fueled resistance expressed through musical movement. This idea connects to tactics used by the American government to assert racialist sovereignty as a tenet of stratifying South Africa’s domestic society through soft power. This paper demonstrates through semantic and musical deconstructions how and why Paul Simon’s “Graceland” project and the Voëlvry punk movement worked to dismantle tenets of racial governance at the grassroots level in South Africa. From the usage of the English language to the usage of Western instrumentation with “reclaimed” rhythm, these cases show a broader yet calculated transgression from mediatic expressions of Apartheid through moral entrepreneurship.

When they support us: Expectations for social support from outgroup members

ABSTRACT Our research examines perceptions of emotional support messages characterized by high verbal person-centeredness (VPC) when sent from an outgroup versus an ingroup member. We conducted two experiments in which White participants (N 1 = 206, N 2 = 166) imagined receiving a high VPC support message from a White (ingroup) or Black (outgroup) peer. Counter to our hypotheses drawn from expectancy violations theory, both studies revealed that participants perceived high VPC from a Black peer as more expected than high VPC from a White peer. In a highly salient intergroup context (Study 1), high VPC from the outgroup predicted greater perceived support effectiveness and support provider liking and trustworthiness. Implications of our findings for intergroup and supportive communication theory are discussed.

Microaggressions and the Complexities of Smartness in Kindergarten

ABSTRACT This study follows Mikah, an African American twice exceptional (2E-gifted and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]) kindergarten boy, in a U.S. classroom over the course of an academic semester, considering the research questions: How did Mikah (a pseudonym), age 5, experience microaggression in kindergarten? How were the microaggressions structured by the school/classroom and between home and school? A case study using ethnographic methods and critical discourse analysis methods was used. Data sources were collected and analyzed, including participant observation in the kindergarten classroom; interviews with teachers, children, parents, the coach, principal, and superintendent; children’s work samples; and classroom, school, and district media. The research findings showed how, across the year, Mikah switched his position from a victim of microaggressions by White people to the perpetrator of microaggressions toward Black peers and how Mikah’s White classroom teacher placed both Mikah and his father in perpetual need of disciplining because neither can completely avoid the “need” for her guidance on school-based normativity. The research indicated that racial microaggressions could spread and intensify when White teachers are not trained and committed to inclusive anti-racist approaches in the classroom, and to listening to Black children’s strengths and their parents’ wisdom.

Crisis and bias: Exploring ethnic prejudice among Chinese‐Dutch children before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractInterethnic prejudice in children has been studied mostly among White and Black populations in the United States, but less among East Asian populations and Europe. Given that interethnic prejudice is sensitive to populations and contexts, research on previously neglected groups is needed. In the current study, interethnic prejudice is examined among Chinese‐Dutch children aged 7–11 years (N = 80, 42 girls and 38 boys), focusing on their preference for and rejection of East Asian, White, Southwest Asian and North African, and Black peers. In addition, interethnic prejudice is examined in relation to the COVID‐19 pandemic, a global crisis that has led to anti‐Asian racism. The results revealed that Chinese‐Dutch children evaluated their ethnic ingroup and the White outgroup most positively, and the Black outgroup least positively. Moreover, stronger ingroup affinity (in terms of lower ingroup rejection) among Chinese‐Dutch children was found during than before the COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting the importance of situational influences on children's interethnic prejudice.

Parenting and White children's prosocial behaviors toward same‐race and other‐race peers: The moderating role of targeted moral emotions

AbstractObjectiveWe examined the associations among parenting, children's moral emotions, and children's prosocial behaviors toward Black peers and White peers.BackgroundParenting practices inform children's prosocial behaviors; however, the contextual and individual factors that predict children's differentiated prosocial behaviors have been understudied.MethodParticipants were 190 White children (5.4 to 8.91 years old, 45.8% female) and their primary parents. Parents reported parenting practices. Children's prosocial behaviors were assessed through distribution tasks; children's sympathy and empathic anger were observed in response to films that depicted injustice toward others.ResultsNurturant parenting positively predicted, whereas restrictive parenting negatively predicted, children's prosocial behaviors toward diverse others. Additionally, parenting predicted children's prosocial behaviors toward Black peers only when children expressed low levels of empathic anger toward victimized Black peers.ConclusionsOverall, nurturant parenting is positively related, and restrictive parenting is negatively related, to children's prosocial behaviors toward different targets. Children's target‐specific empathic anger moderated the relation of specific parenting practices to children's prosocial behaviors toward racial outgroup peers.ImplicationsWhite parents should understand the way that restrictive parenting might impede children's generosity toward diverse others and engage in nurturant parenting, especially when children do not naturally feel concerned about distressed outgroup members.

Lead teacher, assistant teacher, and peer racial/ethnic match and child outcomes for Black children enrolled in enhanced high-quality early care and education programs

Teacher-child racial match has been shown to benefit young Black children, but less is known about the degree to which the match is with the lead teacher or the assistant, and if the preschool racial context moderates this association. This study utilized existing data collected during the 2014–15 through 2018–19 school years in 20 high-quality preschools that enrolled children from households/families with low-income. Analyses of data from 2553 preschool-age Black children enrolled in 418 classrooms revealed that most Black children (82%) were enrolled in preschools with a majority (>=50%) of Black peers, and children in Black Majority preschools were more likely to experience teacher-child racial match with lead and assistant teachers. Racial match with lead and/or assistant teachers were associated with teacher demographic and beliefs differences but not differences in classroom instructional support or child outcomes. Black Majority preschool enrollment was also associated with more problem-behaviors but not other outcomes. However, within Black Majority schools, behavior concerns were reduced when the assistant teacher was a racial match and child initiative was higher when both the teachers were a match. In sum, the effect of teacher-child racial match for Black children should be considered jointly with co-occurring ecological contexts that typify the proximal effects of systemic racism like the preschool racial composition.

Skin Tone and the Health Returns to Higher Status.

This study addresses two questions. First, why do Black Americans exhibit worse health outcomes than White Americans even at higher levels of socioeconomic status (SES)? Second, are diminished health returns to higher status concentrated among Black Americans with darker skin color? Novel hypotheses are tested with biosocial panel data from Add Health, a nationally representative cohort of Black and White adolescents who have transitioned to adulthood. We find that White and light-skin Black respondents report improved health after achieving higher SES, on average, while their darker-skin Black peers report declining health. These patterns persist regardless of controls for adolescent health status and unmeasured between-person heterogeneity. Moreover, increased inflammation tied to unfair treatment and perceptions of lower status helps to account for patterns of diminished health returns for dark-skin Black groups. Our study is the first to document skin tone heterogeneity in diminished health returns and one of few studies to identify life course stress processes underlying such disparities. We consider additional processes that could be examined in future studies, as well as the broader health and policy implications of our findings.

Parents' valuing diversity and White children's prosociality toward White and Black peers

Although scholars are increasingly building empirical evidence that helps us understand racism, they have conducted surprisingly little research on White children's prosocial behavior toward historically marginalized people. 190 White, non-Hispanic children (M = 7.09 years, 54.2% boys) participated in the study. We examined whether both parents' reported values for racial diversity in their children's friendships and parents' and teachers' reports of children's cross-race friendships were related to children's sharing behaviors toward Black or White peers. We found that parents' valuing of diversity was positively related to older, but not younger, children's sharing behavior toward Black peers but not White peers. Further, for children of all age, parental diversity values were positively related to teachers' and parents' report of children's cross-race friendships. Our findings indicate that interventions to improve White children's positive behavior toward Black peers should include a focus on contexts that promote equity (i.e., parents' values and friendships).

Immigration Enforcement and Hispanic Youth Substance Use: Is Depression a Mediator?

Hispanic adolescents report earlier onset and higher substance use rates than their non-Hispanic White and Black peers. This study examines the associations between the immigration-related arrest of a family member and substance use among Hispanic early adolescents and explores the mediating role of depressive symptoms as the mechanism explaining the association. We apply a mediated multiple linear regression analysis on 661 Hispanic youth attending 7th grade in an urban school district in a south-central, new arrival state. We found that Hispanic early adolescents who experienced the immigration-related arrest of a family member reported significantly higher substance use than Hispanic youth who did not experience the arrest of a family member due to immigration enforcement. Moreover, we found this relationship to be fully mediated by depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that even though the majority of Hispanic youth in the U.S. are citizens, experiencing the immigration-related arrest of a family member is not uncommon and has critical implications for poor mental health and maladaptive coping behaviors.

White children's empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior toward White and Black children.

Relations among White (non-Latinx) children's empathy-related responding, prosocial behaviors, and racial attitudes toward White and Black peers were examined. In 2017, 190 (54% boys) White 5- to 9-year-old children (M=7.09 years, SD=0.94) watched a series of videos that depicted social rejection of either a White or Black child. Empathy-related responses, prosocial behaviors, and racial attitudes were measured using multiple methods. Results showed that younger children showed less facial concern toward Black than White peers and greater increases with age in concern and prosocial behaviors (sharing a desirable prize) for Black, compared to White, targets. Children's facial anger increased with age for White but not Black targets. The findings can extend our understanding children's anti-racism development.

Challenges to recruitment and retention of Black forensic pathologists

BackgroundInformal estimates place the number of practicing Black forensic pathologists (BFPs) in the United States (US) at somewhere between 35 and 45 which is less than 10% the estimated total of 600. The legacy of medical and institutional racism means that BFPs in the US encounter particular challenges to training and career development that their White peers do not have to contend with. MethodsA survey developed on SurveyMonkey in English, was distributed through social media networks and by direct email to known BFPs. Their responses to questions about the challenges they faced in training and as qualified specialists and factors that eased or facilitated their progress were collected and analyzed. FindingsBFPs report challenges to recruitment and retention that are like those faced by Black peers in other medical specialties. InterpretationWhile personal determination is an essential ingredient to career success as a BFP, there are certain structural barriers that must be eliminated to increase the total number of BFPs. The pipeline that produces BFPs must be nurtured, reimagined, and reinvigorated.

Black men doctoral scientists and engineers persisting: Peer support and racism in science and engineering

AbstractDrawing on racial battle fatigue as theoretical framing and critical race methodology, we offer the counterstories of 16 Black men doctoral scientists and engineers who relied on same race peer support to successfully persist in their science and engineering (S&E) doctoral programs. Our analysis of narratives and interviews yielded three themes that illustrate the men's engagement with Black peers and how racism influences the types of peer relationships they formed in their S&E doctoral programs. Further, we describe three types of same race peer relationships that support Black men as they pursue S&E doctoral degrees. We underscore the salience of racism and recommend expanding research in S&E by: (1) including the lived experiences of Black men scientists and engineers in the scholarly literature, and (2) highlighting the importance of same race peer networks as academic, emotional, and social structures for Black men persisting in S&E. Within, we offer implications for science education, higher education, and S&E researchers interested in creating supportive S&E environments for Black men.

"This kid looks like he has everything": 3- to 11-year-old children's concerns for fairness and social preferences when peers differ in social class and race.

This study investigated 3- to 11-year-old US children's (N=348) perceptions of access to resources, social group preferences, and resource distribution decisions and reasoning when hypothetical peers differed in social class (poor or rich) and race (Black or White). Data were collected in 2019. The sample reflected the region where data were collected in terms of gender (44% girls, 30% boys, 1% another identity) and race and ethnicity (46% White, 10% multiracial or multiethnic, 9% Black, 5% Latinx, 2% Asian, 3% another identity), and parents reported a higher average level of education than the regional average. Results revealed both marked age differences in children's perceptions, preferences, decisions, and reasoning and specific combinations of peer group memberships that were especially likely to receive preferential treatment. With age, children perceived that rich peers had greater access to resources than poor peers, but when both peers were poor, White peers were perceived to have more resources than Black peers. Social group preferences changed with age, from mixed social class and racial group preferences, to preferences for rich peers, to dislike for rich peers. Resource allocation decisions and reasoning reflected both social group and fairness concerns: young children distributed more to White peers especially if they were also rich, participants in middle childhood explicitly favored rich peers regardless of their race, and older children distributed more to poor peers and reasoned about either moral concerns for equity or social class stereotypes. Thus, overall, younger children's responses often reflected broader economic and racial inequalities while older children often sought to create more equity, though not always for moral reasons.

Examination of the Interaction between Parental Military-Status and Race among Non-Hispanic Black and Non-Hispanic White Adolescents with Overweight/Obesity.

Adolescent military-dependents experience distinct risk and protective factors, which may necessitate additional clinical considerations. In civilian youth, overweight/obesity is associated with eating, internalizing, and externalizing difficulties, with some studies reporting more difficulties among non-Hispanic White (vs. non-Hispanic Black) youth. It is unknown if these disparities exist among adolescent military-dependents, or between civilian and military-dependent youth. Non-Hispanic Black (187 civilian, 38 military-dependent) and non-Hispanic White (205 civilian, 84 military-dependent) adolescents with overweight/obesity (14.7 ± 1.6 years; 73.9% girls; body mass index adjusted for age and sex 1.9 ± 0.5) completed a disordered-eating interview; parents completed a measure assessing their child's internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Multiple linear regressions examined parental military-status as a moderator of the relationship of participant race with eating, internalizing, and externalizing difficulties. White civilian youth with overweight/obesity reported significantly greater disordered-eating than their Black peers (p < .001); there were no other significant racial differences. In all regressions, parental military-status significantly moderated the association between race and each dependent variable (ps < .047). Black military-dependents (vs. civilians) reported more disordered-eating and internalizing difficulties (ps = .01). White military-dependents (vs. civilians) reported fewer externalizing difficulties (p = .01). Black adolescent military-dependents with overweight/obesity may experience more eating and internalizing difficulties (vs. civilians), a pattern not observed among White participants. Future work should examine if being a military-dependent and a historically marginalized racial group member accounts for these findings. Such data may inform providers of youth with intersecting minority identities.

Race Inequity in School Attendance Across the Jim Crow South and Its Implications for Black-White Disparities in Trajectories of Cognitive Function Among Older Adults.

Although education is a key determinant of cognitive function, its role in determining Black-White disparities in cognitive function is unclear. This may be due, in part, to data limitations that have made it difficult to account for systemic educational inequities in the Jim Crow South experienced by older cohorts, including differences in the number of days Black students attended school compared to their White counterparts or Black peers in better-funded southern states. We determine if accounting for differential rates of school attendance across race, years, and states in the Jim Crow South better illuminates Black-White disparities in trajectories of cognitive function. We linked historical state-level data on school attendance from the 1919/1920 to 1953/1954 Biennial Surveys of Education to the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative, longitudinal study of U.S. adults older than age 50. We restricted our sample to Black and White older adults who attended school in the Jim Crow South and began primary school in/after 1919/1920 and completed primary/secondary school by 1953/1954 (n = 4,343). We used linear mixed models to estimate trajectories of total cognitive function, episodic memory, and working memory. Self-reported years of schooling explained 28%-33% of the Black-White disparity in level of cognitive function, episodic memory, and working memory. Duration of school, a measure that accounted for differential rates of school attendance, explained 41%-55% of the Black-White disparity in these outcomes. Our study highlights the importance of using a more refined measure of schooling for understanding the education-cognitive health relationship.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RACIAL SEGREGATION IN ERNEST JAMES GAINES’S A LESSON BEFORE DYING

In Ernest James Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, racial segregation between Blacks and Whites in the United States is more evident in the field of education and in prisons where schools, libraries, and jail cells are segregated because of white Americans’ opposition to their black peers’ conception of racial mixing extolled by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, to quote only two. This racial segregation shows not only the inferior position occupied by Blacks before their white fellows, but also the kind of lifestyle they have to live daily on the American soil. For, the novel reads that while white schools are well built and crammed with good pedagogical materials and teachers who teach all along the school period, black ones are, however, unfashionable with teachers deprived of good teaching materials and whose teaching period is very often shortened for the simple reason that their learners have to go and work for Whites’ interests on plantations. In prisons, for example, while white prisoners are fed daily and put into jail cells with seats and toilet papers, black prisoners find theirs deprived of these important artifacts.