Expressive Cool and Racial Differences in the Neighborhood Socialization of Male Adolescents Toward Education

• In Event: Exploring Suburban School Inequality

Abstract

Purpose
This study’s purpose is to assess how aspects of neighborhood collective socialization relate to male adolescents’ gender-role performance (i.e. expressive cool) and their education (i.e. achievement ideology and grades).

Theories
Researchers suggest that male adolescents enact expressive cool behaviors to get the attention that they miss at home (Ferguson, 2001), gain peer acceptance (Carter, 2003) or to secure the respect that they believe is generally denied to black males (Majors & Billson, 1993). These externalizing behaviors include a heightened importance of style, outfits, language, and walk, which Pattillo (1999) contends are “taken more seriously” by blacks than whites in middle class contexts (p. 119). Expressive cool also includes externalizing behaviors associated with racial and masculine identities (MacLeod, 1987; Chavous et al., 2003; Smalls et al., 2007). Rather than a static trait, adolescents may switch to an expressive code of conduct to gain advancement within particular contexts that reward it (Carter, 2003). While expressive cool may be linked to educational attitudes and performance, examinations of adolescent culture intimate that its effects on the two could appear paradoxical (MacLeod 1987, Mickelson, 1990; O’Connor, 1997). Finally, expressive cool is informed by adolescents’ neighborhood collective socialization, or the influence adults have on neighboring youth’s gender-role performance (Jencks & Mayer, 1990).

Methods
Methods used in this study include factor analysis to create measures, and Hierarchical Linear Modeling to examine relationships between adolescents’ expressive cool, neighborhood dimensions and education outcomes. Questions guiding the analysis include, 1) does expressive cool account for racial differences in adolescents’ achievement ideology rejection (AIR) and grades (GPA), 2) is there an “attitude-achievement paradox” where adolescents’ expressive cool is more strongly related to their educational attitudes (AIR) than behavior (GPA), and 3) does neighborhood collective socialization (NCS) account for racial differences in youths’ AIR and GPA? These questions are explored for the full sample and for black and white youth separately.

Data
This study’s data come from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study, a longitudinal survey of 1,482 youths of Prince George’s County. The county’s near-urban location, and predominantly black and middle-class composition make it ideal for assessing Pattillo’s hypotheses about racial differences in expressive culture. The elimination of underrepresented ethnic groups, females, and residential movers resulted in a study sample of 406 (260 black, 146 white) 11th grade males.

Results/conclusions
Key analysis findings include, 1) an apparent attitude-achievement paradox where expressive cool related to AIR but not GPA in all samples; 2) significant masculinity effects for blacks that lowered AIR levels. Masculinity’s effect on GPA—and the black GPA disadvantage too--became insignificant once NCS was considered; 3) increased AIR for blacks related to personality switching; and 4) the largest study increases in AIR extend from neighborhood joblessness and residency near DC for whites.

Significance
The study’s significance extends from its consideration of socialization processes within multiple units of analysis, its results which challenge assumptions about racial differences among young males, and its advancement of knowledge within a critically important yet underserved area of research.

Author

• Odis Johnson, Washington University in St. Louis