Advice for Change? Analyzing Adults' Advice to Black and Latinx Youth on How to Respond to Racism

• In Event: 77.043 - Name the World: Teaching Students to Recognize and Resist Racial and Economic Inequity

Abstract

Objective: This paper explores the advice adolescents of color report hearing from adults at home and at school about how to respond to racism when they experience it directly and analyzes those messages.

Theoretical Framework: A large body of literature shows that parents of color in the United States send messages to their children on how to interact with a raced society (Hughes & Chen, 1997; Ward, 1997). This overarching practice referred to as racial socialization (Hughes, 2006) often entails parents directly preparing their children to handle bias or racism (Hughes, 2003). The documented goal of this preparation is to help children of color cope with racism. Consequently, preparation for bias practices correlate to a number of positive psychological outcomes (Constantine & Blackmon, 2002; Fischer & Shaw, 1999). However, even if someone draws on the best coping and resilience strategies available and successfully navigates a racist society, they ultimately still live in a racist society. To truly remove the burden that children of color experience as a result of racism, we should also offer adolescents advice that would position them to disrupt racist systems - or transform society (El-Amin, 2015).

Methods: This paper is drawn from a mixed methods study that investigated critical consciousness development in adolescents (n = 464) attending five public high schools. For that study, a sample of ~50 Black and Latinx youth were asked for three years: “What messages do you get from adults at your school or at home about how to handle racism or discrimination?” This question guides this papers investigation.

Findings: This paper finds that while adults offer adolescents salient and proven messages for how to navigate a racist society, they offer less clear advice to adolescents on how to transform (alter or dismantle) racist conditions. Initial data analysis shows that students interpreted the possibility of experiencing racism in two different ways: (1) interpersonally and (2) ideologically or structurally. In response to what they should do if they experience interpersonal racism, the most frequent advice adolescents reported receiving from adults were: Ignore It/Walk Away. When responding in terms of ideological or structural racism, adolescents reported hearing the following advice from adults: (1) Rise above it, (2) Prove them Wrong, and (3) Believe in yourself. While consistent with the existing racial socialization literature, missing from these messages sent by both families and adults in schools is any advice about how to engage racist experiences with strategies that have the potential to directly alter racist conditions. Also missing from the advice is nuance that responses can vary depending on the type of racism experienced and the context in which racism is experienced.

Significance: This paper contributes to the limited research on the advice adolescents receive from adults beyond their families about how to respond to racism and if/how that advice is differentiated based on the type of racism encountered. This paper also investigates to what extent parents of color prepare their children to play a role in dismantling racism.

Author

• Aaliyah El-Amin, Harvard University