They Told Me How It Is: Racial Socialization and Parental Education among Black College Students

• In Event: 390 - Section on Race, Gender and Class Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Race, Gender, and Class: Navigating Higher Education

Abstract

The cultural process of racial socialization is an underexplored sociological phenomenon, especially in terms of social class differences in socialization patterns. Racial socialization might help us to better understand the experiences of black students in college as well as undergoing the mobility process more broadly. This paper asks the following research questions: How do black college freshmen make sense of what they recall their parents told them about race? Are there social class differences in parents’ socialization strategies and in how the students interpret them as strategies? If so, how might social class affect racial socialization? To answer these questions, qualitative interviews were conducted with students at an elite public university. Preliminary findings reveal that students with college educated parents reported consistent and strategic discussions about race from their parents. These discussions around cultural socialization connected blackness to academic and social achievement, instilling and reinforcing racial pride. Multiple generation students also reported being prepared for racial bias in a way that first generation students were not. Two main explanations for these class based differences are discussed: social isolation and integration, and interactional styles. Access to majority white spaces by the multiple generation respondents and their parents made race a central feature of their homes, whereas first generation students occupied more socially isolated all black spaces.

Author

• Kennedy Turner, University of Michigan