Beyond Black and White: The Impact of Ethnoracial Composition of Schools on Black Self-Esteem

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Race/Ethnicity, Happiness, and Self-esteem

Abstract

Previous research on African-American adolescent self-esteem has largely focused on intergroup disparities, and found conflicting results as to why African-American adolescents have higher levels of self-esteem, despite experiences with discrimination. While scholars suggest that racial social context matters for self-esteem, their explanation not only assumes racial segregation, but it relies upon a Black/White racial context. Research has yet to examine self-esteem within integrated social contexts, especially in consideration of the greater variation and diversity in the ethnoracial composition of schools and neighborhoods, and the growing Latinx and Asian populations in the United States. This project, using the National Longitudinal Survey of College Freshman (NLSF) will address the questions, What is the impact of school and neighborhood racial composition on self-esteem for black college freshmen, and how is that impact mediated by skin color. Using OLS regression, this study finds that skin color is a significant predictor of self-esteem for Black college students, and there is a differing impact of increasing Latinx and Asian populations on self-esteem for lighter-skin students in comparison to darker-skin students.

Author

• Hadiya Layla Jones, Princeton University