Exploring Approaches to Studying Racialization of Children and Implications for Studying How Religious Institutions Racialize Children

• In Event: 4167 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Children & Youth Roundtable 3: Institutional Contexts

Abstract

Since churches are social institutions where many people are socialized, not only into religious norms, but into secular group norms, churches are a salient site to explore and observe children’s socialization processes. Specifically, the racially segregated nature of churches make them a unique site to explore children's racialization by way of the representations--or lack thereof--of race in the symbolic and material culture used to teach children. This paper compares and contrasts three theoretical frameworks for how children are racialized or socialized into a racialized society. Further, this paper discusses the ways in which these approaches to race socialization can assist in the study of how religious institutions racialize children.

Author

• Henry Zonio, University of Kentucky