Structural Risk and Protective Resources as Predictors of Perceived Stress Among Black Adolescents: NSAL-A Representation

• In Event: Joint Roundtables: Social Psychology Section and Sociology of Emotions Section
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4 - Mental Health

Abstract

Perceived stress among Black adolescents is often framed as an individual psychological outcome, obscuring the structural conditions that produce chronic stress exposure. Drawing on sociological stress theory, racism-as-stressor frameworks, and Critical Race Theory, this study conceptualizes stress as a socially organized outcome rooted in racialized everyday experiences and spatially structured neighborhood conditions. Using nationally representative data from the National Survey of American Life–Adolescent Supplement (2001–2004), I examine whether everyday racial discrimination and perceived neighborhood safety predict perceived stress among Black adolescents, and whether self-worth and emotional support function as protective resources.

Hierarchical OLS regression models indicate that both everyday discrimination and lower neighborhood safety are independently associated with higher perceived stress, net of demographic, socioeconomic, and contextual controls. Self-worth and emotional support are associated with lower stress, though moderation analyses reveal selective buffering. Emotional support attenuates the association between neighborhood danger and stress, while neither emotional support nor self-worth buffers the stress impacts of discrimination. These findings underscore that perceived stress among Black adolescents is structurally produced through racialized social and spatial environments. Protective resources reduce, but do not eliminate, the effects of structural risk, highlighting the limits of resilience-based framings and the need for institutional and policy interventions that address racialized exposure to discrimination and neighborhood danger.

Author

• Silvino Avila Kibuta, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque