Racial Discrimination, Racial Socialization, and Crime: Investigating Resilience Mechanisms

• In Event: Racial Discrimination and Crime

Abstract

Recent studies demonstrate that interpersonal racial discrimination is criminogenic. Given both the stubborn persistence of racial discrimination and the fact that most African Americans do not engage in crime, scholarly attention has turned to sources of resilience. Two recent studies have shown that racial socialization—a class of adaptive and protective practices used to promote functioning in a society stratified by race—provides resilience to the criminogenic effects of racial discrimination, but that it does so in gendered ways. This study builds on these findings in two ways. First, I explore how racial socialization reduces the criminogenic effects of racial discrimination. In doing so, I examine two potential resilience mechanisms: racial identity and spirituality/religious involvement. Second, I examine the role of sex/gender by investigating potential gender differences in the salience and functioning of these mechanisms to better understand how gender differences in racist experiences and sociocultural resources converge to shape developmental outcomes. These questions are explored using panel data from the FACHS, a longitudinal, multisite survey of roughly 700 African American families. The results are discussed in terms of elaborating a micro-level, developmental model of racial discrimination, racial socialization, and offending among African American youth.

Author

• Callie H. Burt, Arizona State University