Legacies of Socialization: Investigating the Relationship Between Criminal Offending and Racial Socialization

• In Event: The Relationship Between Systemic Racism and Crime or Criminalization

Abstract

Racial socialization, the process of Black parents teaching their children about race, identity, and coping mechanisms to deal with discrimination, plays a large role in various aspects of an individual’s behavior, including criminal offending. Extant research identified four types of racial socialization, including cultural socialization, egalitarianism, preparation for bias, and promotion of mistrust, which theorists linked to protection or exacerbation of one’s criminal offending. Unnever and Gabbidon centered racial socialization within their Theory of African American Offending, specifically theorizing a negative relationship between cultural socialization, egalitarianism, and preparation for bias with criminal offending. Alternatively, they hypothesized negative relationships between promotion of mistrust and an overall absence of racial socialization with criminal offending. In addition to utilizing previously identified measures, this study introduces a unique measurement of racial socialization by analyzing a “dosage” effect, or assessing the relationship between the number of racial socialization types an individual received and their subsequent criminal offending. This study investigates these relationships using data from the Woodlawn Study, a longitudinal project which followed a Black first-grade community cohort from Chicago throughout the life course. Preliminary results indicate some support for the theory and multivariate analyses will be conducted to further the investigation into these relationships.

Author

• Erika Feeney, University of Maryland