“Free to be Me?”: Examining the Impact of School Contextual Factors on Adolescent Biracial Identification

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Middle school is an important time when biracial adolescents are reflecting and redefining the meaning of their racial and ethnic identities (Gaither et al., 2014). The biracial and multiethnic adolescent population continues to grow and is anticipated to triple by 2060 (Vespa et al., 2020). While research has identified that diversity in school ethnic composition and cross-ethnic friendships support racial identity development among monoracial students, less is known about contextual factors that influence biracial identification (Cheng & Klugman, 2010; Kramer et al., 2015). Evidence suggests that biracial adolescents are more racially fluid in their identification compared to their monoracial peers (Echols & Graham, 2018; Kelcholiver & Leslie, 2007).
School contextual factors such as peer racial climate or racial/ethnic representation at school may have strong implications for biracial identification. Thus, the current study aims to determine the school contextual factors that influence changes in biracial identification. It is hypothesized that negative peer racial climate, low quality friendships with other biracial youth, low subjective perception of racial/ethnic representation, and high reports of peer discrimination will influence the likelihood that biracial adolescents change their identification to monoracial.
Participants for the current study (N = 695; 56% female) were drawn from a larger longitudinal study on adolescent development in 26 ethnically diverse middle schools across California. Data utilized in this study were collected in the spring of seventh and eighth grade. Participants self-reported their experiences and perceptions of peer racial climate, quality of friendship between them and their biracial friends, perception of biracial representation at school, and peer discrimination. All participants’ ethnic identification was determined by self-report and was used to examine changes in biracial identification from 7th to 8th grade.
Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the influences that school context may have on changes in racial/ethnic identification in biracial youth (see Table 1) while controlling for participant sex. Preliminary analyses revealed that biracial adolescents who perceived a negative peer racial climate (B = -0.660, p < 0.05), low perception of biracial peer representation at school (B = -0.927, p < 0.01), but reported high friendship quality with biracial friends (B = 0.962, p < 0.01) had a greater likelihood of changing from a biracial to monoracial identification the following school year.
Consistent with our hypothesis, biracial kids were more likely to change if they reported a negative racial climate and low representation. Unexpectedly, high quality friendships between biracial youth predicted greater likelihood of changing to monoracial. Further analyses will probe into these unexpected findings to identify other contextual factors that predict the likelihood of a stable or fluid biracial identification. For example, it could be important that biracial youth and their friends match their ethnic identification or that their friends have high social status if they function as predictor of remaining biracial versus changing to monoracial. We will also explore how psychosocial outcomes such as social anxiety and overall school diversity may impact biracial identification stability or fluidity.

Authors

• Desiree Machiko Tanimura, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Sandra Graham, University of California, Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author