Poster #66 - The role of critical consciousness in white and Black parents’ racial socialization during summer 2020

• In Event: Poster Session 12

Abstract

Critical consciousness (CC) refers to the critical analysis of, and action against, oppressive social structures, such as structural racism (Freire, 1970). Parents’ CC has been theorized to facilitate race conversations that center how social structures, policies, and historical factors perpetuate inequities (Marchand et al., 2019), but few studies have investigated this link empirically. During summer 2020, parents’ CC was particularly relevant when George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a white police officer. For white parents, who often evade matters of race, this called many to grapple with racial inequality. For Black parents, Floyd’s murder reinforced the nation’s history of police brutality and anti-Black oppression. While navigating these events for themselves, parents also made decisions about whether to talk with their children about racism. The current analysis: 1) describes white and Black parents’ racial socialization as well as their attitudes and concerns about having race discussions; and 2) investigates the association between parents’ CC and decisions to talk with their children about the racial events of summer 2020.

Participants included 748 parents (389 white parents; 359 Black parents) of 8-11-year-old children who completed an online survey between October 2020-January 2021. For Aim 1, parents answered whether (yes/no) they had discussed two racial events: the murder of George Floyd and the BLM movement. Parents also reported on their attitudes toward, and concerns about, race-related conversations. For Aim 2, we used the critical reflection subscale (α=.94; Diemer et al., 2017) and an adapted version of the critical action subscale that measured actions challenging racism (α=.62; yes/no). Two additional measures related to CC were included: parents’ anger towards injustice (α=.92; Flanagan et al., 2007) and parents’ own critical childhood racial socialization (e.g., “Did your parents talk to you about the importance of fighting for racial equality?”, α =.90; developed by the study team).

For Aim 1, we found the majority of white parents reported talking about George Floyd (71.7%) and BLM (76.1%); however, significantly more Black parents discussed George Floyd (80.5%) and BLM (84.7%) with their children. Further, white and Black parents differed on what they thought their children should know about racism as well as their concerns about race-related conversations (Table 1). For Aim 2, we ran four hierarchical logistic regression models (separated by parent race) predicting whether parents talked about George Floyd and BLM. For white parents, higher levels of critical reflection (only GF), anger towards injustice (only BLM), critical action (GF and BLM), and childhood racial socialization (GF and BLM) significantly increased the likelihood of talking about race events. For Black parents, higher levels of critical reflection (only GF), critical action (GF and BLM), and childhood racial socialization (GF and BLM) significantly predicted race conversations.

Findings from this study elucidate how white and Black parents’ experiences discussing racism during their childhood, as well as their current awareness and response to structural inequality, positively predict whether they choose to talk about politicized racial events with their children. We discuss contributions to both the CC and racial socialization literatures.

Authors

• Brandon Dull, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Northwestern University

• David Chae, Tulane School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine

• Andrew N Meltzoff, University of Washington