Poster #143 - How do “anti-racist” White parents engage in racial socialization?

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

White children display racial biases early in development (Raabe & Beelmann, 2011), and such biases have negative consequences for children of color (Trent et al., 2019). As such, researchers and laypeople alike have suggested that White parents should talk about race with their children, with the goal of encouraging positive racial attitudes. Despite the potential benefits of parent-child conversations about race, most studies have shown that most White parents do not have direct conversations about race with their children; they either avoid the topic entirely (Sullivan et al., 2021; Vittrup, 2018) or favor color-evasive conversations (Abaied & Perry, 2021; Pahlke et al., 2012). There are, however, White parents who have expressed significant interest in addressing race with their children, as indicated by their engagement in organizations focused on racial justice with children (e.g., EmbraceRace; Families for Justice); little is known about racial socialization amongst these parents. The current project investigated how White parents who have contact with organizations focused on children and race engage with their children about race. We recruited White parents (N=227) who were on the listserv to receive correspondence from EmbraceRace–a nonprofit organization focused on supporting caregivers in addressing race with their children. Parents completed an open-ended question assessing if they had engaged in race-related conversations with their child, as well as measures assessing their concern about children’s racial biases and motivation to regulate their children’s racial biases (Scott et al., 2022). We created a qualitative coding scheme of the themes in parents’ open-ended responses in accordance with recommended procedures for inductive thematic analyses (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Two trained coders who were unaware of hypotheses coded the open-ended responses. Qualitative analyses revealed 8 primary themes among parent responses: 1) not at all/very little race-related conversation (5%); 2) said “yes” but did not elaborate about conversations (1.7%); 3) addressed race through diverse books or toys (44.26%); 4) discussed diversity in their community (30.21%); 5) discussed modern racial injustice (60%); 6) discussed the history of race relations (37.45%); 7) communicated that skin color does not matter (15.74%); 8) discussed the value of differences/diversity (11.91%). Furthermore, parents were highly concerned about children’s biases (10-point Likert scale; M=9.26, SD=0.93) and highly motivated to regulate their children’s biases (9-point Likert scale; M=8.54, SD=0.61). Taken together, these results indicate that many parents who engage with organizations focused on children and race utilize empirically supported conversation approaches for addressing race-related issues with their children and are highly concerned about and motivated to regulate their children’s racial biases. Moreover, these findings suggest that concern about and motivation to address children’s racial biases may be related to the initiation of parent-child race-related conversations. Future work will involve investigating the relations among motivation, concern, and parent-child conversations, as well as examining whether these different types of conversation approaches are linked to relevant child outcomes in the race domain.

Authors

• Nicole Huth, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Katharine Scott, Northwestern University

• Eren Fukuda, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Patricia G. Devine, University of Wissonsin

• Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsin - Madison