M(ai)cro Race Conversations: How Black and White Parents Talk with Children about “Black Lives Matter”

• In Event: Racial Socialization in the Sociopolitical Era of “Black Lives Matter”: Parents, Schools, and Social Media

Abstract

The 2020 murders of multiple unarmed Black individuals, including Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, galvanized global support of #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) and ignited the racial justice movement of our generation. During this period, parents were called on to address and contextualize these racial events with their children (e.g., Sesame Workshop, 2020). A few recent psychological studies have explored how parents addressed racial equality and differences with their children during 2020 (Abaied et al., 2022; Abaied and Perry, 2021; Sullivan et al., 2021). Extending prior research, the present presentation uses the m(ai)cro model of development (Rogers, Niwa, et al., 2021) to center the sociopolitical event of BLM as a lens for examining racial justice in parent-child conversations. We focus on conversations with 8–11-year-old children as this is a developmental period when children are developing their own racial identities and belief systems and learning to question societal norms (Rogers et al., 2021). Furthermore, we focus on Black and white parents, not because other groups are not implicated, but because BLM is directly about Black people and the longstanding racial binary that positions whiteness as superior and blackness as inferior positions these groups as anchors that tether the racial hierarchy in place (Molina, 2014; Rogers, Niwa, et al., 2021).

Our sample included Black (n=359) and white (n=389) parents of 8–11-year-old children who completed an online survey between October 2020 and January 2021. Parents reported on whether they had discussed BLM with their child, and if so, described their conversations or explained why not. Pairs of trained research assistants coded qualitative responses by identifying themes, creating and refining a coding system, conducting independent coding, and performing reliability coding. This presentation focuses on whether Black and white parents differ in their approaches to discussing BLM with their children.

Black parents (84.68%) were significantly more likely than white parents (76.09%) to have addressed BLM with their child. Amongst parents who had discussed BLM with their child, the most common themes were acknowledging racial inequity (32.83%; “I told him people are protesting to help make sure that black lives are treated fairly and that we get equal rights with others”), affirming the importance of Black lives (23.50%; “…We need to educate them to show them that black lives do in fact matter”), and use of emphasizing equality without acknowledging injustice (14.67%; “…God created us equally”). Black parents were significantly more likely than white parents to acknowledge inequity (p<.001) and affirm the importance of Black lives (p<.001). In contrast, white parents were significantly more likely than Black parents to discuss equality while avoiding injustice (p<.001).

Overall, parents addressed BLM at a higher rate than expected based on prior research, and both the incidence and content of conversations varied based on race. Exploratory analyses testing the role of child age, parent education, and racial diversity of census tract will be reviewed. Discussion will focus on implications for the racial socialization literature and the development of a sociopolitical identity in middle childhood.

Authors

• Katharine Scott, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Finn Wintz

• Sarah Eisenman

• Chiara Dorsi

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

• Andrew N Meltzoff, University of Washington

• Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Northwestern University