“They Just See Skin”: Maternal Appraisals of the “Racial Reckoning” on Children’s Futures

• In Event: The role of racial socialization and education in the development of anti-racism among diverse youth

Abstract

Following the widely publicized killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests in 2020, topics of race, racism and “racial reckoning” were ubiquitous in the United States. Indeed, nearly all families had at least some vicarious exposure to events through media. Parents’ appraisals of these events likely depended on various factors, including their racial/ethnic identity, racial and political ideologies, and previous history with violence or trauma. For some parents, events may have been threatening because they signaled potential danger in the environment for oneself or their child. For others, events provided the opportunity to convey certain values or engage in advocacy, while still other parents likely viewed these events as not relevant to their family. The goal of this study was to identity factors associated with different appraisals, and test whether the nature of appraisals predicted increased parental distress over a four-month period.
To assess appraisals, 262 mothers from diverse backgrounds with a previous mental health history provided written narratives about the perceived meaning of the 2020 events for their child’s future. Participants were recruited via Prolific in a longitudinal study on vulnerable parents during COVID. Narratives were collected in December 2020 and subject to text analysis for affective content using LIWC15 and thematic coding for perceived positive and negative implications. Examples of positive implications included: facilitated parent-child communication, increased multicultural awareness, and optimist about societal change. Examples of negative implications included: Child worry or fear, potential police harm toward child, and concern about White child being targeted or disadvantaged. Other measures assessed political beliefs, awareness of White privilege, institutional distrust, neighborhood diversity, lifetime exposure to violence, current and past PTSD.
Completed analysis indicate that appraisals from mothers of Black children included significantly fewer positive and more negative emotion words and more negative perceived implications than other mothers (see Figure 1). More negative appraisals predicted subsequent increases in PTSD symptoms only for Black mothers (i.e., a moderating effect of race/ethnicity on the relation between appraisals and subsequent PTSD symptom). In these analyses, negative and positive implications were tested overall (i.e., any positive or negative implication included). Additional analysis are examining predictors of specific types of perceived consequences among White mothers, including increased communication about values regarding race/ethnicity (positive consequence) and fear about child being “targeted” for Whiteness (negative consequence). Specifically, we will test whether these appraisals reflect both ideologies and individual life experiences (e.g., previous trauma), and whether perceiving these events as dangerous for your White child is predictive of increased subsequent distress.
Our findings provide longitudinal support of the link between vicarious racism exposure and PTSD symptoms among mothers of Black children, highlighting one potential form of racism-related stress for parents of color. Additional planned analysis will provide insight into how White parents understand nationally publicized racial events. Given the role of White mothers in shaping racial/ethnic socialization within their family and in influencing local efforts to address systemic racism (e.g., school curriculum), this line of inquiry has implications of anti-racist efforts across the United States.

Authors

• Destiny Printz Pereira, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Adenique Lisse, University of Connecticut

• Stephanie Milan, University of Connecticut