Evaluations of Bias-based Bullying of Im/migrant Youth in the U.S.: The Role of School Climate

• In Event: How Do Social-Contextual Factors Shape Youth’s Intergroup Attitudes towards Immigrants and Refugees across Four Countries?

Abstract

Bullying—while pervasive—disproportionately targets racial/ethnic minority youth (Cornell et al., 2015). Moreover, bias-based bullying (BB) has especially deleterious effects (Rosenthal et al., 2013). Furthermore, a significant uptick in BB targeting Muslim, Middle-Eastern, and Latinx immigrant youth occurred following the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign (SPLC, 2019). Bias-based social exclusion bullying, a subtler form of BB, is often viewed by others as more acceptable than overt (physical/verbal) discrimination, though just as harmful (Hodson et al., 2010).
Importantly, school climate is a critical context in which BB occurs. Schools where teachers and staff are perceived as equally and consistently supportive of students, report less bullying in general (Cornell et al., 2015). However, in schools with climates that are more accepting of bullying, students who are perceived as “foreigners” report higher rates of relational and verbal aggression (Atwal & Wang, 2019). Research, however, has yet to assess the relation between school climate and student judgments of BB, and specifically bias-based social exclusion bullying of ethnic minority migrant youth amidst this nationwide anti-immigrant attitudinal shift. We hypothesized that BB of Middle-Eastern and Latinx youth would be evaluated as more acceptable than an African-American recent migrant youth. It was also hypothesized that youth who attended schools where adults were perceived to be more supportive of all students and where bullying was not tolerated would be less accepting of BB overall. It was an open question if the evaluation of acceptability of BB based on the target ethnicity would remain under those optimal school conditions.
In the current study, 743 U.S. youth (Mage=13.90, SD=2.07; 50% girls) evaluated hypothetical vignettes in which White/European-American perpetrators socially excluded African-American, Middle-Eastern, or Latinx recent migrant targets. We ran a 2 (participant immigrant status: non-immigrant/immigrant (34%)) x 2 (participant race/ethnicity: White/European-American, ethnic/racial minority (52%)) x 3 (target ethnicity (TE): African-American, Middle-Eastern, Latinx) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last variable. The School Climate Bullying Survey (Cornell, 2011) was administered, including the Perceived Adult Support (PAS) and General Bullying scales, and the Immigrant-based Bullying scale (α’s 0.70-0.81), which included items for this study modified from the General Bullying scale that addressed specific reasons why immigrant youth in particular would be bullied (e.g., because of their accent, because they come from another country). These scales were entered as covariates.
Significant main effects of target ethnicity and perceived adult support emerged but were qualified by an interaction between the two (F(2,1472)=21.086***), indicating that when adult support in school was perceived as low, students viewed relational BB of Latinx targets as significantly less bad than African-American targets (p<0.001). Significant interactions emerged between target ethnicity and the other measures of school climate (Table 1) and will be discussed, as will the importance of school-based approaches to anti-bullying and whole-school anti-discrimination norms. We will also discuss the important role of school anti-discrimination norms in counteracting larger societal discriminatory norms helping to create safe schools and safe communities for all students.

Authors

• Alaina Brenick, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Abby Stepka, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maisha Seraj, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rui Wu, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mingjung Choi, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Arianna Trahiotis, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author