Poster #83 - Racial Regularties: Adolescents Learning about Race from Racialized Patterns

• In Event: Poster Session 13

Abstract

Though adolescents receive explicit messages about race from parents, teachers, and peers, they also learn about race from implicit patterns across opportunities, jobs, treatment and more. Hughes and Watford (2021) have labeled these repeated racialized patterns as racial regularities. Racial regularities are patterns between two or more racial groups, occurring in a setting, that persist over time. The current study used qualitative interviews from adolescents across middle school and high school to examine the types of racial regularities adolescents perceive and learn from.

Our data were drawn from the Early Adolescent Cohort study, a longitudinal mixed-methods study of diverse adolescents in New York City. The study examined adolescents’ experiences across the contexts of school, family, and neighborhood over time. We recruited adolescents from six New York City public schools to participate in classroom-administered surveys in the spring of their 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade academic years. We recruited two cohorts of 6th graders (2004, 2005). Details about the procedures for the study have been described elsewhere (Hughes et al., 2016). While recruiting the full sample, we also recruited an intensive subsample of 240 adolescents to participate in an intensive family study. Adolescents in the intensive sample also participated in in-depth interviews in 6th, 8th, and 11th grade. Their caregivers similarly participated in interviews when adolescents were in 6th, 8th, and 11th grade.

In the present study, we used interview data from adolescents in 6th, 8th, and 11th grade to focus on the racial patterns they observe in the many contexts they frequent. The sample includes 230 adolescents: 126 identified as a girl, 59 identified as African American, 55 identified as Chinese, 46 identified as Dominican, 13 identified as Puerto Rican, 54 identified as white, and 3 identified as another race. Students attended six different schools, but a majority (41%) attended a school categorized by segregated academically-tracked programs.

The majority of interviews contain descriptions of racial regularities, supporting the perception of racialized patterns as an important way youth learn about race. Most often, racial regularities occurred in school settings, but they also were observed in community change over time, traveling between neighborhoods, and differential treatment of groups in service establishments.

Authors

• Elizabeth Cox, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Diane L Hughes, New York University

• Sohini Das, New York University