N. Keita Christophe

McGill University | McGill

Ethnic-racial pride (positive feelings about one’s ethnic-racial group) is critical to healthy identity development across the lifespan. Research on ethnic-racial pride development among Latinx populations has focused exclusively on youth, without regard to pride development amongst parents and relations between pride within family units. Using mul...

In the last decade, there has been a surge in research examining racial-ethnic socialization (RES) in Latinx families building upon a research base that has established Latinx culturally resilient processes. Our chapter brings together these lines of work and presents a model for understanding the protective processes of RES in Latinx families. We...

Multiracial individuals are exposed to many forms of interpersonal racial discrimination, including general discrimination against their monoracial groups and discrimination against being multiracial. Because their families include members of different racial groups, multiracial people may also be exposed to various forms of discrimination from wit...

Objectives: Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) has important implications for individual psychosocial functioning as well as familial processes. For example, parents' ERI can shape children's developmental contexts through ethnic-racial socialization (ERS). Yet, existing research has tended to focus on the content or frequency of socialization messages...

A longitudinal study involving 455 Black young adults living in Canada investigated whether gender and autonomous motivation influenced the relationship between perceived racism threat and Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism, and whether BLM activism influenced life satisfaction over time. A moderated mediation analysis using PROCESS Macro Model 58 t...

This paper used cross‐lagged panel models to test the longitudinal interplay between maternal cultural socialization, peer ethnic‐racial discrimination, and ethnic‐racial pride across 5th to 11th grade among Mexican American youth (N = 674, Mage = 10.86; 72% born in the United States; 50% girls; Wave 1 collected 2006–2008). Maternal cultural social...

This chapter applies critical multiracial theory to advance the conceptualization and measurement of multiracial experiences and identity in developmental science. We aim to illustrate the complexity in how multiracials navigate, negotiate, and challenge (mono)racism and white supremacy in the United States. First, we investigate the historic exclu...

Critical action—defined as actions and behaviors aimed at disrupting systems of oppression—is a developmental asset for Black and Latinx youth. Over the past two decades, research on Black and Latinx youth’s critical action has proliferated, particularly with respect to the development of quantitative measures. In this chapter, we review current co...

The present study examined Multiracial emerging adults’ reports of up to two of their primary caregivers’ support of their Multiracial experiences, in addition to their reports on outcomes of their own feelings of Multiracial pride, challenges with racial identity, lack of family acceptance, and psychological distress. We then organized participant...

Multiracial-Black youth are one of the fastest-growing populations in the U.S., but little is known about their racialized developmental experiences. This study uses Latent Profile Analysis to identify patterns of parental racial socialization among Biracial Black-White adolescents and explore whether those profiles relate to demographics and racia...

Sexual minority (e.g., gay, lesbian, bisexual) people are at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors compared to their heterosexual peers. The interpersonal theory of suicide proposes that perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness are central to the desire to die, and both are associated with suicidal ideation in sexual minorit...

Objective: This study expands the literature on risk taking among college students by exploring anti-racism action as a form of positive risk taking. Participants: 346 Black (64%) and Latinx (36%) college students (85% female) ages 18-27 years (M = 18.75, SD = 1.31). Methods: Participants responded to questionnaires on anti-racism action, health-ri...

The field of psychology is coming toward a critical juncture; scholars are increasingly recognizing that race, ethnicity, and culture play important roles in their fields of study, but do not always have the language to integrate race and culture into their own work. Furthermore, common conceptions of race may systematically exclude those from mult...

Racial-ethnic socialization is a process where parents pass beliefs and behaviors to their children, including critical reflections on race and racism. Currently, it is not well known across racial/ethnic groups in the U.S how parents’ socialization competency (confidence, skills, and stress surrounding the delivery of racial-ethnic socialization)...

This study aims to better understand how racially/ethnically minoritized youth exhibit adaptive psychological functioning (less anxiety) and health behaviors (better sleep and less binge drinking) in the context of discrimination, ethnic-racial identity and coping. Among 364 minoritized emerging adults (Mage = 18.79, 85.2% female), we utilized high...

This paper tested whether shift-&-persist coping, or coping involving the combination of cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and optimism (Chen & Miller, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012, 7, 135), attenuates the risks presented by economic hardship and ethnic discrimination for change in depressive symptoms from 9th to 12th grade, in a sa...

As the research on familism values, or cultural values relating to support, interconnectedness, and obligations has blossomed, scholars are increasingly interested in the applicability and impact of familism values across diverse racial/ethnic youth. However, existing measures of familism tend to be long, posing potential practicality issues and ha...

The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of familial support of Multiracial individuals’ unique racial experiences to advance the field’s understanding of how familial processes influence Multiracial development. A sample of 422 Multiracial college students (77.7% female, M age = 20.05) from three different regions of the United States co...

Critical civic engagement (CCE) refers to interpersonal, community, and political actions to combat and cope with racial inequity. While discrimination and identity are well-known drivers of civic engagement, it is less well-known how parental preparation for bias socialization, which teaches Black youth how to cope with unequal social systems, wor...

Familism is a central cultural value endorsed by Latinx youth that has been identified as a promotive factor for their psychological wellbeing (Stein et al., 2014). However, in the context of familial stress, familism values may instead serve to increase risk, but this research has not been extended to consider parental alcohol use as a risk contex...

Critical consciousness is one way in which minoritized youth can resist oppression and move towards sociopolitical change, but little is known about how it evolves alongside developmentally-relevant assets such as ethnic-racial identity. Among 367 ethnically-racially diverse youth (Mage = 15.85, 68.9% female, 85% U.S-born), links between multiple i...

Objectives: Based on the conceptual overlap between shift-&-persist (S&P) and culturally based strategies (critical civic engagement [CCE] and spiritually based coping), this study tests whether associations between these three previously disparate strategies are attributable to the existence of a higher-order coping construct: culturally informed...

Life course theorists posit that sensitive periods exist during life span development where risk and protective factors may be particularly predictive of psychological outcomes relative to other periods in life. While there have been between-cohort studies trying to examine differences in discrimination and depressive symptoms, these studies have n...

This study investigated the main and interactive effects of identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride on psychological distress in Biracial emerging adults. Additionally, we examined whether these associations may differ by Biracial sub-group (e.g., black–white, Asian–white, Latinx–white, and minority–minority) given their un...

Objectives: Little is understood about how Multiracial individuals are socialized around race and ethnicity, and how these socialization messages are related to ethnic-racial identity development. Method: This study utilizes a person-centered framework with a diverse sample of 286 Multiracial college students to examine the patterns of ethnic-ra...

Shift-&-persist is a coping strategy that has been shown to lead to positive health outcomes in low-SES youth but has not yet been examined with respect to psychological health. This study tests whether the shift-&-persist coping strategy works in tandem with ethnic-racial identity to protect against depressive symptoms in the face of two uncontrol...

Pocos estudios han examinado los procesos de identidad nacional en las madres inmigrantes Latinas y sus hijos. Este estudio utiliza un análisis centrado en el individuo APPROACH para examinar cómo se relacionan los perfiles de identidad estadounidense y étnico-racial (Latinxs) con los valores culturales, la orientación grupal y las prácticas de soc...

Life course models of the impact of discrimination on health and mental health outcomes posit that the pernicious effects of discrimination may not be immediate, but instead may become apparent at later stages in development. This study tests whether peer discrimination changes at particular transition points (i.e., transition to middle and high sc...

Structural inequalities present throughout U.S. public schools are known to contribute to the significant achievement gaps that persist between lower-income students of color and their more financially secure, White peers. Because of this, community programs have been identified as places where typically underserved students can receive the support...