Article

“We’re All Equal” But Not Really: Perceptions of Racial Inequity Among Racial-Ethnic Minoritized Youth in the U.S

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Abstract

Racial-ethnic inequity is deeply entrenched in U.S. social systems, yet adolescents’ voices and understanding around inequity are not often directly examined. The current qualitative study uses focus group data from African American ( n = 21), Chinese- ( n = 17), Indian- ( n = 13), and Mexican- ( n = 17) origin adolescents ( M age = 12.93 years; SD = 1.23; 51% boys) to provide insight on how youth navigate their attitudes and beliefs about these issues. Using a racial-ethnic socialization lens, we explore proximal (e.g., parents, peers, teachers) and distal (e.g., media, society) ways in which adolescents come to understand racial-ethnic inequity. Three themes characterized adolescents’ discussions. School diversity, of peers and of thought, and messages around egalitarianism were two prominent influences on their perceptions. A third theme related to perceptions of social hierarchies, which appeared to be shaped by stereotypes, peer interactions, and ideas about inequity itself. Emergent themes suggest that the school context is a particularly salient social setting that encompasses multiple sources of socialization (e.g., teachers, classmates, academics, climate), and parents, peers, and the media also play prominent roles.

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... Focus group data for the present study were drawn from the larger promoting dialogues project, a mixed method investigation that explored how families of adolescent youth from four racially-ethnically minoritized backgrounds (i.e., African American, Mexican-origin, Chinese-origin, and Indian-origin [South Asian]) engage in conversations about preparation for bias and discriminatory experiences. Details regarding the promoting dialogues project can be found elsewhere (Kiang et al., 2021). Data collection with Indian American participants took place in an emerging immigrant destination located in the southeastern U.S. from Fall 2018 to Spring 2019. ...
... The interview guide was created as a part of the larger promoting dialogues project (Kiang et al., 2021). The interview guide questions covered topics such as experiences of discrimination and/or racism, socialization messages, barriers, and facilitators of having such conversations. ...
... The codebook was used to code all transcripts from the promoting dialogues project, including the Indian American subset. More in-depth details related to the coding process for the larger project are discussed elsewhere (Kiang et al., 2021). ...
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Indian Americans are an under researched population within the racial-ethnic socialization (RES) literature, and very little is known about how Indian American immigrant families navigate these conversations. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study explored parent and youth perspectives of RES processes in Indian American families. A total of six focus groups were conducted with 13 adolescents (mean age = 13.6; 60% girls) and 15 parents (mean age = 42.0; 62% mothers). Inductive thematic analysis of focus group transcripts revealed that cultural socialization and the lack of preparation for bias were the most salient RES messages Indian American parents provided their adolescents. Parents’ messages related to cultural socialization heavily centered on cultural and ethnic pride. These pride messages were often consistent with the model minority stereotype. Despite many parents and adolescents reporting experiencing discrimination, parents typically refrained from providing preparation for bias messages. Parents’ perspectives also revealed a shared difficulty in discerning when an event was racially discriminatory. When parents did provide coping with discrimination messages, these messages most often encouraged adolescents to simply “avoid it” or “ignore it.” Consequently, adolescents reported feeling ill-prepared to face racial-ethnic discrimination, indicating an unmet need for timely and helpful preparation for bias messages.
... Flere internasjonale studier har undersøkt på hvilke måter en etnisk mangfoldig elevsammensetning kan forme elevers holdninger til etniske minoriteter (se f.eks. Bubritzki et al., 2018;Kiang et al., 2021;Knifsend et al., 2017;Stark et al., 2015). Kiang og kolleger (2021) har gjennomført fokusgruppeintervjuer med amerikanske skoleungdommer med ulike minoritetsbakgrunner omkring temaene «rase» og etnisitet og identitetsformasjon. ...
... 13, 23). Til tross for at ungdommene løftet frem flere positive sider ved å ha en mangfoldig elevgruppe på skolen, fant de imidlertid også at konflikter eller forskjeller mellom ulike minoritetsgrupper kunne føre til diskriminerende eller andregjørende opplevelser i tillegg til de som de opplevde fra majoritetselever (Kiang et al., 2021). I en svensk kvantitativ studie har Bohman og Miklikowska (2021) gjort longitudinelle analyser av effekten av etnisk mangfoldige klasser på intergrupperelasjoner. ...
Thesis
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In this thesis I present and discuss students’ narratives about prejudice in school. Schools are, by law and through educational policy, responsible for working against and preventing prejudice. This is a challenging and complex task. Research from the school context has found that teachers find it challenging to identify, interpret and handle situations where they believe students express or make use of prejudice(s) and negative stereotypes. Research has also shown that students experience various forms of exclusion based on their presumed minority belonging, both through interactions with students and teachers, as well as encounters with teaching materials or instructional content. There is not, however, much research focusing on what students understand as prejudice(s), and in what ways students experience prejudice and negative stereotypes in school. Nor how student composition may play into and shape students’ understandings of prejudice(s). Increased knowledge about prejudice from a student perspective can be an important contribution to schools’ work with preventing prejudice and social exclusion. The thesis springs out from a desire to gain insight into students’ experiences with and understandings of prejudice, to contribute with knowledge that can provide a broader basis for expanding teachers’ competence in terms of prejudice prevention in school. Additionally, it provides new perspectives in terms of understanding and interpreting students’ experiences with and understandings of prejudice in school. I have conducted observations in three high schools and interviewed 28 students about their experiences with and understandings of prejudice in school. The students’ narratives show that term «prejudice» itself, does not necessarily appear as relevant for the students. They mainly talked about social practices and specific teaching situations and topics which they, in different ways and to various degrees, associated with the term prejudice. The students’ associations refer to both social dynamics and social categories, such as gender, religion, and skin color, where power relations, social relations, privilege, and exposedness, are in motion in various ways, and affect how students understand different situations and practices. In the thesis, I draw on theoretical perspectives on prejudice and stereotypes, social psychological perspectives on groups and social identity, as well as perspectives on power relations and intersectionality. This framework provides a basis from which to unpack complex narratives about prejudice in school and opens for exploration and discussion of how power relations and relational aspects are manifested or expressed, and how they can be seen in connection with students’ narratives about, and associations to, prejudice. The thesis comprises three scientific articles. In the first article, I investigate boys’ use of disparaging humor and slurs among friends. They describe their use of humor as a central part of being mates, and as a way of signaling camaraderie and relational closeness. The boys do not consider their use of humor as prejudicial, however, they express that the humor they use is rarely well thought through and that they cannot be completely sure of how it feels being on the receiving end of such humor. Central to the article’s discussions are humor and its positive functions both in groups and for individuals, one the one hand, and ambivalence and ambiguity tied to disparaging humor, on the other. In the second article, I discuss girls with Muslim backgrounds and their experiences with and understandings of learning about Islam in school. The article shows, like previous research, that Islam as a teaching topic can be experienced as especially challenging for Muslim students. My findings, however, indicate that religion and ethics class stand out as a space where religious boundaries can become more salient because of the topic itself, as well as the students’ reactions and responses in class. In the third article, Røthing and I discuss students’ narratives about diversity of opinion and discomfort in the classroom. We investigate how students’ experiences of discomfort in specific situations can be understood, considering student positions, context, and certain topics as especially «sticky» and challenging. Our analyses indicate that discomfort can stick to certain topics in ways that prevent critical reflection and learning through diverging opinions and disagreement, and that class dynamics and student composition can have great impact on how and/or whether diverse opinions are expressed. The students’ narratives reflect various burdens for students with Muslim backgrounds, and complex responses marked by emotions such as discomfort, fear, insecurity, and irritation, from the majority students. Empirically the thesis contributes with new knowledge by providing deeper insight into how students understand and experience prejudice in school. By questioning and shedding light on nuances in students’ narratives, the thesis contributes to a complex understanding of prejudice in school from a student perspective. Theoretically the thesis contributes with conceptualizations of students’ perceptions of and experiences with prejudice. Additionally, it contributes theoretically by combining theories that together opens for investigation and analysis of both individual, relational, structural, and contextual aspects of prejudice in school.
... For example, exposure to social injustices and inequities in broader media could be interpreted based on how it is talked about within school and peer circles. Especially for Asian American and Latinx adolescents, who might not be receiving messages related to social inequities within their households, they could heavily depend on school, peers, and media to help them navigate the racial hierarchy (Kiang et al., 2023). Furthermore, the exposure to such conversations might lead the adolescent to engage in critical reflection and critical action Watts et al., 2011), which could manifest as them taking on the role of the "deliverer" of racial socialization messages within the immigrant family context. ...
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Immigrants currently account for close to 14% of the United States’ population with one in four children growing up in an immigrant household. Yet, little is known about how immigrant parents and their adolescents dialogue about race and ethnicity within the evolving sociopolitical environment. Traditionally, the adolescents’ role in racial-ethnic socialization (RES) has been conceptualized as receivers of messages around race and ethnicity from their parents. However, differential rates at which adolescents and parents acculturate to the mainstream society could lead the adolescent to possess a more contemporary understanding of the social and racial landscape in the United States, thereby becoming the “deliverer” of messages on racial socialization rather being just a “receiver.” To inform our understanding of the potential process of how adolescents might be positioned to socialize their parents on race/ethnicity, this paper integrates key aspects of RES, racial-ethnic identity, and critical consciousness among Latinx and Asian immigrant adolescents to inform a conceptual model of adolescent-directed RES. The current conceptual model highlights several important avenues for future research to empirically assess individual and familial factors associated with adolescent-directed RES.
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We first review current literature on three ethnic–racial dynamics that are considered to be resources and stressors in the lives of ethnic-minority youth: ethnic–racial identity, socialization, and discrimination. Next, we propose that a more contextualized view of these ethnic–racial dynamics reveals that they are interdependent, inseparable, and mutually defining and that an ecological/transactional perspective on these ethnic–racial dynamics shifts researchers’ gaze from studying them as individual-level processes to studying the features of settings that produce them. We describe what is known about how identity, socialization, and discrimination occur in four microsystems—families, peers, schools, and neighborhoods—and argue that focusing on specific characteristics of these microsystems in which particular types of identity, socialization, and discrimination processes cooccur would be informative.
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Ever since G. Stanley Hall's (1904) seminal work a century ago, peer relationships have been regarded as a central feature of American adolescence. From the early years through the present, researchers have remained decidedly ambivalent about the effects of peers on American adolescents (Berndt, 1999), but few deny the significance of peer relationships and interactions during this stage of life. Do peers comprise a supportive social context that fosters identity and helps to socialize youth into adult roles, or do they form an arena for frivolous and delinquent activity, with patterns of interaction that undermine autonomy and self-esteem? In this chapter I overview some of the major features of peer relations that have occupied researchers' attention over the past 10 or 15 years. Insights emerging from their studies underscore the complexity of adolescent peer relations and clarify the conditions under which peer interactions foster healthy or unhealthy development.
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There is a large amount of research concerning the qualities of a good teacher. However, students' perception is rarely considered in both educational research and practice, although their daily school life is dominated by relationships with teachers. Semi-structured interviews with 86 7th and 8th graders from German secondary schools were conducted to examine how students perceive "good" and "bad" teachers based on their daily school experiences. A thematic analysis was used to extract themes and subthemes that describe the students' perception of "good" and "bad" teachers, and that might function as potential starting points to improve the teacher-student relationship. Interestingly, the qualities of bad teachers were not always opposed to those of good teachers. Overall, the findings show that students prioritize teachers' (inter)personal dimensions over their academic abilities in everyday classroom interactions when evaluating them as educators. The study discusses practical implications as well as future research direction.
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Adolescents form their identities by both accommodating (endorsing) and resisting (challenging) cultural stereotypes. Most research on Black males focuses on how they accommodate to negative stereotypes (e.g., delinquency, aggression), but a growing literature emphasizes how youth resist stereotypes. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed to examine patterns of resistance and accommodation at the intersection of racial and gender stereotypes among Black adolescent males (N = 21). Findings indicate that, overall, Black males resist racial stereotypes more readily than gender. Using an intersectionality lens, we found three paths of resistance: (a) the “accommodators” endorsed racial and gender stereotypes, (b) the “resisters” resisted both sets of stereotypes, and (c) the “exceptions” resisted racial stereotypes but accommodated to gender. Implications for the study of resistance, identity, and intersectionality are discussed.
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What is the relationship between white children’s interpretations of racial phenomena and dominant racial ideology? Do children passively adopt dominant racial ideological positions, the result of a “deep cultural conditioning” that happens to children? Do kids assertively challenge ideologies, rejecting adults’ authoritative worldviews through enacting child agency? Or is something more dialectically complex occurring that includes both reproduction and reinvention? Drawing on a subset of data from a two-year ethnographic study with white, affluent families, the author focuses on the relationship between children’s ideas about race and Bonilla-Silva’s four frames of colorblind ideology. The findings demonstrate that rather than adopting colorblind ideology in a prescriptive fashion, children engage in the dialectical process of interpretive reproduction whereby they simultaneously reproduce and rework colorblind ideology, including if, how, and when colorblind frames are used. Acknowledging the active role children play in their own racial socialization, this article complicates the theory of white habitus, arguing for greater recognition of children’s agency and innovation in this socialization process. Exploring this relationship is central to understanding how racism—the ideological sphere of the racialized social system—is reproduced and reworked across generations and how ideal whiteness is dynamic, adapting with the newest generation of whites as they move through different contexts.
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Background How best to serve a racially and ethnically diverse student body has been a topic of intensive theory development for the past 30 or 40 years. We have strong theoretical models regarding the need for and practice of multicultural education, the goals of which include both increased educational achievement for students of color and improved inter-group relations. Nevertheless, there are few places where one can find a broad examination of the empirical support for the influence of multicultural educational practice on either student outcomes or intergroup relations. Purpose In this article, I use James A. Banks's widely used conceptualization of the five components of multicultural educational practice—content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogies, and empowering school cultures—to examine the empirical evidence for the influence of each of these five different components on the academic outcomes of students of color and intergroup relations in schools. Conclusions The empirical research reveals that all five components of multicultural educational practice outlined by Banks to have a strong, positive impact on the educational outcomes of students of color and to improved intergroup relations, although research has been stronger in some areas (e.g., prejudice reduction and some equity pedagogies such as cooperative learning) than others (e.g., the specific effects of content integration and knowledge construction). The evidence suggests several additional conclusions: (1) Multicultural educational practice has benefit for the academic outcomes of all students, not just students of color. (2) Multicultural educational practice is most effective when implemented with careful attention to issues of race and power. (3) The academic and intergroup relations outcomes are linked, such that efforts designed to improve one improve the other. Implications for future research on the effects of multicultural educational practice on students, as well as teacher and administrator education programs, are discussed.
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Adolescents' perceptions of the prejudice in their social environments can factor into their developmental outcomes. The degree to which others in the environment perceive such prejudice—regardless of adolescents' own perceptions—also matters by shedding light on the contextual climate in which adolescents spend their daily lives. Drawing on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study revealed that school-wide perceptions of peer prejudice, which tap into the interpersonal climate of schools, appeared to be particularly risky for adolescents' academic achievement. In contrast, adolescents' own perceptions of peer prejudice at schools were associated with their feelings of alienation in school. Importantly, these patterns did not vary substantially by several markers of vulnerability to social stigmatization.
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This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of 81 research reports containing 122 intervention–control comparisons of structured programs to reduce prejudice or promote positive intergroup attitudes in children and adolescents. Overall, the analysis revealed a mean effect size of d = 0.30, indicating low to moderate intervention effects. From the great variety of different approaches, interventions based on direct contact experiences along with social-cognitive training programs designed to promote empathy and perspective taking showed the strongest effect sizes. In addition, effects varied according to the program participant's social status (higher effects for majority groups), the target out-group (lower effect sizes for ethnic vs. disabled and aged out-groups), and the type of outcome assessment (higher effects for cognitive vs. affective and behavioral measures of intergroup attitudes). The discussion considers several limitations including the lack of implementation and follow-up research as well as future direction of research on promoting intergroup relations.
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The focus group (FG) technique has been recently rediscovered by social scientists. It has become the subject of important methodological discussions and it is now considered a very innovative research method. However, such a widespread use of FG seems to have become a fashionable research technique. The impression is that FG is often adopted without any prior consideration of whether it really is the most suitable research technique for achieving the cognitive goals of the research. At the same time, it seems that the FG is often adopted only because it is considered an easy-to-organise and inexpensive technique. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the nature of the FG, analyse its advantages and disadvantages and identify the cognitive problems that it helps to face. In order to discuss these two points, I will focus on the two main characteristics that differentiate the FG from other techniques of information gathering in social research. Firstly, in FGs the informative source is a group. Secondly, the heuristic value of this technique lies in the kind of interaction that emerges during the debate. Several researchers have indicated these two aspects as the main characteristics of FG; but only few authors have translated these comments into serious epistemological and methodological knowledge, thus allowing the FG to give its best results.
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In this article, we examine the pervasive endorsement of racial color blindness—the belief that racial group membership should not be taken into account, or even noticed—as a strategy for managing diversity and intergroup relations. Despite research demonstrating the automatic perception of race (and thus the seeming improbability of actual color blindness), the color-blind approach to race has become increasingly prevalent in a variety of important domains, from education and business to law and societal discourse. An emerging research literature has revealed the many ways in which color blindness shapes individual, group, and institutional efforts to handle issues related to diversity. We offer an integrative assessment of this work, highlighting recent psychological investigations that have explored the emergence, practice, and implications of color blindness. We conclude by discussing alternative strategies for managing diversity and underscoring the importance of an approach that simultaneously accommodates the concerns of Whites and minorities.