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Promoting Pride but Missing the Need for Preparation for Bias: Racial-Ethnic Socialization Among Indian American Families Living in the Southeast U.S.

Authors:
Puja Patel at University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Puja Patel
Michelle Y. Martin Romero at University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Michelle Y. Martin Romero
Gabriela L Stein at University of Texas at Austin
Gabriela L Stein
Vaishali Raval
Vaishali Raval
Vaishali Raval
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Abstract

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.
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Promoting Pride but Missing the Need for Preparation for Bias:
Racial-Ethnic Socialization Among Indian American Families
Living in the Southeast U.S.
Puja Patel
1
, Michelle Y. Martin Romero
1
, Gabriela Livas Stein
1
, and Vaishali Raval
2
1
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
2
Department of Psychology, Miami University
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’per-
spectives 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 adoles-
cents 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.
What is the public significance of this article?
Very little is known about how Indian American immigrant families navigate conversations around
racism and discrimination. Along with identifying several facets of racial-ethnic socialization (RES)
messages, the study highlights the discrepancy between possible reservations held by the parents and the
need for RES messages voiced by the adolescents. These findings call attention to the complexity and
importance of further studying RES within Indian American communities.
Keywords: racial-ethnic socialization, Indian American, model minority, preparation for bias
In the U.S., minoritized parents (i.e., parents experiencing mar-
ginalization because of historical and contemporary racism;
Gillborn, 2005) are faced with raising their youth in the context
of racism and discrimination. To help youth thrive in this context,
parents engage in racial-ethnic socialization (RES) whereby parents
provide their children with messages aimed at fostering a sense of
pride in their group as well as how to cope with racism and racial-
ethnic discrimination (Priest et al., 2014). These messages focus
both on the transmission of cultural messages due to shared lan-
guage, values, traditions, and norms within an ethnic group (i.e., a
group of people that share cultural heritage) as well as messages
about racialized experiences (i.e., discrimination and racism) due to
shared phenotypic characteristics (Hughes et al., 2006). As such, we
use the umbrella term RES to refer to both cultural messages and
messages about racialized experiences. Furthermore, because it is
difficult to disentangle racial and ethnic socialization messages in
the lived experiences of immigrant groups (Umaña-Taylor & Hill,
2020), throughout this article, we will refer to racial-ethnic messages
and racial-ethnic discrimination. Although minoritized families
around the globe engage in RES processes due to increased migra-
tion (Pew Research Center, 2020), the bulk of research on RES
processes has described the experiences of African American and
Black families in the U.S. leaving room for work describing these
processes in other groups (Priest et al., 2014).
For Asian American populations in the U.S., these conversations
are critical as a recent Pew study found that 39% of Asian adults in
the U.S. report racial-ethnic discrimination, but little is known about
how families prepare their youth to navigate these experiences
(Juang et al., 2017). As such, there has been increased attention
to Asian American parental RES processes. Yet, South Asian voices
(e.g., Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepal, Bhutan,
Maldives, and Afghanistan) are largely missing among extant
literature (Juang et al., 2017). This is surprising as Indian Americans
make up the second-largest Asian American group in the U.S.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This article was published Online First June 16, 2022.
Puja Patel https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8201-7743
Giant Steps Grant from University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Puja
Patel, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, 296 Eberhart Building, Greensboro, NC 27412, United
States. Email: pppatel2@uncg.edu
Asian American Journal of Psychology
© 2022 American Psychological Association 2023, Vol. 14, No. 3, 250–261
ISSN: 1948-1985 https://doi.org/10.1037/aap0000296
250
... Research concerning the ethnic-racial socialization of these two generational groups suggests that 1st-generation AIA parents place more emphasis on their children's connection with Indian culture and less emphasis on preparation for racism, encouraging a nonconfrontational approach to racism (Daga & Raval, 2018;Inman et al., 2015;Patel et al., 2023;Tummala-Narra et al., 2024). To maintain consistency and continuity within one's cultural heritage, both 1.5-and 2nd-generation AIAs are encouraged to engage in their cultural heritage and maintain Asian Indian values (e.g., close family times, engaging with people from their own communities) over White American values (e.g., independence, dating; Inman et al., 1999Inman et al., , 2001. ...
... Yet, research with AIAs demonstrates that this characterization diminishes the complexity of social position and identity based in racial ambiguity and coloniality, including the influence of immigration and acculturation dynamics across generations, within a xenophobic and racist society. For instance, the "model minority myth" has been equated to success for AIAs when, in fact, there is clear research evidence that this myth has created significant mental health issues and barriers to help for this community (Daga & Raval, 2018;Mudambi, 2019;Patel et al., 2023). What is considered as healthy adjustment needs to be contextualized at the intersection of access (privilege) and inequities (oppression) and with consideration of immigrant waves and generations. ...
... Clinicians should also explore how clients' ethnic-racial identity may have transformed across time and context. When considering the tendency to internalize the model minority stereotype and avoid discussions about race and racism within AIA communities, we encourage clinicians to inquire with their clients about early life and present-day experiences of pre-and postmigration contexts, including sociocultural socialization, stereotyping and racism (Daga & Raval, 2018;Inman et al., 2015;Patel et al., 2023;Tummala-Narra et al., 2024). Given the negative consequences of racism on health and identity, clinicians need to validate the negative effects of racism on clients' lives, especially as most people do not identify racism as a potential source of sustained emotional distress. ...
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... Thus, for this study we used a RES scale designed specifically for Asian American families that included more targeted assessment of cultural heritage maintenance (e.g., cooking Asian food, using "ethnic" media), preparation for bias, and experiences of race-based discrimination (Juang et al., 2016). The RES scale also includes an additional subscale that measures parents' minimization of race, a construct that has been documented with qualitative data (Patel et al., 2023;Wang et al., 2022;Young et al., 2021) but less systematically included in survey studies. ...
... While research examining links between experiences of racial discrimination and cultural maintenance is limited, a sample of immigrant Chinese mothers who experienced more racial discrimination was shown to pass along fewer cultural pride messages to their children (Hagelskamp & Hughes, 2014). Further evidence indicates that among a sample of immigrant Indian American parents with adolescents, parents primarily relied on cultural pride messages, regardless of prior experiences of racial discrimination (Patel et al., 2023). In sum, while the association between parents' experiences of racial discrimination and cultural maintenance practices is less clear, research suggests that more frequent experiences of racial discrimination may push parents to engage in conversations to raise awareness of discrimination with their children and minimize race less. ...
... Firstgeneration Asian American parents (i.e., immigrants) may have a strong sense of REI having lived in their heritage country and consequently engage in high levels of cultural heritage maintenance (Anderson et al., 2015;Atkin & Yoo, 2021). Whereas some studies found that first-generation parents have trouble recognizing racial discrimination in the United States and may avoid talking about racism with their children (Gonzalez et al., 2022;Patel et al., 2023), other evidence suggests that parents may transmit more preparation for bias messages to their children after they experience racial discrimination (e.g., Hagelskamp & Hughes, 2014). In contrast, with less direct access to cultural knowledge, there may be more variation in second + generation parents' (i.e., U.S.-born) sense of REI, and they may feel less capable of engaging in cultural heritage maintenance (Juang et al., 2018). ...
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... Some studies documented other ERS strategies in AAPI families, such as egalitarianism (French et al., 2013;Kiang et al., 2022;Kim, Hunt, et al., 2023;Patel et al., 2022), pluralism Kim, Hunt, et al., 2023;Ren et al., 2022), minimization of race (Keum et al., 2023;Kiang et al., 2022;Kim, Hunt, et al., 2023), exposure to diversity (Alvarez et al., 2006;Park, 2020;Tian, 2023), avoidance of race talk (Keum et al., 2023), becoming American ( Two studies evaluated profiles of ERS. Using the MY-Soc, Atkin and Ahn (2022) identified profiles among Asian ...
... Three studies linked perceptions of children's risk for discrimination to ERS. Patel et al. (2022) found that if Indian American parents felt their child was unlikely to experience discrimination, even if they themselves experienced discrimination, they avoided preparation for bias. Waters and Kasinitz (2010) found the opposite: Chinese parents who perceived a high risk of discrimination engaged in greater preparation for bias. ...
... They attributed their parents' perspectives to their parents' own discrimination experiences, homogeneous ethnic social networks, especially among immigrants, and uncritical consumption of both mainstream and ethnic media. Patel (2022) found that Indian American parents' internalization of the model minority myth was associated with greater cultural socialization. Tian (2023) found that parents' desire to expose their child to diversity depended on their perspectives of other ethnic-racial groups which, in turn, was related to social class. ...
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... Prior research suggests that Asian American parents more often engage in conversations about heritage culture with less emphasis on racial issues (e.g., inequities and discrimination) than parents of other racial minority groups (Juang et al., 2017;Patel et al., 2023). This may be influenced by factors like immigrant generation status, pre-migration and post-migration messages about race, personal experiences with racism, and sociocultural contexts (Hughes et al., 2016;Juang et al., 2018;Kim et al., 2024;Tummala-Narra et al., 2024). ...
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Article
  • Dec 2021
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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