Abstract
For children of color, ethnic-racial socialization typically encourages cultural/racial pride and cultivates the ability to recognize and cope with bias against their ethnic-racial group. In contrast, White parents often provide color-blind messages, which minimize the reality of continued racism in U.S. society and overlook overwhelming evidence of White children's biased attitudes. Many mental health professionals recommend that parents and educators instead provide explicit anti-racist messages to foster healthier and more realistic White ethnic-racial identities. Children's books have often been used in interventions attempting to decrease prejudice against youths of color or recent immigrants. Unfortunately, recently expanded book banning attempts often target books which address race, ethnicity, and prejudice. The authors of one challenged book about racism, Something Happened in Our Town, discuss strategies to challenge bans, encourage healthy ethnic-racial socialization, promote value-in-diversity messages, and support children in confronting prejudice.
TopResearch About Children’S Ethnic-Racial Learning, Identities & Socialization
Roberts & Rizzo (2020) propose that racism in the United States is created and maintained by an interplay between seven psychological and sociopolitical factors: 1) racial categories and stereotypes, 2) in-group preferences (factions), 3) racial segregation, 4) a social hierarchy based on assumed White supremacy, 5) maintenance of the hierarchy by social, political, and economic policies (power), 6) biased media representations, and 7) passive acceptance of systemic racism or denial that it exists. In sum, they describe racism as “organized by categories, triggered by factions, hardened by segregation, emboldened by hierarchy, legislated by power, legitimized by media, and overlooked by passivism” (p. 483). All of these factors have been explored by social scientists investigating ethnic-racial learning, identity, and socialization.
Because of the extensive research on these topics, this chapter emphasizes meta-analyses, literature reviews, and theoretical papers. Individual studies are mentioned if they were recently published or illustrate particularly interesting methodologies or findings.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Implicit Racial Bias: Negative feelings about people of other races that are unconscious or outside one’s awareness.
Color-Blind Parenting: A child socialization approach in which discussion of race or ethnicity is avoided or delayed. Similarities between individuals are emphasized and differences are minimized, including the reality of historical and modern-day racism experienced by people of color.
Ethnic-Racial Socialization (ERS): The mechanisms by which parents and other socializing agents transmit information and perspectives about ethnicity and race to children.
Book Bans: Actions against books which lead to reduced access to the book by students; Book bans are based on objections to book content and may occur because of parental challenges, administrative or governmental actions.
Anti-Racism: Supporting equity for people of color through one’s actions or expressions of ideas.
Immigrants: People who have left the country they were born in and moved to another country.
Bicultural Identity: A person’s sense of self that incorporates two cultures - both their cultural heritage and that of the country they have moved to/live in.
Explicit Racial Attitudes: Opinions and feelings about people from one’s own or other races that are conscious and directly expressed.
Ethnic-Racial Identity (ERI): Aspects of one’s sense of self that reflect how racially-mediated social experiences and/or connections with a group’s shared cultural heritage impact one's psychological well-being.
Systemic Racism: Systemic racism, sometimes referred to as structural racism, describes the policies and practices that permeate a society and its institutions, resulting in unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race.
Ethnic-Racial Learning: How children learn about race at different developmental stages and what they learn, both via direct communication from adults and via observations and experiences.