How does racial context matter?: Family preparation‐for‐bias messages and racial coping reported by Black youth.

Scott, J. C., Pinderhughes, E. E., & Johnson, S. K. (2020). How does racial context matter?: Family preparation‐for‐bias messages and racial coping reported by Black youth. Child Development, 91(5), 1471-1490.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13332

Abstract: Black families and youth likely consider specific racial discriminatory situations in preparation-for-bias messages and racial coping responses. Our study investigated coping responses embedded in youth-reported Black families' preparation-for-bias messages and youths' proactive coping responses to specific racially discriminatory situations-teachers' negative expectations, store employees' hyper-monitoring and police harassment. Gender and racial discrimination experience differences were considered along with relations between messages and coping. Our investigation was guided by the integrated-developmental, transactional/ecological, intersectionality, and Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory theoretical frameworks. We conducted cluster analyses using data from 117 Black youth aged 13-14 to identify situation-specific family messages and youth coping responses. Families' messages and youths' responses varied in content and frequency based on the specific discriminatory situation, which suggests consideration of context.