This study examined 164 African American adolescents' (M age = 15) daily reports of racial discrimination and parental racial socialization over 21 days. The study examined same-day and previous-day associations of adolescents' discrimination and socialization experiences with their positive and negative psychological affect. It further explored whether racial socialization messages buffered discrimination's effects on affect when messages were received during the same day and on the day prior to discrimination. Findings indicated the deleterious effect of racial discrimination (associated with more negative affect) and highlighted the importance of examining youth's short-term coping in critical developmental years. Findings also showed how messages promote positive youth emotions. However, daily moderating associations differed from prior survey studies, suggesting the importance of examining short-term processes. Racial Discrimination Experiences Among African American Adolescents Racial discrimination is the negative and unfair treatment of a group of people or individuals based on phenotypical characteristics such as skin color (Kessler, Mickelson, & Williams, 1999). Research highlights that it is not uncommon for African American youth to experience racial discrimination in schools and other public spaces (e.g., Banerjee,
The negotiation of multiple social identities (e.g., race, gender, and socioeconomic status) is relevant to emerging adults in their first year of college, with important implications for their social attitudes and subsequent intergroup interactions and behaviors (Arnett, 2000;Jones & Abes, 2013). Social identity scholarship acknowledges that individuals hold multiple social identities simultaneously, but relatively little research examines individuals' identification with multiple social identities or implications for their social attitudes. The current study used latent class cluster analysis to examine variation in patterns of identity centrality across gender, racial, and social class identities among a diverse college student sample (N ϭ 887) attending a predominantly White university. Five cluster groups were distinguished (all average, all low, all high, high-race/low-SES, and high-gender/low-SES importance). Cluster membership related to participants' self-identified gender, racial, and social class categories. Cluster groups also varied in social-identity-related attitudes, with the all-high-importance cluster (high centrality across social identities) showing higher sexism, racism, and classism consciousness scores and more positive intergroup and social justice action attitudes than all-low-importance or all-average-importance clusters, and showing similarities and differences in attitudes compared with those for whom a single identity was most central. Implications of findings for identity theory and supporting identity development in higher education are discussed.
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