Recently, there has been an emergence of literature on the mechanisms through which parents transmit information, values, and perspectives about ethnicity and race to their children, commonly referred to as racial or ethnic socialization. This literature has sought to document the nature of such socialization, its antecedents in parents' and children's characteristics and experiences, and its consequences for children's well-being and development. In this article, the authors integrate and synthesize what is known about racial and ethnic socialization on the basis of current empirical research, examining studies concerning its nature and frequency; its child, parent, and ecological predictors; and its consequences for children's development, including ethnic identity, self-esteem, coping with discrimination, academic achievement, and psychosocial well-being. The authors also discuss conceptual and methodological limitations of the literature and suggest directions for future research.

For youth and adults of color, prolonged exposure to racial discrimination may result in debilitating psychological, behavioral, and health outcomes. Research has suggested that race-based traumatic stress can manifest from direct and vicarious discriminatory racial encounters (DREs) that impact individuals during and after an event. To help their children prepare for and prevent the deleterious consequences of DREs, many parents of color utilize racial socialization (RS), or communication about racialized experiences. Although RS research has illuminated associations between RS and youth well-being indicators (i.e., psychosocial, physiological, academic, and identity-related), findings have mainly focused on RS frequency and endorsement in retrospective accounts and not on how RS is transmitted and received, used during in-the-moment encounters, or applied to reduce racial stress and trauma through clinical processes. This article explores how systemic and interpersonal DREs require literate, active, and bidirectional RS to repair from race-based traumatic stress often overlooked by traditional stress and coping models and clinical services. A novel theory (Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory [RECAST]), wherein RS moderates the relationship between racial stress and self-efficacy in a path to coping and well-being, is advanced. Greater RS competency is proposed as achievable through intentional and mindful practice. Given heightened awareness to DREs plaguing youth, better understanding of how RS processes and skills development can help youth and parents heal from the effects of past, current, and future racial trauma is important. A description of proposed measures and RECAST’s use within trauma-focused clinical practices and interventions for family led healing is also provided.

The reklaonship between racial sociadization attitudes and racial identity stages is the subject of this article, with racial socialization hypothesized as one key variable to link the literatures in childhood racial awareness ad young adult racial identity. A teenage sample was selected to compare measures of racial socialization and racial identity processes. The Scale of Racial Socilizationfor Adolescents and the 50-item Racial Identity Attitude Scale (RIAS) based on Nigrescence theory were administered to 287 African American adolescents between the ages of 14 and 15 years. A principal components analysis was conducted on the RIAS to assess its appropriateness with a younger adolescent population. The factor analytic procedure yielded a three-factor solution with moderately reliablefactors. Thefactors corresponded to the Nigrescence stages of preencounter, immersion, and internalization. Results indicate that specific factors of racial socialization differentially predict all of the racial identiy stages for females and the preencounter and internalization identity stages for males. Findings also suggest that racial socialization is multidimensional, and implications for integrating it with revised multidimensional conceptualizations of racial identity are raised.

Little empirical work has been initiated that broadens the definition of racial socialization and its measurement to integrate it with current theoretical discussion of racial identity developmentand AfricanAmerican cultural characteristics and strengths. This study reports the development and validation of the Scale of Racial SocializationforAdolescents (SORS-A). A principal components analysis was conducted following administration of the SORS-A and measures of demographics, family communication about racism, and perception of skin color to 200 African American urban teenagers. Four factors were found to be very meaningful and moderately reliable. The racial socialization factors include Spiritual and Religious Coping, Extended Family Caring, Cultural Pride Reinforcement, and Racism Awareness Teaching. A second-order factor analysis to identify underlying themes was also conducted. Themes of protective and proactive racial socialization were found to be supportive of a theoreticalframework for racial socialization that is multidimensional and inclusive of both socially oppressive and culturally empowering experiences.

An adolescent's perspective of family race-related socialization is a novel way to understand racial identity and socialization experiences. This article reports on the development of the Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TERS), which asks students how often they receive socialization about managing racism, cultural pride, and spirituality. A factor analysis was conducted with 260 African American youth. The results revealed five meaningful and reliable factors, including Cultural Coping With Antagonism, Cultural Pride Reinforcement, Cultural Legacy Appreciation, Cultural Alertness to Discrimination (CAD), and Cultural Endorsement of the Mainstream (CEM), and one composite factor (combines the first four TERS factors) called Cultural Socialization Experience (CULTRS). Findings reveal that boys experience more CAD communications than do girls, a moderate degree of family conversations about race is associated with greater frequency of racial socialization, family member experiences with racism are associated with higher frequency of CULTRS, and personal experience with racism is associated with lower CEM in girls but not boys. The presence of a small correlation between racial socialization experiences and racial socialization beliefs supports the discriminant validity of the scale. Implications for adolescent and family research are discussed.