Systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia lead to unequal access to health, wealth, housing, education, and civic opportunities, and thus touch all aspects of human development (Mezey, 2019;Ritchie, 2017). Creating equitable systems begins with becoming aware of inequities and their impacts on historically oppressed communities. Awareness of societal inequality is a developmental foundation of critical consciousness, a process of becoming critically reflective, motivated, and active in challenging systems of inequality and oppression (Watts et al., 2011). Despite growing research on youth critical consciousness (Heberle et al., 2020), few longitudinal studies explore how critical consciousness changes over time or by race and ethnicity. Given that experiences of oppression vary (Rosenbloom & Way, 2004), adolescents from different racial and ethnic groups may show different patterns of age-related change in awareness of inequality-a key aspect of critical consciousness.By documenting trajectories of awareness of inequality by race and ethnicity, as well as gender, parent education, generation status, and their interactions, we seek to advance theory and research on critical consciousness development.
Critical consciousness definitions and theoryThe idea of critical consciousness was first articulated by Paulo Friere (1970) to describe self-and co-constructed processes by which Brazilian farmworkers became critically aware of, and empowered to address, systems of oppression. Critical consciousness is central to liberation movements and key to the psychology of liberation for adolescents who experience oppression (Watts & Flanagan, 2007). In developmental science, critical consciousness is posited to have three interrelated dimensions: (a) critical reflection, or awareness and analysis of