School tracking creates vast differential learning and schooling opportunities that lead to different academic trajectories. Black adolescents are disproportionally placed in nonhonors tracks possibly compromising their racial and academic identity. Interviews with 20 socioeconomically diverse 12 to 13 year old Black seventh graders revealed that narratives about racial and academic identity vary by track placement. Although most adolescents held negative perceptions about students enrolled in nonhonors courses, students in nonhonors seemed to view the negative perceptions of their classmates as reflections of themselves as Black people and as students. In contrast, adolescents in honors courses viewed these negative perceptions as limited to students in nonhonors. They reported having a greater connection to academics and viewed themselves as positive representatives of Blackness.

Objective: Schools are an influential source of information on the meaning of race and culture in society and adolescents' personal lives. Yet, that influence is understudied in the literature on adolescent ethnic-racial identity (ERI) development. Studies of ethnic-racial socialization tend to focus on the family context; the current study measures adolescents' perceptions of ethnic-racial socialization from the school context. Methods: The sample includes 819 youth aged 12-18 (M = 15.27, SD = 1.58) from 4 ethnic-racial groups. We used structural equation modeling to examine the relations between ethnic-racial socialization and ERI controlling for race, gender, and age. To examine ethnic-racial group membership as a moderator, a multigroup model was used. Results: The findings show that, across ethnic-racial groups, the perceptions of opportunities to learn about one's ethnic-racial background and messages about American values are positively associated with youths' exploration of and commitment to their identities. Furthermore, colorblind socialization messages were associated with lower identity commitment. Conclusions: The findings highlight the importance of the school context in shaping students' ethnic-racial socialization and identity. This study investigated how what adolescents learn about race/ethnicity and culture in school is associated with their ERI. The findings indicate that opportunities to learn about one's culture are related to more identity exploration and greater sense of the importance of group membership. Furthermore, opportunities to learn about other cultures promote positive attitudes toward people of different races/ethnicities.

A growing number of scholars in the field of urban education compellingly demonstrate the myriad ways U.S. schooling for Black youth is dehumanizing. Social and emotional learning (SEL), particularly, transformative social emotional learning (TSEL) has come to the fore as a promising intervention to promote positive inclusive school cultures and relationships while recognizing and accounting for the realities of racial oppression. Here, we discuss teachers’ capacity to develop and negotiate student–teacher relationships that acknowledge and actively confront the dehumanization of Black youth in schools. We provide recommendations for teachers’ social emotional training that can effectively humanize learning environments for Black youth.

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