Understanding how Latinx youth cope with discrimination: A call to action.

Abstract

Racial–ethnic discrimination leads to poorer academic and mental health outcomes for Latinx youth. Although there is a growing literature on the resilience processes that shield Latinx youth from the negative ramifications of these experiences, there is limited work that specifically considers the coping behaviors and processes that youth enact to counter the harmful impact of racial–ethnic discrimination. This limited work is further hampered by a lack of measurement tools that account for the uniqueness of racial–ethnic discrimination as a stressor and the culturally relevant coping strategies endemic to Latinx populations. This article reviews the mixed findings among studies that have examined discrimination, coping strategies, and Latinx youth outcomes. Furthermore, the pressing need for a new measure that would better capture the nuanced manner in which Latinx adolescents cope with racism-related stress is outlined. This work concludes with methodological considerations as well as recommendations for the field’s study of coping with the insidious impact of racism-related stress among Latinx adolescents.