Previous research has documented the negative effects of racism on the psychological health of African Americans. However, consideration of racial socialization as a potential buffer against racism experiences has received limited attention. The present study investigated whether two types of parental racial socialization messages reduced the impact of racism on psychological functioning in a sample of 247 African American college freshmen (M=18.30). Results indicated that students who reported more racism experiences also had poorer levels of psychological functioning as indicated by higher levels of psychological stress and psychological distress. Parental messages emphasizing the use of African American cultural resources to cope with racism reduced the impact of racism on psychological stress only. Cultural pride messages predicted less psychological distress while messages emphasizing the use of cultural resources predicted greater psychological distress. However, neither message type moderated the relationship between racism experiences and psychological distress. These results suggest that racial socialization messages have complex relations to psychological functioning in African American college students.

This study examined patterns of: (1) observed racial socialization messages in dyadic discussions between 111 African American mothers and adolescents (M age = 15.50) and (2) mothers’ positive emotions displayed during the discussion. Mothers displayed more advocacy on behalf of their adolescents in response to discrimination by a White teacher than to discrimination by a White salesperson. Mothers displayed consistent emotional support of adolescents’ problem solving across both dilemmas but lower warmth in response to the salesperson dilemma. Findings illustrate evidence of the transactional nature of racial socialization when presented with adolescents’ racial dilemmas. The role of adolescent gender in mothers’ observed racial socialization responses is also discussed. A framework for a process-oriented approach to racial socialization is presented.

Many African American adolescents experience racial discrimination, with adverse consequences; however, stability and change in these experiences over time have not been examined. We examined longitudinal patterns of perceived racial discrimination assessed in grades 7 – 10 and how these discrimination trajectories related to patterns of change in depressive and anxious symptoms and aggressive behaviors assessed over the same 4-year period. Growth mixture modeling performed on a community epidemiologically-defined sample of urban African American adolescents (n = 504) revealed three trajectories of discrimination: (1) increasing, (2) decreasing, and (3) stable low. As predicted, African American boys were more frequent targets for racial discrimination as they aged, and were more likely to be in the increasing group. Results of parallel process growth mixture modeling revealed that youth in the increasing racial discrimination group were four times more likely to be in an increasing depression trajectory than youth in the low stable discrimination trajectory. Though youth in the increasing racial discrimination group were nearly twice as likely to be in the high aggression trajectory, results were not statistically significant. These results indicate an association between variation in the growth of perceived racial discrimination and youth behavior and psychological well-being over the adolescent years.

Experiences with racism are a common occurrence for African American youth and may result in negative self perceptions relevant for the experience of depressive symptoms. This study examined the longitudinal association between perceptions of racism and depressive symptoms, and whether perceived academic or social control mediated this association, in a community epidemiologicallydefined sample of urban African American adolescents (N = 500; 46.4% female). Structural equation modeling revealed that experiences with racism were associated with low perceived academic control, which in turn was associated with increased depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that experiences with racism can have long lasting effects for African American youth's depressive symptoms, and highlight the detrimental effects of experiences with racism for perceptions of control in the academic domain. Implications for intervention are discussed.Keywords adolescent depression; African American; racism; perceived control Contextual stressors are critical for understanding depression and other psychosocial outcomes in African American adolescents (Garcia Coll et al., 1996;Hammack, 2003). One type of contextual stress central to the experience of many African American adolescents is the experience of racism and discrimination (Harrell, 2000). Clark and colleagues define racism as "beliefs, attitudes, institutional arrangements, and acts that tend to denigrate individuals or groups because of phenotypic characteristics or ethnic group affiliation" (Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999, p. 805). According to their model of racism as a biopsychosocial stressor, the perception of an event as racist activates a set of psychological and emotional stress responses to the event (Clark et al., 1999). NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptA significant body of work has documented the harmful effects of racism on the physical and mental health outcomes of African American adults (e.g., Clark et al., 1999;Jackson et al., 1996). In particular, racism has been linked to adverse birth outcomes (Giscombe & Lobel, 2005), hypertension (Brondolo, Rieppi, Kelly, & Gerin, 2003), substance abuse (Gibbons, Gerrard, Cleveland, Wills, & Brody, 2004), and psychological distress (Williams, Neighbors, & Jackson, 2003). Although much of the empirical research linking adults' experiences with racism with mental health has been cross-sectional (Williams et al., 2003), prospective studies have found that adult experiences with racism and discrimination are linked with later mental health difficulties. For example, Schulz and colleagues (2006) found that increases in discrimination over a two-year period were positively associated with increases in depressive symptoms over that same period even after adjusting for baseline symptoms of discrimination and depression (Schulz et al., 2006). Thus, experiences with racism can have long lasting adverse health consequences for adults.Relative to research examining consequences of rac...

Previous research has documented the negative effects of racism on the psychological health of African American males. However, consideration of racial identity as a potential buffer against racist experiences has received limited attention. This analysis investigates whether one dimension of the Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity, private regard, reduces the effect of racism on internalizing symptoms in 107 African American late-adolescent males. Findings show that racist experiences were positively associated with greater anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results also indicated that private regard reduced the impact of racist experiences, but only for anxiety symptoms. Specifically, males with lower private who also experienced racism had greater anxiety as compared to those with higher private regard. The potential clinical benefits of private regard for African American males are discussed.