Invisible targets: Conceptualizing U.S. Latine youth's exposure to family‐level vicarious racism

Abstract

Vicarious exposure to discrimination can result in multiple negative outcomes in youth. In this article, we offer a conceptual model that articulates the intersecting contextual factors and potential moderators for U.S. Latine youth's exposure to family‐level vicarious racism, and explore how that affects youth and family responses. We define and describe youth's exposure to family‐level vicarious racism, considering the ramifications of these experiences through family processes and cultural values. We conclude by arguing that research on discrimination and racism in Latine families needs to account for family‐level processes.

Latinx/Hispanic youths’ experiences of cultural stressors, emotional reactions, and coping within the family context.

“…This may highlight the need for future research to ask focused questions around how youth may experience cultural stressors together with family members to uncover how else youth might experience cultural stressors and subsequent emotional reactions and coping elicited by these shared experiences. Consistent with the family-level vicarious racism model (Martin Romero & Stein, 2023) and prior vicarious racism scholarship (e.g., N. J. Heard-Garris et al, 2018), youth vicariously experienced cultural stressors by observing family members having these experiences.…”

“…Per the family-level vicarious racism model (Martin Romero & Stein, 2023), Latinx/Hispanic youth may also experience cultural stressors within the family by experiencing stressors together (i.e., shared experiences) with family members. Yet no existing study has examined how Latinx/Hispanic youth experience cultural stressors together with family members.…”

“…Moreover, missing from the literature is an examination of whether emotional reactions are shared when youth and parents experience cultural stressors together. Youth likely share emotional reactions with family members due to shared racism experiences (Martin Romero & Stein, 2023). Therefore, research is needed to understand Latinx/ Hispanic youths' emotional reactions to cultural stressors experienced together and by observing family having these experiences.…”

“…These mixed findings may be due to coping responses being influenced by the family context in which they are enacted. Consistent with the family-level vicarious racism model (Martin Romero & Stein, 2023), Latinx/Hispanic youth discussed coping together with family when observing family members and other Latinx/Hispanics experience racial-ethnic discrimination (Martin Romero et al, 2022). Youth and their parents avoided watching news or limited discussions over racial-ethnic discrimination to prevent and minimize distress.…”

Cultural stress and critical consciousness among Latinx adolescents.

“…Not surprisingly, immigration-related threat is associated with greater symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety (Martinez et al, 2015). The negative impacts of immigration-related threat reverberate across the Latinx community (Ayón, 2017), and in particular, it may adversely impact Latinx youth in mixed status families due to family-level vicarious racism (Martin Romero & Stein, 2023). However, Latinx immigrants engage in activism by supporting the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act and by fighting against their own exclusion from higher education (Bjorklund, 2018; Seif, 2011).…”