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Historical and contemporary political events underscore that Latinx people do not necessarily view race and racism in the United States through a shared lens with other Latinx people and other communities of color. Thus, it is critical to understand how Latinx youth develop attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that challenge white supremacy-or anti-racist identities and behaviors-that actively disrupt racial oppression communities of color face as well as their own communities. In this paper, we review theoretical mechanisms by which Latinx youth may develop anti-racist identities and actions on behalf of their own ethnic/racial communities and other communities oppressed by white supremacy. We conclude by offering suggestions for how institutions may support Latinx youth's anti-racist identities and actions.

This descriptive, exploratory, sequential mixed-methods study investigated youths’ articulations about racism via an open-ended survey question, and the extent to which these articulations differed based on youths’ demographic characteristics. This study included 384 youth who identified as African American ( n = 98), Latinx/o/Hispanic ( n = 74), Asian/Pacific Islander ( n = 52), Multiracial ( n = 38), Native American ( n = 20), and White ( n = 100). Youth were between 14 and 18 years of age ( Mage = 16.66, SD = 1.28) and were primarily cisgender girls (51.3%) followed by cisgender boys (44.5%) and transgender (4.2%) youth. Thematic analysis was used to analyze youths’ responses, finding that youth displayed an analysis of intrapersonal/interpersonal racism, structural racism, and color-evasive ideology. Cross-tabulation analysis revealed that youth from lower socioeconomic statues (SES) were more likely than higher SES youth to describe racism as an intrapersonal/interpersonal phenomenon, and girls and transgender youth were more likely than boys to express a structural analysis of racism. Study findings suggest that youths’ beliefs about racism are multidimensional and primarily characterize racism as an intrapersonal/interpersonal phenomenon. Results may be used to inform the development of youth programs that aim to discuss racism in critical ways.

Guided by Critical Consciousness Theory and the Multicontextual Model for Diverse Learning Environments, this research explored whether a critical reflection of societal inequality and a hostile campus climate were associated with collective student efficacy and grade point average (GPA) among racially/ethnically diverse students. We examined whether these relationships were mediated by positive and informal experiences with peers or faculty. Multiple indicator multiple causes models indicated that there were no latent mean differences or differential item functioning based on students’ race/ethnicity, indicating that study measures were not biased against Students of Color or white students. There was one latent mean difference based on gender, such that women were more likely than men to endorse a critical reflection of societal inequality. Structural equation modeling indicated that a critical reflection of societal inequality was positively associated with collective student efficacy and GPA. In contrast, a hostile campus climate was negatively associated with collective student efficacy, GPA, and positive and informal experiences with peers or faculty. Negative experiences with faculty mediated the association between a hostile campus climate and collective student efficacy, such that a more hostile campus climate was associated with fewer positive and informal experiences with faculty and these negative experiences, in turn, were associated with less collective student efficacy. These findings suggest that a critical reflection of societal inequality promotes positive civic and academic capacities among college students, and that support from campus members (e.g., faculty) is key to achieve these positive outcomes.

In this practice note, we document the development of a youth participatory action research (YPAR) program designed by and for Latine youth residing in a small but rapidly growing Latine community. Our community–academic team partnered to cocreate a YPAR curriculum focused on supporting Latine youth in learning about research and developing their own research projects. Participants in the pilot year worked on Photovoice projects centered on topics they identified, including preventing colorism and machismo and increasing access to mental health services. We reviewed lessons learned from this work, including challenges engaging young people and creating linguistically inclusive spaces.

This research explored the impact a 3-day pre-college diversity intervention had on incoming White college students’ (N = 63) colour-blind racial attitudes (COBRAS), or their unawareness of racial ...

Objectives Latinx and Black young adults' experiences with the U.S. political system have been contentious. Despite this, they utilize psychological strengths, such as their critical consciousness (CC), to participate in the political process. This research explored relations between CC (e.g., critical reflection of social inequality and voting likelihood) and forms of civic/political engagement (e.g., sociopolitical action and social media engagement) among Latinx and Black young adults. Method Measurement invariance (MI) tests and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used with Latinx (N = 354, Mage = 26.08, SD = 5.03) young adults who were slightly predominately male (55.1%) and Black American young adults (N = 160, Mage = 25.84, SD = 4.98) who were slightly predominately female (52.5%). Results MI results indicated measures were not invariant (i.e., they were measured differently) across groups. Therefore, the hypothesized model was examined separately for groups. SEM analyses suggested both groups' critical reflection positively predicted voting likelihood and sociopolitical action. For Latinx young adults, voting likelihood mediated the relation between critical reflection and social media engagement. Black young adults' voting likelihood was unrelated to sociopolitical action and social media engagement. Alternative models examined bidirectional relations between CC and civic/political engagement. Conclusions Findings suggest civic/political engagement pathways differ for Latinx and Black young adults. However, fostering critical reflection has the potential to stimulate both groups' intent to vote and sociopolitical action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

This study examined thematic patterns of parents' engaged coping messages in response to their adolescents' negative race-based experiences. Ten focus groups were conducted with 73 Black parents from a Southeastern city (73% female). Using modified grounded theory, narratives that supported adolescent engaged coping were coded for three ethnic-racial socialization messages, the perpetrator, and the setting, followed by inductive (open) coding. The majority of experiences were school-related. Themes were informed by parents' critical engagement, ethnic-racial socialization, and engaged racial coping. Findings revealed that parents advised a repertoire of engaged coping strategies, from actively confronting interpersonal perpetrators (e.g., peers), to critically engaging with institutional perpetrators. Strategies to develop adolescents' critical reflection and anti-racism actions to dismantle racism across contexts are discussed.

Ethnic racial identity and critical consciousness frame how youth of color understand themselves in their racialized worlds. Although both may be salient in the lives of youth of color, little work investigates how ethnic racial identity and critical consciousness development overlap to promote positive outcomes during adolescence. This theoretical paper contributes to this effort, providing an overview of research on both phenomena and mapping their potential areas of congruence. This article concludes with suggestions of how the two processes might influence one another to foster positive developmental outcomes among youth of color. This work urges researchers to examine the intersections of ethnic racial identity and critical consciousness processes among youth of color that can lead to a more holistic understanding of how youth of color draw upon these processes to resist and challenge racial marginalization, as well as navigate diverse sociopolitical contexts.

Scholarship on youth engagement indicates that adolescents address social issues of public concern, but it is not clear how youth challenge racism. This gap in the literature stems from indirect conceptualizations and a lack of quantitative measurement of adolescents’ acts to oppose racism. Correspondingly, this study presents the validation of a measure of youth anti-racism action. Study 1 describes the youth participatory approach used in the development of the Anti-Racism Action Scale and presents the results from an exploratory factor analysis that examined the measure’s initial factor structure and reliability. The factor structure of the 22-item measure was explored with a diverse sample of adolescents (Mage = 16.00, SD = 1.18; 61.7% girls, Black/African American [29.3%], Asian/South Asian [21.1%], White/European American [24.4%], Arab/Middle-Eastern [17.5%], Latino/Hispanic [4.5%], and Multiracial [3.3%]) enrolled in a race dialogue program (n = 249). The results indicated the measure consisted of three subscales: Interpersonal Action, Communal Action, and Political Change Action. In Study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with an independent, nationally representative sample of youth (n = 384) from diverse backgrounds (Mage = 17.00, SD = 1.29, 51.0% girls, White/European American [26.1%], Black/African American [25.6%], Latino/Hispanic [19.3%], Asian/Pacific Islander [13.6%], Multiracial [9.9%], Native American [5.2%] and “other” [0.3%]). The results confirmed a three-factor model that resulted in a 16-item measure. Furthermore, tests of convergent validity tests were pursued between the Anti-Racism Action Scale and the Critical Consciousness Scale, a widely used measure of youths’ awareness of the structural causes of various forms of oppression, sense of sociopolitical agency, and social action. This study suggests that youth engagement in anti-racism is multidimensional and that notion of adolescent social action are more diverse than represented in the literature.

This research explored the development of Black adolescents' (N = 454) critical reflection, conceived as individual (i.e., blaming Black people) and structural (i.e., blaming systemic racism) attributions for race achievement gaps. In this longitudinal study, adolescents and their parents reported their individual and structural attributions for race achievement gaps and parents' racial socialization. Adolescents' structural attributions increased from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Average levels of individual attributions did not change. Adolescents' reports of parental racial socialization and parents' structural attributions when youth were in Grade 10 predicted increases in adolescents' structural attributions. Findings are applied to future research and efforts to increase adolescent critical reflection.

This research explored whether Black male adolescents' (N = 453; Mage = 13.72, SD = 1.33) perceptions of parental racial socialization (i.e., behavioral racial socialization) and school racial climate (i.e., equitable school racial climate) were associated with prosocial outcomes (i.e., prosocial behaviors and positive relations with others) across three waves of adolescence. This study also explored whether youth's beliefs about the extent to which Black individuals and other marginalized communities are united by experiences of oppression (i.e., oppressed minority ideology) and empathy mediated these associations. Structural equation modeling indicated that parental behavioral racial socialization at Wave 1 and positive relations with others at Wave 3 were positively linked through youth's oppressed minority ideology and empathy at Wave 2. Thus, Black male adolescents who relate to other marginalized communities through a shared experience of oppression and feel empathy towards others' lives possess skills that translate their lessons about race and racism into positive relations with others.

Despite associations between ethnic-racial identity processes (i.e., exploration and resolution) and positive psychosocial outcomes among adolescents, limited empirical research investigates longitudinal associations between these processes and civic beliefs. To address this gap in the literature, this research explored whether changes in ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution predicted civic beliefs among adolescents. Participants included 400 Latinx (n = 121; 47.1% girls) and Black American (n = 279; 52.0% girls) adolescents in the 6th (n = 210), 7th (n = 113) and 8th Grades (n = 74). Neither initial levels nor changes in ethnic-racial identity exploration predicted civic beliefs across four time-points of the study, or across two years of middle school. Adolescents who demonstrated greater increases in ethnic-racial identity resolution across two years of middle school were likely to have greater civic beliefs by the end of the two years, as compared to adolescents who had smaller increases in resolution. These results suggest that adolescents who have an increasingly clear sense of their ethnic-racial selves may have greater access to cognitive and socioemotional resources that promote their development of beliefs on the need to advance the well-being of their communities.

In this study, we investigate how Black early adolescents describe the influence of systems and individuals on sociopolitical conditions in their schools, neighborhoods, and communities. Scholars suggest critical reflection of sociopolitical conditions, an analysis that considers the role of institutional and systemic bias on the social conditions of marginalized groups, promotes long-term civic engagement to address those inequitable conditions. Through a qualitative investigation ( N = 36) we find Black early adolescents engage in critically reflective discourse regarding their sociopolitical environment and consider both system and individual attributions for problems in and solutions for their schools and communities. These early adolescents consider their own role in constructing positive change as well as the roles of public servants, parents, and community members. Taken together, this research broadens our understanding of the capacity for racially marginalized early adolescents to engage in analysis of systematic bias and individual responsibility in relation to inequitable social conditions in their schools and communities.

The current study examined whether youth perceptions of school racial messages that acknowledged the reality of racism (critical consciousness [CC] messages) or denied racism (color-blind messages) predicted youth anti-racism action through interpersonal and communal/political means. We further tested whether youths' critical reflection of perceived inequality and anger toward social injustice-psychological aspects of CC development-mediated relations between school messages and youth actions. These questions were explored using structural equation modeling with 372 racially/ethnically diverse adolescents (Mage = 17.00; standard deviation = 1.29; female = 51.0%). Results indicated that youth perceptions of CC messages predicted their involvement in both interpersonal and communal/political anti-racism action. Youths' anger toward social injustice mediated links between school racial messages and anti-racism action, albeit in unique ways. These findings underscore the power of schools in prompting youth anti-racism action. Implications of the importance of partnerships between schools and youth community organizing groups to stimulate youth anti-racism action were discussed.

This study applies multiple indicator and multiple causes modeling to examine to what extent critical social analysis of inequality, a dimension of critical consciousness (CC), may be explained by political party identification (i.e., Republican vs. Democrat) or political ideology (i.e., conservative vs. liberal). These issues were examined among 237 public high school students from a large Midwestern city, who generally came from historically marginalized groups. Analyses suggest that political party identification was only marginally associated with critical social analysis of inequality and political ideology had a small positive association with critical social analysis of inequality. Further, political identification and political ideology only explained between 2% and 4% of the variance in critical social analysis of inequality. These results suggest complexity in how youth think about political institutions and inequality, while also providing evidence that a critical social analysis of inequality is largely independent of political identification and ideology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Sociopolitical development theory asserts that critical social analysis informs prosocial behaviors. We suggest that one aspect of Black adolescents’ critical social analysis development is an oppression analysis, in which Black adolescents consider (1) the importance of race to they are, (2) their personal feelings about their racial group, and (3) the experience of oppression for minority groups. The current study examined oppression analysis as a latent construct among a sample of 265 Black male adolescents in Grades 7 to 10 from three suburban districts in the Midwestern United States. Structural equation modeling revealed that received parental racial pride messages, but not school-based discrimination experiences, predicted Black male adolescents’ oppression analysis. An oppression analysis and school-based discrimination had direct effects on prosocial behaviors. Racial pride messages had an indirect effect on prosocial behaviors through oppression analysis. In addition, an oppression analysis had an indirect effect on prosocial behaviors through social-emotional skills. This research offers insight into the role of Black boys’ critical social analysis among individual and contextual factors in facilitating positive developmental outcomes.

Marginalized youth's development occurs in contexts rife with racialized, gendered, and socioeconomic social identity threats and barriers to social mobility. An emergent line of inquiry suggests critical action-a component of critical consciousness, defined as engaging in individual or collective social action to produce social change-may bolster career development for those experiencing marginalization. Yet, the specific mechanisms underlying critical action-career development associations are not well understood. Applying structural equation modeling (SEM) to 4 waves of longitudinal data from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study (when participants were 17, 19, 21, and 29 years old), the authors explore the role of critical action for African American participants from lower-SES households (n = 261). The obtained model, which links critical action to career expectancies in adolescence and occupational attainment in adulthood, converges with earlier research linking critical consciousness to career development, social mobility pathways, and occupational attainment among marginalized youth. This study adds to previous literature by suggesting that critical action: (a) plays a significant role in fostering career expectancies in adolescence, particularly during high school, among marginalized youth; and (b) may promote the attainment of higher-status occupations in adulthood. Given the role of occupational attainment in social mobility and inclusion, these findings suggest an important mechanism by which social inequities may be narrowed. (PsycINFO Database Record