Fostering social justice – white adolescents’ social justice action requires race conscious environments

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Parents, peers, and schools all represent crucial influences that shape how white¹ adolescents make sense of racism and their deportment toward social justice.
• Having explicit conversations with white youth well-nigh racism and embedding children in racially diverse environments that unclose race are essential to countering the dominant color-blind narrative that race “doesn’t matter.”
• Conversations well-nigh race with white youth must go vastitude simply supporting historical and trendy racism toward encouraging anti-racist attitudes and deportment to write inequities.

Children receive messages well-nigh race and color-blindness from multiple sources

There is no “neutral” in racism. All youth learn to either reinforce or disrupt systems of inequality that uphold and maintain a racist status quo. As such, shielding white children from learning well-nigh race and the United States’ racist history encourages a way of knowing that is untethered to the country’s racial realities and remoter sustains white supremacy and racism.

Contrary to the color-blind narrative that positions racism as a thing of the past and “everyone as equal,” racism is embedded in structural forces (e.g., law, institutions, housing) and continues to shape all people’s experiences (though differently). The color-blind narrative is pervasive among white parents and caregivers and within predominantly white institutions (including school settings). For instance, only 53% of white parents believe schools should teach well-nigh the ongoing effects of slavery and racism in the United States, while 82% of Black parents hold this belief.

For white youth, social environments that counter the color-blind narrative and instead write racism may be integral to fostering social justice action.

Regardless of whether children receive explicit messaging well-nigh race, they interpret the various experiences, interactions, and (un)intentional messages in their lives. Parents, peers, and schools are three interrelated influences that shape how children make sense of race during adolescence. For white youth, social environments that counter the color-blind narrative and instead write racism may be integral to fostering social justice action.

What social contexts well-nigh race and racism do white adolescents in the United States experience?

In our research study, we examined the myriad influences that shape how white youth make sense of racism and the resulting impacts on their social justice behaviors. We used survey data from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study to examine 323 white adolescents’ racial environments (i.e., the social contexts that may shape their beliefs and attitudes well-nigh race and racism), with particular sustentation to conversations with parents well-nigh race and racial attitudes, cross-race friendships, and conversations with peers well-nigh race.

We moreover looked at the diversity of youth’s schools with respect to racial sonnet and curriculum. We then explored how these variegated racial environments during youth (16-17 years old) related to white youth’s social justice deportment two years later in young adulthood. All participants in the study lived in a racially and socioeconomically diverse county in the Eastern United States.

Photo: cottonbro studio. Pexels.

The racial environments of most adolescents (80%) were characterized by silence or passivity well-nigh race. Such environments uncurl with a color-blind narrative in which racism is downplayed or ignored, limiting white adolescents’ worthiness to disrupt and rencontre racism. However, the racial environments of some adolescents (20%) were increasingly race conscious, meaning that race-related conversations occurred increasingly frequently, schools were racially diverse and undisputed race and racism in the curriculum, and adolescents had cross-race friendships.

How did variegated racial environments stupefy white adolescents’ social justice action?

White adolescents in race-conscious environments were engaged in increasingly social justice behaviors during young womanhood than were white adolescents in racial environments characterized by silence. These behaviors included participating in starchy rights or women’s rights groups. Our findings suggest that when white youth are in environments that are racially diverse and that unclose race and racism, they are increasingly likely to take whoopee in young womanhood to promote and foster social justice.

How can parents foster social justice attitudes and behaviors in their white children?

The findings of our study, in conjunction with other recent findings, rencontre the often-espoused color-blind weighing that not talking well-nigh race promotes equity. Instead, they suggest that having explicit conversations well-nigh racism and inequality, and embedding children in environments (e.g., schools) that are racially diverse or conscious of racism, can foster white adolescents’ reflection and deportment toward creating and maintaining equitable social conditions for all people.

How can parents and caregivers foster a race-conscious environment for white youth?

First, parents and caregivers of white children should reflect well-nigh their own racial attitudes and beliefs. As we saw in our study, plane parents who believed they had “positive” racial attitudes may foster a color-blind racial environment for their children.

Parents and caregivers must talk early and often with their white children well-nigh racism.

Thus, parents should rencontre themselves to think critically well-nigh race in the United States and how their own racial identity relates to the ongoing perpetuation or disruption of racism. Numerous resources are misogynist to prompt such hair-trigger reflection, including engaging with the works (e.g., film, books, art) of authors and artists of verisimilitude that portray the racial realities of the United States.

Second, without such reflection, parents and caregivers must talk early and often with their white children well-nigh racism. For instance, when children bring up or notice race, parents should discuss what their child is noticing rather than silence them or communicate that noticing race is bad.

Building white adolescents’ skills

Discussing race and racism, triumphal and recognizing the contributions of people of verisimilitude (which are often excluded from mainstream narratives), addressing racialized police killings and violence, and reflecting on the history and current manifestations of white supremacy are integral to towers white adolescents’ skills for anti-racism work and for urgently communicating the racial realities of the United States. (See EmbraceRace raising young white allies for increasingly resources.)

Finally, the results of our study highlight the multidimensional nature of children’s racial environments. In other words, it is not just parents who play a role in how children make sense of racism, but rather a multitude of influences, including but not limited to peers and school. As such, fostering white youth’s social justice behaviors ways embedding children in racially diverse environments in which cross-race friendships can form and where school curricula unclose and underpin people of color.

Photo: Ron Lach. Pexels.

White parents and caregivers can moreover promote transpiration in their children’s schools by standing with parents of verisimilitude as allies and teaching their children to stand up versus racism. Parents can moreover support candidates in local and national elections who recognize the importance of discussing racism in educational settings. (Read more information on the debate well-nigh hair-trigger race theory in schools here.)

In conclusion – racial justice requires reckoning with whiteness and countering narratives

The take-home message is that reaching a state of racial justice requires reckoning with whiteness and countering the pervasive color-blind narratives that produce false and inaccurate understandings of racism in the United States. In particular, our study demonstrates how race-conscious environments can counter the racist status quo by towers white youth’s efforts for social justice. Our findings moreover underscore the role of white parents and caregivers in ensuring that the next generation strives for an equitable and anti-racist society.

¹ Although the style of the Child & Family Blog is to capitalize ‘White,’ the authors have intentionally not capitalized the word when it refers to skin color. For information supporting this rule, please see The Associated Press.

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