Racial Socialization as Critical Action? Connecting Black and White Parents' Critical Consciousness to Their Anti-Racist Socialization.

Parents' critical consciousness has been theorized to facilitate race conversations that center on how social structures, policies, and historical factors perpetuate inequities, but few studies have investigated this link empirically. The current analysis examines the associations between Black and...

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Published in:Developmental Psychology Vol. 61; no. 12; pp. 2315 - 2331
Main Authors: Dull, Brandon D., Rogers, Leoandra Onnie
Format: Article
Published: American Psychological Association Dec2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Dec2025
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      pub: American Psychological Association
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        atl: Racial Socialization as Critical Action? Connecting Black and White Parents' Critical Consciousness to Their Anti-Racist Socialization.
      aug:
        au:
          Dull, Brandon D.
          Rogers, Leoandra Onnie
        affil: Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
      su:
        World Wide Web
        Cross-sectional method
        Consciousness
        African Americans
        Qualitative research
        Institutional racism
        White people
        Social change
        Goal (Psychology)
        Quantitative research
        Anti-racism
        Communication
        White supremacy
        Psychology of parents
        Socialization
        Data analysis
        Research funding
        Questionnaires
        Probability theory
        Reflection (Philosophy)
        Descriptive statistics
        Chi-squared test
        Latent structure analysis
        Surveys
        Statistics
        Application software
        Factor analysis
        Data analysis software
      sug:
        subj:
          World Wide Web
          Cross-sectional method
          Consciousness
          African Americans
          Qualitative research
          Institutional racism
          White people
          Social change
          Goal (Psychology)
          Quantitative research
          Anti-racism
          Communication
          White supremacy
          Psychology of parents
          Socialization
          Software Publishers
          Software publishers (except video game publishers)
          Custom Computer Programming Services
          Internet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search Portals
          Data analysis
          Research funding
          Questionnaires
          Probability theory
          Reflection (Philosophy)
          Descriptive statistics
          Chi-squared test
          Latent structure analysis
          Surveys
          Statistics
          Application software
          Factor analysis
          Data analysis software
      keyword:
        Black Lives Matter
        childhood
        critical consciousness
        racial socialization
        racism
        Black Lives Matter
        childhood
        critical consciousness
        racial socialization
        racism
      ab: Parents' critical consciousness has been theorized to facilitate race conversations that center on how social structures, policies, and historical factors perpetuate inequities, but few studies have investigated this link empirically. The current analysis examines the associations between Black and white parents' critical consciousness and their anti-racist socialization amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. Participants were 725 parents (344 Black, 381 white, M = 38.08, SD = 7.00) of 8- to 11-year-old children who completed an online survey between October 2020 and January 2021, following the murder of George Floyd. Using latent profile analysis, the results show how Black and white parents' critical consciousness profiles are differentially related to whether and how they discussed Black Lives Matter with their children. Overall, both Black and white parents with higher levels of critical consciousness were more likely to engage in anti-racist socialization that countered dominant white supremacist and anti-Black ideologies, though fewer white parents did so than Black parents. The article discusses the implications of the findings for fostering critical racial socialization practices and offers a (re)conceptualization of racial socialization as a form of critical action for parents. Public Significance Statement: Parent–child conversations about race and racism have been reported to build children's skills to actively resist and challenge oppressive systems, yet we know little about how to foster such conversations. The present study examined how Black and white parents' critical consciousness (i.e., awareness of, and action against, systems of power) was associated with their racial socialization practices amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. The findings emphasize how building parents' critical consciousness can serve as a pathway toward parent–child conversations that disrupt racism.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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