Black Emotions Matter: Understanding the Impact of Racial Oppression on Black Youth’s Emotional Development
Black US Americans’ emotions are subject to stereotypes about the anger and aggression of Black people. These stereotypes are readily applied to Black adolescents’ emotions. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to operationalize racial oppression in the emotional lives of Black adolescents throug...
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| Published in | Journal of research on adolescence Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 13 - 33 |
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| Main Authors | , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
01.03.2022
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Black US Americans’ emotions are subject to stereotypes about the anger and aggression of Black people. These stereotypes are readily applied to Black adolescents’ emotions. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to operationalize racial oppression in the emotional lives of Black adolescents through an application of García Coll et al.'s (1996) ecological model for minority youth development. We specify emotionally inhibitive features of Black adolescents’ schools, the adaptive culture of Black Americans in the United States that responds to emotional inhibition, Black families’ emotion socialization processes, and Black adolescents’ emotional flexibility behaviors. Throughout, we integrate findings from research on Black adolescents’ emotional adjustment with research on cultural values, emotion and racial socialization, school‐based racial experiences, and theory on emotion and cultural navigation. |
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| Bibliography: | Acknowledgement: We would like to acknowledge our colleagues within our professional networks who have listened to and encouraged our initial ideas represented in this paper through conversations, seminar presentations, and guest lectures – namely, Dr. Chelsea Williams, Dr. Wendy Kliewer, Dr. Zewelanji Serpell, and the Developmental Psychology Area at Virginia Commonwealth University. We would also like to acknowledge the National Science Foundation for the provision of funding during the development of this manuscript to further develop these concepts and ideas. Finally, we would like to acknowledge and thank the editors of the special series on “Dismantling Systems of Racism and Oppression During Adolescence”, Drs. Laura Wray‐Lake, Dawn Witherspoon, Linda Halgunseth and Lisa Spanierman, for their leadership in creating this opportunity for synergy in new findings, perspectives, and future directions on creating liberated futures for our adolescents. Funding: While working on this manuscript, Dr. Fantasy Lozada was supported by a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation (#2046607, PI: Lozada) Conflict of Interest: The authors have no actual or perceived conflicts of interest in the conduct or report of the research reviewed or written about in this manuscript. |
| ISSN: | 1050-8392 1532-7795 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/jora.12699 |