Discrimination, Racial-Ethnic Identification, and School Maladjustment

Background: Although half of K-12 school students belong to a racial-ethnic (RE) minority group, studies examining school outcomes infrequently use theoretical frameworks developed for RE youth. The Integrative Model of Ethnic Minority Child Development situates RE youth’s developmental outcomes within proximal and distal interactions that are influenced by social identity and oppression. In the Integrative Model, developmental outcomes for RE youth are influenced by inhibiting factors (i.e. discrimination) and promoting factors (i.e. RE socialization) in the social ecology. Perceived discrimination is associated with school maladjustment including poor classroom behaviors, reduced school belongingness, declining grades, increased absenteeism, and lower graduation rates. Alternatively, RE socialization promotes ethnic identification and is associated with positive youth developmental outcomes and lower psychosocial distress from perceived discrimination. Using the Integrative Model, we examine whether perceived discrimination is associated with school maladjustment, and whether ethnic identification moderates this association.

Methods: We examined the relationship between discrimination, ethnic identification, and school maladjustment with ordinary least squares regression using data from the Rural Adaptation Project. The School Success Profile (SSP) is a youth self-report instrument that measures attitudes and perceptions of self, proximal relationships, and characteristics of the household, neighborhood, and school environments. The sample (n=3,022) was 50.55% female with a mean age of 11.79 years and consisted of youth from two rural counties in North Carolina. Participants’ self-reported RE identities consisted of Black (25.26%), Hispanic (10.36%), Native American (23.31%), White non-Hispanic (28.41%), and Biracial (12.65%). We built the analytic model by regressing a school maladjustment index on discrimination and ethnic identification. Then, we examined changes in associations and effect size as we entered inhibiting/promoting factors from each proximal relationship system, and controlled for youth characteristics.

Results: We observed a significant main effect for discrimination and ethnic identification on school maladjustment. Discrimination was associated with increased school maladjustment, and ethnic identification was inversely associated with maladjustment. The association between discrimination and school maladjustment became insignificant after promoting/inhibiting factors from the school system were added to the model. Ethnic identification remained significant and promotive in the final model. Contrary to the effect hypothesized by the Integrative Model, ethnic identification did not moderate the relationship between discrimination and school maladjustment. Discrimination and ethnic identification explained 2% of the variance in school maladjustment, which remained invariant to the promoting/inhibiting factors.

Conclusions and Implications: Discrimination and RE identification are associated with school outcomes in RE minority youth. RE identification is a salient protective factor and more research on RE socialization is warranted to understand how RE identification is promoted in different RE groups and associated with academic outcomes. However, the benefits of RE identification are independent of other factors and do not moderate the negative association of perceived discrimination. The Integrative Model offers a promising framework for examining RE youth’s academic outcomes and relationships between promoting and inhibiting factors. Future studies guided by the Integrative Model are warranted to examine the longitudinal effect of racial socialization messages and RE identification on academic achievement.