How Racial-Ethnic Socialization Science Can Transform Social Work Policy and Practice with Adolescents

During adolescence, youth work to figure out who they are and who they want to become, making identity exploration a core developmental task (Erikson, 1968). As such, adolescence is a critical time for understanding racialized group membership and how youth may be labeled and categorized by others within various social contexts. Adolescents have the developmental capabilities to consider complicated social issues such as race and racism and better understand structural forces and hierarchies (Loyd & Gaither, 2018; Rivas-Drake & Umana-Taylor, 2019). Traditionally, racial-ethnic socialization (RES) is the multidimensional transmission of information (e.g., preparation for bias) about race and ethnicity from various agents (e.g., parents) to youth in a variety of contexts (e.g., schools). The foundations of this scholarship sought to elucidate how families of historically and contemporarily marginalized groups (e.g., Black people) experience and navigate discrimination. The purposes of RES science closely align with the goals and ethics of social work: responding to individual barriers and societal problems. While there is decades of research examining RES processes and their implications for youth development, identity formation, and well-being, social work has not substantially considered how this scientific knowledge base can inform and align with various grand challenges: ensuring healthy development for youth, eliminating racism, building healthy relationships to end violence, and achieving equal opportunity and justice. RES serves as a bridge between psychosocial processes and how people behave in the world--both important to social work policy and practice. For example, school social workers should be attentive to how parental socialization practices around racism influence students' academic and behavioral outcomes (Hughes, et al., 2009). The interaction between RES at home and institutional socialization at school may lead to students being labeled as deviant, test-anxious, or socially isolated from their peers. Ultimately, RES is the process through which individuals and institutions learn to navigate and engage with race. This roundtable will converge a group of transdisciplinary scholars to consider how RES science can transform social work policy and practice amongst different populations and across contexts. The scholars will present insights on how their scientific work on RES informs their interventions, community-based practice, and social justice activism. Our first presenter will discuss how RES practices within Black/White mixed-race families prepare youth for bias while simultaneously reinforcing White supremacy. Our second presenter will explore how RES is transformed by social media and the importance of having dynamic understandings of race in social work science, policy, and practice. Our third presenter will discuss the importance of considering the transactional nature of RES to illustrate how youth-level characteristics shape the features and implications of RES. Our last presenter will explore how RES intersects with Black students' school experiences, considering the dual role of schools as sources of support and sites of exclusion. Our discussant will offer recommendations on the development of evidence-based RES interventions and confront challenges researchers and practitioners may face. We aim to demonstrate how social work-informed RES research can guide social justice efforts for transformative change through policy and practice.