Short Commentary
Teaching African American Children about Race: Fostering Intergroup Relationships through Parental Racial Socialization
Adrienne L Edwards*
Human Development and Family Studies Program, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Adrienne L Edwards
Human Development and Family Studies Program
University of Nevada, Reno, USA
Tel: 1-775-784-7010
E-mail: adrienneedwards@unr.edu
Received Date: Dec 25, 2016; Accepted Date: Jan 12, 2017; Published Date: Jan 20, 2017
Citation: Edwards AL (2017) Teaching African American Children about Race: Fostering Intergroup Relationships through Parental Racial Socialization. J Child Adolesc Behav 5: 329. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000329
Copyright: © 2017 Edwards AL. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In the United States, highly publicized sociopolitical topics such as police-related shootings of African American men and adolescents and societal responses to them such as the Black Lives Matter Movement have drawn attention to how and what children, particularly African American children, are learning about race and intergroup relationships. This commentary highlights how African American parents teach children about their race and how to go about interacting with members of other racial groups by drawing attention to the complexities of parental racial socialization. Points to consider about how African American parents transmit racialized messages to their children are discussed for scholars to take into account when examining how racial socialization influences parenting and child behavior.
