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3. Being Black in America: Racial Socialization
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| 57 3 Being Black in America Racial Socialization Black Americans’ Socialization about Race As a young black person, I was always told by my grandmother to get a bag from the store clerk whenever I made a purchase (no matter how small or big the merchandise). She told me this because she was socializing me about race and preparing me to avoid experiencing racial discrimination. In her view, all it took was a black person leaving a store with an item in her hand and no bag as proof of purchase, and she would be reprimanded for stealing. My grandmother grew up in the South in the early 1900s, and this was a lesson among others that black people like her had to learn in order to avoid confrontation by whites (and possibly other racial groups) about things for which they may have had little responsibility or guilt. For my grandmother, it did not come down to having a bag or a receipt in one’s hand as proof of purchase; it was your race and a product leaving the store that brought about a store clerk’s alarm that a black person was stealing. To this day, I ask for a bag with my purchase (no matter how small or how big the merchandise), or I hedge the lesson a little by leaving the store with my purchase and a “visible ” receipt in my hand. As a matter of precaution, I learned from my grandmother that having black skin could carry a price in America—an albatross of guilt without trial or substantial evidence. This was one of my personal lessons in racial socialization, and it is experiences such as these that I have had personally and have heard about from other blacks that motivated me to study black Americans’ racial socialization experiences and the influence of those experiences on their everyday social and political interactions. Regardless of blacks’ class, gender, or sexuality, race either trumps other social identities or occurs intersectionally with them (Simien 2006; Cohen 1999; Hochschild 58 | Being Black in America 1995; Dawson 1994). Thus, whether a black American is a woman or a man, rich or poor, heterosexual or homosexual, race affects his or her life experiences . How black people learn about the effect of race on their lives and the meaning of being black in America, or the process of racial socialization, are the foci of this chapter. Racial socialization is the process by which African Americans learn about and identify with the influence of race on their social status, culture, and group history in the United States (Caughy et al. 2002; Sanders Thompson 1994; Demo and Hughes 1990; Peters 1985). Although there are several sources from which black Americans learn about being black in America, including, for example, media, churches, schools, and social networks (Martin and McAdoo 2007; McAdoo 2007; Dawson 1994), children’s parents and families are most integral to the transmission of racial socialization messages (McAdoo 2007; Martin and McAdoo 2007; McHale et al. 2006; S. Hill 1999; Hughes and Chen 1997; Phinney and Chavira 1995; Demo and Hughes 1990; Sanders Thompson 1994). An overwhelming number of black Americans report having learned such messages from their parents (Hughes and Chen 1997; Thornton et al. 1990; Sanders Thompson 1994; Bowman and Howard 1985). For example, in the National Survey of Black Americans, 63.6 percent of black American adults reported transmitting racial socialization messages to their children (Thornton et al. 1990), and in a study of black American adolescents, 68 percent reported having received racial socialization messages from their parents (Bowman and Howard 1985). Messages about race comprise information that instills racial pride, cultural awareness, racism awareness, spiritual coping, familial caretaking, individual advancement, and egalitarianism (Martin and McAdoo 2007; Stevenson 1994; Boykin and Toms 1985). Still, these messages receive different emphases depending on parents’ thoughts about race (Hughes and Chen 1997; Thornton et al. 1990) and even what parents learned about race themselves (Hughes and Chen 1997). Moreover, married parents, mothers, parents living in the Northeast, older parents, and more educated parents are more likely to relay racial socialization messages (Thornton et al. 1990). Learning about race is important for understanding black Americans’ political and social attitudes because it plays a salient role in African Americans ’ racial identity (Mutisya and Ross 2005; Sanders Thompson 1999; D. Miller 1999; Miller and MacIntosh 1999). Black identity includes several complex components that connect group members to the black American experience, including a reverence for distinct...