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Differentiating Pathways between Ethnic-Racial Identity and Critical Consciousness

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Abstract

Critical consciousness is one way in which minoritized youth can resist oppression and move towards sociopolitical change, but little is known about how it evolves alongside developmentally-relevant assets such as ethnic-racial identity. Among 367 ethnically-racially diverse youth (Mage = 15.85, 68.9% female, 85% U.S-born), links between multiple identity constructs (oppressed minority identity, centrality, public regard) and critical consciousness (reflection, motivation, action) were examined using structural equation modeling. Oppressed minority ideology and centrality were associated with more reflection, more motivation, but less critical action. In contrast, public regard was associated with less reflection, less motivation, but more action. The results suggest that different identity processes should be cultivated to help promote these largely independent dimensions of critical consciousness. Further implications of the findings and ideas for future research are discussed.

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Notes

  1. More tangentially related to the current study, but underscoring the importance of considering racial differences, critical action’s impact on mental health was also found to differ across groups (Hope et al. 2019a, 2019b).

  2. This is the same conclusion reached in recent work validating the ShoCCS (Diemer et al., 2020), but full measurement invariance testing could be further examined in explicitly measurement-focused studies.

  3. Established procedures were used to evenly spread true score variance across three parcels (Kishton & Widaman, 1994). Specifically, after looking at each of the factor loadings, the strongest loading item was placed in Parcel 1, the second highest loading item on Parcel 2, the third and fourth highest loading items on Parcel 3, the fourth highest loading item on Parcel 2, and so on in a ‘snake-like’ fashion.

  4. Because invariance of factor loadings and item intercepts was established through measurement invariance testing, this part of this model was constrained to equality (i.e., invariance) in both Models A and B. Because invariance has been established by ethnicity-race among diverse adolescents (Rapa et al., 2020), loadings and intercepts for critical reflection, motivation, and action are also specified to be invariant across groups in both Models A and B.

  5. Allowing one pair of items per factor to correlate would result in ‘good’ fitting factors, but may also be capitalizing on random chance, especially considering the small number of items per subscale.

  6. Mean scores, not latent variables, were used to assess identity and critical consciousness dimensions in this preliminary step of analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the individual adolescents who participated in the study.

Funding

This work was supported, in part, by a predoctoral fellowship provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD07376) through the Carolina Consortium on Human Development, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to KC. Funding for the study, in part, was also made possible by internal grant support awarded to GS.

Data sharing declaration

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the authors on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, P.O. Box 7778, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA

    Lisa Kiang & N. Keita Christophe

  2. UNC-Greensboro, Greensboro, USA

    Gabriela L. Stein

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LK collaborated in the conception of the manuscript’s primary aims; KC designed and coordinated the larger study from which this manuscript is based and performed the statistical analysis; GS helped design and coordinate the larger study from which this manuscript is based. All authors drafted, read, and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lisa Kiang.

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All procedures performed in the current study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the UNCG Institutional Review Board.

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Appendix

Appendix

Equivalent Model with Critical Reflection, Motivation, and Action Predicting Ethnic-racial Identity Dimensionsi.

figure a

Note. Structural paths go from right to left to illustrate ‘reverse causality’. Given cross-sectional data, this model is equivalent i.e., same model fit and number of parameters estimated as the primary analytical model. Non-significant paths are indicated via dashed lines and factor loadings are omitted for greater readability.

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Kiang, L., Christophe, N.K. & Stein, G.L. Differentiating Pathways between Ethnic-Racial Identity and Critical Consciousness. J Youth Adolescence 50, 1369–1383 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01453-9

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