Sociology Compass
Volume 5, Issue 11 (November 2011)
pages 995-1004
DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00418.x
Annamaria Csizmadia, Assistant Professor, Human Development & Family Studies
University of Connecticut, Stamford
Deficit-based scholarship has suggested that multiracial youth are maladjusted due to racial identity confusion and social marginality. This paper proposes an integrative model of multiracial youth’s positive development. This model highlights the important role of social cognition in understanding multiracial youth’s development. Drawing on Spencer’s PVEST [Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems], developmental research on monoracial and multiracial youth, and the racial socialization literature, I argue that multiracial youth’s perceptions of how their racial identity choices are accepted in their social environment have implications for their adjustment. Serving as developmental resources, parents can attenuate their children’s social perceptual biases or enhance their abilities to cope with actualized negative social experiences by engaging in cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and transmitting race-related messages that help multiracial children reframe their negative perceptions.
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