The Study

Urban African American adolescents compose a population that is at particular risk for poor developmental outcomes, such as drug abuse, violence and teenage pregnancy. During adolescence, these students undergo an extra challenge due to the developmental task of integrating their individual personal identity with their racial identity. In this study, Associate Professor Robbie J. Steward and her research team examined the degree to which grade point average, academic performance and coping styles can predict urban African American high school students’ attitudes about race.

The Findings

A few studies have examined the relationship between racial identity and school achievements, but with conflicting results. Some researchers have suggested that high-achieving African American students dissociate themselves from their own culture, exhibiting “raceless” behaviors. For other black students, school failure may represent a desire to demonstrate their distinctiveness from dominant white culture. Yet, other studies have shown high-achieving African American adolescents who are well adapted in their social environments. The 100 students who participated in this study were urban high school juniors and seniors in a high-risk district for poverty, unemployment and crime. Participants completed questionnaires that measured coping styles, assessed attitudes about race, and reflected personal moods and emotions. Cumulative grade point averages were identified through school records, and revealed a school average of 1.75. Results from this study suggested that a greater adherence to negative beliefs about one’s own culture is associated with lower academic performance and less positive psychological adjustment strategies. The research also found that these beliefs about race often are sustained by an unwillingness or inability to relax among one’s own people. These students tended to have greater exposure to mainstream media as a means of coping with problems and engaged in more activities such as watching television, which can lead to overexposure to negative stereotypical portraits of blacks. Steward suggests that school counselors introduce students to coping strategies that include: relaxation techniques; the development of support groups that provide students with diversion activities that are less isolating from school norms/expectations; and students’ engagement in structured, challenging, and demanding activities that result in a more positive sense of self as individuals and as African Americans.

What It Means to You

Do counselors in your schools have the means to identify students with negative feelings about their race and strategies to reverse these attitudes? What ways can educators in your district reinforce positive views of minorities?

For More Information

Steward, R. J., Jo, H.I., Murray, D., Fitzgerald, W., Neil, D., Fear, F., & Hill, H. (1998). Psychological adjustment and coping styles of urban African American high school students. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 26, 70-82.

< back to 2003 ed-research reports