Toxic pathways: Exploring the impacts of vicarious and environmental racism on black youth in early childhood

Abstract

Academic and public discourse continues to center discussions of structural racism, its effects, and policy remediation of its lasting impacts on the well-being of racial minorities over the life course. We contribute to this discourse through a research synthesis of scholarship on the health and well-being consequences of vicarious and environmental racism for Black youth. Utilizing a sociological perspective, we propose a model that 1) identifies the ways that racism vicariously impacts the health and well-being of Black children on the interpersonal level through discrimination, and 2) highlights how structural and environmental factors both exacerbate these experiences and impact health and well-being directly. The harmful effects of vicarious racism on Black children between birth and age 5 are well-documented. Given the lack of agency in early childhood, coupled with their caregivers’ heightened exposure to racialized adversity, we argue that Black youth are particularly vulnerable to racism's indirect impact on mental health and socioemotional development. Additionally, decades of research on environmental justice and environmental racism show yet another route through which structural racism shapes the health of racial minorities across the life course (e.g., toxic exposure, resource scarcity, urban heat). Despite this growing focus on how Black children's well-being is shaped through indirect experiences of racism, as well as the mental health impacts of personal and vicarious racism, few studies have coalesced these lines of research to better understand how to lessen and mitigate the impacts of these adverse exposures. As such, we emphasize strategies for psychological resilience and harm reduction.