The roles of racial identity exploration and critical reflection in white young adults' commitment to social justice and racial justice

Abstract

White young adults in the United States often face challenges in developing anti-racist values and commitments, given that their distal and proximal contexts of development are fundamentally shaped by racist ideologies, such as white normativity and supremacy. Yet little is known about how some white young adults, despite these challenges, form life goals centered on social justice and racial justice—defined here as critical purpose. Drawing on frameworks of ethnic-racial identity, white racial identity development, and critical consciousness, this study investigated how white racial identity exploration and critical reflection predict white young adults' endorsement of critical purposes. Critical reflection was examined at two levels: general and domain-specific about racism. Survey data were collected from 598 white young adults (ages 18–25), and sequential regression analyses were conducted to test how these developmental processes predicted four types of life goals: making money, helping others, advancing social justice, and fighting for racial justice. Results indicated that although racial identity exploration was positively associated with endorsement of social justice and racial justice life goals (i.e., critical purposes), both forms of critical reflection more robustly predicted critical purposes. Domain-specific critical reflection about racism more strongly predicted critical purpose for racial justice. These findings demonstrate the interplay between racial identity and critical consciousness in the lives of white young adults as they form commitments to advancing justice. The findings also highlight the utility of distinguishing between domain-specific and general critical reflection in research and practice.