MEDIA MESSAGES: INTERSECTIONS OF ETHNIC-RACIAL AND MEDIA SOCIALIZATION IN AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILIES

Abstract

Research on ethnic-racial socialization in African American families has rarely examined parental messages about media, even though African American youth are among the heaviest media consumers, and media depictions are frequently biased. We surveyed 398 parents of African American 3- to 17-year-olds, asking how often they socialized their child using (a) ethnic-racial socialization, (b) parental mediation, and (c) media racial depictions. Results suggest that ethnic-racial socialization includes a specific set of practices involving encouraging, critiquing, and avoiding particular types of media racial depictions – strategies which we call Media-Based Ethnic-Racial Socialization (MBERS). Frequencies for all three socialization domains were predicted by parent and perceived child ethnic-racial identity strength and parental perceptions of racial bias and opportunity in the child’s media. These results suggest the importance of media for ethnic-racial socialization practices and the centrality of race even for socialization domains that may not always be seen as racialized, such as parental mediation.