Abstract
School belonging is a key indicator of students’ academic well-being that is threatened by adults’ and peers’ transgressions of discrimination. Moreover, the hierarchical power structure at school enables adults and peers to enact ethnic-racial discrimination differently, which is also more or less salient among Black, Asian American, and Latinx youth. Therefore, this study aimed to disentangle the links between adult and peer-perpetrated racial discrimination at school, five distinct coping strategies, and school belonging across ethnic-racial groups. Participants were 1686 students in grades 9–12. These results indicated that adolescents who reported peer discrimination also reported greater proactive and aggressive coping. Black youth who reported more adult discrimination also reported more proactive coping, whereas Asian and Latinx youth who reported more peer discrimination reported more proactive coping. Peer discrimination was indirectly associated with greater school belonging via proactive coping, whereas adult discrimination was directly and negatively related to belonging. These findings suggest that adolescents may be selecting to proactively cope when faced with the discrimination source they most often navigate.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the students, staff, and administrators at our participating school sites. We thank all TIDES research assistants, staff, and postdoctoral fellows for their contributions to the research process.
Authors’ Contributions
J.P.M. contributed to the present study’s conception, design, analytic plan, and drafted the manuscript; J.E.K. also contributed to the present study’s conception, conceptualization and design, conducted statistical analyses, and drafted the manuscript; D.R-.D. conceived the original study, acquired project funding, contributed to the material preparation, data collection, analytic plan, and preparation of manuscript; A.M.R. also conceived the original study, contributed to the material preparation, data collection, analytic plan, and preparation of manuscript; A.J.U-.T. conceived the original study, acquired project funding, contributed to the material preparation, data collection, and preparation of manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS No. 1625196, PI: D.R-.D.; BCS No. 1625277, PI: A.J.U-.T.) for the TIDES project.
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Montoro, J.P., Kilday, J.E., Rivas-Drake, D. et al. Coping with Discrimination from Peers and Adults: Implications for Adolescents’ School Belonging. J Youth Adolescence 50, 126–143 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01360-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01360-5