Previous research has documented the role of ethnic–racial identity and critical consciousness in promoting adaptive and healthy coping responses to racial discrimination among Black and Latinx youth [
24,
61]. Familial racial socialization may work in tandem with youth’s ethnic–racial identity beliefs and their critical action because youth rely on these familial messages about race and racism to process their experiences and determine how to respond [
11,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21]. Our findings build upon this literature by examining how familial racial socialization informs the relationship between gendered racism and critical action among Black and Latina adolescent girls. Moreover, we nuance current studies on adolescents’ critical action by assessing the risk associated with different types of community activism and considering how Black and Latina girls’ intersectional identities and experiences inform critical consciousness processes.
Across both racial groups, girls who experienced more gendered racism—particularly being perceived as angry—engaged in more community activism. Girls who received more familial racial socialization tended to engage in more of each type of community activism. For high-risk activism specifically, familial racial socialization moderated the association between girls’ experiences of gendered racism and their critical action, such that girls who received more messages from their family about race tended to be more involved in political engagement and high-risk activism. Our findings offer more insight into how girls’ experiences of family socialization and gendered racism inform their critical action. These findings underscore the importance of engaging in intersectional and familial-focused approaches to expand our conceptualization of Black and Latina girls’ critical and community action.
4.1. Fueling the Fire: How Stereotypes of Anger Contribute to Community Activism
Girls who were more frequently perceived as angry engaged in more low- and high-risk activism as compared to girls who were less frequently perceived as angry. It is worth noting that Black girls in our sample reported being stereotyped as angry more often than Latina and Afro-Latina girls. This may be related to distinctive racialized and gendered stereotypes specific to Black women and girls as being aggressive, angry, and domineering [
44]. While similar racist and sexist stereotypes exist about Latina women and girl’s “spicy” nature [
45,
46], it is possible that being perceived as angry was less salient for the Latina and Afro-Latina girls in the current sample. We offer two interpretations of these findings. It is possible that Black and Latina girls who speak up for themselves and others in contexts like their schools may be interpreted as “aggressive”, with their leadership and critical self-advocacy misinterpreted as anger [
44,
56,
66]. In this case, girls may not initially be angry, and something like challenging their teacher about the lack of diversity in the school curriculum could be perceived as “sassy” or “defiant”. It is also possible that sometimes girls are angry about the discrimination or inequalities they experience, and adults may feel threatened by their response. For example, girls may resist a dress code infraction that feels racially motivated, feel angry about it, and a school administrator could see that as defiance. This finding is especially important to consider because of previous literature emphasizing the importance of Black and Latina girls speaking up and not losing their voices during times of injustice [
56,
63,
64,
66]. By invoking stereotypes of anger, individuals may seek to silence Black and Latina women and girls by invalidating their experiences and writing them off as reactionary. It is unfair that girls of color must filter their reactions because their emotions can be politicized by others and weaponized to silence them [
76]. In future studies, scholars should consider how adults working with youth can honor anger as a valid response to gendered racism and systemic oppression and how they can help girls utilize their anger in personally productive capacities [
77].
It is also important to consider why other types of gendered racism, like microaggressions related to assumptions of strength, appearance and beauty, and instances where girls feel silenced and marginalized, did not predict community activism. For many Black and Latina girls, being strong and resilient is not only a cultural value, but a part of their self-definition [
27,
28]. Thus, when girls are stereotyped as strong or independent, they may not necessarily view the microaggression as negative, but instead as an indicator of resilience and resistance. However, scholars have demonstrated how perceptions of being strong can lead to a lack of support, mentorship, and positive guidance due to adultification bias [
44,
49]. Adultification is harmful, because it frames girls as more adult-like than their peers and may prevent some girls from seeking help when they need it. Contrarily, stereotypes about girls’ appearance and experiences of marginalization may make girls feel like they are not important or that their voices do not matter. Experiences of sexual violence [
55], exoticism [
44,
45], and gatekeeping in academic and professional spaces [
47,
48] may inhibit girls from engaging in critical action because they may be focused on coping or surviving in other ways. Adults working with youth should be cautious of how these stereotypes are impacting Black and Latina girls’ well-being, access to resources, and ability to practice critical action.
4.2. Ethnic–Racial Identity and Familial Racial Socialization as a Critical Component of Critical Consciousness and Well-Being
Consistently across both racial groups, girls who engaged in more ethnic–racial identity exploration engaged in more low-risk, high-risk, and formal political activism. This finding supports the associations found in prior studies between ethnic–racial identity and critical consciousness development, such that events inciting ethnic–racial identity exploration are also likely to contribute to critical reflection and action [
24,
61]. For Black and Latinx girls, having a strong ethnic–racial identity is important for their health and well-being because these identities are often central to their sense of self, shaping the way they build community. In the current study, we expanded on previous findings about ethnic–racial identity and critical consciousness by considering whether familial racial socialization played a role in these processes. Familial racial socialization may provide youth with critical perspectives about how others, like their parents, are navigating racially systemic inequities [
18,
19]. Furthermore, as youth discuss issues of racism and/or gendered racism with their family members, they may come to recognize the importance of community support, resources, and activism.
We found that familial racial socialization contributed to girls’ participation in all three types of community activism. Specifically, familial racial socialization contributed to low-risk activism. We also found that familial racial socialization informed the relationship between perceptions of being angry and high-risk activism; we see this same trending relationship with formal political activism (see
Figure 2). For high-risk and formal political activism, we saw that when girls experienced more stereotypes and received less familial racial socialization, they engaged in less activism; contrarily, if they received more familial messages, they engaged in more activism, suggesting that familial racial socialization may serve as a protective factor against experiences of discrimination, contributing to transforming experiences of discrimination into action. These findings aligned with empirical literature demonstrating that familial conversations about racial discrimination inform Black and Latinx youths’ decisions about how to take action [
11,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21]. Thus, our findings offer additional insight into the integrative model of ethnic–racial identity and critical consciousness by emphasizing the role of familial racial socialization in Black and Latina girls’ critical consciousness development.
4.4. Limitations and Considerations
While our study makes several notable contributions to the extant literature, there are some limitations and considerations worth mentioning. Although we intentionally recruited Afro-Latina girls, we did not have sufficient power to make meaningful comparisons to Black or Latina girls. Therefore, we combined the Afro-Latina and Latina samples, based on their similar ancestral relationship to colonization in Latina America as opposed to chattel slavery in the United States. However, it is important to note that Latina and Afro-Latina girls’ experiences of marginalization also vary, often due to colorism [
58,
83]. Afro-Latina girls may face different types of stereotypes and are racialized differently in the United States. For instance, many Afro-Latina girls have darker skin tones and experience colorism and criticism of their hair. Additionally, others may try to force Afro-Latinx people to “choose” an identity as either Black or Latinx, rejecting one side or the other; this may result in feeling like their identities are invisible in different contexts within the Latinx community [
84]. By combining these groups, we may lose information about Afro-Latina girls’ experiences of gendered racism.
Similarly, while we included gender-expansive youth in our analyses, we recognize that our findings are limited because of the small sample size. Gender-expansive youth continue to expand the designations and definitions of gender identities in ways that we may not have captured through our survey selections. Furthermore, by combining butch, femmes, and genderqueer youth, we may have lost important insight into these youths’ experiences of marginalization. Additionally, no trans girls participated in our study, and so our results are not inclusive of their experiences of gendered racism. Research shows that youth who do not conform to their sex assigned at birth experience greater harassment and bullying; this may be particularly true for youth of color [
30]. Although our statistical power was limited in the types of analyses we could run, we included these gender-expansive youths’ experiences to provide a more accurate representation of the adolescent youth who participated in our study. Scholars must find more ways to be intentionally inclusive in sample design, rather than opting to exclude certain populations based on low numerical representation. Without doing so, the field will continue to miss out on critical developmental knowledge about gender-expansive youth, for instance.
Another consideration is that we used the Black Community Activism Orientation Scale [
31] and the Gender Racial Microaggressions Scale for Black Women [
5] to measure Black and Latina girls’ and gender-expansive youths’ experiences. Both of these scales have advanced the field by offering more ecologically valid measures of Black peoples’ experiences. However, since the Black Activism Orientation Scale focuses on Black adolescents and young adults in general, we may have missed some activist behaviors specific to Latina girls. We addressed this concern by tailoring our measure to be racially specific and did not find any significant racial differences in these girls’ community activism participation. Moreover, this measure does not focus on girlhood. It is possible that there may be types of activism, specific to girls, that may not be captured in this measure. For instance, one subtle way that girls choose to resist gendered racism daily is through self-expression via fashion, hair, and make-up [
47]. Other literature demonstrates how Black and Latina girls may also leverage art or service (e.g., mutual aid) as part of their community activism [
63,
64,
65,
66]. Therefore, future measures of critical action must be more expansive to not only better incorporate the ways girls show up in their activism, but also to capture these moments of micro-resistance that are often overlooked and devalued in the current literature. Similarly, we adapted the Gendered Racial Microaggression Scale to be age-specific by including more youth-specific contexts in the items. We did see some significant differences in terms of the experiences of gendered racism Black girls faced compared to that faced by Latina and Afro-Latina girls. It is possible we did not capture microaggressions that Latina or Afro-Latina girls face. These measures were not adapted to show participants’ gender in the item. Thus, there may also be ways that gender-expansive youth are discriminated against that are not captured by our measure.
4.5. Implications
Our study has important implications for parents, educators, and youth practitioners, as well as for scholars studying identity and critical consciousness development among adolescents. The results indicate that familial racial socialization can encourage Black and Latina girls to respond to gendered racial discrimination through critical action. Researchers have demonstrated that racial socialization processes inform youths’ racial understandings and beliefs about the world, which can then inform their perceived ability to cope with instances of racial discrimination [
15,
61]. We build on this work by demonstrating that familial racial socialization plays a role in Black and Latina girls’ responses to gendered racial discrimination, in part by influencing their beliefs and actions about affecting positive change in their communities. Thus, we suggest that in addition to offering messages about preparation for discrimination, parents might also offer concrete ways for girls to feel involved and important within their local communities. This might include volunteering with a local youth organization, getting involved in a youth participatory research project, or facilitating other activities that nurture their activist spirit and desire to improve social conditions. To date, culturally relevant family-based programs have often focused specifically on preparing parents to discuss race and racism with their children [
85]. Our results suggest that, when possible, these programs might also incorporate opportunities for families to learn more about how to translate Black and Latina girls’ ideas and experiences of injustice into different forms of critical community activism.
Similarly, the results should encourage educators to develop and incorporate curriculum, programming, and organizational practices that address Black and Latina girls’ cultural and social realities and support their critical consciousness development. While some culturally relevant curricula, like ethnic studies [
86], allow students of color to explore their intersectional identities, the majority of schools struggle to integrate discussions of race, ethnicity, and culture and are explicitly instructed to avoid talking with students about “racially charged” sociopolitical events that may impact Black and Latinx girls’ gendered and racialized realities. Given the nationwide pushback against students learning accurate information about racism in school [
87,
88], as well as against gender affirming care for gender-expansive and diverse youth [
89], this will likely be more difficult or impossible for educators who work within schools and districts that do not adopt anti-bias and discrimination policies [
90]. Youth in our study, who were being educated in the Southern region of the United States, may be particularly impacted by the movement to ban critical race theory (CRT) from schools; currently 10 out of 15 states from which we recruited our participants have banned historically accurate discussions of race and racism in the classroom [
87,
88,
91,
92]. At the minimum, we hope educators will use these findings and consider the importance of locating books or materials that address gendered racial stereotypes of Black and Latinx girls (e.g., Piecing Me Together, by R. Watson, or Juliet Takes a Breath, by G. Rivera) and encourage girls to tap into peers, caregivers, and youth mentors who can provide a web of support and care [
93]. Additionally, we encourage educators facing barriers to discussing racism in the classroom, to continue to get creative about how they may choose to connect girls to youth organizations in their communities (e.g., Girls for Gender Equity or Radical Monarchs) and service opportunities that relate to youths’ interests. If the curriculum and programming cannot occur within the classroom, educators can still serve as advocates for Black and Latina girls to find ways to reflect on and consider actions to address the sociopolitical events impacting their lives.
Our results offer a few main points of departure for scholars who study identity development, family socialization processes, and critical consciousness development. First, researchers should interrogate how familial messages (i.e., talking about a time when they encountered discrimination) and modeling (i.e., seeing the adults in their lives attend protests or take care of others in their communities) encourage girls to take action against gendered racism and social inequities in their communities. In moving forward, scholars could examine the type of gendered and racialized messages that Black and Latinx girls receive from different family members in their lives, especially in regards to thinking about how a family member’s own social identities and positioning may inform the conversations they have with these girls. Finally, more studies must assess the multidimensional nature of familial socialization regarding gendered and racialized systemic barriers, as well as the mechanisms that underlie the connection between familial socialization and youth action. In particular, scholars should explore the way in which families are especially impactful in incorporating culturally relevant values, traditions, and knowledge within their messages to Black and Latina girls about taking action within their communities.
Lastly, we call for scholars and educators to consider the complexities of what it means to support Black and Latina girls’ decisions to engage in critical action in their communities. Although scholars generally consider critical action an adaptive and healthy coping response to racism, we still need more empirical evidence on how cultural values (e.g., communalism and familismo) [
62], structural barriers (e.g., institutional support and insufficient activist development in schools) [
39,
40], and risk (e.g., physical harm or threats to self and family) [
31,
65] inform Black and Latina girls’ critical consciousness development. Most current attempts to quantitatively measure critical action lack community focus and do not consider the various risks youth face when they engage in critical actions like attending protests, organizing events in their communities, and drawing attention to social inequities. Youth engaging in critical action may encounter discrimination or experience physical, psychological, and legal costs that vary based on their intersectional identities (i.e., gender, sexuality, and nationality status) [
26]. Girls who take action within their schools may find themselves hyper surveilled, punished, and even at risk of being pushed into the carceral system [
44,
56,
66]. Ergo, adults must be prepared to support youth after they commit to taking action and encounter these types of risks. At a baseline, parents, educators, and scholars can have open and honest conversations about how youth can determine their own comfort with certain forms of critical action and the potential consequences. This may include discussions on how youth can mitigate risk when engaging in high-risk activism, such as providing a checklist on how youth can prepare for a protest (e.g., what to bring, how to establish a home base, and how to respond if police become involved) [
94]. Scholars and educators might also consider accompanying youth as co-conspirators when youth share concerns about how their activism may impact their safety; for allies joining Black and Latinx youth, this means a willingness to risk your safety. Another way scholars can support youth could be by developing long term collaborations through youth participatory action research that can provide a space for youth to lead activism around issues that are important to them. Youth participatory action research fosters trusting, youth-adult partnerships that can support youth in stepping up or seeking support when they need it. All in all, scholars and educators must honor the risk that comes with Black and Latinx youths’ decisions to engage in critical action and support these youth to take action in ways that feel right to them.