Welcome to the Racial Experiences of Youth Laboratory! This laboratory is designed to examine the everyday racial experiences of Black youth with a specific focus on racial discrimination and racial identity.

What is racial discrimination?

Racial discrimination is defined as dominant group members' actions that have a differential and negative effect on subordinate racial/ethnic groups.

What is racial identity?

Racial identity is defined as the significance and meaning that individuals ascribe to being a member of their racial group.

Research aims for the lab

One of the primary aims of the lab is to understand experiences of discrimination from adolescents' perspectives. Previous research suggests that discrimination is pervasive among Black youth but not all perceive it as race-based during this developmental period. We seek to understand whether discriminatory experiences are influenced by the perpetrator (i.e., peers versus adults), the setting (i.e., the school versus neighborhood) and/or the time (i.e., in the past year versus the past month)? The second goal is to understand the intervening mechanisms in the relationship between perceptions of discrimination, mental health and psychological well-being. While racial identity is considered a key moderator for perceptions of racial discrimination, we are also interested in examining coping behaviors as a mediator for perceptions of racial discrimination. Also, there is interest in simultaneously examining a specificity model, or the specific relations among particular stressors, mediators, moderators and outcome variables. Lastly, this lab seeks to address the question: Who is most affected by discrimination? In essence, we desire to identify profiles of youth that are most adversely affected by discriminatory experiences and what distinguishes them from other Black youth based on demographic characteristics, personality variables and contextual variables.