Addressing Racialized Identity, Political Efficacy and Acts of Citizenship in Adolescent Black Youth in the United States

Addressing adolescent youth political efficacy seems essential to the prosperity of a democratic society. Research in the United States (US) has focused on different constructs of political socialization such as interest in politics (e.g., Prior 2010), participation, engagement or voting (e.g., Eckstein, et al. 2012; Quintelier & van Deth 2014; Vecchione & Caprara 2009), and trust in or satisfaction with the political system and politicians (Levi & Stoker 2000). The literature on youth political efficacy reveals the potential for reducing the civic knowledge and civic engagement gap among adolescent US Black youth (Hope 2015; Hope & Jagers 2014). The conversion of the US from a limited welfare state into one stressing privatization, personal responsibility, and mass incarceration has transformed the relationship adolescent Black youth develop with their government and their neighborhoods by altering the idea of Blackness (Clay 2018), thus altering the context of their societal relations. Blackness, and all that it signifies, is concealed. Black suffering, a consequence of systemic racism, is transformed according to neoliberal principles (Baldridge 2014; Clay 2018; Spence 2015). This is especially true when examining the acts of citizenship associated with adolescent Black youth in the US. Given how this neoliberal turn has fundamentally reshaped Black communities, Black suffering, and the relationship between Black people and the US government, explorations of how adolescent Black youth articulate their racialized identity and political efficacy become appealing. By deconstructing adolescent Black youth racialized identity and political efficacy in neoliberal times, we can begin to understand how this population delineates the structures and circumstances that hinder their ability to civically engage their communities, which has implications for marginalized youth populations globally. The proposed paper, Addressing Racialized Identity, Political Efficacy and Acts of Citizenship in Adolescent Black Youth in the United States, brings forth two separate, yet compatible theoretical frameworks, Black Resilience Neoliberalism (BRN) and the sociopolitical development model (SPD), to grasp the racialized identity and the political efficacy of adolescent Black youth in the US. Sixty-three adolescent Black youth completed an online survey that gauged their racialized identity and sense of societal responsibility, civic agency, and contribution to their community. I hypothesized that adolescent Black youth would positively express their Blackness. Their political efficacy would illuminate neoliberal principles such as self-help and self-responsibility. Moreover, those who positively express their Blackness would demonstrate strong associations between their Black identity and their political efficacy. Findings indicated that for a majority of respondents, racialized identity constituted a fundamental component of their social political development (Sellers et al 1998; Watts et al. 2003). Notably, however, between one-fifth and one-fourth of our Black youth participants internalized white supremacist thought that perpetuates and normalizes the oppression of people of color in the US. In that regard, our findings beg the question how deeply racialized bodies endure suffering in spaces such as schools and communities, and how this suffering might appear normal to some adolescent US Black youth.