Racial Discrimination, Ethnic-Racial Socialization, and Cultural Identities Among Asian American Youths

Objectives: This study investigates whether and how racial discrimination is associated with ethnic-racial socialization in the family and how distinct aspects of ethnic-racial socialization influence children's ethnic and American identity among Filipino American and Korean American families. Method: The data are obtained from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Asian American Families Project (N = 1,580; 379 Filipino American youths and 377 parents, and 410 Korean American youths and 414 parents; M-age of youths = 15.01). Using the bootstrapping and maximum likelihood with missing values approaches, we conducted path analyses to test the hypothesized associations concurrently and longitudinally for each ethnic group. Results: Youth-reported racial discrimination was directly associated with weaker American identity, both concurrently and longitudinally. In concurrent models, racial discrimination experienced by both youth and parents was positively associated with youth-reported preparation for bias, which in turn was linked with stronger ethnic identity among Filipinos, whereas no indirect pathways reached statistical significance among Koreans. In longitudinal models, parent-reported discrimination was linked with higher levels of promotion of mistrust among both groups, which predicted weaker ethnic identity among Filipino youth but stronger American identity among Korean youth. Conclusions: The present study highlights how exposure to racial discrimination may have a lasting influence in cultural identity development among Asian Americans and possibly through ethnic-racial socialization in the family, which might have been shaped by such experiences. Our results also underscore the importance of considering the experiences of both children and parents in studies of discrimination and ethnic-racial socialization.