Disentangling the Roles of Negative Emotions and Racial Identity in the Theory of African American Offending

We test the theory of African American offending’s (TAAO) proposed mediation pathways of anger and depression between everyday racial discrimination and criminal justice injustices from the police and serious offending. Additionally, we test TAAO’s hypothesized moderated mediation association of racial identity on the association between discriminatory experiences and offending via negative emotions. The proposed pathways are assessed utilizing bootstrapped mediation and moderated mediation analytical techniques on a sample of African American youth from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Anger is revealed to partially mediate the association between criminal justice injustices and offending. Racial identity modestly moderates this mediation, meaning as racial identity strengthens the association between criminal justice injustices and offending via anger significantly weakens. In other words, a strong positive racial identity provides a modest buffer against the negative consequences of discriminatory encounters with police. No other significant mediation or moderated mediation pathways were found. Results lend reasonable support to TAAO as well as further highlight the need for additional research into how African Americans’ lived experiences in our racially stratified society uniquely impact their pathways to and resilience against criminal behavior.